It’s been a while since we’ve had an Anna Nicole Smith story. TMZ is reporting that the California Department of Justice is investigating two of Smith’s doctors. Remember all those years of crazy, half-asleep interviews she gave? Turns out it wasn’t just the Trim Spa! Okay we all knew that, but it appears that the California DOJ knows it too, and is interested enough to take some action.

“Sources tell TMZ the DOJ’s Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement has contacted Larry Birkhead, Big Mo (Anna’s bodyguard) and others. We’re told DOJ is particularly interested in two doctors — Khristine Eroshevich and Sandeep Kapoor. TMZ broke the story that Dr. Kapoor prescribed methadone to Anna under an assumed name when she was eight months pregnant. Dr. Eroshevich ordered a virtual pharmacy of drugs for Anna, five days after her son Daniel died.”

[From TMZ]

Anna’s life was so tragic, and she was responsible for a lot of it. But you can’t help but feel terribly for someone who experienced so much tragedy. I don’t have kids, but I can tell you that God forbid should anything happen, I’d want a pharmacy prescribed to me too. The point of having good people around is that they look out for you during those times, and don’t actually prescribe half the Merck Pharmaceuticals manual to you. Dr. Sandeep Kapoor prescribed a crazy amount of drugs for Anna, including Dilaudid (Hydromorphone), Lorazapam (Ativan), Soma (Carisoprodol), Prexige (Lumiracoxib), and Methadone. Those are all some pretty serious medications, few of which are safe to combine. I can’t help but wonder who in Anna’s circle feels responsible for her death. She was surrounded by enablers. Do any of them really see what role they played in her life? Each person is responsible for their own decisions, and Anna was responsible for her own choices, including the choices to keep a lot of “yes men” around her. But at some point the woman was clearly so out of it. Lots of people, not just one or two, should have stepped in. Hopefully her doctors will be thoroughly investigated, and have their medical licenses taken away if appropriate.

Header Photo from TMZ.

The NY Post is reporting that the disturbing photos of deceased Anna that were run in the National Enquirer were real and not “photo re-creations” as the tabloid claimed. There was a story that Anna’s mother Virgie Arthur went to the morgue to visit Anna and brought a reporter for paparazzi photo agency Splash News with her, so this is entirely plausible.

March 3, 2007 — DESPITE the National Enquirer’s claim that the eerie post-mortem images of Anna Nicole Smith it published were “photo re-creations based on eyewitness accounts,” a source close to the magazine says they were the actual photos of the Playboy playmate’s corpse lying in a Florida mortuary. “We didn’t want to get anyone fired,” an Enquirer operative told The Post’s Braden Keil. Someone with access to the refrigerated drawers scored a big payday after pulling out Smith’s pre-embalmed body and unzipping the body bag for an Enquirer photographer to hurriedly snap her bluish face.

I remember reading on the Splash News website that they had actual photos of Anna’s corpse, which they received a lot of heat for at the time. I wouldn’t doubt that one of the pictures is real, but my take is that the large photo the magazine used for the header image was the photo recreation, and that a less pretty small inset picture (warning: link leads to maybe-real picture) of Anna was real. The header image looks too cosmetic and like Anna is sleeping while the smaller picture seems a little more realistic. I would bet they did it that way so as not to feel guilty about running the actual photo. Either way, it’s despicable.

Anna Nicole Smith’s funeral went on as planned today in the Bahamas despite her mother’s last-minute legal ploy to try to put a stop to it and have her daughter buried in Texas. Not only did Anna Nicole Smith’s mother continue her fight to bury her daughter somewhere else on the day of her funeral, but the father of Anna’s deceased son Daniel had his lawyer send a request to the Chief Magistrate of the Bahamas asking to have Daniel’s body exhumed and moved to Texas. It’s unclear whether the request was related to Anna’s mother’s fight for the body.

Howard K. Stern and Larry Birkhead, who are legally disputing custody of Anna’s child but seem to have reconciled after she died, arrived separately and were seen embracing inside. Anna’s mother was one of the last people to make it to the ceremony, and was met by boos from the crowd gathered outside.

About 100 people attended the funeral while curious onlookers, photographers and news crew clamored for a glimpse of Anna’s send off. It wasn’t cheap for press to get inside the gated community where the church was located. Camera crews were required to submit requests to cover the event and to pay a fee of $2,000 per camera and $5,000 per live feed.

Howard K. Stern says that the funeral was set up according to Anna’s wishes and that “she did have a lot of specific things that she wanted” Anna wore a pink beaded dress she had custom made specifically for her funeral in a prescient or wishful moment, and was donned with a tiara. Pink flowers decorated the church. Her casket was draped with a pink velvet fabric dripping with pink ribbons and feathers. Bobby Trendy wanted to hot glue them on, but according to her wishes he was denied.

Anna’s casket made it to the graveyard at about 1:30 PM EST. She was buried next to her son and with an urn containing some of the ashes of her late second husband J. Howard Marshall, the billionaire octagenarian whose money she was still fighting for when she died.

Howard K. Stern’s eulogy focused on Anna’s “truth,” and how he had a real relationship with her and will miss her. He said she was a smart woman who knew what it took to be famous.

Country singer Joe Nichols sang two songs requested by Howard K. Stern for the funeral, “I’ll Wait for You” and her favorite country song, Dolly Parton’s “Wings of a Dove.”

Anna’s infant daughter Dannielynn was not at the service.

The coroner who examined Anna says that he will be able to come up with a final determination of death within nine or ten days. Another medical examiner, the one Anna hired to examine Daniel independently, says that he doesn’t believe methadone was involved in her death. If he didn’t do the autopsy, it sounds like speculation to me.

Pictures from Entertainment Tonight.

Update: The word “tacky” in the title has been removed. The rest of the article was pretty neutral.

So many people are crawling out of the woodwork in the death of ANS; seems like everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame. In this case, it’s one of Smith’s lesbian girlfriends, Sandi Powledge.

Powledge gave an “exclusive interview” to the Houston Chronicle about the early years of ANS’ life before she met fame and fortune.

They met at a gay bar in North Houston with ANS pursuing Powledge. I think Powledge might be convoluting the story here because do y’all see her photo up there? She’s kind of homely and she didn’t have much money either– so what’s the point in dating someone ugly if they don’t have money (this is purely from an ANS point of view)?

Basically the interview is just Powledge crying about how ANS died. They didn’t even have contact for twelve years! I mean, if someone had told me some crazy pyscho cheating shit I used to date up and died, I would be like, “Oh. *awkward pause* So what’s for dinner? I’m starving!”

During one point in the interview, Powledge said,

“She was a kind, loving, caring person who didn’t know how to handle what happened to her. When I look back, I’m going to remember how she was with me. … I’ve got a lot of great memories.”

Then later on in the interview, she paints another portrait of ANS:

Smith expected exclusivity from Powledge and gave her a pager and cellular phone so they could remain in constant contact even while Smith was out of town.

“She told me, ‘I’d better not hear music in the background when I call you.’ She didn’t want me at a club with my friends when she’s going off doing her thing,” Powledge said.

Smith’s infidelity became a source of fights. Smith’s aunt, Elaine Tabers, who along with her husband lived with their famous niece at the ranch in the Cypress-Rosehill area, would often persuade Powledge to make peace.

“Elaine would always tell me, ‘Don’t say anything. If you love her, leave it as it is,’ ” Powledge recalled. “She’d tell me to hang on and work this out.”

But there were other concerns, as well. Even in those early days of fame, Smith had a taste for pills and alcohol, Powledge said.

“I’d say, ‘Can’t we just have a night without it?’ She’d say, ‘Yeah.’ But as the night wore on, I could always tell by her slur or the look on her face,” said Powledge, who would later struggle with drugs herself, long after breaking up with Smith.

As Smith grew more famous and left town more often, their contact grew less frequent, and Powledge tired of waiting for her. She moved back to her hometown of Winnsboro, 100 miles east of Dallas, without telling Smith, sparking a fight. Smith angrily demanded that Powledge return to Houston to see her, and Powledge did, driving 260 miles through a violent rainstorm with her brother.

No wonder why she died. No one ever said “no” to her; she was constantly surrounded by enablers who wanted a bit of the life she had. I’m sure when Powledge saw the limo ANS came in to pick her up for their first date she was like, “Whoo ee, that’s a fancy machine-driven carriage!”

It sounds like she tried to push her insecurities off on everyone else and manipulated and emotionally abused everyone around her. The more I read about ANS, the harder and colder my heart gets.

And this lady needs some massive therapy, because if she’s still clinging onto a photo album of Smith and cries when talking about some lying manipulative ho she dated over a decade ago, she really has issues.

Oh and what is also interesting is that ANS made her do a commitment ceremony too over water… specifically the diving board at ANS’ Spring, Tx home. No KFC was served.

Read the whole barfy article here. Also, Powledge gave the same interview (seriously what can change in 12 years of no communication?) back in ‘99 to the Houston Press and the Dallas Observer, sister indie newspapers.

Anna’s ex-assistant Kim “Kimmy” Walther supposedly posted a rant on her one-page poorly formatted website against Howard K Stern, basically accusing him of profiting from Anna’s death and lying about it, and saying it was suspicious that he was around when both Anna and Daniel died.

Now Walther is saying that she doesn’t know who put up that site on the domain with her name, but that it wasn’t her. She also says she likes Howard and doesn’t agree with what’s posted there:

Kim says she’s come forward because an impersonator has set up a defamatory Website on the Internet, pretending to be her. She wants people to know that she has nothing but kind things to say about Howard, Anna and Daniel.

During her time from 2000 to 2005 as Anna’s assistant, Kim says she often spent time with young Daniel, playing video games or bowling or watching stand-up comedy.

“He loved stand-up comedy and was just an amazing kid. In May of last year, he called to tell me that he got his driver’s license. He never seemed depressed, unhappy.”

Whoever registered KimberlyWalther.com did it after Anna Nicole died, most likely to spread their belief that Howard was culpable in her death. The domain name was registered on February 16, 2007, and the owners used a service to keep their identities’ private. Walthers was well known as Anna’s assistant on her reality show, and TMZ published her name as a witness to Anna’s will the same day the site was registered, February 16th.

In her interview with The Insider, Walther said that Anna Nicole told her last fall that Daniel had fallen in with a bad crowd at college but that she thought she was overreacting. His death came as a complete shock to her.

She also said that Anna never did anything she didn’t want to do and that “she was probably the most strong-willed person I’ve ever met.”

Update: Thanks to Evil Beet for alerting me to this video preview of Kim’s interview

Alright, so good, the crazy dramatic judge did something smart for once and gave custody of ANS’ body to Dannielynn’s court appointed guardian. The guardian decided that she should be buried in the Bahamas which pissed off Virgie, ANS’ mom; she will be appealing. Maybe to increase the drama even further, her lawyer might try going off her insulin again.

Anna bought four plots next to her son in the Bahamas. Smith’s other bloodsucker lawyer who controls Smith’s estate, Wayne Munroe, said there were four plots. Two for her children, and two for her and Stern.

What’s very interesting is that even though Stern is considered her boyfriend, wouldn’t he be considered a common law husband therefore defeating Virgie Arthur’s claim of next of kin? I have no idea how California law works– if someone could enlighten me that’d be great.

I wonder if this is hard for Stern to not even be able to represent his child in court. Of course, I am only assuming that Stern is the father… but as they say, assuming makes an Ass out of U. But I’m glad that there is a court appointed guardian in this case. Out of all the people with relative authority in the case, he seems the most sane. I seriously wonder about this judge; I think he’s going to get his own Judge Judy show after this case.

Anyway here is what the lovely Bahamian people are saying about the recent revelation of ANS being buried on their tiny island:

Tourists have already begun coming to the Lakeview Memorial Gardens & Mausoleums cemetery since Daniel was buried there in October, and local tour operators say the site could soon become even more of a tourist attraction.

If the former reality star is buried at the cemetery, 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.

Capitalistic opportunists! Damn, I guess it takes one to know one, Anna.

Picture note by Celebitchy: Here are pictures from Anna’s future resting place, Lakeview Memorial Gardens & Mausoleums cemetery, thanks to FindaGrave.com.

UPDATE: Thanks to the sweetheart that told me it wasn’t Virgie that collapsed but rather her lawyer, John O’Quinn.

The judge in the Anna Nicole Smith case, Larry Seidlin, seems to be getting all caught up in the drama in his courtroom. It’s probably the most interesting thing that’s ever happened at his job. He first took a liking to Howard K Stern, making sure he had two different private jets on standby to whisk him back to the Bahamas, and telling him he liked having him around.

It seems like he’s not that biased after all and just likes interesting witnesses, because he’s all up Larry Birkhead’s ass and praised his testimony yesterday.

Stern also seems to have gotten on the Judge Seidlin’s bad side with wishy-washy testimony about Anna’s drug use. The judge asked Howard about Anna’s drug use. Howard said that Anna was on prescription medication and that Anna’s baby-talking in the clown face video was “just the way she talked” and that “at times she was more impaired than that,” which seems to have really pissed off Seidlin.

Birkhead said in his testimony that Howard went to the Bahamas with a duffel bag full of drugs for Anna that he gave her in the hospital before she gave birth when she was several month’s pregnant. He also said that Howard told him that businessman Ben Thompson, who has since revealed that a vasectomy makes him incapable of having children, was Dannielynn’s real father.

Birkhead said Anna filled out a baby book while she was in the hospital that lists him - Larry Birkhead - as Dannielynn’s dad.

Meanwhile Stern has denied that he sent that fax of Anna’s will dated just five days before she died. He told the angry judge that it must have been a mistake or something and that he knows nothing about it.

And incredibly there’s some kind of fake check writing scam that one of Anna’s companies is being investigated for in the Bahamas. Chances are Howard K Stern is behind it, although he denies knowing about that too. He told the judge that Anna paid for everything, that he basically has no other clients, and that he’s now living off borrowed money from his parents and whatever he made from Entertainment Tonight.

If Anna does get that 1/2 billion she was fighting for from her dead husband’s estate, Stern will receive 6% as her lawyer, though.

Stern is still being investigated for his role in Daniel’s death and I bet he’s trying to hide his involvement in that check forgery case. He had to make money somehow. It’s also going to come out soon that he’s not Dannielynn’s father.

The guy is going to break soon. I don’t know if I think he killed Anna, but he doesn’t seem that stable and I doubt he can hold it together much longer.

Back in the heavier, slightly more sober days of E! Networks The Anna Nicole Show, Anna had a punky gay assistant named Kimmy who seemed to be in love with her. Kimmy had Anna’s face tattoed on her shoulder and could be seen gazing at her adoringly in footage from the show.

Kimmy has finally weighed in on Anna’s death and Howard K Stern’s role in her life, and her verdict is about the same as Anna’s family. She thinks Howard had a hand in Anna’s death, and is at the very least profiting from it. She says that she finds it unbelievable that Anna didn’t have another will drawn up after her son’s death, and that she thinks Howard is hiding something. On her personal website she spells out the reasons why Howard can’t be trusted:

YOU LIED ON THE STAND TODAY! YOU SAID YOU DO NOT GAIN MONETARY BY BEING THE EXECUTOR OF ANNA NICOLE’S WILL? WHAT ABOUT THAT DOCUMENT YOU HAD HER SIGN ONCE YOU WON THE HUGE AWARD FROM HOWARD MARSHALL ESTATE??? DO YOU GET 10% OR 100% ??? SO YOU DO CONTROL THE EARNING TO BENEFIT YOU!!! WHAT A F&&*ING LIAR!!!!!!

Anna Nicole

Howard K Stern

1. Researched laws from around the country and found one that would benefit YOU in any paternity case.
2. Convinced Anna Nicole to move to the Bahamas for the benefit of her child.
3. Daniel died within hours of arriving and you flushed WHAT down the toilet?
4. You loved Anna Nicole so much you turned your head when you signed the FedX for the METHADONE?
5. You loved Anna Nicole so much you had to rush out and buy a Yacht and to take her where? A watery grave?
6. Did you have enough time to empty the refrigerator of anything you wanted to hide from the corner?
7. My guess the reason you don’t want any DNA samples done on you or Dannielynn is they will find DRUGS in both systems.
8. Was Dannielynn born an addict?
9. Not for one minute do I believe Anna Nicole didn’t have another will made out. You know she was obsessive about taking care of her child. What did you do with the updated will? Or did it not benefit you?
10. How much of a percentage do you get from the Marshall case? Did Anna find out you were bilking her out of her hard earned money?
11. Do I ever want to see your snout again? NO I value my health to much and your track record is not good…..people are dieing around you…
12. Where is Daniels will? I know he had one made out.
13.
14. OH Please, Howard! Hot Smoochie Lips, Inc….Tell the world you wanted to star in your own reality show. Where are the gowns of Annas that you sent out to be dry cleaned and they never returned? Will we be seeing them on ebay?
15. You never slept in the same bed with Anna!! You crawled in there after she fell asleep…she never invited you to her bed!!!
16. Now you have E on your side they won’t show the real HOWARD!
17. The burial plots were bought by YOU…you sicko… that is the only way you could think of to finally get to sleep next to her each night?? After you are dead!!!! because it wasn’t happening while she was living.

LARRY BIRKHEAD IS THE FATHER OF DANNIELYNN

Larry only wanted the best for Anna Nicole. He tried to do the right thing by her and his daughter.

Thanks everyone for all the nice emails. I will start a forum.. and we will talk… I’m still in a state of shock over what is going on. And that judge?? what is up with him?? That bloke needs to go back to being a cabbie…

EDIT: This was just added:

I’m going to show up, when you least expect me! I have my own tapes… you had no right making a fool out of Anna like you did.

[Kimmy’s website is currently down, and this news was found on aggregate celebrity gossip site Oh No They Didn’t]

According to commentors on Oh No They Didn’t, Kimmy was fired after The Anna Nicole Show wrapped because Howard didn’t like her and wanted her out of the picture.

The judge Kimmy mentions seems to be favoring Howard K Stern heavily and even offered him one of two separate private jets to fly back to the Bahamas in comfort. The guy needs to be thrown off the case.

It looks like Kimmy’s suspicions about Anna’s will may be correct - TMZ, your source for all things Anna, is reporting that they’ve found a fax dated 02/03/2007 that suggests that Stern was in the process of changing Anna’s will a few days before she died. Of course Anna may have wanted to change the will herself, but it’s thought that it was Howard’s doing since she was generally out of it.

Things are getting crazy in the court battles over Anna’s body and Dannielynn’s paternity. Judge Seidlin, a former cab driver from the Bronx, got a call mid-hearing from the Broward County medical examiner that Anna’s body was decomposing fast, and that some kind of ruling should be issued. The lawyers are objecting to each other so much that the judge is calling them “Texas” and “California” for short.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait until the damn Oscars to get a break from the constant Anna Nicole and Britney coverage.

Here’s Kimmy on Anna Nicole’s fascinating show. I didn’t watch the whole thing. I may waste my time reading about this shit on the Internet but my patience is wearing thin.

Bringing new meaning to the circus surrounding her death, Anna Nicole made a video tape in which we get to see her vacant drug-addled expression enhanced by clown makeup. She’s eight months pregnant with Dannielynn at the time and doesn’t understand cameraman Howard’s repeated question “Is this a mushroom trip?” She also has some kind of baby doll in a stroller. Howard tells her “This footage is worth money,” and she answers in a baby voice “Why? What footage?”

Since she’s barely able to function, I wonder how she was able to paint her face in a reasonable semblance of a clown? She must have done that before the drugs kicked in.

While it’s not really shocking to see her whacked out of her mind while pregnant, the makeup really adds something to the “footage.”

Yesterday RadarOnline reported about this video, and said no one really wanted to have anything to do with it - not because it showed Anna pregnant and drugged out of her mind, but because there were questions as to who owned the copyright. The guy shopping it around claimed it fell off a truck. Fox News was apparently satisfied with his claim enough to air it.

Supposedly there’s parts of the tape where Anna talks about how she wanted to die the first time she gave birth:

Radar has seen the video—intended for Smith’s blog, but never posted—which features the onetime Playboy Playmate discussing her fears about her impending childbirth a week before she entered the hospital. In it, she slurs that she suffered such a difficult ordeal giving birth to her first child—her ill-fated son, Daniel—that she “wanted to die.”

We’re sure to see the rest of this already annoying video in the days, probably hours, to come. We’ve already seen Anna having a C-Section, what else is left to gawk at? I wouldn’t be surprised to see a sex tape shot by Howard of Anna and the Bahamian immigration minister, who has since resigned his position in shame and probably doesn’t have much more to lose at this point.

Thanks to TMZ for this video.