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2good2btrueTopic starter

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Doctor Caused Doris Duke's Death With Overdoses, Report Says
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr
Published: April 26, 1995
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A court-appointed investigator looking into the death of Doris Duke, the billionaire tobacco heiress, has concluded that her doctor caused her death with a fatal overdose of morphine and that the principal executor of her estate had squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars since she died.

In a report unsealed in Surrogate Court yesterday, the investigator, Richard H. Kuh, said that although Miss Duke was terminally ill, her death was intentionally hastened by the repeated and increasing doses of morphine that her doctor administered.

Mr. Kuh's investigation was ordered three months ago by Judge Eve Preminger, who has been trying to settle a messy legal fight between several of Miss Duke's heirs.

Specifically, he was asked to investigate allegations that Miss Duke had been murdered by her doctors and her butler and to determine whether the butler, Bernard Lafferty, had squandered the estate's money on spending sprees and drinking binges since being named a co-executor. The allegations came from several people who had been cut out of Miss Duke's last will, signed in March 1993.

Lawyers for Mr. Lafferty and the Duke estate fought hard to keep the report from being made public, arguing it would damage the reputations of Miss Duke's doctor and legal advisers. But Judge Preminger shot down their objections.

"This court is not a public relations office," she said. "Your request is denied. The application is denied. The report is open to the public."

Judge Preminger said she was astounded by Mr. Kuh's findings. She ordered the estate to temporarily stop lending money to Mr. Lafferty and to freeze payments to the legion of lawyers he has hired. She also said she would give the estate's lawyers a week to respond to the report before holding a hearing and ruling on Mr. Lafferty's fitness to administer the Duke fortune.

Howard L. Weitzman, a lawyer for the Duke estate, said Mr. Kuh's report was incomplete and inaccurate. "We think when all the facts are before the court, that ultimately Miss Duke's wishes will be carried out and the executor that she wanted to administer the estate will be confirmed," he said.

Miss Duke died on Oct. 28, 1993, at her mansion in Beverly Hills, leaving a $1.2 billion estate and no natural heirs. Although she left most of her money to charity, she willed Mr. Laffery, an Irish-born butler who became her friend and confidant in her last years, $5 million and made him a co-executor at a salary of $500,000 a year for life. She also appointed U.S. Trust Company of New York a co-executor.

Several former employees and one of her former physicians, Dr. Harry B. Demopoulos, have challenged the will, arguing that Mr. Lafferty and his lawyers cajoled Miss Duke into giving him control over the estate while she was sick and heavily sedated. Dr. Demopoulous had been named the executor in a previous will.

Earlier this week, Miss Duke's adopted daughter, Chandi Heffner Duke, who was disinherited in 1991, dropped her challenge to the will after reaching a $65 million settlement with Mr. Lafferty and the estate, lawyers said. The settlement still must be approved by a judge.

The heiress's physician, Dr. Charles F. Kivowitz, has said in court papers that Miss Duke died of a heart attack brought about by fluid in her lungs. The doctor has maintained that her death was the natural consequence of a stroke she suffered three months earlier at the age of 80. Because her body was cremated shortly after death, an autopsy was not performed.

Mr. Kuh's report paints a different picture. Dr. Nicholas T. Macris, who was hired by Mr. Kuh to review Miss Duke's medical records, found thatDr. Kivowitz gave increasingly bigger doses of morphine to Miss Duke the day before she died, despite signs that she was no longer in pain and had slipped into "a morphine-induced coma."

Dr. Macris, a Cornell Medical School professor, concluded that the nurses' notes and Dr. Kivowitz's own records "document his decision to end Ms. Duke's life" by cutting off her oxygen and by "increasing the morphine to a dosage level that would stop Ms. Duke's breathing and cause her death," the report said.

A lawyer for Dr. Kivowitz, Harland Braun, said last night that Miss Duke had been intentionally killed with morphine, but he denied the doctor was responsible.

Mr. Kuh pointed out that California law permits the withdrawal of life support from terminally ill people, but does not permit doctors to take a deliberate act to end life. The Los Angeles police have begun an inquiry into Miss Duke's death, but a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles District Attorney said last night that no one had been arrested or indicted. The spokeswoman said investigators had not yet seen Mr. Kuh's report.

The Kuh report also questioned Mr. Lafferty's spending habits since she died. So far, the report said, he has spent more than $1 million on himself, including nearly $155,000 in American Express bills at luxury stores like Cartier and Giorgio Armani.

In addition, Mr. Kuh said, Mr. Lafferty -- who has no assets of his own and is at present insolvent -- has borrowed more than $825,000 from U.S. Trust Company, the co-executor of the estate. The loans were apparently granted without interest.

Since Miss Duke's death, Mr. Lafferty has also spent more than $320,000 on what Mr. Kuh called questionable renovations to Miss Duke's homes in Somerset, N.J., and Beverly Hills. Among the expenses were $60,000 to enlarge Miss Duke's bedroom, which Mr. Lafferty now uses, and to install a spa bathtub in her former bathroom.

Mr. Kuh also questioned the purchase of a new Cadillac for Mr. Lafferty after he wrecked Miss Duke's car, and a $1,769 expediture to reopen a firing range on Ms. Duke's property. Perhaps the strangest expense highlighted in the report was the purchase of two miniature horses "to provide companionship" for a camel kept at the Duke estate.

Mr. Weitzman could not be reached yesterday afternoon to discuss the specific findings in Mr. Kuh's report.

The report said Mr. Lafferty also authorized several sizable cash gifts to people during September and October 1993, when Miss Duke "admittedly was in poor physical condition and in at least questionable mental shape."

Those gifts included several large checks to various doctors: a $900,000 loan to Dr. Rolando Atiga; a $500,000 gift to Dr. Harry Glassman, a plastic surgeon, and a $10,000 gift to Dr. Kivowitz.

During the same period, Mr. Lafferty also dispersed $2 million to Duke University, $1 million to the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, and $1 million to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the report said.

"No documentation establishes that these various gifts -- noncharitable and charitable -- were in fact approved by Duke," Mr. Kuh wrote. "As noted, it is likely she was in such condition in September-October 1993 that she well may have been incapable of understandingly approving."

The report also cast doubts on Mr. Lafferty's mental health. The report said that he was an admitted alcoholic who has gone on at least four serious drinking binges since Miss Duke's death. In addition, the report said, Mr. Lafferty regularly takes "three sleeping medications, seven anti-depressants, three anti- psychotics and six anti-anxiety medicines, many simultaneously."

The report concludes that "Lafferty should not be managing complex financial matters for an appreciable time." In addition, Mr. Kuh raised serious questions about Miss Duke's mental state from March to June 1993, when she was hospitalized and decided to change her will. The changes gave far more control to Mr. Lafferty and a new law firm -- Katchen Muchen Zavis and Weitzman -- than her previous wills had.

The estate has paid out more than $10 million in legal fees since Ms. Duke died, about $9 million of that going to the Katchen Muchen firm, the report said.

That means that Howard Weitzman received alot of that money, with a will that had been altered just days before her murder/death when she was not in a good mental state of mind....




Courtney Love has also had millions embezzled from Weitzman...!!

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Last Edit: August 10, 2012, 08:46:31 AM by 2good2btrue
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suspicious mind

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here is a link to a program i caught one day a couple weeks ago about this.
i wasn't paying much attention at first but then they mentioned the part about the guy basicly keeping this woman sedated and then finally giving her a fatal dose and my ears perked up big time. what was so strange to me was they had weitzman and he was just singing the praises of this butler. there was also some mention of liz taylor . they also discribed this butler kind of like some will sometimes discribe michael. the only way the will got contested was because her real doctor had at some point been named executor or a benenficiar, so he could contest it .
the tv program is a download on the list above .

couple more links
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another thing there was a program the night of the funeral and randy j. taborelli was commenting and mentioned john branca having a connection to the presley estate.
a detail about that that struck me was that vernon was named executor. umm he was dead by sometime in 79 with i think a heart attack.  :suspect:
Last Edit: August 10, 2012, 09:10:08 AM by suspicious mind
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"I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves."  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login




Why not just tell people I'm an alien from Mars? Tell them I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight. They'll believe anything you say, because you're a reporter. But if I, Michael Jackson, were to say, "I'm an alien from Mars and I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight," people would say, "Oh, man, that Michael Jackson is nuts. He's cracked up. You can't believe a single word that comes out of his mouth."

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paula-c

Lethal combination; doctors and lawyers
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2good2btrueTopic starter

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Wow!!
DeJaVu...but this time Michael somehow outsmarted them...
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marumjj

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Thanks 2good2btrue is that MJ did it better  ;)
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suspicious mind

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Lethal combination; doctors and lawyers

think there is supposed to be something in the bible about drs. and lawyers in the last day.
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Why not just tell people I'm an alien from Mars? Tell them I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight. They'll believe anything you say, because you're a reporter. But if I, Michael Jackson, were to say, "I'm an alien from Mars and I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight," people would say, "Oh, man, that Michael Jackson is nuts. He's cracked up. You can't believe a single word that comes out of his mouth."

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MJonmind

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Lethal combination; doctors and lawyers

think there is supposed to be something in the bible about drs. and lawyers in the last day.
:icon_lol:  IDK maybe Jude 1:12

Quote
New International Version (©1984)
These men are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm--shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted--twice dead.

New Living Translation (©2007)
When these people eat with you in your fellowship meals commemorating the Lord's love, they are like dangerous reefs that can shipwreck you. They are like shameless shepherds who care only for themselves. They are like clouds blowing over the land without giving any rain. They are like trees in autumn that are doubly dead, for they bear no fruit and have been pulled up by the roots.
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suspicious mind

looks like luke 11 starting around 42 .  i actually didn't see one for doctors. must be one of those often misquoted ones. :icon_lol:
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Why not just tell people I'm an alien from Mars? Tell them I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight. They'll believe anything you say, because you're a reporter. But if I, Michael Jackson, were to say, "I'm an alien from Mars and I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight," people would say, "Oh, man, that Michael Jackson is nuts. He's cracked up. You can't believe a single word that comes out of his mouth."

 

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