KEY POINTS:
FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida - Lawyers for the parties feuding over the body of Anna Nicole Smith have announced she will be buried in the Bahamas, next to her dead son.
Broward Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin had earlier placed Smith's body - rapidly decomposing two weeks after her unexplained death at age 39 in a Florida hotel casino - into the custody of a court-appointed guardian of her 5-month-old baby daughter.
"I'm very grateful that Anna Nicole's wishes are going to be carried out," said Smith's long-time lawyer and companion, Howard K. Stern, who had fought to have her buried next to her son Daniel in the Bahamas, where he died five month ago aged 20.
Asked to confirm that meant the funeral would take place in Nassau, Stern's lawyer Krista Barth, and the lawyer for Smith's former boyfriend Larry Birkhead, Debra Opri, said, "Yes."
Speaking to reporters outside the Fort Lauderdale courthouse where Stern, Birkhead and Smith's mother, Virgie Arthur, have spent six days fighting over the corpse, the lawyers said they could not give any details about the funeral but hoped it would be private.
Florida Judge Larry Seidlin had today ordered that the body of the former Playboy centerfold be handed into the custody of the court-appointed guardian of her 5-month-old baby daughter, sidestepping a ruling on her burial.
Tearfully, Broward Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin said at the end of six days of often melodramatic hearings that he wanted Smith buried next to her son, Daniel, in the Bahamas, as demanded by her companion Howard K. Stern.
But rather than making the order himself, Seidlin instructed Richard Milstein, a lawyer he appointed to represent the baby, Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern, to seek a consensus between Stern, Smith's mother Virgie Arthur, who wanted her buried in her native Texas, and Larry Birkhead, a former boyfriend who claims to be the father of Dannielynn.
Smith died at the age of 39 on February 8 after collapsing in a Florida hotel-casino.
"I want her buried. I want her buried with her son. I want her buried in the Bahamas with her son," Seidlin said, choking on tears from behind the judge's bench after reading the conclusion of his ruling.
The decision appeared to mean the legal tussle over the former topless dancer's rapidly decomposing corpse could drag on.
"I'm just telling you mama, I feel for you, I absolutely feel for you," Seidlin told Arthur shortly before announcing his decision.
"I have suffered with this, I have struggled with this, I have shed tears for your little girl and your grandchild," said Seidlin, a probate judge whose chambers are decorated with old movie posters.
Smith's death has been followed by more than just the legal battle over her burial place.
The paternity of her baby daughter is still in dispute and Smith's estate could itself be worth a fortune one day if a decade-long court battle to inherit the wealth of her former husband, Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall, prevails.
- REUTERS
