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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - The feuding mother, partner and former boyfriend of Anna Nicole Smith took a brief break from a courtroom battle over the Playboy model's corpse today to get a private viewing of her rapidly decomposing body in a Florida morgue.
The visitation came on the
fifth day of hearings before south Florida Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin, who has said he will decide by Friday whether to let Smith's body be released to her companion Howard K. Stern and buried in the Bahamas, or to her estranged mother, Virgie Arthur, and buried in Texas.
The body of Smith -- famous in life for her abundant curves -- has lain in cold storage for nearly two weeks at the Broward Medical Examiner's Office since she died on Feb. 8 at a Florida casino hotel of unexplained causes, aged 39.
It was finally embalmed on Sunday, after a struggle to find a funeral home willing to sign a confidentiality agreement. But Seidlin got a call from Broward County Medical Examiner Joshua Perper yesterday and again today saying the corpse was decomposing quickly and would soon be unsuitable for a family viewing.
Arthur, Stern and Larry Birkhead, a former Smith boyfriend who claims to be the father of her 5-month-old daughter, were ferried in black sport utility vehicles from the court to the morgue for a viewing of the former Playboy centrefold model.
Birkhead is due to testify in the case on behalf of Smith's mother, arguing for her burial in Texas.
The hearings before Seidlin, who again today swatted aside complaints from lawyers that the proceedings had become a circus, were dominated by accusations that all involved were trying to profit from Smith's corpse.
Lawyers for Stern said Arthur wanted her daughter buried in Texas because it would help her sell the rights to her story and also accused her of selling a video of a visit to her dead grandson's grave to the Splash news agency for US$12,500 ($17,939).
Smith's son Daniel, died in the Bahamas, aged 20, just three days after his mother gave birth to the baby girl, Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern.
"The only one that ever made money off my daughter is that man right there," Arthur said, pointing to Stern, whom she accused of agreeing to sell video of Smith's corpse.
"That's why he wants her body, for a million bucks."
Aside from the prospect of turning Smith's colourful life and death into profit, Smith's estate could also one day be worth half a billion dollars if a separate, decade-long courtroom battle to inherit the fortune of her dead husband, oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall, prevails. So the question of who fathered Dannielynn looms large.
Birkhead says he is the father while Stern is listed on the birth certificate as the child's father.
Seeking to capitalize on the case, a convenience store outside the courthouse today put T-shirts on sale for US$15 each with the slogan, "I'm the Baby's Daddy."
- REUTERS
