Blonde Ambition (13 page)

   "Friends don't let other friends drive drunk," fashion mogul and former Anna boyfriend, Peter Nygard, told me. "In Howard's case, he gave her the car keys. He was irresponsible in the way he acted, calling himself her custodian, but not taking care of her as he should. He eliminated everyone in her life." Peter says Howard was probably happy to keep her so intoxicated because she needed him more. "It seems he enjoyed the fact she was so out of it. I don't think she'd be dead today if she was under my watch."

   Jackie Hatten, Anna's friend and godmother of Daniel, flew to the Bahamas for two days in October to "save Anna." After Daniel's death, Jackie feared that Anna was next. Jackie stayed with Peter Nygard, who confirms Anna and Jackie were good friends and that Jackie also lived with Anna.

   Anna dated Jackie's brother, Mark. That relationship ended in his arrest and imprisonment. Hatten, an artist, served a seven-year sentence for making "terrorist threats" against Anna and blames Howard K. Stern for his imprisonment. Hatten claims that it was all a setup by Howard K. Stern, who, he says, called police and told them Anna had a stalker that was on his way to his house with a gun. Jackie said that her brother and Anna had just had a big fight and he was coming over to pack up his stuff since they had been living together. When I spoke to Mark Hatten from prison in the spring of 2007, he told me, "Howard wanted me out of Anna's life, he was jealous that we were close. He did this to silence me."

   Law enforcement sources confirmed that in June 2000, the FBI interviewed Hatten in prison. He claimed Anna Nicole and Howard K. Stern wanted him to arrange a hit on Pierce Marshall, J. Howard Marshall's son and their bitter rival in the war for her late husband's money. The FBI asked him to wear a wire and secretly tape Anna Nicole, which he later refused to do. Hatten told me on the phone from prison that he still loved her and didn't want to see her get sent to prison. He also claims that Howard once gave him two small pills, saying they were aspirin. Hatten says the pills knocked him out, and he was unconscious for at least twenty-four hours.

   His younger sister Jackie believes this was just another example of Howard K. Stern manipulating Anna's life. "Jackie's probably right based on what I saw myself," Peter Nygard told me. "Howard cut everyone else out of Anna's life, especially those that tried to help her."

   Peter experienced this himself. "She called me several times when she got to the Bahamas, often leaving a message," Peter said. "I would call her back, and Howard always picked up the phone. She never got the messages, because she never called back after each time. One time when she phoned me again, I asked, 'why didn't you call me back?'"

   "I never got your message!" she said.

   "One time she called my house asking if we could have dinner. I called back and Howard answered the phone. I offered that she could come over to my house for dinner, and Howard responded like a jealous boyfriend. I know she never got the message."

• • •

When Jackie arrived in the Bahamas on her mission to save Anna in October 2006, she tried to call Anna a few times from Peter Nygard's house. But whoever answered the phone, always hung up. Persistent, Jackie went over to Anna's house. When she got there, she realized she couldn't just go up to the door and knock as the security was tight at the fortress-like home. Jackie announced her presence on the intercom at the locked gate. "Anna's not in any shape for visitors," she heard Howard say in the background. Then, someone promptly told her to leave the premises immediately. She believes Howard didn't want her to see how drugged Anna was.

   "She told them she was staying at my place," Peter said. "After Jackie told me what happened, I told her she might as well take off and go back home. So she left. Then, Anna called me either that same night or the next night asking where Jackie was."

   "I wanted to see her," Anna said. Peter explained that Jackie had been turned away at the gate. "Is she still there?" Anna asked. "I'd love to talk to her."

   "It sounded like she absolutely would've seen Jackie if she could've," Peter told me. "She sounded sincere. I told Jackie about it, but Jackie could never get through to her again."

   Jackie told Peter that Anna was in imminent danger. She felt Howard was increasingly drugging her so he could inherit the money. She said someone needed to save Anna's life to "take her away from Howard."

   "He may try to kill her," Jackie said. "Howard is responsible for killing the boy and Anna's next."

   "I thought at the time they were wild claims," Peter said. "But sure enough Anna is dead a few months later."

   When I asked King Eric and Brigitte whether or not they had seen any drugs or prescription medications in the house, Brigitte said, "I didn't look for it. If it was hidden someplace, then, I mean, you don't rummage through people's things."

   "Howard Stern doesn't push anything on Anna," King Eric quickly interjected. "Trust me, nobody push nothing on Anna. Whatever she does, she wanna do it. I don't care how it look to you, she doesn't do anything nobody want. Matter of fact, if you wanted her to do something, tell her NOT to do it. If you want her not to do it, tell her TO do it. That's how bad she is like that."

   "Howard wasn't controlling," Mrs. Gibson, the babysitter, told me. "I have never seen that of him. He was the quietest man going." Then, without my asking another question, she added an unexpected postscript, "He didn't seem like he was after the money." Anna's mother Virgie Arthur also felt that Howard K. Stern was after Anna's money and went on television to say so. "She's the one making the money," she said in an interview aired on
En
tertainment Tonight
. "And the people surrounding her are gaining from it, so they don't want any of the family around. I don't know why they don't want the family around. We have never asked for anything. She has never given us anything."

   Virgie was devastated that she was not invited to the funeral of her grandson, Daniel, whom she raised until he was around six-years-old. She also told me she tried to contact Anna numerous times, but each time she was either hung up on or the phone number had been changed.

   A week before Daniel's funeral, Virgie went on CNN and said, "I know that Danny had a trust fund [claiming Anna's former husband, billionaire J. Howard Marshall, set one up for him]. . . . But if Howard marries Vickie and Daniel's gone, that leaves Howard and the baby to inherit whatever money she has." And then she made her point even clearer. "If Howard Stern marries her and she ends up dead, then who does the money go to?" Howard K. Stern.

   Before ending the interview, Virgie Arthur pleaded, "Vickie Lynn, you know I love you, always have." Then, she looked right in the camera and added, "And be careful about who you hang around with, because you may be next."

   After her mother's attention-getting interview on CNN, Anna Nicole made sure her first television interview since the death of her son was blockbuster. Heavily promoted by
Enter
tainment Tonight,
the "most riveting interview you have ever seen" would be stretched out over an entire November ratings sweeps week and would include everything from a rant against her mother to graphic video Howard K. Stern had taken of Anna's c-section delivery of Dannielynn.

   Before the airdate, reporter Mark Steines, who was invited to Horizons for the interview, said that fear of the paparazzi had turned Anna into a veritable recluse. In a blog on the
En
tertainment Tonight
Web site, he wrote: "There are absolutely no signs of life on the outside. I would come to learn that the fear of constant paparazzi keeps Anna and her support team locked up, blinds drawn, and constantly aware that prying eyes are trying to snap photos.

   "There is a pool no one uses, gardens no one visits and terraces no one stands on to take in the warm night air. Anna and her baby live pretty much like prisoners inside this home."

   Steines also noted that Anna Nicole seemed like a changed person, nothing like the bubbly, childlike blonde he'd interviewed in the past. "She's calmer, sadder, a bit of a broken bird, yet she looked quite beautiful."

   The "world exclusive" interview only increased the maelstrom that had become Anna Nicole Smith's life. Tongues wagged that Anna, with a new trendy haircut, seemed highly sedated and was slurring her words. When asked about this interview later in Judge Seidlin's courtroom, Howard K. Stern would say that he'd seen her "more impaired than that." Judge Seidlin was stunned and thought the statement shocking, leading some legal commentators to later call it Howard's "Freudian slip."

   During the interview, Howard K. Stern sat next to her, looking uncomfortable and awkward, seeming unsure of what she would say next. She giggled when she talked about the first time she realized she was in love with Howard. She beamed "like a mother" Steines said, when she held Dannielynn and asked the seven-week-old, "Can you say Mommy?"

   When she mentioned her son, Daniel, she began sobbing. "Daniel's dead! Daniel's dead!" she cried. "This was not supposed to happen." With tears streaming down her face, she wondered, "I don't understand why God took him and didn't take me."

   Then, she turned her anger and venom toward her mother. Furious that Virgie had gone on CNN and "said I killed my son or Howard killed my son," Anna huffed that Virgie was only her birth mother, "not my real mother." Anna asked, "Who does she think she is" to go out and make "ridiculous statements about me killing my son?"

   For the record, according to the CNN transcript, Virgie Arthur never accused Anna of killing her son.

   "She didn't know him, she didn't know me," Anna explained bitterly. "She never really wanted to know me because she was too jealous of me . . . . I saw how evil she was and evil she looked. So, bring it on Mom, Mommie Dearest. Bring it on!"

   The following week when
Entertainment Tonight
was showing Howard K. Stern's "beautiful" and "uncensored" home video of a screaming, heavily medicated Anna Nicole in the hospital having a c-section delivery of Dannielynn, Anna Nicole Smith was back in the same Bahamian hospital. This time she had pneumonia.

• • •

"She didn't seem good," her new friend King Eric remembers. "I took her when she was sick and needed to go to the doctor. Howard couldn't get her to go to the doctor. Howard had to call me." When King Eric got to Horizons, he found a very sick Anna Nicole in bed, obviously 

sedated, and complaining that her back hurt.

   "Listen Anna," King Eric told her. "This is Daddy. Daddy say you have to go to the doctor and that's where you gotta go. I'm gonna call and I will make a reservation and I'm gonna take you personally."

   Anna put on her childish voice and asked, "Will you do that?"

   "Yes," King Eric promised. "I will do that."

   At first he took her to a chiropractor because she was complaining of intense back pain. The chiropractor said it wasn't her back. He told them that Anna needed to be seen by a physician. So, King Eric took her to a local walk-in clinic, and the doctor at the clinic said they needed to take her to the hospital, "
Now
."

   Anna immediately said, "No way!"

   And King Eric responded, "Daddy say you gotta go. Daddy's gonna take you. Daddy and Howard are gonna stay and be with you all the time."

   "Okay," she relinquished. "Then, I will go. If you're going to be there, I will go."

   Anna Nicole had a very bad case of pneumonia and doctors quickly got her on oxygen, antibiotics, and monitors. Then, they drained fluid from her lungs. It was "very serious," doctors said. She was in the hospital for six days.  Throughout the next three months, Brigitte and Mrs. Gibson— Anna's two "mommies"—would call the house to check in on Anna and drop by for visits. Brigitte said that she would call and Howard would say, "She's under the weather" or "She has an upset stomach" or "It might be the flu."

   "She became more to me like a daughter," babysitter Mrs. Gibson said. "I would call and check on her. Most of the time, he would answer the phone. I would ask how she was doing today. He'd say she 'wasn't doing good' or sometimes she'd be 'pretty good.'"

   On November 14, less than a week after she was out of the hospital, Anna felt good enough to go look at a new house. It was a full two weeks after she was supposed to have already moved out of the Horizons house, as ordered by Ben Thompson's hand-delivered notice to vacate the premises as she had not yet paid the mortgage. She and all of her belongings had not budged, but she was looking at other real estate options.

   Gregg White, a broker with King's Real Estate, was showing her his own house, a 5000 square foot lakeside home with one and a half acres of water frontage in central Nassau. The asking price was $1.89 million. Howard had already previewed the house and liked it, so Anna decided to go look at it for herself. When she had looked at houses on an episode of E! Entertainment's
The Anna Nicole Show
, she had flopped around on the beds, climbed in the tubs and pretended to bathe, and talked about sex a lot. This adventure didn't seem too far afield.

   Her driver took her to the luxury lakefront house where she met broker Gregg White. She was wearing a loose, baggy sweat suit and slippers. She was, as Gregg remembers, "strikingly beautiful, very tall." She was, however, noticeably "very clumsy" and was "dragging her feet." Gregg says she kept stumbling "and almost tripped over the Oriental rug in the house." And "her speech was slurred and slow."

   There had been lots of stories in the Bahamian press around the time about the problems they were having with the Horizons house and their permanent residency. "It was obvious they were scrambling to do an actual investment," Gregg told me. "I definitely got the sense from Howard that there was a sense of urgency so he could meet the requirement."