Out of all of the headlines in the wake of Anna Nicole Smith's passing, this was the one I was least expecting to see. I mean... Dear lord.
via AP wire
Gabor Husband May Be Smith's Baby's Dad
LOS ANGELES - The husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor said Friday that he had a decade-long affair with Anna Nicole Smith and may be her infant daughter's father.
The claim by Prince Frederick von Anhalt comes amid a paternity suit over Smith's 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn. The birth certificate lists Dannielynn's father as attorney Howard K. Stern, but former Smith boyfriend Larry Birkhead is waging a legal challenge, saying he is the father.
"If you go back from September, she wasn't with one of those guys, she was with me," von Anhalt told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.
He said he would file a lawsuit if Dannielynn is turned over to Stern or Birkhead.
Von Anhalt, 59, and Gabor, 90, have been married for more than 20 years.
Gabor, a onetime sex symbol and star of such 1950s films as "Moulin Rouge" and "Queen of Outer Space," has been in declining health in recent years and suffered a stroke in 2005. She was partially paralyzed in a car crash in 2002.
Von Anhalt, who is Gabor's eighth husband, said he and Smith first met in the 1990s when Smith was still married to elderly oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II. He said Smith approached him and Gabor at the Plaza Hotel in New York.
"She was a very big fan of Zsa Zsa and wanted to be like Zsa Zsa," he said. "She wanted to be a princess."
He said the two started an affair soon after, meeting over the years in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. For much of that time, he said, Smith urged him to make her a princess like his wife.
But short of divorcing the actress, he said the only solution would have been adopting Smith. Von Anhalt said he did consider that and even filled out adoption papers, but Gabor refused to sign them.
Meanwhile, a judge on Friday refused to order an emergency DNA test on the body of Anna Nicole Smith as part of a paternity suit involving her infant daughter, but he ordered that the body be preserved until a hearing in 10 days, attorneys said.
A medical examiner began an autopsy Friday on Anna Nicole Smith, whose mother blamed drugs for the former Playboy playmate's sudden death that ended an extraordinary tabloid life at just 39.
"I think she had too many drugs, just like Danny (Smith's late son)," her mother, Vergie Arthur, told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday. "I tried to warn her about drugs and the people that she hung around with. She didn't listen."
"She was too drugged up," Arthur said. "By the last interview I saw of her, she was so wasted."
Smith's attorney, Ron Rale, said the one-time reality TV star had been ill for several days with a fever and was still depressed over the death five months ago of her 20-year-old son from what a private medical examiner determined was a combination of methadone and two antidepressants.
On Thursday, authorities say, a private nurse found Smith unconscious in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and called 911. A bodyguard performed CPR, Seminole Police Chief Charlie Tiger said, but Smith was declared dead at a hospital.
Late Thursday, sheriff's deputies carried out at least eight brown paper bags sealed with red evidence tape from Smith's hotel room.
Several detectives are reviewing the hotel surveillance tapes to see if they might provide a clue to what happened, Deputy Police Chief Michael Browne said Friday. He said they had interviewed everyone connected to the death and no one was under suspicion.
"Nothing about this death seems suspicious. We're not treating it that way," Browne said. "We're being very thorough. We're going to look at everything."
Edwina Johnson, chief investigator for the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office, said an autopsy was under way Friday morning to try to determine the cause of death.
If Smith died of natural causes, the findings will likely be announced quickly, but definitive results could take weeks, said Dr. Joshua Perper, who was performing the autopsy.
"I am not a prophet, and I cannot tell you before the autopsy what I am going to find," he said.
Smith's son's death in the Bahamas on Sept. 10 came just a few days after she gave birth to a daughter, Dannielynn, whose custody remains in dispute.
The birth certificate lists Dannielynn's father as attorney Howard K. Stern, Smith's most recent companion, who Rale said was with Smith at the hotel and was too choked up to talk when he called Rale with the news. Smith's ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead is waging a legal challenge, saying he is the father.
At a hearing Friday in Los Angeles, a judge declined Birkhead's attorney's request to order an immediate DNA sample be taken from Smith's body. The judge ordered the body be retained, though, until a hearing on Feb. 20, attorney Debra Opri said.
Opri said the DNA is needed to connect Smith with Dannielynn "so that no one can switch the babies."
She also asked the judge to take jurisdiction over the child until her paternity is established. "Nothing was granted. Nothing was denied," she said.
Rale, Smith's attorney, said it was "despicable that we would have an emergency notice and appear right now."
The baby was being cared for in the Bahamas by the mother of Shane Gibson, the Bahamian immigration minister who is a close friend of Smith's, People magazine reported on its Web site, citing unidentified sources.
A visibly shaken Gibson declined comment as he was leaving his office Thursday night, and he has not responded to several message left by The Associated Press seeking comment.
Through the '90s and into the 21st century, Smith was famous for being famous, a pop-culture punchline because of her up-and-down weight, her Marilyn Monroe looks, her exaggerated curves, her little-girl voice, her ditzy-blonde persona and her over-the-top revealing outfits.
Recently, she lost a reported 69 pounds and became a spokeswoman for TrimSpa, a weight-loss supplement. In recent TV appearances, her speech was often slurred and she seemed out of it. Some critics said she seemed drugged-out.
"Undoubtedly it will be found at the end of the day that drugs featured in her death as they did in the death of poor Daniel," said Michael Scott, a former attorney for Smith in the Bahamas.
Rale said he had talked to her on Tuesday or Wednesday, and she had flu symptoms and a fever and was still grieving over her son. He dismissed claims her death was related to drugs as "a bunch of nonsense."
"Poor Anna Nicole," he said. "She's been the underdog. She's been besieged ... and she's been trying her best and nobody should have to endure what she's endured."
The Texas-born Smith was a topless dancer at a strip club before she made the cover of Playboy magazine in 1992. She became Playboy's playmate of the year in 1993. She was also signed to a contract with Guess jeans, appearing in TV commercials, billboards and magazine ads.
In 1994, she married 89-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, owner of Great Northern Oil Co. After his death the following year, she engaged in a protracted legal fight with her former stepson, E. Pierce Marshall, over whether she had a right to the estate.
A federal court in California awarded Smith $474 million. That was later overturned. But in May, the U.S. Supreme Court revived her case, ruling that she deserved another day in court.
The stepson died June 20 at age 67, but the family said the court fight would continue.
Smith starred in her own reality TV series, "The Anna Nicole Show," in 2002-04. She also appeared in movies, performing a bit part in "The Hudsucker Proxy" in 1994.
Smith was born Vickie Lynn Hogan on Nov. 28, 1967, in Houston, one of six children. Her parents split up when she was a toddler, and she was raised by her mother, a deputy sheriff.
She dropped out after 11th grade after she was expelled for fighting, and worked as a waitress and then a cook at Jim's Krispy Fried Chicken restaurant in Mexia, Texas.
She married 16-year-old fry cook Bill Smith in 1985, giving birth to Daniel before divorcing two years later.
