Posted on 09/14/2006 9:22:01 AM PDT by Semus Dynnen
Anna Nicole 'memory loss' over son's sudden death...
Anna Nicole Smith frantically tried to revive her stricken son and had to be sedated after he died, her attorney said Wednesday. Authorities termed the death "suspicious" and said criminal charges could be filed. Daniel Smith died Sunday while visiting his mother, a reality TV star and former Playboy playmate, in her hospital room three days after she gave birth to a baby girl.
"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," attorney Michael Scott said.
The chief inspector of the Bahamas coroner's office on Wednesday called the death of the 20-year-old Smith "suspicious" and a formal inquiry that could lead to criminal charges was scheduled for next month.
Police also revealed that a third person was in the hospital room at the time of the death.
But Scott said that the third person was another one of Anna Nicole Smith's attorneys, Howard K. Stern.
He said Anna Nicole Smith and Stern continued efforts to revive Smith even after he had been proclaimed dead by staff at Doctors Hospital in Nassau.
"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," Scott read from a prepared statement.
He said she suffered memory loss and that it "was necessary for Howard to tell Anna again that Daniel had passed away," he added.
Authorities said they believe they know what killed Smith but were waiting for a toxicology report to confirm the findings.
Anna Nicole Smith, who went to the U.S. Supreme Court this year to sue for an inheritance, was in seclusion in the Bahamas with family and friends, Scott said. The identity of the newborn girl's father has not been publicly disclosed.
"You would expect any parent who sustained this kind of loss" to seek seclusion, Scott said.
A jury inquest, which will be open to the public, is scheduled to start Oct. 23, and Anna Nicole Smith will be required to attend, coroner Linda P. Virgill said.
"Whenever there is a suspicious death we would have an inquest to determine how the person died," Bradley Neely, chief inspector of the coroner's office, told Associated Press Television News.
The autopsy and toxicology reports will not be made public until the inquest is held, to avoid prejudicing the jury, Virgill said.
Jurors will meet in a courtroom inside a weathered, pink-pastel judicial building in the seaside capital, Nassau. If the inquest, which will be open to the public, determines a crime was committed, the case would be sent to the attorney general's office.
Virgill said there was no sign of physical injury to Smith, who was seen helping make his 38-year-old mother comfortable before he died. Anna Nicole Smith noticed him slumped in a chair Sunday morning and called for help. Hospital staff unsuccessfully tried CPR and other measures to revive him.
Scott dismissed media reports that Anna Nicole Smith's son had antidepressants or other drugs in his system.
"It's sheer speculation. It's irresponsible speculation, may I point out," he told reporters.
Ferguson, the assistant police commissioner, told the AP that no drug paraphernalia or traces of illegal drugs were found on Daniel Smith, in the hospital room or near the room.
Police believe Daniel Smith went directly to Doctors Hospital in Nassau after arriving in the Bahamas by plane, 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 on the E! reality series "The Anna Nicole Show."
Anna Nicole Smith married Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 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 he died in June at age 67.
Smith won a $474 million judgment, which was cut to about $89 million, and eventually reduced to zero. In May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Smith could continue to pursue her claim in federal courts in California, despite a Texas state court ruling that Marshall's youngest son was the sole heir.
The situation is so sad.
Over the past year she looked like she was starting to clean up her act some, she didn't looked so drugged out like she first did while she was taking off the weight.
I feel sorry for that baby girl she just gave birth to.
Sep 15, 2006 12:24 am US/Central
Anna Nicole Wants Son's Death Probed
http://cbs11tv.com/entertainment/entertainment_story_258020508.html
AP) Anna Nicole Smith supports a formal inquest to determine how her 20-year-old son died while visiting her in the hospital, an attorney for the former Playboy playmate and reality TV star said Thursday.
"She fully wants this process to take place and she wishes the public to not jump to conclusions and to wait for the conclusion of the proceedings," said Michael Scott, one of Smith's attorneys.
Her son, Daniel Wayne Smith, died Sunday, three days after she gave birth to a daughter in the Bahamas.
A jury inquest is scheduled to begin on Oct. 23. Witnesses including Smith, hospital staff and others who saw her son the night of his death were expected to be summoned.
Smith was unable to grant interviews, Scott said.
"She's resting. She's obviously devastated," he said. "It's going to take a long time to heal. She's in seclusion and she wants some privacy."
"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," Scott said Wednesday.
The chief inspector of the Bahamas coroner's office on Wednesday called the death of the 20-year-old Smith "suspicious" and a formal inquiry that could lead to criminal charges was scheduled for next month. The term "suspicious," however, meant the cause was not immediately apparent and did not necessarily imply foul play, coroner Linda P. Virgill told reporters Thursday.
Police revealed that a third person was in the hospital room at the time of Daniel Smith's death. Although they witheld the name at first, police officials confirmed Thursday that the third person was Anna Nicole Smith's lawyer Howard K. Stern.
Scott said Anna Nicole Smith and Stern continued efforts to revive Daniel Smith even after he had been proclaimed dead by staff at Doctors Hospital in Nassau.
"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," Scott read from a prepared statement Wednesday.
He said she suffered memory loss and that it "was necessary for Howard to tell Anna again that Daniel had passed away," he added.
A toxicology report on Daniel Smith was expected to be completed by Friday. Officials said the results of the autopsy and toxicology tests would be kept secret until the inquest.
If the inquest, which will be open to the public, determines a crime was committed, the case would be sent to the attorney general's office for possible prosecution.
Once the toxicology report is completed, Virgill said Smith's remains will be transferred to a funeral home hired by the family to send them home to California.
Police believe Daniel Smith arrived in the Bahamas on Saturday night and went directly to Doctors Hospital in Nassau, the private facility where his half-sister was born two days earlier. He spent the night in a room with his mother and Stern.
In his statement, Scott said Stern picked up Daniel from the airport on Sept. 9 and that they drove straight to the hospital. Scott also said that the night before he died Daniel assisted his mother to the bathroom on several occasions "as she was still in a lot of pain from her C-section."
The 38-year-old noticed her son had stopped breathing in the morning and called for help, Scott has said. Hospital staff unsuccessfully tried CPR and other measures to revive him. Police have said no evidence of drugs was found at the scene.
"What we are investigating presently is how, when and by what manner Daniel came to meet his death," Virgill told Brian Andrews of CBS' WFOR-TV in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
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 name of the father of Anna Nicole Smith's new daughter has not been publicly 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 of $474 million in her favor was eventually reduced to nothing, although in May the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Smith could continue to pursue her claim in federal courts in California, despite a Texas state court ruling that Marshall's youngest son was the sole heir.
Yes, it's a very sad situation all around. I wouldn't know about how she has been; don't keep up with her - but I'm sure being pregnant had a lot to do with any clean-up she had done. At least, I certainly hope so.
I have a bad feeling that we're not ever going to know the truth of what happened to Daniel.
He tells of the night Daniel visited his Mom.
There wasn't any place for Daniel to sleep, so at some point, he moved in the same bed with Anna. She woke up and found he wasn't breathing.
It was bedlam after that..and Anna went out of her mind "praying to Jesus, and telling Jesus to take her and not take Daniel"..
Howard and Anna were hysterical.."Anna screamed out NO, NO, NO..and she wanted to keep trying to save him", and continued pounding on his chest, after he was declared dead.
Anna did NOT scream "You did this" to Howard.
No blood and vomit in the room.
The boy was on Lexapro for depression...
Anna was sedated because she "refused to leave her son"...and has no recollection of the trauma in the room..
It's all very sad.
BTW, some teenage boys who saw her hug and smooch her son felt it was gross, said they would be harassed if anyone saw their mothers doing it to them and would never ever want a mother like her.
Has a DNA test been done?
... and the woman just had a C-section????
This is sadder and sadder and stranger and stranger.
Poor messed up kid.
Guen, I don't know how big her hospital bed was, but most are single and it had to be awfully tight in there.
BUT, Howard said Daniel complained of being "very tired"..It IS strange..
sw
Thanks for the ping. I've heard so many different, contradictory things the past weeks that I didn't know what to post and what not to, so I didn't update anything.
OK. Well, that's all very strange. So, Daniel wasn't in a chair elsewhere in the room - I can see why there would be a lie put out about exactly *where* he was.
I've heard "it's your fault" and "you caused this" as being things overheard by other people in the hospital. That kept changing with each "report." I haven't seen any of the tab pubs, so don't know what they're saying.
Hmmm. I did hear about the Lexapro, but Wecht said it was a very low dosage and wouldn't cause any problems. Some friend of Daniel's was on a TV tab report and said that Daniel had complained all the night before of a stomach ache and then complained about it again as he was groing to catch the plane to The Bahamas the next morning.
Others said he had been hospitalized twice that they knew of, in the past two months - once for depression over a girl and once for an elevated heart rate. I've heard that several times.
Birkhead has been on a couple of times, too - saying that "Hannah" or "Hannah Rose" is not the baby's name. Something is strange about his whole distance from all this. I can't put my finger on it.
Oh! Now I will say it: "Told ya so, told ya so!" Not you, per se, spectre, just in general - I said all along I *thought* that was who the father might be, although "people in the know" kept saying Peter Birkhead, so I finally believed that.
I knew a paternity test had been done, but for some reason, Birkhead was claiming he was the one who asked for it - and yet he never revealed the results!
Yikes, Anna Nicole named the baby for Daniel *after* her son had died - the baby had no name before that? Oh, my.
Anna Nicole found an enabler in Howard K Stern, and he helped her in her demise. He is called an opportunist.
The sister of Howard K Stern said that he had no job other than Anna Nicole, and he had not taken a cent from her, since 1995, and he would be paid on a contingency if she did receive any money. The sister said that Howard K Smith was supported by her parents. What a tale that is!
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