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Anna Nicole: Bigger in Death as Surreal Circus Grows
She’s Hot. She’s Sexy. She’s Dead.  Four may lay claim to billion-dollar baby as bizarre cast of characters gets louder and larger   

HOLLYWOOD, CA (rushprnews) 02/10/2007 – Never in all her flamboyant life did Anna Nicole Smith make as big a spectacle as in death.
In the big tent, a fourth would-be father may join the potentially lucrative baby derby and doctors had inconclusive results that did not rule out overdose or drug-induced foul play in Smith’s death.
Surreal sideshows included a blocked play for Smith’s DNA, an international hunt for baby Dannielynn, an outspoken lawyer without a client, a supposed recent suicide attempt by Smith, and a police chief who refuses to say whose name appears on the prescription bottles found in Smith’s room. Other acts in the show include a Eurotrash Prince making dubious fatherhood claims, and accusations from Smith’s mother that Smith companion Howard K. Stern played a part in the deaths of her and son Daniel last September.  
Forty news crews jostled for space at the Florida autopsy result press conference and a dozen satellite-dish trucks beamed the news worldwide. Others crowded courtroom steps in Los Angeles and combed beaches in the Bahamas.       
While everything remains highly speculative as the impassioned players are dancing for cameras and custody as fast as they can, events have become so bizarre a daily scorecard seems in order.
Broward County medical examiner Dr. Joshua Perper conducted Smith’s six-hour autopsy and issued an inconclusive report awaiting toxicology results, He said it would help dispel rumours, but instead left the field as wide open as a rainy-day horse race for speculation. For instance, he said no pills were found in the stomach, which might be expected in an overdose.
“The absence of pills of capsules in no way exclude the possibility of this being a drug-induced death,” said Dr. Perpers’ former boss, famed forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht. The doctor said, “In the majority of overdose cases I don’t find pills or capsules in the stomach. The drugs dissolve quickly and the effects so that might cause death do not take place for some time.”
There is also the possibility that methadone, a synthetic narcotic often prescribed in liquid form, played a part in an overdose, as it did with Daniel. The man who claims to be the true father of Dannielynn (pronounced Danny-Lynn), Larry Birkhead, claimed in court papers a month ago that Smith was taking  methadone, even during pregnancy with her daughter.
“We have to wait for (Anna Nicole’s) toxicology report to see if “whether the same was in play here,” said Dr. Wecht, who was hired by Smith to do the examination of her son’s death and is scheduled to report at a hearing in the case on Feb. 26.
One thing seems certain. Smith was a tragic figure surrounded by a peculiar cast of characters who are all making their move at the same moment.
Birkhead and his attorney Debra Opri accused Stern of blocking a DNA test of the baby by hiding her in the Bahamas, where its sovereign status make U.S. court orders difficult to enforce. “Stern and his representatives told us ‘You’ll never get custody. You’ll never get the (baby’s) DNA.’” She added “Larry will not rest until that baby is no longer in the hands of Howard Stern.”

Read the rest of this article by Jeffrey Jolson in Hollywood Today (www.hollywoodtoday.com).
Permission to reprint GRANTED providing Hollywood Today is credited and link www.hollywoodtoday.net used when appropriate.

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