Blonde Ambition (12 page)

   One hundred thirty-four days later she would be by his side.

The day after Anna Nicole Smith finally buried her son Daniel, an attorney representing Ben Thompson hand- delivered a letter to Horizons, the house in which she and Howard were living and Ben said he still owned. The letter notified her that she had to vacate the residence by October 31.

   It wasn't unexpected. Ben Thompson had been asking Anna for weeks to begin making the promised payments toward the $900,000 mortgage on the house. "I don't want to embarrass her or humiliate Anna," Ben said. "I just need my money, or collateral, back." Ben said he did sign the deed over to Anna Nicole Smith on the Horizons house. He was allowing her to use the title so that she could get the expedited residency she desperately needed to protect herself from exboyfriend Larry Birkhead's paternity claims. But, Ben says, the plan was always for them to make payments on the house, which he never received.

   Anna seemed to know for some time that she owed money to Ben Thompson. The day after Howard K. Stern appeared on
Larry King Live
blasting Larry and proclaiming that he, Howard, was the "proud father" of Dannielynn, an e-mail was sent from Anna Nicole's e-mail account to Ben Thompson's work e-mail address. According to Fox News, which obtained the series of e-mails, the September 29 message, with its misspellings and grammatical errors, said in part, "i have NO MONEY, here I cant even berry my son! . . . and they want to do this to me make me sign a mortgage on my house my son isn't even taken care of!!!!!!!"

   The next day, another e-mail from Anna's account arrived in Ben Thompson's inbox. It said, "send the note, i will sign it. Anna." And then, four days later, on October 4, another saying, "please don't worry im working on getting the money for the house!"

   Money. Though big money deals had been made for photos and exclusives—for hundreds of thousands of dollars, more money than many people will make in a lifetime—the actual funds had either been slow in coming or, possibly, going elsewhere for other uses.

• • •

Before Anna came to the Bahamas, she and Howard had retained the well-connected law firm of Callender and Co. in Nassau to help assist her through the residency process, which would give Larry Birkhead more hurdles to jump in his paternity claims. Through Callender, she and Howard were introduced to Bahamas Immigration Minister Shane Gibson, and a friendship blossomed between Anna and Shane Gibson.

   A statement Howard K. Stern gave to the Bahamian T
ribune
said, "We actually met Minister Gibson for the first time after Tracy Ferguson of Callender and Co. advised us to do so. After our initial meeting we shared a cordial, but not close, relationship with Minister Gibson prior to the death of Anna Nicole's son Daniel."

   Anna Nicole's residency certificate was fast-tracked at lightning speed and, according to the T
ribune
, it was received in an "absolutely impossible" timeframe and under questionable circumstances. It is highly unusual to get residency approved within three weeks. Many people have been waiting for years. Virtually everyone in the Bahamas felt Anna got special treatment.

   After her application had been submitted on Friday, August 11, an Immigration Department official called the following Monday, August 14, to set up an interview for the next day at Horizons. Callender & Co. only learned her residency had been granted when an exuberant Anna called her attorneys' offices on September 20 and asked her attorney to bring a $10,000 check to Horizons at seven o'clock that night.

   Anna had gotten a call from Shane Gibson directly. He told her the news and said he was coming by that night. When attorney Tracy Ferguson arrived at Anna's house to give her the check, Immigration Minister Shane Gibson was there. It was clear to an eyewitness that Anna thought she was paying Shane directly and questioned why the check was written to the government instead.

   According to the T
ribune
, the next day, September 21, the Permanent Secretary called Callender & Co. and asked Michael Scott, Anna's attorney and a senior partner at the firm, to send Immigration the $10,000 check for residency. The secretary was surprised to learn that the firm had never received the approval letter and that the check had been delivered the night before directly to Minister Gibson. It was then suggested that she ask the minister's office, where the check was eventually discovered. Within 24 hours, what looked like a quickly written letter was delivered to Callender & Co.

   There were allegations made that expensive gifts were given to Shane Gibson, including a Rolex watch. He denied the accusations with carefully chosen words, repeatedly saying that there were "never any gifts for favors." According to bodyguard Moe Brighthaupt, the one thing Anna definitely gave Shane Gibson was naming him the godfather of Dannielynn.

   "It was when Daniel passed away that we really came to know Minister Gibson," Howard K. Stern said in his statement to the T
ribune
. "The entire Gibson family—not just Minister Gibson—provided a great deal of emotional support to both Anna Nicole and I during a very difficult period."

   Shortly after her death, photos of Anna and Immigration Minister Shane Gibson in bed together—clothed but fawning over each other—would be splashed across the front page of the Bahamian T
ribune
newspaper and led to Gibson's resignation. Howard had, of course, taken the photos. In addition, what transpired between the two of them between August and February would make Anna Nicole, the Playboy Playmate and reality TV star, Bahamas' number one election year political topic and was believed by many to have contributed to the defeat of the ruling party.

• • •

Shane Gibson's father, King Eric Gibson, a famed Bahamian steel drum musician, and Brigitte, his common-law wife, as well as Gerlene Gibson, his ex-wife, and several other members of the Gibson family found ways to assist Anna. "She was searching," King Eric told me. "She was always searching for a home that she never had. And she found it. We just so happened to be there."

   "We didn't put any demands on her," acknowledged Brigitte, the woman who found Anna's lifeless body in that Florida hotel room. "We didn't judge her. I didn't know anything about her. Mr. Nygard said I met her once at his house, but I don't remember. There are always beautiful women there. I never heard of her, as I don't go tabloid. But of course I was curious to meet her and when I met her . . . I just welcomed her. This is what we do."

   "I think the courtesy we extended to her, she appreciated," King Eric said. "I don't use the word 'abuse,' but I think some kind of things had happened to her where she didn't trust anybody. And she put a lot of trust into my family. She'd go away and leave Mrs. Gibson alone with the baby . . . so that's a lot of trust. She just mistrusts everybody."

   "I was told she was looking for someone to do some babysitting," Mrs. Gibson told me. Mrs. Gibson is the woman who was caring for Dannielynn when Anna Nicole Smith took her last breath. "She did have a nanny that come from away. It was time for the nanny to leave.

   "I was asked if I could fill in for the nanny, and I thought it a good idea to go meet Anna," Mrs. Gibson continued. "We spoke for a while, exchanged some words. I asked her if she believed in God." Both Quethlie Alexis and Nadine Alexie said that they too had conversations with Anna about God, often reading the Bible to her.

   The nannies, who say they are now scared for their lives and are afraid of being deported, said in an interview on
Con
troversy TV
, "She's a nice person, a lovely person, someone you know you feel good to be around."

   The first time Mrs. Gibson met Anna she asked her, "Would you like me to pray with you?" Anna had answered yes. "Everyone who was in her room at the time, we all held hands and prayed."

   During the first conversation with Mrs. Gibson, Anna said, "I wish you were my nanny."

   "No doubt, something could work out," Mrs. Gibson said with a smile. "I'll be more than happy to assist in whatever way that I can."

   And that's how her twelve-dollar an hour babysitting job with Anna Nicole Smith began.

   Mrs. Gibson never had a problem being paid.

• • •

Everyone I interviewed who knew Anna during her short life in the Bahamas described her similarly: she was a very sweet person in very dark times. And they described her patterns and habits similarly as well, much of which included a lot of sleep and a lot of drugs.

   "I tried to get her out of the house," King Eric told me. "I think she stays in the house too much. She's a little fragile. When she thinks too much she get into tears. She never understand why her son had to die. She never understand that. So the thing to do is not to let her think, so keep her occupied and then she's happy."

   "I believe in nature and the healing powers of nature," Brigitte recounted. "I wanted her to get out more and have some more kind of spirituality that would help her . . . . I wanted to sort of draw her away and get her away from all her troubles, get her on a different track."

   Then there was Dannielynn. Brigitte would speak only her native German with Dannielynn. The baby found it humorous, perhaps because everyone else found it silly. "It's good for babies to do that and everyone thought it was so funny,"  Brigitte laughed. Singing the baby little German songs when they were together had an added benefit. It made Anna lighten up. "I don't like to go back and brood," Brigitte said. "I'm the opposite and get over it."

   Like Brigitte and King Eric, his ex-wife, Mrs. Gibson, also felt an extreme closeness with Anna, and attempted to help her feel better about her days. "Anna Nicole called me 'Mommy,'" Mrs. Gibson told me proudly. "One day I was standing in her living room and she put her arm around me and she hugged me."

   "You're all the Mommy that I have," Anna said so sweetly. "I wish I had a family like yours."

   Mrs. Gibson says she saw a broken person. "Very sad," Mrs. Gibson remembers. "When she smiled, I always complimented her because I so seldom saw her smile. 'I'm glad to see my girl smiling today.' I called her 'my girl.'" Mrs. Gibson said that Anna cried often, saying her son's death was so difficult to handle. "She'd lie in her bed and sob and sob and sob. She would sometimes say, 'I want to go where Daniel is' and question, 'Why did God take Daniel? I wish it was me instead.'"

   One particular day, Anna was wailing in her bedroom and Mrs. Gibson went to check on what was wrong with Anna. When she went into her room, Anna was on her back on the bed. She had a big poster-size photo of Daniel covering part of her body. "The picture part was down on her face," Mrs. Gibson told me.

   Anna Nicole Smith was looking at that photo of her dead son and crying.

   Anna would spend most of her days in bed, surrounded by her four dogs: Sugar Pie, a poodle; Marilyn, a white silky terrier named after her idol; Puppy, a shih tzu; and another shih tzu that seemed to be nameless. She'd sleep, wake up, play with the dogs, take some drugs, then go back to sleep. She wouldn't do much else. "Physically she was okay," Mrs. Gibson said. "But emotionally she was stressed out. Too stressed. That's all I can say."

   The nannies say that Howard was cold, never helping Anna whenever she fell out of bed or near the pool. Moe, Anna's bodyguard, also told private investigators that one day Anna fell into the pool and Howard yelled at him, "Anna's at the bottom of the pool. Howard was just standing there and I had to jump in."

   Moe has said that Anna fired Howard and Moe several times while in the Bahamas, but they always talked her into hiring them back. Moe says he convinced Anna several times to keep Howard and he now feels guilty knowing Anna died with so many drugs in her system.

   The nannies both have said that Anna often slept for more than twenty-four hours straight, often so "drugged out" that she would stay in bed for days. Two days down, one day up, two days down. It was a depressing cycle.

   One of the nannies, Nadine Alexie, had gone to pharmacology school for a year, so she knew a little about prescription drugs. According to their statements, when Anna's psychiatrist, Dr. Khris, would visit from Los Angeles, she'd say Anna needed lots of medicine. Dr. Khris would arrange the medicine in little cups, and line them up. Every four hours like clockwork, Howard would take a cup and go to Anna's bedroom. He'd wake her up and give her the medicine. Howard, they say, was always the one to give Anna her drugs.

   The little cups were packed with medicine, often six to ten pills at a time. Nadine said she got scared that with that much medicine being taken, if something were to happen to Anna that people around the house, like the lower level employees, would get blamed for it. So, Nadine kept a list of what Howard was giving Anna. A religious woman, Nadine swore before God as her witness that what she says is true.

   According to the nanny's carefully kept notes, Anna was taking a staggering twenty-four drugs at one time. The drugs were kept all over the house: in Anna's refrigerator, the guest bathroom cabinet, and in the guest room. She says the photograph released by the website TMZ, showing Anna's refrigerator filled with methadone, B-complex, vitamin B-12, and Slimfast, was real, not staged as Howard's team has suggested.

   After Daniel died neither Anna nor Howard felt like eating, so Dr. Khris recommended Slimfast as a substitute food to keep them going. Howard didn't eat much at all, the nannies say, he just smoked constantly and nervously.

   "When she'd fall, Howard wouldn't pick her up," Nadine noted. "But Howard didn't miss a beat when giving her those drugs."

   Mrs. Gibson was gentler in her thoughts about Howard. "I thought it would be remiss of me if I did not compliment Howard on the care he was taking for Anna," Mrs. Gibson told me. "He would get up in the night and fix her whatever she needed. He would see to it she got whatever she needs. He would see to it that she gets it, which in my opinion wasn't too much."