Anna Nicole Smith
January and May
Anna Nicole Smith knew what she wanted, and had the sizzling good looks and temperament to get it.
A stripper and model, she left all that behind when she married J Howard Marshall II, a billionaire businessman.
She was 26. He was 89. He made it to 90, dying in 1995, a little more than a year after their wedding.
As his main beneficiary, Smith got what she wanted, and pretty easily and quickly at that.
Her husband did even better, dying happy as well as old. Smith died young and miserable, as did several other members of their family.
Was J Howard Marshall II murdered, and if so, did his wife do the dreadful deed? It seems unlikely. He had lavished plenty of money on her during their short life together, and she knew that time was on her side.
Was she herself murdered? After all, the cause of her death was a drug overdose.
Suspicions arose, and they were actively and seriously investigated.
In 2006, Anna Nicole Smith was living in the Bahamas, where she gave birth to a daughter.
This was her second child. She had an adult son, Daniel, born long before she married Marshall.
Shortly after his step-sister was born, Daniel travelled to the Bahamas to congratulate his mother and meet his new sibling. Soon after arriving on the Caribbean island, he died suddenly. He was 20. Cause of death: an overdose of recreational drugs.
That same year, E Pierce Marshall, the son of Smith's erstwhile husband J Howard Marshall, also died. He was 67, and he succumbed to natural causes.
Soon, another premature death was to complete the circle. Smith herself died, aged 39.
Several years later, the FBI investigated Smith in a murder-for-hire plot. The target of the suspected plot was not her husband but his son, E Pierce Marshall. After the elder Marshall's death, Smith and Marshall Junior fought bitterly over the estate. Many hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake. They probably still are. As of October 2009, the dispute has yet to be resolved by the courts.
Did Smith plot to kill Marshall Junior? The FBI uncovered no evidence of a murder plot.
Was Smith herself murdered? After all, she overdosed on a cocktail of nine different medications, supplied to her by one or more individuals.
No one has been charged with her murder. However, in later October 2009, a California judge ordered three people to stand trial for conspiring to illegally provide controlled substances, and to provide them to an addict. The three are Smith's friend/lawyer Howard K Stern, doctor Sandeep Kapoor, and psychiatrist Khristine Eroshevich.
