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Anna Nicole: Autopsy ordered
09/02/2007 07:13 - (SA)
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| A cover of the June 1993 Playmate of the Year issue of Playboy magazine, featuring Anna Nicole Smith. (Playboy, AP) |
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Hollywood - An autopsy was scheduled for Friday to determine the cause of death of former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith.
Her death was quickly linked by some commentators to reports of drug abuse and came at a time of grief and fresh legal wrangles for Smith.
Smith, the small-town Texas girl turned Playboy Playmate who fought all the way to the US Supreme Court over her billionaire husband's estate, died suddenly on Thursday at the age of 39.
Smith, a voluptuous platinum blonde who grew up idolising
the late screen legend Marilyn Monroe, was pronounced dead at a
Hollywood, Florida, hospital.
A favourite subject of the tabloid media, Smith was rushed
to the hospital after a private nurse who had apparently been
alone with her in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and
Casino telephoned a hotel operator to ask for medical help.
"I can confirm that she is deceased. It's as shocking to me
as to you guys," Smith's attorney, Ronald Rale, told Reuters.
Her lawyer and husband, Howard K Stern, "obviously is
speechless and grieving", Rale said.
Just five months ago, Smith's 20-year-old son from her
first marriage, Daniel, died in a Bahamas hospital three days
after she gave birth to her daughter, Dannielyn Hope Marshall
Stern. She then quickly became embroiled in a paternity suit
over the baby girl filed by an ex-boyfriend, Larry Birkhead.
Smith was ordered to have her infant daughter undergo a
paternity test, and on Wednesday, the day before her death, a
judge set a February 21 deadline for completion of that test.
Emergency order for DNA tests
Smith had said Stern was the father.
Within hours of Smith's death, Birkhead's lawyer Debra Opri
sought an emergency order for DNA tests on the body as part of
the paternity battle. A hearing was scheduled for Friday
morning in Los Angeles Superior Court in the matter.
The hotel told reporters Smith had checked in on Monday and
was scheduled to leave on Friday. Her daughter was not with her
and sources said the child was being cared for in the Bahamas.
Her sister, Donna Hogan, told CNN she had spoken little to
Smith in the last decade and learned of her death through the
news media.
"Its shocking," she said. "But at the same time I'm not
really shocked because of her lifestyle. In the back of your
mind you know that someday it might happen."
Born Vickie Lynn Hogan and raised in the small Texas town
of Mexia, about 130km south of Dallas, Smith grew
up saying she wanted to be like Marilyn Monroe, who came from a
troubled childhood to become one of Hollywood's biggest stars.
Monroe was found dead at the age of 36 by her housekeeper
on Aug 5, 1962. The cause of death was listed as an overdose of
sleeping pills.
Smith also had a difficult childhood and was dogged by talk
of addiction to drugs, including prescription painkillers, that
was fuelled by her slurred words and unusual behaviour at awards
shows and other public events.
"I actually went into a coma, you know. I almost died," she
told the Entertainment Tonight show in late 2004. "I had to rehabilitate myself. And then they took the nurse away, so
there I was crawling - crawling to the bathroom and stuff."
A high school dropout, she was working at Jim's Krispy
Fried Chicken restaurant when she married her first husband,
Billy Wayne Smith, at 17. She separated from him two years
later and moved to Houston.
It was while performing at a Houston topless club that
Smith met elderly oil billionaire J Howard Marshall, who asked
her repeatedly to marry him before they wed in 1994. She was 26
and he was 89.
Marshall died 14 months later and Smith spent much of the
following decade battling members of his family over his
estate. In May 2006, the US Supreme Court ruled that Smith
could pursue her case in federal court.
Smith, also known for modelling Guess? jeans, was named
Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Year in 1993 and had film
roles that year in The Hudsucker Proxy and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult.
- Reuters
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