Testimony depicts final days of Anna Nicole Smith as marked by illness, confusion

Testimony depicts final days of Anna Nicole Smith

LOS ANGELES — Anna Nicole Smith was ill, confused and isolated in a hotel room with a cornucopia of prescription drugs in the days before her death, an investigator testified Tuesday in a criminal case stemming from the celebrity model’s overdose death.

California Department of Justice investigator Danny Santiago testified that witnesses said Smith was unable to walk unassisted into the Florida hotel, and she was so weak she could not sit up to drink liquids.

The testimony was presented in a preliminary hearing involving charges that Smith’s former lawyer-boyfriend Howard K. Stern and two California doctors conspired to illegally provide Smith with controlled substances before her drug-overdose death at age 39.

Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry, who will decide if there is enough evidence to send the case to trial, noted the defendants have not been accused of killing Smith and questioned the relevance when prosecutor Renee Rose asked Santiago about Smith’s cause of death.

“There is not a murder charge,” Perry said. “The cause of death is not an issue.”

Stern, Dr. Sandeep Kapoor and Dr. Khristina Eroshevich have pleaded not guilty. Their attorneys have said they are undecided or unlikely to call defense witnesses during the preliminary hearing.

Santiago’s testimony was mostly a summary of what Florida law enforcement investigators had learned after Smith’s fatal collapse in the hotel room on Feb. 8, 2007. He also identified prescription drugs found in the hotel room as the prosecutor showed pictures of bottles and hundreds of pills.

Some of the prescriptions were in Stern’s name, although some used an alternate spelling, Stearn, and some had been prescribed by Eroshevich, Santiago said.

Smith’s autopsy concluded she died of “acute combined drug intoxication,” and the drugs involved were chloral hydrate combined with Benadryl, clonazepam, diazepam and lorazepam. Clonazepam and Soma, both muscle relaxants, and the sedative diazepam were among medications found in the suite.

Santiago recounted a detective’s description of Smith’s arrival at the hotel on Feb. 5.

“He said she was being supported by Mr. Stern,” Santiago said. “He was holding her as they walked through the lobby. He said she wasn’t her usual vivacious self. She seemed down and was possibly ill.”

He also testified that Stern had told an investigator he had been giving Smith the children’s electrolyte formula Pedialyte in a baby bottle and that she was so confused she asked where her baby was.

Stern told Smith the baby, Dannielynn, had remained in the Bahamas during their trip to Florida to buy a boat.

Stern also told investigators that Smith had complained of flu-like symptoms and was being treated with Tamiflu by Eroshevich, who had the suite next door, Santiago said.

At one point, Stern had to help Smith to the bathroom because she couldn’t get there, the witness said.

Eroshevich at one point asked a hotel employee, Lisa Arredondo, to call a doctor because she could not write prescriptions in Florida, but Stern called to cancel the request because they did not want any leaks about Smith’s condition, Santiago said. Arredondo was assigned as Smith’s personal assistant but never saw her.

Santiago said registered nurse Tasma Brighthaupt, the wife of Smith’s bodyguard, was seated at her bedside at one point but did not notice Smith’s lips were blue and her body was discoloring until someone else arrived and pointed it out. He said Brighthaupt thought Smith was sleeping.

By the time the hotel sent someone to check on Smith, “she was laying on the ground and Maurice Brighthaupt was giving her CPR,” Santiago said. Stern had left Smith that day to look at a boat, Santiago said.

During some of the testimony, Stern sat forward in his courtroom chair with his head in his hands.

Stern’s attorney, Steve Sadow, sought to show that Smith was strong-willed and would have been in charge of her own medical treatment.

Under cross-examination by Sadow, Santiago recounted a conversation he had with Arredondo about her impressions of Smith.

Reading from Santiago’s report, Sadow quoted Arredondo as saying, “She was always the boss. She was in control of everything and everyone, everyone that traveled with her.”

Asked if that included Stern, Santiago said he believed it did.

Santiago acknowledged that Arredondo was also asked if Smith’s “ditzyness” was an act and that Arredondo said yes.

Santiago also acknowledged none of the drugs found in the hotel were opiates.

Sadow also sought to show that Smith suffered from seizures and that an appearance on the 2004 American Music Awards in which she appeared to be drunk resulted from medication to control an episode.

Santiago said he was told that by Stern.

The prosecutor then was allowed to play the tape of Smith’s slurring introduction of Kanye West, whom she called a “freakin’ genius,” to show her demeanor while taking diazepam.

“Video is video,” Sadow said later outside court. “We’re not running from it. It’s what she was on that day. It just depends on the context of why she was that day. We all have bad days.

“She had medical problems,” he said. “If she’s on medication for that, that would explain her activity.”

Santiago also testified that Stern said Smith was in the process of reducing her use of methadone for back pain so she could stop taking it and no methadone was found in her system after her death.

Stern is named in all 11 counts of the complaint. The doctors each face six counts, including conspiracy, and if convicted could be sentenced to as much as five years, eight months in prison. It was not clear what sentence Stern might face if convicted.

Smith died in the midst of a long legal battle to collect millions of dollars from the estate of her late husband, J. Howard Marshall II, owner of Great Northern Oil Co. Smith was 26 when she wed the 89-year-old tycoon. They met while she was a topless dancer at a Texas strip club.

That battle is unresolved. The estate ultimately may go to Smith’s daughter, now 3.

AP Entertainment Writer Anthony McCartney contributed to this report.