Editor's Note: This story is part of our series, Unsolved, Retold: The LGBTQ+ Cold Case Files, which investigates unsolved murders of queer people across the U.S. Find out more about the series.
On October 7, 1966, the legacy of Doris Duke – at the time one of America’s richest women and the most notable heiress in the world – would forever be tarnished.
Duke’s involvement in the death of her openly gay confidant and interior designer captivated not just the wealthy enclaves of Rhode Island’s richest city, but the entire nation. It was rare to see Duke outside her estates, let alone at the center of such a public scandal that resulted in the killing of an innocent man. The case is still a subject of fixation for Rhode Islanders today, although a visit to her Rough Point mansion won’t clue you into the darker side of Duke – you have to go looking for it.
New York Times Co./Getty Images; MyLoupe/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
According to reports from the Newport Police Department later viewed and published by Newport reporter Peter Lance – who also covered the case for The Advocate to promote his 2021 book on the case – Duke was headed out of her sprawling 115-room estate in Newport, Rhode Island’s illustrious “Millionaire’s Row” on Bellevue Avenue on that fateful night in late 1966.
That evening around 5 p.m. Duke was in the passenger seat while her friend and employee who was driving – openly gay designer Eduardo Tirella – left the driver’s seat to open the massive wrought iron gates to her mansion. Suddenly, Duke shifted seats, and the Dodge Polara station wagon she’d rented from AVIS lurched forward, crashing through the gates and pinning Tirella under it.
Tirella was 42 years old and supposed to begin a new career in Hollywood as a set designer. He suffered injuries to his spinal cord, lungs, and brain and died instantly, the coroner later said.
Newport Daily News, Public Record
Lance alleged in a 2021 Vanity Fair article that Newport’s Police Chief Joseph A. Radice, who retired months after the Duke case, ran "a sham investigation that allowed Duke to avoid being indicted for murder."
The Newport police concluded their 1966 investigation rapidly, based on Duke’s sole testimony. Merely 96 hours after the crash, Radice labeled the incident an accident. Duke was later found negligent in a civil lawsuit brought by Tirella’s family and was forced to pay them a small sum.
Although it was reopened in August 2021, Newport Police told me this case is now closed because Tirella’s death is still considered an accident. But Lance is still investigating the case.
"(Doris Duke) committed six intentional acts that resulted in (Tirella's) death," Lance told The Advocate. "The Newport Police Department reopened the case after my book came out, then, closed it again five months later, holding to the same 'accident' story I proved was corruptly arrived at in 1966. I’m now investigating how that happened."
Lieutenant Joseph Carroll, public information officer and community policing supervisor for the Newport Police Department, told The Advocate, “we do investigate fully any new information that is presented to us,” but refused to further comment.
Tirella lived an illustrious life up until his untimely death. Before meeting Duke, Italian-American Tirella joined the Army in 1943 and earned a Bronze Star for fighting at the Battle of the Bulge shortly after enlisting.
Once stateside, Tirella had performed at clubs in New Jersey during the 1940s alongside Frank Sinatra. He later oversaw hat production for Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, and later designed homes for other wealthy socialites, including actress Elizabeth Taylor and singer Peggy Lee. During his career as Duke’s in-house designer and curator, Tirella had his own living space in each of her five properties and traveled with her around the world to purchase tens of millions worth of fine art while curating all aspects of her estates’ designs.
findagrave.com/memorial
And right before his death, Tirella was making strides as a film set designer, creating fictional homes for movies starring actresses including Sharon Tate and Claudia Cardinale. Per Lance’s investigation, Tirella had reportedly grown tired of working only for Duke and told his friends and partner that he was planning on breaking the news to her in person that he’d be moving cross-country to take on a new job. Tirella’s observation of formalities may have been a fatal mistake.
After the crash, Duke was found wandering the road in a dazed and “hysterical” state by two civilians, Lewis Thom and his daughter, Judith. In interviews with Lance, who published a 2021 book (“Homicide at Rough Point”) about the Duke case following years of investigation, Judith said she saw Duke run back towards Rough Point. “She blurted out that she’d run him over, someone named Ed,” Judith later told Lance.
This story is personal for me: I’m a native Rhode Islander who spent summers on the island and frequently toured and worked weddings in the Newport Mansions. Even before I knew of Tirella’s death, the property’s dense history and formidable design always kept my attention during strolls along the Cliff Walk. I grew up enamored with Duke’s Rough Point estate and the myriad urban legends attached to it – including that she once fiercely guarded the famous Cliff Walk and kept a menagerie of exotic animals on the grounds. But the details I later discovered about Duke’s legacy were much darker.
findagrave.com/memorial
Tales of Doris Duke's eccentricity are still told on social media, with Reddit users sharing stories of walking on the Cliff Walk and sneaking peeks at Duke’s armed guards and pet camels. Their claims aren't verified, but they contribute to her reputation among Rhode Island locals, and the larger New England area.
Duke had a reputation even after her death as being reclusive and mysterious. But after Tirella was killed, Duke emerged and went on a financing spree, donating hundreds of thousands to restore timeless historic buildings in Newport that millions still visit each year. It's been said Duke donated all this money to distract from Tirella's killing, and it was unusual for her to be so in the public eye after years of being considered a recluse by locals on the island.
As Lance wrote in “Homicide at Rough Point,” Tirella’s days could have been numbered once he announced his career shift. Lance noted, “nobody left Doris Duke without consequences.” Newporters aren’t united on their consensus of what happened during the crash. Because of this, and because Duke wasn’t found criminally liable for the accident, Tirella’s case remains cold in the public eye.
“She pushed him into the gate, slammed him into the gate and killed him,” said Walter Jablonski, a lifelong resident of Middletown, which is roughly six miles from Duke’s Newport mansion. Jablonski recalls living adjacent to Newport and spending time there during the year of Tirella’s death. Aged 81, Jablonski was born in 1943 at Newport Hospital – the same that housed Duke post-accident – and is now a retired structural engineer. He said Bellevue Avenue remains largely the same as it did in Duke’s day, despite the Newport population’s growth.
Story Clipping via UPI, Public Record
“But I don’t know [if Tirella’s death was intentional], everybody’s got an opinion,” Jablonski added.
Bob Walker, a former paperboy in Newport whose route took him by Duke’s estate, was an eyewitness to the events just after the murder. As he told Lance, Duke’s actions seemed deliberate – after hearing Tirella scream for help, he saw Duke leave the station wagon and examine the bottom of the car as if checking to see if the damage was indeed done.
“I said, ‘Can I help you, ma’am?’ And she said —screaming and pointing her finger — “‘You better get the hell out of here,’” Walker told Lance.
“Technically, “a case is considered cold once there are no viable leads. They've run out of options and are at a wall, essentially,” forensic analyst T.J. Payne told The Advocate. Payne added that while the civil suit found Duke negligent, “I can see how the general public may think of this case as a cold one because, in many people's eyes, it hasn't been solved correctly. His death was ruled an accident, and for some family members, it remains crucial to find justice.”
Payne added that providing Tirella’s family with a final verdict on how Tirella died would mean that, “in finding justice, they can then have his death certificate changed to murder and feel at peace.”
Death Certificate, Public Record
Tirella’s family sued Duke in civil court and Duke was found negligent in his death. While not a criminal trial, that civil negligence judgment meant that Duke “was found responsible for his death in some way, which definitely can play into how law enforcement consider the state of the case,” Payne noted.
Payne did note that paying this case the full attention it was due would be difficult for even larger agencies, let alone the small Newport Police Department. “For law enforcement to truly investigate this case as it should have been done, they could have run the risk of funding for their departments, people could have been demoted, and who knows what other underbelly bureaucracies existed back then,” Payne said.
Following Tirella’s death, Duke donated much of her money and tobacco inheritance to charity. While she had many tabloid-worthy love affairs including with actor Errol Flynn and U.S. Army General George S. Patton, Duke had no living heirs at her death. Some of her fortune was left in a trust to her nephew Walker Inman Jr. – who died in 2010 and bequeathed the remainder (reportedly $1 billion) to his twins, Georgia and Patterson Inman.
Doris Duke contributed $25,000 (in 1966 money; about $235,109.57 in 2024 when accounting for inflation) to restore Newport’s famous Cliff Walk and another $10,000 (about $94,043.83 today) to the Newport Hospital, which treated her after the crash.
But some argue that the charity was simply “blood money,” paid back to the city in exchange for its silence. Duke was sued by the Tirella family in 1971 for $1.25 million (roughly $9.4 million today), and a court found her negligent in the wrongful death civil suit – but she was only made to pay the family $5,620. Accounting for inflation, the Tirella family settled for roughly $42,282 in 2024 – or a paltry 0.0032% of Duke’s total net worth.
By contrast, Doris Duke’s two guard dogs were left $100,000 (about $212,281 today) in her will.
“She killed him twice,” Tirella’s surviving niece Donna Lohmeyer told Lance during the 1971 civil trial. “She destroyed his body and eviscerated his memory.”
Bettmann Collection via Getty Images
Now, what remains of the Duke legacy in Newport is largely her charitable contributions: She established the Newport Restoration Foundation in 1968, two years after Tirella’s death. The Foundation currently maintains more than 70 historic Aquidneck Island properties from the18th and early 19th centuries, and many are open to the public. Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis served as the Foundation’s first president.
The Doris Duke Foundation is still actively distributing Duke’s $2.6 billion endowment to this day. It fulfills many grants dedicated to the arts, environmental conservation and even a reporter’s training program I’m currently a part of – The USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism Data Fellowship. Everywhere you look, Duke’s financial legacy is still visible.
Per the Duke Foundation’s archives, it's only funded six LGBTQ-related grants since its 1996 inception, beginning mainly in 2013.
Duke died in her Los Angeles home Oct. 28, 1993, of cardiac arrest, 21 days after the 27th anniversary of Tirella’s death. With her perished any hope of uncovering the full truth about Tirella’s demise.
Have a tip about this case to share with law enforcement? Contact the Newport Police Department at (401) 846-2606.
Have information or know of a cold case we should profile next? Reach out to Samson Amore at crime@equalpride.com.
Margeaux Sippell contributed to this report.
Editor's note: This story was updated on Jan. 25, 2024, to clarify the source of some details about the investigation into Duke's death, and to add a comment from author Peter Lance.
