Anna Nicole's cause of death still a mystery
(Reuters)
2007-02-11 17:45
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Broward County medical examiner Dr. Joshua Perper said it could take three to five weeks to finish toxicological and other tests. He said he could not rule out drugs or natural causes but that the busty blonde former model and topless dancer who became a tabloid starlet did not die by violence.
Smith's death on Thursday in Hollywood, Florida, at age 39, left myriad questions about her tumultuous last months, the future of her 5-month-old daughter and the fortune she fought to inherit from the oil tycoon she married when he was 89.
A California judge on Friday refused to order an emergency DNA test on Smith's remains but ordered her body preserved until a February 20 hearing in the paternity case surrounding her baby.
Smith's ex-boyfriend, Larry Birkhead, sought the emergency order as part of his attempt to prove that he is the father of Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern. Smith's lawyer and companion, Howard K. Stern, has said he is the father and is named on the baby's birth certificate.
Smith's DNA would not typically be required to prove paternity but Birkhead's attorney, Debra Opri, said she sought the test to make sure the infant being tested was Smith's.
Smith had been living in the Bahamas and collapsed at a casino hotel on the Seminole Indian reservation in Hollywood, Florida.
A source familiar with the situation told Reuters that Dannielynn was cared for overnight by the mother of Bahamian Immigration Minister Shane Gibson but that Stern picked up the child on Friday morning and flew out of Nassau with her to an unknown destination.
Smith's 20-year-old son Daniel died in September while visiting his mother at the Bahamian hospital where she had given birth to her daughter three days earlier. A pathologist hired by the model said her son apparently died from a drug overdose.
AUTOPSY INCONCLUSIVE
At a news conference outside the medical examiner's office in Dania Beach, Florida, Seminole Police Chief Charlie Tiger said prescription drugs were found in Smith's hotel room but there were no illegal drugs, as had been reported by various media.
"No evidence has been revealed to suggest that a crime occurred," said Tiger, who did not identify the prescription medicines.
Perper said there was no immediate indication that Smith had taken any large amount of prescription medicine because there were no pills in her stomach. But he said he would have to wait for laboratory test results to determine if drugs were involved in her death.
"At this time we do not make a determination of the cause and the manner of death," he said. "Our findings are limited to what we can see with our eyes."
Smith's estranged mother, Virgie Arthur, suggested on the ABC program "Good Morning America," that drugs played a role in her daughter's death.
"I tried to warn her about the drugs and the people she hung around. She didn't listen," Arthur said. "She was too drugged up. The last interview I saw of her, she was so wasted."
Smith, who was born Vickie Lynn Hogan, was dogged by talk of addiction to drugs, including prescription painkillers, that was fueled by her slurred words and unusual behavior at awards shows and other public events.
TANGLED LEGAL FIGHT
Smith, a voluptuous platinum blonde who idolized screen legend Marilyn Monroe, gained fame as Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Year in 1993 and as a model for Guess? jeans.
She starred in her own short-lived reality television show and had several film roles.
In 1994, she married oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall, when she was 26 and he was 89. Marshall, who was worth $1.6 billion, died 14 months later and Smith spent much of the following decade battling his family over the estate. Marshall's family called her a gold digger.
But the tangled legal fight is unresolved. A California court awarded her $474 million but another court cut the award to $88 million and an appeals court then ruled she was entitled to nothing. The U.S. Supreme Court last May overturned that ruling and gave Smith another chance to pursue Marshall's fortune.
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