Appeals Court Rules Anna To Be Buried In Bahamas

Anna Nicole Smith will be buried in the Bahamas, an appeals court ruled today.

Her body will be delived to baby Dannielynn’s Guardian Ad Litum for burial in the Bahamas.

Smith?s mother Virgie Arthur had challenged a circuit judge’s decision last week to give control of Smith’s burial to the court-appointed advocate for Smith’s infant daughter, Dannielynn. Arthur’s lawyer, Roberta Mandel, argued to the appeals court that the mother is the legal next of kin.

Appeals Judge Barry Stone asked the advocate’s attorney, Christopher Carver, how his client could figure out what a 5-month-old baby wanted.

“You would need a crystal ball,” Stone said.

Carver said the advocate, Richard Milstein, considered Smith’s wishes to be buried in the Bahamas next to her 20-year-old son Daniel, who died there last year.

“Anna Nicole Smith buried the person she loved most of all in the Bahamas,” Carver said.

Carver said if the court rules against Arthur, Smith’s funeral would take place Friday in the Bahamas. But Mandel has said she would appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Attorneys for Smith’s boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, argued in court papers that Arthur was trying to “place her in death where she never wanted to be in life” — Texas.

Smith, 39, died in a Florida hotel Feb. 8, but her body has remained at a medical examiner’s office because of the dispute.

Her baby daughter, Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern, is living in a gated, waterfront home in the Bahamas, where a judge is hearing the child custody dispute between Stern and Arthur.

On Tuesday, Arthur saw the little girl for the first time and left the home in tears.

“She’s in mourning having lost her daughter and grandson both within the last five months,” said her attorney, Deborah Rose.

Smith’s son died last fall in the Bahamas just a few days after Dannielynn’s birth. Smith and Stern were living in the Bahamas at the time, and Daniel is buried there.

Rose said Arthur’s permission for the visit with Dannielynn did not come from the court, but she declined to say who had authorized it. Arthur was in the Bahamas for a hearing Tuesday that Rose described as a “small technical procedure.”

“Our objective is really to assist our client in having access to her granddaughter and foremost to ensure the best interests and welfare of the child are secured,” Rose said.

The baby’s paternity is also in dispute. Stern is listed on her birth certificate, but two other men also claim to be the father.

Los Angeles photographer Larry Birkhead, Smith’s ex-boyfriend, asked a Fort Lauderdale judge on Wednesday to allow DNA samples from Smith’s body and the baby.

Judge Lawrence Korda ordered DNA samples from Smith’s body be turned over to Birkhead’s attorney but said he had no jurisdiction to do anything further in the case.

“The Bahamas is the proper venue and the Bahamian court has already exercised jurisdiction over the minor child,” Korda said.

Frederic von Anhalt, the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, also says he may be the baby’s father.

A medical examiner has yet to determine Smith’s cause of death. Toxicology results could take up to two more weeks.

Smith married Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26. The reality TV star and Playboy Playmate had been fighting his family over his estimated $500 million fortune since his death in 1995, and her baby daughter could inherit millions.