NH - Police reopen investigation into heiress Doris Duke who 'killed her designer' in 1996

[Betty P]

A murder disguised as an accident that has been talked about for years finally has a witness coming forward.

Doris Duke had been suspected of killing her designer, Eduardo Tirella, by driving over him with her station wagon. She claimed that he was driving the station wagon, got out to open the gate and when she started to drive through the gate, accidentally hit and killed him.

Now a paperboy who was riding his bike along the road that day and heard the accident, has come forward to police. He says he heard the car accelerate and strike Mr. Tirella twice. He heard him screaming and saying "No" before he was struck a second time.

Police reopen investigation into socialite tobacco heiress who 'killed her designer' in 1966 | Daily Mail Online

The paperboy, age 13, was told by his father to never discuss what he saw. Locals considered Doris Duke and her acquaintances to be dangerous people.

Link to Vanity Fair article

The Doris Duke Cold Case Reopens: The Only Known Eyewitness Speaks

 

[MrsWatson]

Very interesting! I went through a Doris Duke phase where I read and watched everything I could find. The romances, the stillborn children, the adopted adult daughter who is married to Pee Wee Herman, the butler. The houses. Falcon's Lair is one of my dream houses. Fascinating person with a very sad and empty life.

I'm not quite sure what reopening the case at this point would really accomplish, though.

 

[Betty P]

Very interesting! I went through a Doris Duke phase where I read and watched everything I could find. The romances, the stillborn children, the adopted adult daughter who is married to Pee Wee Herman, the butler. The houses. Falcon's Lair is one of my dream houses. Fascinating person with a very sad and empty life.

I'm not quite sure what reopening the case at this point would really accomplish, though.

From reading the Vanity Fair article, she was also a domineering, arrogant and violent person. She always got away with it and learned how to cover up her crimes.

At that point the woman and the paperboy were apparently the only two people on that stretch of Bellevue Avenue. Then, Duke heard the click, click, click of the gears of the bike. As Walker came up behind her, he says, “She spun around and looked at me. I said, ‘Can I help you, ma’am?’ And she said,”—screaming and pointing her finger—“‘You better get the hell out of here!’”

“I was a little taken back,” he recounts. “There was the car and the steam. So I started to go around the car and she started ghosting me.” He imitates Duke doing a kind of crab walk, back and forth, that he says prevented him from looking under the vehicle where Tirella’s mangled body was wedged under the rear axle.

Twice more, Walker says, he offered to go for help, and in an increasingly louder voice, Duke bellowed at him. Finally, as he got closer to the back of the station wagon, she screamed, “Get out of here now!” At that point, shaken, he left the scene to finish his paper route.

Thinking back to how the woman had loomed over him, he remembered that she appeared to be uninjured. “She didn’t have a scratch on her face,” he maintains. “If she had, I would have been even more insistent on going for help.”​

 

[Betty P]

Google Street view of where the "accident" took place

Google Maps

 

[MrsWatson]

Lots of pics

Police reopen investigation into socialite tobacco heiress who 'killed her designer' in 1966 | Daily Mail Online

 

[Betty P]

Here's another photo from The Advocate, who also ran a story on the new police investigation

Bob Walker, the newspaper delivery boy who came upon the "accident scene" after hearing what happened.

Since Doris Duke passed away in 1993, there's no way to bring charges against her. I suppose they want to set the record straight. I wonder if her victim, Edurardo Tirella, has any heirs who might choose to sue the Duke estate?

 

[MrsWatson]

Oh sheesh, I totally forgot that angle! Bingo.

 

[Shamrock1]

Statute of limitations on most personal injury actions is 2yrs. Not sure what it was in the 1960s.

 

[AC's Grandma]

Statute of limitations on most personal injury actions is 2yrs. Not sure what it was in the 1960s.

Yes, but it would have been murder charges which has no statue of limitations.

 

[Betty P]

Yes, but it would have been murder charges which has no statue of limitations.

Agree, but Doris Duke passed away in 1993. Like many cold cases being solved these days, it sounds like LE wants to get to the truth and set the record straight. Bringing justice to the victim, even if the perpetrator is no longer living.

From reading the articles (and there are quite a few on this topic in the past), it was an unresolved issue that's been hanging over the local community for many years. It wasn't only an issue because Doris Duke probably got away with murder, it's also the issue of the city having corrupt local officials who helped her cover up the crime. JMO

 

[MrsWatson]

She put loads of money into that town. Millions and millions.

LE knew that. That investigation was over before it was begun.

 

[Laughing]

She put loads of money into that town. Millions and millions.

LE knew that. That investigation was over before it was begun.

BBM

Kinda like this one:

CA - Rebecca Zahau Wrongful Death Revisited 2019

jmho ymmv lrr

 

[Filly]

, the adopted adult daughter who is married to Pee Wee Herman, the butler.

What? For serious? What happened to the socialites like this?

So this quite gorgeous gentleman was her interior designer. Poor man.

Going to check on Paul Reubens and Mr. Tirella. Decorator or designer? I need to know.

 

[Betty P]

What? For serious? What happened to the socialites like this?

So this quite gorgeous gentleman was her interior designer. Poor man.

Going to check on Paul Reubens and Mr. Tirella. Decorator or designer? I need to know.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald said "The rich are very different from you and me". Yes, true.

It struck me as bizarre that she adopted an adult woman as her daughter. I think Doris was on some heavy duty prescription drugs.

 

[Filly]

As F. Scott Fitzgerald said "The rich are very different from you and me". Yes, true.

It struck me as bizarre that she adopted an adult woman as her daughter. I think Doris was on some heavy duty prescription drugs.

Betty, I'm hooked. She adopted Chandi Heffner a flower child and possibly a Hare Krishna because she thought she was the reincarnation of her deceased child.

Heffner came from some money herself it seems. As it always seems to go Brooklyn Beckham son of Posh and David is marrying somebody related to Chandi.

This poor designer. Oddly he comes up as an actor.

Feeling a need to throw in a Jordan quote from "The Great Gatsby" but it wouldn't be verbatim.