Feb 22, 2007 12:30 pm US/Eastern
Judge Says Stern Was 'Maybe An Enabler'
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla (AP) ―
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Broward County Circuit Court Judge Larry Seidlin during a hearing regarding control over Anna Nicole Smith's remains in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. on Feb. 16, 2007.
AP
Anna Nicole Smith's ex-boyfriend testified Thursday that he attempted to curb the starlet's drug use as the judge referred to longtime companion Howard K. Stern as "maybe an enabler."
Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin began the sixth day of a hearing to decide the fate of Smith's body with a long diatribe, saying the centerfold lacked a strong support system and speculated her relationships with estranged mother Virgie Arthur and ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead soured because of overuse of prescription drugs.
"We have Stern. Is he a bad guy or is he a fellow that has some form of a love for her? We don't know," Seidlin said. "Whatever relationship he had with her, he would be called maybe an enabler."
Stern's attorney, Krista Barth, rose in objection, but Seidlin continued in what promised to be a long day of testimony.
The judge set a self-imposed deadline to rule by Friday, so Smith's embalmed body won't decompose too much for a public viewing. Arthur wants to bring Smith home to her native Texas, and attorney-turned-boyfriend Stern wants a burial in the Bahamas, where her son Daniel died of apparent drug-related causes last year.
Birkhead testified that when he visited the Bahamas home Smith and Stern shared last year, he became increasingly concerned about her medicine use.
"They kept bringing more and more drugs in the house," he said, adding that Stern told him that Smith needed the prescriptions to live.
Birkhead said he suggested she enter drug rehabilitation, but that she told him: "I'm not a drug addict and quit calling me one."
So far, the testimony has been peppered with details of Smith's her sexual liaisons and the deals allegedly being pursued to profit from the deaths of the starlet and her son.
Arthur was hammered Wednesday with questions about any compensation she has or would receive from news organizations for access to interviews or footage after the deaths of her daughter and grandson.
She frequently said no to questions about arrangements with specific media outlets, and sidestepped other questions or claimed she didn't understand them. Stern and Birkhead denied getting paid.
Arthur said her last conversation with her daughter about burial came more than 10 years ago, when Smith said she wanted to be interred near her idol Marilyn Monroe, whose body is in a Los Angeles crypt. Birkhead testified he had had a similar conversation with her in recent years.
Even Stern has acknowledged the Playboy model had hoped to be buried near Monroe, though he said she settled on a Bahamian site after her son died of apparent drug-related causes and the details of the California plot could not be worked out.
The Florida hearing is just a morsel of the legal battle surrounding Smith. Birkhead and Stern both claim to be the father of Smith's 5-month-old child, Dannielynn. Stern is listed on her birth certificate. At issue in a California court is who fathered the girl, who could inherit millions of dollars from Smith's estate.
Smith died Feb. 8 in a Florida hotel, but the cause is still unknown. She married Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26 and she had been fighting his family over his estimated $500 million fortune since his death in 1995.
(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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