Posted on 09/15/2006 2:31:42 PM PDT by COUNTrecount
NASSAU, Bahamas - A private pathologist will perform a second autopsy on the body of Anna Nicole Smith's son as requested by a lawyer for the reality TV star, the Bahamas head coroner said Friday.
The former Playboy playmate found her 20-year-old son Daniel Wayne Smith unresponsive Sept. 10 in her hospital room, three days after she gave birth to a daughter. She called for help but doctors were unable to revive him.
Head coroner Linda Virgill said the family's examiner is scheduled to arrive from the United States on Saturday and perform the autopsy Sunday.
"It is nothing unusual for families to want their own pathologist to confirm or look for something that may have been overlooked" in the autopsy by the coroner's office, Virgill said.
An official autopsy was conducted Tuesday, and a toxicology test to confirm the results is expected to be completed next week. Virgill said none of the results will be released before a jury inquest next month.
The families of other foreigners who have died while visiting the island chain have requested separate autopsies, said Reginald Ferguson, assistant commissioner of the Royal Bahamas Police Force. "This is not a problem," he said.
"Numerous persons who found themselves in unusual circumstances in the Bahamas have done this," he told The Associated Press.
Ferguson said that although there were no obvious signs of criminal wrongdoing, it was too early to draw conclusions. "It's a wide open investigation," he said.
The inquest, which could lead to the filing of criminal charges, is scheduled to begin Oct. 23. Witnesses including Smith, hospital staff and others who saw her son were expected to be summoned.
The Bahamas coroner's office has termed Daniel Smith's death to be "suspicious." A police investigation was opened because the cause of death was not immediately clear, but authorities have said they did not find anything in Anna Nicole Smith's room to suggest a crime had been committed or evidence of drugs.
"It is not a criminal investigation. It is an investigation by the police," Ferguson said. "We don't know if any criminality will arise from it."
Smith, who came to this island chain during her pregnancy to avoid media scrutiny, is free to leave the Bahamas, authorities have said.
Michael Scott, a Bahamian lawyer for Smith, declined to comment on the request for another autopsy as he entered his law office Friday.
Police believe Daniel Smith arrived in the Bahamas on Sept. 9 and went directly to Doctors Hospital, a private facility in downtown Nassau. He spent the night in a room with his mother and one of her attorneys, Howard K. Stern, and was seen tending to his mother and newborn half-sister.
On the morning of Sept. 10, the 38-year-old TV star noticed her son had stopped breathing and called for help. Hospital staff unsuccessfully tried CPR and other measures to revive him.
When police arrived, the body was on one of two beds in a room packed with doctors, other hospital staff, Anna Nicole Smith and Stern, Ferguson said.
Daniel Smith was the son of Anna Nicole and Bill Smith, who married in 1985 and divorced two years later. The son had small roles in her movies "Skyscraper" and "To the Limit." He also appeared several times on the E! reality series "The Anna Nicole Show."
The identity of the father of Smith's daughter has not been released.
Anna Nicole Smith married Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 1994, when she was 26 and he was 89. He died the following year. She then feuded with Marshall's son, Pierce Marshall, over her entitlement to the tycoon's estate before Pierce Marshall died in June at age 67.
An initial judgment awarding her $474 million was reversed by an appeal's court. In May, the Supreme Court ruled that Smith could continue to pursue her claim in federal courts in California.
The Smith story sure has gone a long way to help the "media" salvage what has been a very disappointing hurricane season.
This is just what I heard, though. It wasn't that OTHER thing, which I also heard (and dismissed)...
This makes sense. It will keep the story alive for a few more weeks, and that's what's important....
I volunteer to console the widow smith.
they are going to use cyril wecht for thie autopsy.
what is the first result? I mean, they are moving to a second opinion before even knowing the first opinion?
Oh, I hadn't heard that they had named him specifically, but I had a hunch. He'll be fine.
The good thing about Wecht is he'll talk about anything he sees that is at variance from the Bahamian coroner. He thinks outside the box. (I didn't mean that like that - I mean he gets himself in trouble from time to time for disagreeing and bucking authority, in more ways than one.)
Into spelunking are you?
It's called CYA. They may not know the direct results, or what showed up, but they might have a good idea. It's just best, from a legal standpoint, to have a second one done.
Even some average, everyday, friends of mine had another one done on my friend, their sister, because they just didn't like the man she was living with, who found her body. It turned up nothing suspicious, but they were glad they did it.
I have never been a big ANS fan...did see her reality show a season or two ago. Daniel seemed like a good kid. Shy, but a nice young man (who had a most unusual childhood) and he seemed to try to stay in the background of the show and of his mom. What a terrible loss...I pray for ANS to find peace and solice in all of this. No mother should have to go thru somelike this.
Could it be that son, and grandson are the same?
I'd have to loosen up with a glass of cavernet.
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