Friends and family await release of Anna Nicole's body
Anna Nicole Smith’s friends and family awaited the release of her body today, as they planned for starlet’s funeral in the Bahamas after weeks of legal wrangling over her remains.
A horde of reporters and onlookers gathered outside the Broward County medical examiner’s office, where Smith’s body has remained refrigerated since her February 8 death in a hotel room at age 39.
It was not known when her body would be released, but Richard Milstein, the court-appointed advocate for Smith’s five-month-old daughter Dannielynn, has said the funeral would be tomorrow in the Bahamas.
Smith will be buried in a custom-made gown next to her 20-year-old son Daniel following an “over-the-top” memorial service, said a friend helping to organise the memorial.
The service, with about 300 guests at an undisclosed church, will feature large amounts of pink flowers, her favourite colour, and singing from a well-known performer whose name organisers were not ready to disclose, said the friend, Patrik Simpson of Beverly Hills, California.
“It will be a very beautiful, Anna Nicole send-off,” Simpson said last night in the Bahamian capital of Nassau. “Of course it will be over the top because it’s Anna Nicole.”
The burial at Lakeview Memorial Gardens & Mausoleums will be much more intimate, with about 30 people, he said.
Ron Rale, an attorney for Smith’s boyfriend, Howard K Stern, would not disclose any funeral information.
“We want to keep it as private as possible,” Rale said by telephone from the Bahamas.
Smith’s death set off a battle over her burial and for custody of Dannielynn among Stern, Smith's estranged mother Virgie Arthur and ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead.
Arthur had wanted to bury Smith in her native Texas, and fought last week’s ruling from Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin that gave control of the body to Milstein.
Stern insisted the former Playboy Playmate wanted to be buried next to Daniel, who died of apparent drug-related causes last year. Milstein agreed.
The appeals court upheld Seidlin’s ruling and Arthur decided to drop her challenge.
“It’s going to be difficult to appeal the ruling, so we’re not going to appeal,” said Tom Pirtle, an attorney for Arthur.
Dr Joshua Perper, the Broward medical examiner, said after the appeals court ruling that he was not sure if Smith’s body would be suitable for a viewing. He had told Seidlin during the hearing that she was decomposing.
Perper said embalmers would have to take another look at the body. Stern, Arthur and others have already viewed the body at Perper’s office.
Dannielynn is living in a gated, waterfront home in the Bahamas, where a judge is hearing the child-custody dispute between Arthur and Stern. Stern is listed as her father on the birth certificate, but two other men claim paternity, including Birkhead.
In Fort Lauderdale yesterday, Judge Lawrence Korda ordered DNA samples from Smith’s body be turned over to Birkhead’s attorneys. Frederic von Anhalt, the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, also says he could be the father.
Korda said he had no jurisdiction to do anything further in the case.
Smith married Texas oil tycoon J Howard Marshall II in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26.
The reality TV star and Playboy Playmate had been fighting his family over his estimated €371.5m fortune since his death in 1995, and her baby daughter could inherit millions.
