Anna Nicole Smith

Lethal Combinations

Beware What You Wish for

A dream - two dreams - came true when Anna Nicole Smith met J Howard Marshall II in the early 1990s.

She was a topless dancer in a Texas nightclub, in her early twenties. He was a retired oil executive, nearing ninety.

No ordinary stripper, Smith was a Playboy centrefold and Playmate of the Year.

No ordinary businessman, Marshall was a magna cum laude Yale Law School graduate and oil magnate who amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune. Make that multibillion.

She was attractive and curvaceous, possessing vital statistics that appealed to him. He was rich and near the end of his life. She liked his vital statistics too.

They married in June 1994 - in a drive-in wedding chapel in Houston, Texas.

It was her second marriage, his third.

When Anna Nicole was still Vickie Lynn Hogan and a waitress selling fried chicken in a Texas fast-food cafe, she married her co-worker, the cook Billy Wayne Smith in 1985. At this stage of her life, she preferred younger men - he was 16 to her 17. Their son Daniel was born about a year after they married, and they divorced a few years later.

Marshall's first wife was Eleanor Pierce, whom he divorced but not until they had clocked 30 years together (1931-1961). He then promptly married Bettye Bohannon, and this union too lasted for 30 years (1961-1991), terminating with her death. However, during this marriage, Smith was also conducting a torrid affair with an exotic dancer. This relationship ended when she died.

Marshall and his first wife had two sons, J Howard III followed by E Pierce. He had no children with his second wife, or with Anna Nicole.

He met Smith shortly after his second wife died. In marrying her a few years later, was he filling the gap left by the demise of his wife? Or his dancer girlfriend? Or both?

In any event, this marriage too was terminated by death - his own. On 4 August 1995, thirteen months after exchanging vows, Marshall's heart failed.  He was 90.

Fertile Ground for Fights

Marshall 's will was highly tax-efficient; no surprise there. But some aspects of his will and financial planning raised some eyebrows and perhaps contributed to a probate challenge that metastasised into a litigious monster.

¶ Marshall left nothing to his young bride either in his will or by codicil. She was not a beneficiary, pure and simple. (Marriage did not revoke his will, which he signed long before he met Anna Nicole. In England and Wales, marriage renders previous wills invalid unless the will states that it was made in contemplation of the upcoming marriage.)

¶ He left everything to his younger son, Pierce, and nothing to his older son, Howard (they had a serious falling out years before over a business dispute).

¶ Smith and Marshall did not have a pre-nuptial agreement.

¶ Much of Marshall's wealth was tied up in trusts and, consequently, not his to dispose of in his will. In court filings, his estimated worth ranged from a low of $40m to more than $1.5 billion. Crucially, Marshall amended his trust a mere two weeks after marrying Smith, and the change was not in her favour. Smith promptly went to court over this issue.

Smith was neither penniless nor homeless after Marshall's death. In September 1994, three months after their marriage, Marshall formally transferred several houses, cars, jewellery and about $6 million in cash to his bride (she signed an “Act of Donation” document). In later court testimony, Pierce Marshall said that Smith asked her husband for $50,000-$60,000 twice a month during their marriage.

Mother of all litigation

Legal proceedings actually began while Marshall was still alive - Smith sued Pierce Marshall in Texas probate court concerning guardianship proceedings relating to her husband.

And only three days after Marshall died (7 August), Smith asked the court to declare that he had died intestate.

Nine days later (16 August), Pierce filed for probate, and he was promptly challenged by his step-mother and brother.

Smith and Howard Marshall III each claimed that the elder Marshall had promised them half of his estate. Howard also argued that his father lacked testamentary capacity.

Smith v Pierce v Howard. These three contenders were joined in court by various trusts - the critical elements in Marshall III's estate planning.

The lawsuits were complex as well as abundant. For example, Howard sued his brother and his brother’s wife and their children, the Marshall Museum and Library Trust, and three trusts established in the name of the elder Marshall's second wife, Bettye. Pierce countersued.

Smith then filed for bankruptcy in California, arguing that Pierce had unduly influenced the elder Marshall to change a key element of his will, a Living Trust, from revocable to irrevocable. This was the claim she had made in her legal submission while her husband was still alive.

This bankruptcy court awarded Smith $475 million, reduced on appeal to $89m in a Federal District Court in California, and appealed again. In December 2004, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the District Court decision.

California v Texas, probate v bankruptcy court, state v federal court. In jumped the US Supreme Court, which sent the case back to federal court in Texas amid headlines proclaiming victory for Smith.

In May 2010, the Texas Appeals Court ruled in favour of Pierce - and the US Supreme Court agreed to take another look. On it goes.

Time Trials

All of this litigation cost a small fortune; more importantly for the principal players, it was also eating up time - a commodity that, as it turned out, was in limited supply.

In June 2006, twelve years after Marshall's death, Pierce died of natural causes. He was 67.

Three months after Pierce Marshall died, Smith gave birth to a daughter, Dannielynn, in the Bahamas. Her joy was short-lived. Her son Daniel, now 20 years old and a methadone user, immediately flew to the Bahamas to visit his mother and new half-sister. However, he died of an overdose the day after he arrived, reportedly in her hospital room.

Emotionally devastated, Smith became reliant on painkillers, antidepressants and other prescription drugs. In early February 2007, less than six months after her son's death (and the birth of her daughter), she herself succumbed to drugs. She was 39.

Her autopsy revealed 11 different drugs in her system but it wasn't the total number of drugs or their dosage per se that killed her. Rather, some of the drugs did not get along with one another chemically. The combination was lethal.

Smith and Pierce were both dead but the court cases lived on. Smith's estate was fronted by her lawyer/executor Howard K Stern, and Pierce's estate by his widow and executrix Elaine.

Old will, new problems

With Marshall's will still unresolved, Smith's will now entered the frame, and it was a doozy.

For starters, it was 15 years old (she signed it in 1992) and it remained unchanged despite several major events in her life: marriage to Marshall, becoming a widow, the birth of her daughter, and the death of her only son - and, it turned out, heir.

Her 14-page will immediately names Daniel - a minor in 1992 - as her sole heir, current and future.

Several American lawyers have criticised the will, noting that phrases concerning "future children" and "hereafter born" usually appear in wills by men who want to protect their estates from children popping out of their earlier rakish woodwork.

One such future child, little Dannielynn, was in a precarious position when her mother died. But as Smiths will did not provide a substitute heir for Daniel, and as he predeceased his mother, her gift to him lapsed. The rules of intestacy applied and, as nearest next of kin, Dannielynn became her heir after all. She was rescued by her half-brother's premature demise, and her mother's inept will.

Merry Widow

After her husband's death , Smith did not adorn herself in widow's weeds and fade away. Her fame had never been greater, propelled further into the stratosphere by the end of a marriage whose beginning had launched her to global fame. Legal challenges fuelled further exposure.

She was an A-list celebrity - and she milked it for all she and it were worth.

Smith wrote books, modelled clothing, and starred in her own reality TV show. She landed bit parts in Hollywood movies (Naked Gun 33 and 1/3, starring the late Leslie Nielsen; Be Cool with John Travolta and Uma Thurman).

In some ways she could, and did, earn big bucks effortlessly. She earning several thousand dollars from videos of Dannielynn's birth, and a month later, she and her lawyer/lover Howard K Stern exchanged vows in a marriage-like commitment ceremony. Snaps of that happy occasion brought in a cool million dollars.

Postscripts - Legal and Medical

The aftermath of Smith's death was both ludicrous and gruesome. Where would she be buried, and when? Her mother and her lawyer/boyfriend argued over this in court. Meanwhile, her body remained in the Bahamas, subjected to heat and humidity which accelerated decomposition. The Florida judge was reduced to tears in open court at one point.

Dannielynn, an orphan, was also the focus of attention, primarily because she was a potential gold mine if the court cases went her mother's way.

Smith's lawyer, Howard K Stern, was listed as the father on Dannielynn's birth certificate. But a former boyfriend, photographer Larry Birkhead, claimed that he was the real biological daddy and insisted on genetic testing.

Other contenders emerged from the woodwork, including Prince Frederick von Anhalt, husband number eight of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor. Birkhead was victorious, a knockout by DNA in the first round. Dannielynn went to live with him, and her birth certificate was amended.

Not over until the fat lady sings

In October 2009, a California judge ordered her lawyer, her doctor and her psychiatrist to stand trial for conspiring to illegally provide controlled substances, and to provide them to an addict.

In October 2010, a jury convicted both Stern and Eroshevich on two counts of conspiring to obtain controlled substances by fraud and providing false names. Stern was acquitted on seven other counts, and the jury was deadlocked on two counts against Eroshevich, who was found guilty of obtaining medication by fraud. Dr Kapoor was acquitted on all charges. Stern and Eroshevich are appealing their convictions. January 2011 A Superior Court Judge overturned the conspiracy convictions against Stern and Eroshevich and allowed one charge against her to remain but reduced it to a misdemeanour. [March 2011 - the district attorney filed a notice of intent to appeal the judge's decision.]

This case was not the only serious criminal investigation connected to Smith. The FBI questioned her concerning an alleged contract-killing plot to do away with her main legal opponent, Pierce Marshall. Although she had a gun and knife which the feds found (and confiscated), they concluded that she was not involved in a murder plot, although she might have had drug-fuelled murderous fantasies. Case closed.

The other case - the civil case between the heirs of Smith and Marshall - was finally settled when the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favour of Marshall in June 2011. The case hinged on technical issues involving bankruptcy judges. Marshall did not leave anything to Smith in his will, and this judgement, from America's highest court, means that her heirs will get nothing from his estate. The decision also ends more than 15 years of litigation.