"Ferencz said, 'We had a butler who was fired. As of 2023, Doris Burke is possibly single. The will provides Lafferty with an executor's fee of up to $5 million, a lifetime annuity of $500,000 a year, and commissions, which could run into the millions annually, as a trustee of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and of three other closely related new foundations: the Doris Duke Foundation for the Preservation of Endangered Wildlife, the Doris Duke Foundation for the Preservation of New Jersey Farmland and Farm Animals, and the Doris Duke Foundation of Islamic Art. In 1933, when she turned 21, Doris Duke came into the first $10 million left by her father. Karen had heard of the tormented Doris Duke and her operatic life. It was around 4 p.m. when the 53-year-old and her confidante of 10 years, decorator Eduardo Tirella, drove away from her mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, to attend an appointment with the president of the local preservation society. . I know a lot of bull dykes. On February 13, 1935, Cromwell married Doris Duke. ", "When one of Doris's love affairs ended, there was always great drama," says her friend Consuelo Crespi. Her longest relationship was with Joey Castro, the Mexican-born jazz pianist at the Mocambo nightclub in Los Angeles, whom she met in 1950, when he was 23 and she was 38. sometimes I can't believe it's real. I tried repeatedly to get in contact with her. Many believe she killed him. She was a cool lady. The day that America's richest woman, Doris Duke, forged a dark, new chapter of her biography. Although Duke was determined to produce his own heir, Nanaline was as surprised as everyone else when she became pregnant at the age of 42, and she always favored her son, Walker Inman, over Doris. . It was a routine, she later told police; something they'd "done one hundred times before", The Newport Daily News reported. Doris Burke is a sideline reporter and color analyst for ESPN college basketball, as well as NBA on ESPN and NBA on ABC games. Doris married twice: the first to gold digging socialite James Cromwell, and the second, in 1947, to legendary Dominican playboy Porfirio "Rubi" Rubirosa who was said to be extremely well-endowed. For many years she sang in a black gospel choir at the First Baptist Church of Nutley, New Jersey, and left its minister, the Reverend Lawrence G. Roberts, $1 million in her will. Meanwhile, Heffner is holed up on her Hawaiian ranch. Watch full episodes and live stream OWN whenever and wherever you want. "He wanted a settlement," says Nancy Cooke de Herrera, "but you could not get a nickel out of Doris if you came at her the wrong way." The court also gave Doris title to the Fifth Avenue house, which she gave to New York University in 1957, and Rough Point, a huge Vanderbilt "cottage" in Newport. Sean behind the register at Staples in Santa Monica. "He was so attentive," Banks says. Lafferty had been working for Nelson and Claudia Peltz for the previous seven months, and Rybak says, "The Peltzes put him in a 28-day program. I remember when I read his resume, I thought, This man has really been through it. The first single, "To the Other Woman (I'm the Other Woman)", reached no. Mahn soon left, and in 1987 co-authored Daddy's Duchess: The Unauthorized Biography of Doris Duke. According to the 1993 Forbes Four Hundred list, Doris Duke was the 18th-richest woman in America, not far behind cosmetics billionairess Este Lauder. Medical Center last summer. Years ago, she was talking about the things we all talk about nowthe environment, battered women and children, animal rights. James Henry Roberts Cromwell (June 4, 1896 - March 19, 1990) was an American diplomat, candidate for the United States Senate, author, and one-time husband of Doris Duke, "the richest girl in the world". He came over here, and she died. ", Sometimes, Robert Farrah recalls, "Doris would throw up her hands and say, 'No wills! Doris loved it. Peltz, a Michael Milken protg, was beginning his rise to the top of the junk-bond heap; he would soon take over Triangle Industries, then National Can and American Can, and be worth $400 million by 1989. Quite suddenly, early in 1991, Doris called me in distress from Hawaii and said that she was leaving in an urgent way for California and she had become fearful of Chandi. I turned and saw her on the floor. For reasons I don't understand, a curtain seemed to come down. It would come back. Finally, one of her new lawyers, Mr. Doyle, got it back on track. Two years later she bought Falcon's Lair, the Beverly Hills house where Rudolph Valentino once lived. "Sometimes people are attracted to the thing they fear the most.". She was wearing a dark-blue turtleneck, old Levi's, cotton socks, and scruffy moccasins. Pending allocation net proceeds will be invested as part of the Foundation's endowment. ", Donald Robinson, a New Jersey lawyer who had worked closely with Duke since the early 70s, will not comment about the lawsuit, but he speaks glowingly of Heffner's abilities. After testy negotiations with local authorities, she finally shipped the pieces to New Jersey and installed them in her indoor tennis court. That led to pneumonia and she couldn't eat and it was on and off, on and off, for months.". She was very intelligent and very together. Duke turned up at the Ritz in Paris that October walking with a cane. Duke was 80 when she passed away in 1993. There was a deadly side to Doris. She wasn't sure if she wanted to have a baby, but she said by the third month an incredible mother instinct took over. There's no question that Bernard was more than just a butler. That's not the Doris I knew. Duke, who had managed to avoid almost all publicity since the Tirella scandal, stunned the world in November 1988 by putting up the $5 million bail for Imelda Marcos, whom the U.S. government had charged with racketeering. He also said he had worked on and off for Peggy Lee for 10 years. In late 2008, Brian made his first fitful attempts to have Sean added to the Duke Trustto "rattle cages," as he calls it. The next day I got a phone call from Doris to thank me. After Bloom was fired, Protas was told the loan was being reviewed. Peggy Lee told me that she had spoken to Duke on the phone several times in her last months, and that Duke had made a donation to an AIDS charity that Lee is involved with. ", Heffner was sitting in the Manhattan apartment of one of her lawyers on a Saturday afternoon late last December. "She moved very well for that kind of dancingwe called it Middle Eastern, or danse orientale, but essentially it's belly dancing. And Doris said, 'How about the one next to you?' Image: Getty. And then he was going to A.A., and he did very well in A.A., as far as I know. Doris Duke was born in New York City in 1912. ", Thomas Rybak, who had been working as Doris Duke's chef for several months when Lafferty was hired in May 1987, at a salary of about $500 a week, paints a different picture. So we went into the room, and Bernard was buck naked, bent over a chair, passed out. It would be the last time the paparazzi caught her, and, true to form, she slapped Rossellini for not telling her the photographers would be there. . ") Just this month, Newport journalist Peter Lance penned an investigation into the incident for Vanity Fair that suggested the mercurial heiress "got away with murder". Chandi Heffner was "planted" on Doris Duke by Imelda Marcos. ", "What struck me about Chandi was her hairit came all the way down below her waist," says Phyllis Saretta of her first meeting with Chandi Heffner. His family all died, and he had one remaining relative, in Philadelphia. [3][4] This release on Jay Boy Records was not a success, so she continued working as a session singer, mainly in Philadelphia. The rest of the house was dark, which was odd. I called the California home and the other sites many times. Duke never had the chance for anything resembling a normal life. "Miss Duke said to me, 'I think I may have been drugged. In Newport, she loved going to the jazz festival, and then one would sometimes have dinner in that huge house with the ferocious dogs snarling behind the gates. 'Doris Duke really was the last Chinese empress, the last of a type that doesn't exist anymore. [8] Germaine Benjamin was Cromwell's fourth and last wife, from September 27, 1971, until her death in December 1986. Nine months earlier, she had sued her adoptive mother for breach of contract, claiming that she had promised to maintain her in the Duke lifestyle for the rest of Heffner's life and to make her the principal heir of her estate. At a 1990 lunch at Duke Farms for Lord Carrington, then chairman of Christie's, according to Oatsie Charles, "Chandi's attitude toward Doris was awfully offhand. In 1966, socialite Doris Duke's friend died in a freak accident. "You know, fate is strange. She's a very nice girl, really first-rate, and she will keep Doris's foundation going in the futureyou know, not a law firm but a human being. Steve comes about four, and he and I go up to Bernard's room. Heffner takes credit for everything from improving the dairy herd at Duke Farms to arranging the sale of Duke's gold deposits in Switzerland. She took daily tap lessons from Bill "Bojangles" Robinson at the Cotton Club, and for years studied ballet under Cyd Charisse's ex-husband, Nico. On New Year's Day 1964, she ordered him out, and he retaliated by suing her, claiming that they had been secretly married. He wanted me out of there. ", "I was not involved. Both of her parents had actually been married to other people beforeDuke had divorced his first wife after two years, while Holt Inman was . Moreover, Heffner's legal complaint against Duke states: Doris . "Chandi loved animals. This was at 11 in the morning. 50 on the pop chart in early 1970, and the follow-up "Feet Start Walking" also made the R&B chart,[5] but success was cut short when the record company collapsed. 3.89. "I looked upon Bernard as a member of the small Doris Duke family," says Donald Robinson. "That was quite an event. Doris Duke dumped Chandi Heffner because Heffner wanted to marry one of their bodyguards. Duke slid across to the driver's seat to guide the car through the soon-to-be-unlocked entrance. It was 1925 and she instantly became the second richest person in the world. She also asked to be buried at sea. "I got a call from my sister's major-domo, Ferencz Soltesz," said Heffner, who had been living with Duke for two years at that point. [2], She married Johnathan Augustus "Gus" Willingham, an original member of The Cadillacs,[1] and under her married name of Doris Willingham recorded her first single, "Running Away from Loneliness" in 1966. [1] In 1940, for 142 days,[3] he was the United States Ambassador to Canada. When tobacco heiress Doris Duke died last October, she left a will that shocked even those who had known her best. Heffner also said that as next of kin she would have requested an autopsy, but she was never officially notified of Duke's death, and by the time she learned of the cremation, it was too late. Lafferty served. I was constantly arguing with Bernard . Marcos has said that she and Duke were friends of almost 20 years, but others say that they met in the late 1970s through Franco Rossellini.