A newspaper published two photographs on its front page Monday showing Anna Nicole Smith lying in bed fully clothed in a romantic embrace with the Bahamian immigration minister, who approved her application for permanent residency.
Immigration Minister Shane Gibson has come under criticism from the political opposition for giving the former Playboy Playmate special treatment in granting Smith residency in the Bahamas last year. Smith died Thursday in Florida.
The residency application was based on Smith’s purported ownership of a waterfront mansion. But G. Ben Thompson, a South Carolina developer who once dated Smith, has said he had not given Smith the house as a gift as her lawyers have asserted. Thompson is attempting to reclaim the house.
A representative of Anna Nicole Smith’s companion, Howard K. Stern, scrambled on Monday to control dissemination of items he said were stolen from the mansion over the weekend before he returned from Florida, including images from a computer taken from the house.
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Anna Nicole Smith
Ron Rale, Stern’s spokesman, said in a statement Monday that anyone who disseminates any of the items without his prior written consent “will be held liable to the fullest extent of the law.” Rale said police have recovered all the missing property.
Two photographs published on the front page of The Tribune of Nassau show Smith and Gibson looking into each other’s eyes with their faces only a couple inches apart while lying on a bed decorated with pink flowers and a white ribbon. The newspaper said the photographs were taken in Smith’s bedroom and that it obtained the pictures Sunday from an unidentified source.
Opposition leader Hubert Ingraham said he was looking into the matter.
“I’m making some inquiries,” Ingraham told The Associated Press.
All of Smith’s personal items, including the birth certificate of her 5-month-old daughter, whose paternity is being disputed by three men, had been taken from the house, Rale said.
Stern over the weekend reclaimed the Bahamas mansion along with 5-month-old Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern. They had lived in the gated waterfront estate, known as “Horizons,” before Smith died last week.
Stern said he is trying to keep Smith’s mother, Vergie Arthur, who traveled from the United States and went to the gates of the mansion on Sunday, from seeing Dannielynn.
“She just despised that woman,” Stern told “Entertainment Tonight.”
“As long as I have one breath left in my body that woman will not see Dannielynn,” he added.
Arthur told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that she fears for Dannielynn’s safety, pointing out that Stern has been present when Smith’s 20-year-old son, Daniel Smith, died under mysterious circumstances in a Bahamas hospital room while visiting his mother days after Dannielynn was born.
A coroner hired by Smith’s family said Daniel died in September from a lethal combination of drugs, including methadone. An inquest into his death is scheduled to begin March 27.
“I do have a problem with her being with Howard Stern,” Arthur said. “I had a daughter and I had a grandson. He was there when both of them died. Now I only have a granddaughter left, and now he has her, and I’m afraid for her.”
Stern is listed on a birth certificate as Dannielynn’s father. But two other men have challenged the claim.
A former boyfriend, Larry Birkhead, has filed a lawsuit claiming he is the father. Arthur backs his claim. On Friday, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, announced that he had a decade-long affair with Smith and he may be the father.
The New York Daily News has reported that a manuscript it obtained says Smith froze the sperm of her late 90-year-old husband, Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, before his death and may have used it to become pregnant.
Since Marshall’s death in 1995, Smith had been waging a court battle over his estate. A federal court in California awarded Smith $474 million, but that was later overturned. But in May, the U.S. Supreme Court revived her case, ruling that she deserved another day in court.
Experts say the decision of who receives custody could determine the child’s inheritance.