MANHATTAN — A teen heir to Doris Duke’s massive fortune claims he suffered through years of abuse living with his drug-addled dad and feared that his step-mom would kill him.
Walker Patterson Inman III says that his father's fifth wife once stabbed him in the chest when he and his twin sister, Georgia, were staying in their Wyoming mansion.
The 15-year-olds claim they eventually escaped the nightmare existence and got to live with their biological mom, but Walker said he was scared to leave her side for a while.
“I was scared to death my abuser was going to find me and kill me. I would not leave my mom’s side,” he said in affidavit filed in Sept. 10 in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court. “I told on my abusers and she always said if I told she would hunt me down and kill my sister and me or have someone do it for her.”
The affidavit was part of a larger court filing by Walker, Georgia and their mother, Daisha Inman, in response to a two-year court battle with JPMorgan.
The banking giant administers a $29 million trust on behalf of the twins, but it has accused Daisha of misusing the funds to finance a lavish lifestyle for herself.
In the Sept. 10 filing, Daisha and her children tried to push back against JPMorgan's accusations and claimed that they must “jump through hoops” to meet bank’s demands for receipts to justify their expenses.
The three lived with their father, Walker Patterson Inman Jr., until he died of a methadone overdose in 2010.
The twins and their mom claim that when their dad was alive, JPMorgan had no qualms about giving him $160,000 a month for their care — despite having a deadly drug habit that left him without any teeth.
JPMorgan declined to comment on the allegations.
However, court records show that JPMorgan has greater oversight in how to administer the twins' trust.
When Walker Patterson Inman Jr. was alive, the trust had different terms and paid him an income regardless of his behavior. When he died, the kids became discretionary beneficiaries, meaning JPMorgan controls how the trust's money is distributed and spent.
Walker III and Georgia lived with their dad for three and a half years. During that time, 50 nannies were either fired or quit, according to Daisha’s affidavit.
Georgia says in her affidavit that while in their dad’s custody, she and her brother were “treated worse than dogs,” being locked in a room and living on a floor in their own waste.
She also claims that before her dad’s fatal drug trip, he had overdosed twice in front of her.
“I lived this nightmare being abused by drug addicts while my real mom fought to save my brother and me,” Georgia said.
The teen also recalled in her affidavit how their step-mom once stabbed her brother in the chest and that her father refused to take him to the hospital to avoid publicity.
The step-mother could not immediately be reached for comment.
In the ongoing trust battle, JPMorgan has accused Daisha of dating Randy Williams, her ex-husband and a convicted child molester. The bank claims the boyfriend has been pretending to be the mom in emails and tries to hit up the trust for money.
But the teens claim their mom doesn’t have time to date because she’s constantly fighting for them in court. Daisha also says that Williams has not impersonated her and praised his help in winning custody of her kids.
Walker Patterson III and Georgia are the grandniece and grandnephew of Manhattan philanthropist Doris Duke. Their father once said in a court proceeding that they would be worth $1 billion when they turned 21.
In their Sept. 10 affidavits, which were written with the help of Daisha, the teens lauded their mom’s legal push to gain custody and fight to prevent the trusts from scamming them.
“I feel like this has been one big scam with people making millions on my sister and me while my mom, my sister and I get eaten alive by big banks,” Walker said.
