Stern, who exchanged vows with Smith in a ceremony in the Bahamas but never legally married her, told Larry King Live after Danielle’s death: “Despite all the pain she was going through, she was a wonderful mother and a very caring mother.”
“At the funeral she tried to get into the casket,” Birkhead told 20/20. “I knew that after losing Daniel, Anna, who was as close as I was to caring for my daughter, would not be able to get well on her own.”
When Smith died five months later, Paul Marciano said in a statement: “Personally, I don’t think she ever got over the loss of her son Daniel, the love of her life.”
Smith never denied that Stern was Dannielynn’s father, so it will be up to DNA to prove it in court as Stern and Birkhead battled over custody of the child in the wake of Anna Nicole’s death. (Several other men have also come forward as potential fathers, including Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband, Prince Frederick von Anhalt.)
There was also controversy over the fate of Smith’s body, with Stern wanting to decide where she would end up, while Smith’s estranged mother, Virgie Arthur, wanted to take her daughter’s body back to Texas. Stern won, and Smith was buried next to Daniel in the Bahamas.
