If only these pictures could speak for themselves.
Howard K. Stern took several photographs of Daniel Smith's lifeless body, thinking he could make a profit on the morbid shots, a former companion of Anna Nicole Smith's testified Wednesday during the ongoing inquest into her 20-year-old son's 2006 death.
G. Ben Thompson, the South Carolina real estate developer who owned the waterfront house in the Bahamas where Smith and Stern stayed for about five months with Smith's newborn daughter Dannielynn, said that Stern told him the pictures "might be worth some money one day."
"I was totally shocked he was taking pictures of a dead child laying in that bed," Thompson said.
The witness was embroiled in a property dispute with Smith in the months leading up to her death, claiming he had advanced her money to buy his Nassau property and that she never paid him back.
Stern's attorney, Shaka Serville, accused Thompson of fabricating the story about Smith's lawyer-turned-lover, who was in court Wednesday, as payback for the legal tangle over his $900,000 Bahamian residence. Thompson first publicized the allegation in October during an appearance on Geraldo Rivera's talk show, Serville said.
Stern took pictures of Daniel to prove to Smith, who was reportedly debilitated by shock at the time, that her son was really dead, the attorney told the court.
Daniel died Sept. 10, 2006, at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, where his mom was still recovering after giving birth to Dannielynn just three days before.
While the cause of death was determined to be a lethal mixture of antidepressants, sleep aids and methadone, the coroner originally assigned to the case declared his death "suspicious" and scheduled an inquest for sometime October 2006.
Various procedural and family-instigated obstacles, not least of which was Smith's own sudden death last February, kept the inquest from beginning until late last year.
The controversial testimony continued Wednesday when Thompson's son, Gayther Thompson, took the stand.
He stated that Stern, who has been the basis for much speculation as to where Daniel got his hands on methadone, found two white pills in the clothes Daniel was wearing when he collapsed and seemingly threw them away.
Thompson's son-in-law, Ford Shelley, testified Tuesday that Stern found two pills in the pocket of Daniel's pants and flushed them down the toilet.
"I asked Howard what he had done, and Howard said he 'took care of a problem,'" Shelley said.
The Bahamian pathologist who performed Daniel's official autopsy, Dr. Govinda Raju, told the court last month that the young man had at least eight different drugs in his system when he died, although he reaffirmed that it was a combination of Zoloft, Lexapro and prescription methadone that killed him.
Stern took the stand briefly in November, where he mainly spoke of Smith and Daniel's tight bond.
"She was very close to Danny and I saw it," the attorney said. "Almost every time I saw Anna Nicole, she had Danny with her."
He was never asked any questions about the events leading up to Daniel's death, but he was informed that he could be recalled as a witness at a later time.
Further testimony has been postponed until Mar. 17.
Larry Birkhead was expected to appear to testify, as well, but it turns out he never left the mainland.
The photographer turned celebrity dad told tmz.com Wednesday that he was too ill to make the flight from Los Angeles to the Bahamas, having been hospitalized with a 106 degree temperature.
He's been in and out of the hospital a couple of times with a severe case of the flu, he said, and daughter Dannielynn has also been suffering from an ear infection.