Bahamas Cemetery Could Become Tourist Attraction
POSTED: 5:22 pm EST February 22, 2007
NASSAU, Bahamas -- The four graves are unmarked for now, with just a patch of fresh sod showing where Anna Nicole Smith's son was laid to rest. But the humble cemetery meant for the "common people of the Bahamas" could soon become a tourist magnet.
A Florida judge gave custody of the former Playboy Playmate's body to her baby daughter's guardian on Thursday but said in a surprise ruling that he hoped Smith would be buried alongside her 20-year-old son in the Bahamas.
Tourists have already begun coming to the Lakeview Memorial Gardens & Mausoleums cemetery since Daniel Smith was buried here in October, and local tour operators say the site could soon become even more of a tourist attraction.
Anna Nicole Smith's will did not say where she wanted to buried, but her companion, Howard K. Stern, testified this week in court that she wanted to be buried in the Bahamas. An attorney for Smith's estate, Wayne Munroe, said she bought funeral plots for four people -- Daniel, her 5-month-old daughter Dannielynn, Stern and herself.
If the former reality star is buried at the cemetery located on John F. Kennedy Drive, a busy road leading from the airport to downtown Nassau, tour operators would likely include it as an attraction, said Rosco Welch, secretary of the Bahamas Taxi Cab Union.
"The only interesting person at Lakeview right now is Daniel Smith, but we've been having quite a bit of tourists ask where he's buried," Welch said.
Many drivers are already offering to show tourists Smith's waterfront residence, he said.
Cemetery employee Tamita Barr said dozens of journalists have visited Lakeview Memorial since Smith died Feb. 8 at the age of 39 after she was found unconscious in a Florida hotel room. No cause of death has been determined.
"From the day the lady died there have been reporters," Barr said. "We don't stop them from coming, and we don't really know what drives them to come."
Some 1,500 people have been buried at Lakeview Memorial, one of two private cemeteries on New Providence island, since it opened in 1999. A double plot costs $3,700, and the cemetery shows signs of an unfinished expansion, including a large patch still waiting to be covered with grass.
Until now, no celebrities are counted among those buried there, only "common people of the Bahamas," Barr said.
Daniel Smith was buried at Lakeview Memorial after he died Sept. 10 while visiting his mother in the Bahamas after she gave birth to her daughter. A private pathologist concluded he died from a combination of methadone and antidepressants.
Separately Thursday, a Supreme Court judge in Nassau ordered a closed-door hearing on who should have custody of Smith's daughter to resume on Monday, attorneys said outside the courthouse. Emerick Knowles, an attorney for Smith's ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead, said he filed a motion on his client's behalf claiming paternity of the baby girl.
http://www.nbc6.net/news/11085621/detail.html
There was always a photo of DiMaggio??? popping up at Marilyn's grave.