A year ago, Vanity Fair published my account of Bob Walker, the former paperboy for Doris Duke, who confronted her in 1966, moments after she’d committed murder

By Peter Lance Aug. 11th 2022 A year ago, the remarkable story of Bob Walker, the one-time paper boy for Doris Duke, was published in Vanity Fair, along with a video of my interviews with Bob in which he told of confronting the billionairess back in the fall of 1966 after she’d crushed her designer and art curator Eduardo Tirella under the wheels of a 2-ton station wagon outside the gates of Rough Point, her English Manor-style estate in Newport, Rhode Island.

This drone video shows how close the estate was to the corner of Ledge Road, a block away, as Bob peddled his bike to deliver The Newport Daily News, when he heard the voices of a man and a woman, near the main gate, screaming at each other.

According to his riveting account in that video, when he reached the corner of Bellevue Avenue (aka “Millionaire’s Row”) Bob turned to see the aftermath of the crash. Suddenly, a tall woman got out of the ’66 Dodge Polara wagon, took a few steps and abruptly turned around, staring under it, as if to see whether Eduardo, who, moments before, she’d run over in a fit of rage, was still alive. Rather than expressing shock or remorse at the loss of her “long time companion,” Miss Duke, uninjured and with cold blood, seemed to be searching for proof of life. When Bob, then 10 years-old, offered three times to go for help, the billionairess angrily screamed at him to leave the scene.

In the VF story I reported how Bob’s account of the final moments of Eduardo’s life synced precisely with what I’d learned after a  two year investigation, first detailed in Vanity Fair’s July 2020 edition and later covered in my 438 page book HOMICIDE AT ROUGH POINT:

Namely that Miss Duke had committed intent-to-kill murder and that the Newport Police Department’s Mafia-related Chief at the time, had corruptly closed the case in 96 hours with “the heiress” presumed to be the only living witness. Then, 55 years later, finding Bob “credible,” the Newport PD reopened the case, prompting an Associated Press story that went global.

But, as I later reported in a detailed 30 page TIMELINE, Det. Jacque Wuest, the Newport PD’s cold case detective, who confirmed that Bob had given his unwavering account in detail as far back to the early 70’s, abruptly closed the case again in mid-November. That happened after she’d been promoted to Sergeant and took off on a three week vacation to Europe. After first pledging to find “justice” for Eduardo, she was now claiming there was “no new evidence” that would cause the police to alter the initial conclusion that the 42 year-old designer’s violent death was “an unfortunate accident.”

The case closing prompted a second AP story that went viral and coverage of the story from Taiwan to Germany, where, most recently, Stern Crime, the true crime magazine, ran a detailed piece on my findings in their 40th edition.

For the full story, including the international media coverage GO HERE.

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