Duke’s Butler Wills His Fortune to Foundation

Bernard Lafferty, the butler made wealthy by the will of his billionaire boss, Doris Duke, has left his own estate to charity “in memory of” the woman he served.

In his own will filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Lafferty provided that every penny of his assets go to the Doris Duke Foundation to benefit causes favored by the tobacco heiress, including the “performing arts . . . ecological concerns [and] medical research, provided that animals are not used.”

Lafferty, 51, died in his Benedict Canyon mansion a week ago Monday, almost three years after he was at the bedside of Duke when she died in her nearby gated home, Falcon Lair. Paramedics said Lafferty appeared to have died of natural causes, though final results of an autopsy are pending.

The ponytailed butler lived his last years in comfort but also controversy, after Duke’s will named him executor of her $1.2-billion estate, providing him $5 million in fees and a $500,000 annual bequest. Those challenging Duke’s will--from a former doctor for the heiress to her onetime cook--accused Lafferty of being an alcoholic spendthrift who gained Duke’s confidence, then killed her with overdoses of drugs.

Lafferty, meanwhile, complained that the will fight was generating millions in legal fees while holding up delivery of Duke’s fortune to charity.

“It’s been painful,” he said once. “The worst part is, I feel like I’ve failed Miss Duke because none of her money is going to the people who really need it.”

Lafferty’s will, signed in March 1994, calls for his own executor--a Chicago probate lawyer--to serve “without compensation.” Singer Peggy Lee, for whom he once worked, is named as alternate executor.

Documents filed with the will estimate Lafferty’s assets at $3.5 million. But that does not account for outstanding debts or a final payment he still was due as part of a settlement reached last spring, under which he agreed to step down as executor of Duke’s will.

Lafferty’s Los Angeles lawyer said Wednesday that the terms of his will should shame those who attacked his character and belittled his claim that he merely wanted to see Duke’s wishes carried out.

“I think it will be very surprising to them, but that’s the way he was, a fair and loyal person,” said attorney Charlotte Hassett.

“He’s giving [everything] back basically to [Duke]. He always considered it her money . . . and he’s giving it the way she would have wanted.”

Still undetermined is whether there will be a challenge to the will, as with Duke’s. Lafferty, orphaned as a teenager in Ireland, left nothing to his closest relatives--four aunts and a series of cousins.

Lafferty was to be cremated today dressed in his favorite gold silk Armani jacket, white silk shirt, black silk pants, black velvet Versace shoes and rosary beads decorated with shamrocks. He asked that his ashes be spread where Duke’s were, in the waters off her Hawaiian estate.