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NASSAU - Former Playboy pinup Anna Nicole Smith was laid to rest in the Bahamas today as a flock of doves flew skyward, following a three-week battle for her corpse and amid legal wrangling over her 5-month-old baby.
Smith's brown coffin, which was draped in pink sequined fabric
with feathers and tassels that fluttered in the warm island breeze, was placed in a grave next to her dead son Daniel while a raucous crowd of onlookers cheered and shouted outside Nassau's Lakeview cemetery.
"The saddest moment was when they were laying her down into the hole because it was like goodbye," said Diane Dean, who works for East Sunrise Mortuary and sat among the mourners under a tent used to shield the burial from uninvited eyes.
Twenty-four doves were released over the grave of the tabloid star, whose sudden death in Florida on February 8 at age 39 touched off a media maelstrom. One dove refused to leave the coffin, and walked up and down on it, Dean said.
In attendance were all of those who had feuded bitterly over the corpse, and over Smith's baby daughter Dannielynn, a potential multimillionaire if her estate one day wins a decade-long battle to inherit from a former oil tycoon husband.
Her estranged mother, Virgie Arthur, who wanted her daughter buried in her native Texas, was accompanied by a reporter from the Splash news agency.
Larry Birkhead, a former boyfriend who claims to be Dannielynn's father, was accompanied by his lawyer. The crowd outside the cemetery chanted his name. He came and left waving to fans.
Howard K Stern, Smith's longtime companion and who is listed as Dannielynn's father on her birth certificate, remained standing at the burial site after the others had gone, as if "in disbelief," said Dean.
Stern had insisted on burying her next to Daniel, who died last September in the Bahamas just days after Dannielynn was born.
Earlier, a white hearse delivered Smith's coffin to Nassau's Mount Horeb Church, where organisers said 300 guests sat inside and 300 sightseers, tourists and local residents gathered behind barricades outside.
The main players in the furor surrounding the death of the former topless dancer and billionaire's widow arrived in white stretch limousines, accompanied by police motorcycles.
"She has lived an intriguing life, that's for sure," said Heather McCarthy, on holiday with her family from Boston, who said she came to the church because she was sure friends and family back home would ask her about the funeral.
"It's a joke. It's not a funeral, it's a circus. You see people clapping," said Frank Ronne, an auctioneer from Boston also on holiday.
"If it was a sunny day, I would be at the beach."
Only a few reporters were allowed inside the church and into the cemetery.
Carloads of paparazzi and several television news helicopters accompanied the coffin from a Florida morgue to the airport in Miami from where it was flown to the Bahamas early on Friday morning.
It was still unclear what caused Smith's death. But her estate could ultimately be worth millions if it wins a legal battle to inherit from J Howard Marshall, a billionaire whom she married when she was 26 and he was 89. They had met at a strip club where she danced.
Popular Bahamian talk show host Darold Miller broadcast live from outside the church.
"This is a chapter we want closed so that we can move on and deal with the real issues in this country," Miller said, referring to a general election that is expected to be held in the Atlantic island chain in May.
- REUTERS