The unexplained death of Anna Nicole Smith's son at her bedside has gripped the gossip-mongers, writes Denis Staunton
The mysterious death of Daniel Smith, the 20-year-old son of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith has provoked a festival of finger-pointing and prurient speculation among the bloodthirsty legion of celebrity watchers in the US.
Daniel was visiting his mother in hospital in the Bahamas on Sunday, three days after she gave birth to a baby girl, when he died of what the coroner will describe only as "not natural" causes. He had spent the night in his mother's room, along with Howard K Stern, described as Smith's "lawyer and confidant" when he was found sitting upright in a chair and not breathing.
"It would appear from our report that the mother had gotten up, saw him in the chair and he appeared to be sound asleep. She tried to wake him up, he was unresponsive and she sounded the alarm . . . Doctors were called to check him and he was subsequently pronounced dead," said Reginald Ferguson, assistant commissioner of the Royal Bahamas Police Force.
Daniel was born during Smith's short-lived first marriage, but he grew up in the celebrity spotlight on account of his mother's second marriage, to Texan oil tycoon J Howard Marshall II in 1994. Marshall, who met Smith at a strip club where she worked as an exotic dancer, was 89 on their wedding day. His bride was 26.
When Marshall died a year later, Smith claimed half of his $1.6 billion (€1.3 billion) estate and a court initially awarded her $474 million (€375 million). The rest of Marshall's family contested the award and got it cut to $89 million (€70 million) and finally to nothing at all. Earlier this year, the US supreme court ruled that Smith could continue to pursue her claim through the courts in California.
In the years after Marshall's death, Smith's career as an actor stalled and her ballooning weight, combined with sometimes bizarre public behaviour, made her the butt of cruel jokes. Her fortunes improved after 2002, when she lost more than 30kg and hosted a reality TV show, The Anna Nicole Show - a less dignified version of The Osbournes.
Daniel, who was a constant presence on the show, appeared to have a warm relationship with his mother, although some of her celebrity friends, including female wrestler Joanie Laurer, worried that the boy was "too serious".
According to Michael Scott, Smith's attorney in the Bahamas, Stern picked Daniel up at the airport last Saturday night and drove with him straight to the hospital where Smith was recovering after giving birth by Caesarean section.
"When Daniel arrived in the hospital room he went straight to his baby sister. He embraced his mother and sister and told them both that he loved them. Daniel was very helpful to his mother and baby sister. On several occasions throughout the night, Daniel assisted his mother to the bathroom, as she was still in a lot of pain from her C-section," he added.
Scott said Daniel, Smith and Stern were together the whole time, except when Stern left briefly to get them some food. "Later in the morning, Anna Nicole awoke and noticed that her son appeared not to be breathing. Anna Nicole frantically awakened Howard with the alarm that Daniel was not breathing. Howard immediately checked Daniel's neck for a pulse and the nurses were immediately summoned," according to Scott. "Anna Nicole was so distraught at the loss of Daniel that she refused to leave his side and it was necessary to sedate her in order to check her out of the hospital. The devastation and grief over Daniel's sudden death, coupled with the sedation, has been so extreme that Anna Nicole experienced memory loss of the event. It was necessary for Howard to tell Anna again that Daniel had passed away."
Within hours of Daniel's death, US media speculated that he had died of a drug overdose or of a heart attack brought on by drug abuse. Officials in the Bahamas refused to confirm or deny such reports but were due to release a toxicology report yesterday.
TV talk show hosts and radio shock jocks needed no scientific evidence to work out who was to blame for Daniel's death, claiming that Smith's "lifestyle" had made life unbearable for him.
On Fox News, Smith's former make-up artist Holly Pergola acknowledged that the former model had always tried to protect her son from the rougher side-effects of celebrity before slyly joining the condemnation of her grieving former employer.
"Well, it's a very sad case, of course, and we don't want to point the finger of blame," she commented. "On the other hand, Anna Nicole has been apparently under the influence of drugs many times in public throughout that entire show that she had. So it seems like a household where drugs may have been present. But again, we don't want to point the finger of blame. But the coroner has said the death was due to unnatural causes. So it certainly raises a lot of questions. I'm sure that's what everyone was thinking."