judge fires heiress's executor

udge fires heiress's executor

New York - A judge fired Doris Duke's butler as executor of the tobacco heiress's billion-dollar estate, saying the man could not make a distinction between her money and his. Judge Eve Preminger also fired the US Trust Company as co-executor of the Duke fortune, saying it should have served as a brake on Bernard Lafferty's spending sprees but instead loaned the butler hundreds of thousands of dollars which he squandered on such things as antiques. Once known as "the richest girl in the world", Duke died in October 1993 at age 80 after having changed her will several times, depending on whom she trusted at the time. Reuter