Drugs played a tragic role in the lives of Anna Nicole and Daniel Smith. Now authorities are trying to determine the extent of the drug use by both mother and son in separate cases, thousands of miles apart.
While a judge in Los Angeles cleared the way for a probe into the doctors who prescribed a pharmacy's worth of pills for Anna Nicole, her ex-lover Larry Birkhead took the stand in the Bahamas to drop some bombshells about Daniel's drug use.
Testifying at the inquest into the 20-year-old's sudden death on Sept. 10, 2006, Birkhead said in the months before his death Daniel had gotten involved with a bad crowd at school and began drinking heavily and using drugs.
"She didn't care for the kids he was hanging out with at the community college he attended," said Birkhead, who added that "there was tension" between mother and son during the period between January and May 2006, when Birkhead lived with Anna Nicole. He lost 20 pounds. He missed curfew. He was hospitalized for abusing sedatives.
Daniel was once caught on the home-surveillance camera stealing methadone from his mother's stash, Birkhead testified.
Instead of "running around experimenting with his friends," Anna Nicole eventually decided to keep his drug use in house, even giving him an Ecstasy tablet, Birkhead said.
The father of Anna Nicole's only daughter and sole heir, Dannielynn, also altered an account he gave police in which he said he witnessed her giving Daniel methadone.
The celebrity photographer also wavered on another statement he provided the cops during his paternity battle with Anna Nicole and her companion Howard K. Stern over Dannielynn. Initially, he claimed to have seen Stern smoking pot with Anna and Daniel, but now says he wasn't sure exactly what he saw.
Birkhead and Stern eventually made peace, with Birkhead assuming full custody of Dannielynn.
Three days after Anna Nicole gave birth to daughter Dannielynn, Daniel was dead in his mother's room at Doctors Hospital in Nassau.
Dr. Govinda Raju, the Bahamian pathologist who performed Daniel's official autopsy, told the court in December that the young man had a lethal combination of sleep aids, antidepressants and methadone in his system when he died. Because the coroner declared his death "suspicious," an inquest was initiated, compelling both Birkhead and Stern to testify.
Stern is due to take the stand tomorrow.
Meanwhile, in an ongoing probe of physicians who prescribed Anna Nicole the drugs that ultimately killed her in February 2007, a Los Angeles Judge ruled Monday that a computer seized from Smith's psychiatrist could remain in the hands of the feds.
An attorney for Dr. Khristine Eroshevich had petitioned for the computer to be returned to her out of concern that the investigation could violate the privacy of other patients whose files are also on the hard drive.
But Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler denied the request on the grounds that a court officer could conduct a thorough search using a software program that will ensure that documents not pertaining to the case aren't accessed by investigators.
Last October, agents for the California Department of Justice raided various homes and offices of Smith's doctors looking for any evidence of wrongdoing—a standard affair in the aftermath of a drug overdose, particularly one as high profile as Smith's. A similar investigation was carried out following the accidental drug death of Heath Ledger.