The 1966 Dodge Station Wagon roared across the street in Newport, Rhode Island, smashing through a fence before coming to a stop against a tree, almost completely in front of it.
Local people and police were fast on the scene. He discovered a spoiled middle-aged woman “bleeding from the mouth” and screaming for “someone named Ed”.
The woman staggered to her feet and across the street into a house – a lavish 30-room mansion along one of America’s most exclusive avenues – as she looked for her friend.
“She walked from the house fast,” a witness told police. When the woman came back down the stairs, she made a shocking entrance. He said “he walked on Ed.”
Returning to the station wagon, the police took another look. They found the victim Eduardo Tyrla under the rear wheel of the vehicle, blood-soaked and bled. And he soon finds out that the woman he murdered was no ordinary local, but in fact, Doris Duke, the wealthiest tobacco heir and socialite, once described as “the world’s richest girl”. Had given.
October 7, 1966, the accident was always dismissed as an “unfortunate accident”. But now, a new book claims that the incident was much deeper than that.
Peter Lance says, “Entirely he intended to kill her,”Murder at Rough Point“(Tapa Media Media) is out now.
Lance grew up in Newport, a seaside town that in the 19th century became a summer destination for some of the wealthiest families in the country, including Vanderbilt and Esters. Lance began his journalism career in the 1960s in the local newspaper The Newport Daily News. He says that he was always attacked in the Duke case.
“Newport is a strange place where everyone is connected to everyone,” he says. “One of the biggest legends in the city was that Doris Duke ran away with the murder. When I was a cube reporter, the city was buzzing with this rumor. ”
Duke was the daughter of James Duke, the founder of the American Tobacco Company. When he died in 1925, his fortune (more than a billion dollars in today’s dollars) was passed on to 12-year-old Doris.
His Newport estate, known as Rough Point, also visited him. The Guild Age mansion would later become a favorite of Doris’s many residences. But, by many accounts, Doris Duke did not run an indulgent home.
“He was a living Cruella de Vil,” the author says. “He was driven by his ragas, unbelievably upset, booze and barbeturates in an extremely angry mad, stingy, hyper-jealousy.”
Doris’s taunted ways were legendary. She insisted that her servants pay for any glass items broken by them. He refused to tip the taxi drivers. A thanks when the farm manager at the New Jersey compound suggested employees buy new turkeys, Duke insisted on frozen birds because they were 30 cents cheaper.
One person who could work for him was Tyrala. A handsome gay man in his 40s, Tyrla was a designer and served as Duke’s artistic consultant for a decade, renovating his homes and valuing antiques.
But by 1966, he had enough. He was getting more work in Hollywood films and was determined to leave Duke behind and move to the West Coast.
One night before the accident Tyrla arrived at Rough Point, telling friends that he would like to break the news of his personal visit to Duke.
The following afternoon, the staff gave Duke and Tyrella a heated argument, Lance says.
After a few minutes at around 5 pm, the pair left for a meeting. He sat in the Dodge station wagon with the wheel at the rear of the Tyrla and the Duke on the passenger seat.
The car went under the driveway, reaching near the huge iron gate leading to the road outside the estates. Tyrla got about 12 feet short, put the car in the park, climbed out and went to open the locked gate.
This was the last thing he would ever do.
Duke slammed into the driver’s seat, released the parking brake, put the car in drive and collided with gas, injuring the car at Tyrla, across the road, through the gate and eventually crashing into a tree.
Passers-by called the officers, and a nearby patron, Edward Angel, arrived at the scene almost immediately. Other policemen soon appeared, including another patrolman, Norman Mather.
Mather tries to ask the Duke some questions, but she will not answer. The city’s police chief Joseph Redis soon pulled over. He told Mather, “I’ll handle it.” You go back to the station and type it. ”
Then, Mather told Lance, Redis arm-in-walk with the Duke back to his house.
The Duke was later taken to the hospital, where he spent the night, sheltered by his doctor from the police.
Back at the station, Mather typed his report, but a sergeant saw him coming out of the typewriter and crushed him. “This matter is being taken care of by the Chief Radis. You do not need to do anything else. The sergeant told him.
The next day, Mather went to Redis’ office to ask what was going on. “I am the chief. Goes what I say. Now get out of my office, “Redis barked at him.
The duke was not officially questioned until two days after the accident. He answered four brief questions lying on the bed in Rough Point surrounded by his pet dogs and lawyers.
She claimed that Tyrla’s death was an accident. She said she was shifted to the driver’s seat to drive the car through the gate after Tyrla opened, but she inadvertently hit the gas instead of the brakes: “Suddenly the car overtook, and I was on top of it. . ” Duke said Tyrla was crushed against the gate and then dragged across the road and under the car.
At Duke’s word alone, Redis declared the case closed. However, public pressure forced him to return to that decision.
In search of something else to close the case, the police conducted another interview with Duke the next day. But instead of interrogating the suspect, Lance found evidence that police agreed to produce an interview transcript that Duke would then simply sign.
“It doesn’t get more baroque and corrupt,” says Lance.
Five days after Tyrla was killed, the case was closed for good.
Lance states that instead of the accident, the evidence points to an intentional criminal act. He speculates that the Duke, a vengeful woman who once angrily kills a lover, is not going to allow Tyrla to leave him.
It was absolutely intended to kill him.
Peter Lance, author of “Homicide for Rough Point”, rejecting Doris Duke’s claim that she accidentally killed Eduardo Tyrla
Duke claimed the car crushed Tyrla against the gate, but Tyrla’s autopsy report showed no damage to her lower body, which Lance says would have pinned the victim against it.
What’s more, Officer Angel, who was the first policeman to arrive, told Lance that he saw no blood at the gate and no blood ran from the gate to the road. However, he found Tyrla’s blood and skin in the middle of the road.
Engel says that the day after the tragedy, his training officer took him back to the accident scene to demonstrate that evidence suggested a different scenario from becoming an official officer.
The skin and blood found in the street suggested that Tyrla had stepped onto the hood of the car as Duke pointed the gun at him. He suddenly stopped, threw Tyla into the hood and into the street, probably fracturing her hip and leaving skin and blood residues on the ground.
“Now he is sitting there contemplating,” says Lance. “She decides to just go for it, and when he drives her and drags her across the street.”
After Duke closes the case, he suddenly finds a philanthropic side that many in the city were found to be out of character, Lance says.
She gave $ 25,000 to restore the Cliff Walk to walk the path of a panoramic seafront traversing the rear of the city’s mansion, (despite the fact that she was embroiled in a legal battle in the city, leaving her property Trying to shut down) He gave $ 10,000 to Newport Hospital, where a doctor rescued him from police. He helped restore many local historic houses.
Seven months after the case closed, Radis retired. The police chief later purchased two Florida condos.
“I think Radis probably thought, ‘I could benefit from this [case]. This is a cash opportunity for me, says Lance.
In the book, Radis’ granddaughter says that she once asked her late grandfather if he had been paid by the Duke, and he denied it.
For Duke, he resisted paying anything to Tyrala’s family, despite earning $ 1 million in interest from his fortune alone.
Tyrlla’s family sued in civil court in 1971 and Duke was found “negligent”. Each of Tyrala’s eight siblings received just $ 5,620 after legal fees.
Duke died in 1993, aged 80. Today, Rough Point, like many good old Newport mansions, is open to the public.
Lance specifically believes that the Newport Restoration Foundation, which controls the house, has said it is “convinced” by police in its conclusion that Tyrla’s death was an accident.
An information card at the house detailing the events of October 7, 1966 stated that “many rumors and half-truths surround this tragedy.”
“It’s time for him not to be in fantasy,” says Lance. “Let’s have a debate about my findings.” They can look into it, but they do not want to.
“Doris had the whole ethos, ‘Clean up after me.’ “
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