Anna Nicole Smith
Feb. 8, 2007
(CBS/AP) Anna Nicole Smith, the former Playboy playmate whose bizarre life careened from marriage to an octogenarian billionaire to the untimely death of her son, died Thursday after collapsing at a Florida hotel, one of her lawyers said.
Smith, 39, collapsed and was unresponsive while staying at the Seminole Hard Rock Cafe Hotel and Casino, said the attorney, Ron Rale. She was rushed to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Fla.
Charlie Tiger of the Seminole police said at a news conference that a private female nurse discovered Smith's body at the hotel and that a bodyguard administered CPR at 1:45 p.m.
Tiger said police received confirmation of her death at 2:49 p.m., and that the cause of death will be determined by the medical examiner.
"She checked in Monday at 8 p.m. as a guest. She was due to check out tomorrow," said Danielle Giordano, a spokeswoman for the hotel.
The past year has been a turbulent one for Smith. She was facing a paternity suit filed by her ex-boyfriend, Larry Birkhead, who claimed to be the father of her infant daughter, Dannielynn. The baby was born on Sept. 7 in the Bahamas, days before her son Daniel, 20, died suddenly of a drug overdose.
Smith had been a tabloid staple even before she became Playboy's Playmate of the Year in 1993. Readers were fascinated by her bombshell good looks, her marriage to an elderly billionaire and subsequent court fight over his estate, her weight fluctuations and the sudden death last year of her 20-year-old son.
A former topless dancer, she made her name squeezing into Guess jeans. She resembled the late actress Marilyn Monroe, a similarity played up in her magazine ads, billboards and department store displays.
In 1994, she married 89-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, the head of oil-based Koch Industries, which is part of a family fortune worth at least $400 million.
Marshall died in 1995, setting off a feud with her former stepson, E. Pierce Marshall, over whether she had a right to his estate.
A federal court in California awarded Smith $474 million in a complicated legal twist that began after she declared bankruptcy. That was later overturned.
But last May, the U.S. Supreme Court revived her case. The justices said only that federal courts in California could deal with her case, despite a Texas state court ruling that Marshall was the estate's sole heir.
The stepson then died in June at age 67. But the family said the court fight would continue.
In the following years, Smith had her own reality show, "The Anna Nicole Smith" show on the E! cable network.
Daniel Smith died Sept. 10 in his mother's hospital room in the Bahamas, just days after she gave birth to a daughter. A medical examiner hired by the family said he had methadone and two antidepressants in his system when he died.
Meanwhile, the paternity of her now 5-month-old daughter remained a matter of dispute.
Smith was born Vickie Lynn Hogan on Nov. 28, 1967, in Houston, one of six children of Donald Eugene and Virgie Hart Hogan.
She married Bill Smith in 1985, giving birth to Daniel before they divorced two years later.
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