[erubresen]

Anna Nicole Smith collapses, dies at 39


Anna Nicole Smith, followed by her companion and attorney Howard K. Stern
at a boxing event on Jan. 6, 2007 in Hollywood, Fla.


By SUZETTE LABOY, Associated Press Writer
February 8, 2007

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. - Anna Nicole Smith, the voluptuous former Playboy centerfold who married an octogenarian billionaire and waged a legal battle for his fortune all the way to the Supreme Court, died Thursday after collapsing at a hotel. She was 39.

The blond bombshell — who recently became tabloid fodder all over again after the sudden, apparently drug-related death of her 20-year-old son — was found unresponsive while staying at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, said her attorney, Ron Rale. She was rushed to a hospital.

Edwina Johnson, chief investigator of the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office, said the cause of death is under investigation and an autopsy will be done on Friday.

The curvaceous Texas-born Smith was a topless dancer at strip club before she entered her photos in a search contest and made the cover of Playboy magazine in 1992, captivating readers with her Marilyn Monroe looks. She became Playboy's playmate of the year in 1993.

She was also signed to a contract with Guess jeans, appearing in TV commercials, billboards and magazine ads.

In 1994, she married 89-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, the head of oil-based Koch Industries, which is part of a family fortune worth at least $400 million. He died in 1995 at age 90, setting off a feud with her former stepson, E. Pierce Marshall, over whether she had a right to his estate.

A federal court in California awarded Smith $474 million. That was later overturned. But in May, the U.S. Supreme Court revived her case, ruling that she deserved another day in court in her battle with her former stepson.

The stepson died June 20 at age 67. But the family said the court fight would continue.

More recently, Smith's ballooning figure and up-and-down weight became a subject of public fascination. But she lost a reported 69 pounds and became a spokeswoman for TrimSpa, a weight-loss supplement.

She starred in her own reality TV series, "The Anna Nicole Show," in 2002-04 and appeared in movies. She had a bit part in "The Hudsucker Proxy" in 1994.

After news came of Smith's death, G. Eric Brunstad Jr., the lawyer who represented Marshall, said in a statement: "We're very shocked by the news and extend the deepest condolences to her family."

Smith's son, Daniel Smith, died Sept. 10 in his mother's hospital room in the Bahamas, just days after she gave birth to a daughter.

An American medical examiner hired by the family, Cyril Wecht, said he had methadone and two antidepressants in his system when he died. Low levels of the three drugs interacted to cause an accidental death, Wecht said. Last month, a Bahamas magistrate scheduled a formal inquiry into the death for March 27.

Meanwhile, the paternity of her now 5-month-old daughter remained a matter of dispute. The birth certificate lists Dannielynn's father as attorney Howard K. Stern, Smith's most recent companion. Smith's ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead was waging a legal challenge, saying he was the father.
Debra Opri, the attorney who filed his paternity suit, said Birkhead "is devastated. He is inconsolable, and we are taking steps now to protect the DNA testing of the child. The child is our number one priority."

She was born Vickie Lynn Hogan on Nov. 28, 1967, in Houston, one of six children of Donald Eugene and Virgie Hart Hogan. She married Bill Smith in 1985, giving birth to Daniel before divorcing two years later.

"From my professional exposure to Anna Nicole, I can say she was always personable, down to earth and driven. All in all, a joy to have as a client," said Wayne Munroe, her Bahamian lawyer who has overseen the aftermath of her son's mysterious death in Nassau.

Also, 42-photo slide show:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070208/...a_nicole_smith

[TOOGUEITEME]

It's sad. She led a fairly tragic life and was dumb as a rock.

[LarryRda]

Or she was a genius playing dumb. (no, I don't think so either)

Anna Nicole Smith's Wikipedia Entry Defaced As She Died





In the minutes following Anna Nicole Smith's death today, her Wikipedia page went totally postal. A few bits of web-graffiti saved for posterity after the jump.
On February 8, 2007, Smith was found unresponsive in a room of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. She was rushed to hospital. A witness told local media that paramedics were pumping her chest when they took her out of the hotel. The also stuck bees in her mouth. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS S [20] [21]Anna Nicole Smith b. (November 28, 1967) d. LOL TEH STAIRS IN TEH HOUSEis an American model, actress and buxom blonde celebrity, who first gained popularity as Playboy magazine's 1993 Playmate of the Year. She died of a drug overdose after collapsing in a Las Vegas casino. 1 She is survived by her five month old infant daughter.On February 8, 2007, the bitch bought the farm. [20] [21]Anna Nicole Smith (November 28, 1967 - Febuary 8, 2007) is an American model, actress and buxom blonde celebrity, who first gained popularity as Playboy magazine's 1993 Playmate of the Year. LOL L8RZOn February 8, 2007, Smith was found unresponsive in a room of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. She was rushed to hospital. A witness told local media that paramedics were pumping her chest when they took her out of the hotel. She's dead Anthony. Sorry buddy. [20]Talk: Anna Nicole Smith [Wikipedia]

[IntinyBut]

That's bad, but I could not help laughing.......



She was on Insider (not that I am a regular) and she looked like a space case from mars. I have no clue what she was on, but she may have had too much of it last night.

[Romobencience]

I wonder if she died and then collapsed or collapsed and then died. Headlines are so ambivalent.

First her son. Then she gets married to Howard K. Stern. Then she is dead.

Howard, I think the police would like to speak with you, like NOW.

[Wckcvhsg]

Why does she remind me of Texas? (And I'm not complimenting Texas, if you want me to spell it out for you.)

[HakTaisanip]

It's hard to build a successful life if your career is based on sex.



How's Britney Spears doing?

[xtrslots]

Tell that to Madonna.

It's hard to build a successful life if your career is based on sex.



How's Britney Spears doing?

[Flirigor]

must be some kind of foul play.

[ingeneensueva]

It's a sad day. She was struggling with methadone and presumably a drug addiction.

But a great day for the plastics industry - they could recycle her gazookas I'm sure.

[BruceCroucshs]

here's a tee for all da fans:

[BloofPailafum]

must be some kind of foul play.

Yep ... and is this a sample? :

But a great day for the plastics industry - they could recycle her gazookas I'm sure.

[WomanBreast40356]

Well it would be environmentally sound if there was recycling. I think they remove implants upon death (could be wrong).

What I may be wrong about is her alleged "addiction" and "overdose" reported by various media outlets.

One should never assume anything in such a high profile death, especially when there are $$$ floating around. Trust me on this as somewhat of an expert on human nature - as an attorney I've (nearly) seen it all when it comes to seeing eyes light up when $$$ are mentioned to heirs, wives, business partners - you name it.

Using an addiction to blame her death would be a terribly convenient way to make everyone think "it was all just a tragic accident".

[Lafclaria]

Why can't we just let the poor woman rest in peace?

Why Did We Watch? The Answer Isn’t Pretty
NY Times
February 10, 2007

[mussmicky]

Because, if she was murdered, the only way she could possibly rest in peace is if the truth were exposed.
I'm not jumping to conclusions, merely floating the possibility. Like GT said, there is lots of money involved here, wounded egos, people looking for revenge after things didn't go their way with the the old guy's estate.
It's only natural for us to speculate. Now, does that mean I want an absolute media circus revolving around this death for weeks, no of course not. It would be a distraction from what our government is doing, and what journalists aren't. Wait a minute, in light of that I guess we can pretty much count on that media blitz...
Junk Food News for the masses.
The NY Times article makes some good points about popular culture. Too bad the newspaper is guilty of the same fakery and lack of substance for which the article criticises Anna Nicole.

I would like to add, however, that I do enjoy the New York Times for it's crossword puzzle and travel section.

[Romobencience]

I heard on the streets that during her autopsy, there were no chemicals or drugs found in her blood or stomach

[AlexDatig]

February 10, 2007

Autopsy Gives No Fast Clues to Smith’s Death

By JAMES BARRON

As a medical examiner on one coast conducted an autopsy and a judge on another coast ordered her body preserved for 10 days, Anna Nicole Smith monopolized the gaudy, gossipy celebrity stage yesterday as she had tried to do in life.

The medical examiner in Broward County, Fla., called her death “sudden, unexpected and unexplained,” but said more tests were needed to determine the cause. Ms. Smith, 39, a former Playboy model who became a pop-culture punch line in the 1990s after she married an octogenarian tycoon, was found dead Thursday in a hotel suite in Hollywood, Fla.

Yesterday was a day of almost nonstop coverage by cable television networks, and a day when a third man said he could have fathered Ms. Smith’s 5-month-old daughter, not either of the two men already fighting over paternity.

It was a day when the police chief whose officers were dispatched to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino put to rest a rumor that had swirled in the scramble for details on Ms. Smith’s final days — that her companion, Howard K. Stern, was flushing away drugs when paramedics arrived.

The chief, Charlie Tiger of the Seminole Police Department — which had jurisdiction because the hotel is on Indian land — said, “None of our officers who arrived on scene saw anything like that.”

The medical examiner said only prescription drugs were found in the room.

And it was a day when even Ms. Smith’s hardscrabble childhood underwent revision. “She didn’t come from a small town, as she said she did,” her mother, Virgie Arthur, said on “Good Morning America.”

Ms. Smith had claimed the small town of Mexia, Tex., about 80 miles south of Dallas, as her birthplace. Ms. Arthur said she once asked Ms. Smith why she had reinvented her biography: “You’re born in Houston, a middle-class family. Why do you tell that story?”

“She said, ‘Mom, nobody wants to read books or see people on TV concerning, you know, middle-class girl found a rich millionaire and married him. There’s not a story in that,’ ” Ms. Arthur recalled. “She said, ‘The story is I come from rags to riches, and so that’s what I’m going to tell.’ ”

Ms. Arthur said Ms. Smith told her, “ ‘Mom, if my name is out there in the news, good or bad, doesn’t matter, good or bad, I make money, so I’m going to do whatever it takes.’ ”

Ms. Arthur blamed drugs for her daughter’s death. “I think she had too many drugs, just like Danny,” she said, referring to Ms. Smith’s 20-year-old son, who died last fall while visiting Ms. Smith and her newborn daughter in the hospital in the Bahamas, “and I tried to warn her about drugs and the people that she hung around, and she didn’t listen.”

In California, the judge in the paternity case over Ms. Smith’s daughter, Dannielynn, denied a request for immediate DNA samples from Ms. Smith’s body. The judge, Robert Schneider of Los Angeles County Superior Court, also turned down a request for custody from Larry Birkhead, an ex-boyfriend who is contesting Mr. Stern’s paternity.

The judge ordered that Ms. Smith’s body not be disposed of until Feb. 20, when he scheduled a hearing to decide the paternity claims. He could order DNA samples then.

Mr. Stern is listed on the girl’s birth certificate as the father. But yet another man said yesterday that he might be the father. Prince Frederick von Anhalt, 59, who is married to the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, 90, told The Associated Press that he and Ms. Smith had had an affair since the mid-1990s.

“If you go back from September,” when Ms. Smith gave birth, Prince Frederick said, “she wasn’t with one of those guys; she was with me.”

He told The A.P. that he met Ms. Smith when she approached him and Ms. Gabor at the Plaza Hotel in New York. He said this was during Ms. Smith’s 14-month marriage to the Texas oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall II, who died in 1995 at 90.

In Florida, officials provided some details about the scene in Ms. Smith’s hotel room when paramedics arrived. Chief Tiger said there was no evidence of a crime. And the Broward County medical examiner, Dr. Joshua Perper, said he had ruled out blows to her body or asphyxiation as possible causes of death.

He said that more tests would have to be done to establish why Ms. Smith died.

Dr. Perper said that she had apparently been sick for several days with flulike symptoms. But he said the autopsy had shown only “subtle findings” in her heart and gastrointestinal tract. He said she had a bruise on her back from a minor fall in the bathroom several days ago.

He said there were medications but no illegal ones in her room, and no pills in her stomach. He said the authorities had compiled a long list of prescription drugs she was taking.

Jessica Seubert and Lisa Muñoz contributed reporting.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[education]

Posted on Tue, Feb. 13, 2007

New details offered on Smith's final hours


LOS ANGELES - (AP) -- The sister of Anna Nicole Smith's partner said he was not with the former Playboy playmate when she died but knew that she was very sick only hours before she died.

Howard K. Stern's older sister, Bonnie, recently traveled from her Beverly Hills home to the Bahamas to be with the 38-year-old California lawyer who says he is the father of Smith's baby.

Smith, 39, died Thursday after collapsing in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino near Hollywood. A private nurse called 911 after finding Smith unresponsive.

Bonnie Stern said her brother told her that Smith was running a fever of 105 degrees and that a nurse was ''icing her down'' earlier that day.

''When he left her, she was sleeping,'' Bonnie Stern said.

Bonnie Stern said that he had tried to get Smith to visit a doctor but Smith had refused because she was afraid that it would garner publicity. When news reached him that Smith was dead, she said, he had been gone for about two hours.

''They had plans to get a yacht and to buy an engagement ring. They were going to get married Feb. 27. It was going to be a real marriage,'' she said.

Asked what she thought caused Smith's death, Bonnie Stern said: ``Her immunity was so low. She was so depressed. She kept getting sick and her body just probably broke down.''

Asked about the relationship between her brother and Smith, Bonnie Stern said that he met the former model in 1996 when she was referred to his law firm and he soon became her personal attorney.

''He started doing her legal work and then he became her confidant. They became best friends and then he fell in love with her,'' she said.

As for Larry Birkhead, the man who claims that he might be the father of Smith's infant daughter, Dannielynn, she said: ``Larry Birkhead was not her boyfriend. There were times of some intimacy.''

Birkhead told New York's Daily News that the two had meticulously planned for the birth of the child, but that after they broke up, he was pushed to the side.

''Howard has never liked me and he never wanted me and Anna to be together,'' Birkhead, 34, told The Daily News in today's editions. ``After she got pregnant, things went quickly downhill because of his difference of opinion on several matters.''

Birkhead recounted how he had tried to save Smith from her risky lifestyle. He said Smith left him because of his attempts to intervene. The couple split early last summer.

''I watched over her to make sure she was safe, and once I was basically pushed to the side,'' he said, ``I had no control over what she did or anyone else around her did.''

© 2007 MiamiHerald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.


Smith, 39, died Thursday after collapsing in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino near Hollywood. A private nurse called 911 after finding Smith unresponsive.

Bonnie Stern said her brother told her that Smith was running a fever of 105 degrees and that a nurse was ''icing her down'' earlier that day. What sort of nurse is this?

Above 104 is life-threatening. She should have called EMS immediately.

[Searmoreibe]

Zippy, you have never run into an incompetent nurse before? I have been treated by nurses who made this one look like a candidate for the ANA Magnet Award.

[bensabath]

Something fishy about this Howard K. Stern character.

And the sister seems to be running interference.


As Judge Judy said on Larry King last night:How many families with a potential worth of millions of dollars suffer the unexpected deaths of two fairly young people within such a short time?Take it from a girl born and raised in Brooklyn: This don't smell right.