AP Features, February 21st, 2007
Anna Nicole Smith wanted to be buried in California near her idol Marilyn Monroe, her mother tearfully acknowledged Wednesday _ an admission that could hurt the mother's fight to have the starlet buried in her native Texas.
Virgie Arthur said her last conversation with Smith about her burial came more than 10 years ago.
"Wherever the stars are buried, that's where she wanted to be buried," Arthur said.
Arthur is arguing in court against Howard K. Stern, the lawyer who had been Smith's boyfriend for many years. Stern wants to bury the former Playboy playmate in the Bahamas with her son, Daniel, who died last September at age 20 of apparently drug-related causes.
Arthur said she believed any mother would want to be buried with her children, but she wants to exhume the son and bury him in Texas, too.
Smith, 39, died Feb. 8 in a Florida hotel of unknown causes. Bringing urgency to the case was another warning from a medical examiner that Smith's body soon will be too decomposed and discolored for a public viewing. Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin promised a ruling by Friday.
The Florida hearing is just one part of the legal battle surrounding Smith, whose life was a tabloid fixture as well. In California, a judge is trying to determine who fathered Smith's 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn, who could inherit millions, depending on how Smith's estate is divided.
Stern is listed as the father on the birth certificate, but photographer Larry Birkhead, who once dated Smith, says the girl is his.
On Tuesday, Stern testified that Smith had insisted at her son's funeral on being buried with him in the Bahamas. But Stern also acknowledged that she had once asked to be buried next to Monroe.
On the stand, Arthur tried to raise suspicions about Stern and the unsolved deaths.
"I knew she would be next. My grandson did not overdose. Howard was there when he died, and Howard was there when my daughter died. And he has my granddaughter now and it is not even his child. I'm afraid for her life as well," Arthur said, crying. "Please, help us."
Smith was the widow of Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II. The two married in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26. She had been fighting his family over his estimated $500 million fortune since his death in 1995.
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Associated Press writers Kelli Kennedy in Fort Lauderdale, Damian Grass in Miami and Jeff Wilson in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
