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Anna Nicole: Media And Mysteries

So much mystery and scandal surround the untimely death of Anna Nicole Smith that The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm asked a couple of magazine editors to help sort it all out.

In separate interviews, she spoke to editors for People and Us magazines.

To begin, Storm wanted to know: What do we know for a fact?

According to The Early Show entertainment contributor Jess Cagle, who is also an assistant managing editor at People magazine, these are the facts:

  • Anna Nicole Smith and Howard K. Stern had gone to south Florida, staying at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.
  • On Thursday, Smith was found unconscious.
  • There was, apparently, a private nurse with her who had called for help. Why did she have a nurse? "We don't know why she was there," said Cagle. "That's one of the mysteries. A bodyguard tried to administer CPR."
  • Smith was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead sometime after 2 p.m. ET.
  • Stern was not in the hotel room at the time but, Cagle added, "I think he may have gone to the hospital."
  • The baby, Dannielynn Hope, is in the Bahamas with friends of the couple.

    Right after Dannielynn was born, Smith lost her son, Daniel, because of an apparently lethal combination of drugs. How did Smith cope with that?

    "Apparently," reported Cagle, "people say she never got over that. You can only imagine the sort of horror of that happening and also the guilt and everything else that happened."

    Was she suicidal?


    Photos: Anna Nicole: The Aftermath
    "People are certainly implying that she was suicidal," Cagle replied. "I don't know that she actually went to someone and said, 'I'm suicidal. I want to kill myself.' But everyone who spent time with her these last few days, I believe, is saying she was completely detached and had sort of lost this fight that was in her."

    At least one publication is asking if it was murder, but Cagle said he doesn't think that is a plausible scenario. The cloud of suspicion is hanging over Stern only because he was in the room when Smith's son, Daniel, died, and he was around when Smith died.

    "However," Cagle concluded, "I think the first theory people may be looking at here: Was it a drug overdose of some kind?"

    Katrina Szish, a contributing editor for Us magazine, pointed out that Smith and Stern were not legally married, although they had a commitment ceremony.

    "Supposedly," reported Szish, "a wedding was going to be happening at some point soon. But, no, they were not legally married."

    Szish also said it had been reported on Wednesday, the day before Smith died, that she had slipped and fallen and hit her head on the bathtub in her room at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.

    Then, on the day she died, it was reported that she was feverish, not feeling well, and she laid down to take a nap and didn't wake up.

    Efforts were made to revive her. Said Szish, "Besides the CPR administered by her bodyguard, there were also reports she was given doses of adrenaline-type drugs, typically given to people who may have suffered an overdose."

    Would anybody be surprised if drugs were at play in her death?

    "Unfortunately, no," Szish replied.

    One of the biggest mysteries: Who is the father of Dannielynn Hope?

    The answer to that question will be decided through DNA testing — testing to which Smith had been opposed. But this week, she got word that she would have to arrange for a paternity test by Feb. 21.

    That was not her only legal woe. TrimSpa, the weight-loss product for which she served as spokeswoman, was the subject of a class action lawsuit. Smith was named in the suit, accused of giving misleading information about what these diet drugs could actually do.

    Asked her opinion of how Smith was treated by the media, Szish replied: "I have to admit, I think the media has been so unkind to Anna Nicole, specifically in light of the death of her son. It was easy to make fun of her before (the death of her son) for her sort of her ditzy behavior. But once her son died, everyone was just throwing out allegations: 'She was a terrible mother. Of course, it was her fault. She should have known what was going on.'

    "For somebody who was in such a fragile, difficult position, that's just very, very unkind. And I can't imagine that the media attacks that she really did endure, and has continued to endure, could have helped her situation at all."

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