by Rita Cosby
2:27 p.m., 2:30 p.m., 2:32 p.m. Howard repeatedly called Moe.
2:31 p.m. Dr. Khris called the hotel liaison.
2:36 p.m. The hotel liaison called the hotel's Director of Operations.
2:37 p.m.
Alex Katz called the liaison. He was the other person in the room with them Monday night after they arrived, the night Anna had the 105-degree fever. The same person who an eyewitness says picked up medication for Anna prescribed in his name.
2:43 p.m.
The ambulance carrying Anna Nicole Smith arrived at Memorial Regional Hospital.
2:49 p.m. Anna Nicole Smith was pronounced dead.
3:12 p.m. Howard called Alex Goen of TrimSpa.
3:13 p.m.
Howard called the Hard Rock Hotel's main number.
3:14 p.m. Howard called Alex Goen of TrimSpa.
3:17 p.m. Alex Goen called Howard.
3:21 p.m.
Howard called the Horizons house in the Bahamas.
3:23 p.m.
Howard got a call from the Boesch Law Firm, which handles Anna's case against J. Howard Marshall's family.
3:37 p.m. and 3:38 p.m. Howard called attorney Ron Rale.
3:48 p.m.–3:52 p.m.
Ron Rale was live with me on MSNBC, officially breaking the news that "Anna Nicole is deceased." He said on the air that Howard is "obviously speechless," "unable to speak."
3:49 p.m. and 3:51 p.m.
Howard wasn't quite speechless. He called Entertainment Tonight/Paramount and spoke with them first for two minutes, then for four minutes. According to eyewitnesses, he quickly reserved a block of rooms for the Entertainment Tonight crew. Host Mark Steines would be flying in that night on the ET jet with Dr. Khristine Eroshevich.
4:15 p.m. Howard got a call from Alex Goen of TrimSpa.
4:26 p.m.
Howard called Ray Martino in California (where Anna's son Daniel used to live).
4:27 p.m. Howard called the hotel liaison.
4:34 p.m. Howard called the hotel liaison again.
4:47 p.m. Hotel liaison called Howard twice.
4:49 p.m. Howard called "information."
4:51 p.m. and 4:52 p.m.
Howard called a local elementary school and then its aftercare program.
4:55 p.m. The hotel liaison called Howard.
4:59 p.m.
Anna Nicole's body arrived at the Medical Examiner's office and is logged in.
5:38 p.m. Leon Stern, Howard's father, called Howard.
7:12 p.m. and 7:13 p.m. Moe called Ron Rale.
8:25 p.m. Seminole Police Detectives cleared the scene.
• • •
Although the coroner has never given an exact time of death, the last person to see Anna alive was, according to his own comments to police, Howard K. Stern. But Howard is quick to point out that he wasn't the one to discover her body. In fact, he made an unusual comment to a close friend that "He is tormented by Anna's death and felt if he was the one who found her body, after being there during Daniel's death, he would've killed himself too. That the pain of finding her, after what happened with Daniel, would've been too much for Howard."
Detectives found eleven prescription medications in various places in the suite, including the nightstand, the dresser drawer, and especially in Howard's now infamous duffel bag. The bag was found on the floor and was full of prescription medicine mostly written to Howard. Among the medications found in Howard's duffel bag was chloral hydrate, considered by Dr. Perper to be "the most significant drug implicated in this fatality."
Moe told private investigators he felt guilty, wondering if what was inside the packages of prescriptions he received at his house and delivered to Howard on that Monday night before her death, was what killed Anna. Moe also told numerous people he was put under intense pressure "not to talk" and to "shut his wife up." Howard and his attorneys were calling Moe, telling him to "stay in our camp." Moe felt so much stress that he was hospitalized at least twice. His tell-all book, Baby Girl, which was supposed to give, among other things, a "candid look at Smith's ability to manipulate her men, her depression after the death of her son, and her drug use" was cancelled before publication.
Howard, Ron Rale, and Larry Birkhead called Moe relentlessly after his book deal was announced. Larry was concerned about what Moe was going to write about him in the book, and Ron Rale and Howard kept telling Moe "to keep Tas quiet." Moe believes Howard's team "played a role in killing his book deal."
There may be more concerns weighing heavily on Moe. After Anna's death, Moe presented his story on Fox News, and said he had been gone "like fifteen minutes" from the hotel room when he called to check on how Anna was doing. He did call his wife at 12:27 p.m., approximately fifteen minutes after he left the room. But what happened before hotel surveillance cameras have him arriving back at 1:40 p.m., is a bit strange and is still confusing.
"Initial comments and initial reactions are often the most telling in a case," former New York Police Department squad commander Joe Cardinale told me, speaking about cases in general.
Indeed, the initial scene investigation as documented by Seminole Detective Marian Bryant, states something both interesting and perplexing. "Around 12:30 p.m., the bodyguard's wife checked on the decedent and observed her to be blue. She immediately called her husband, Maurice Brighthaupt, and informed him of the situation. She also started CPR in her capacity as a registered nurse. As soon as Maurice returned to the hotel, he immediately called the Seminole Emergency Medical Personnel around 1:40 p.m."
From 12:27 p.m. to 1:40 p.m. is obviously not "immediately." It is also interesting to note that both Moe and his wife initially referred to 12:30, or about fifteen minutes after Moe left the room.
Tas said when she spoke to Moe on the phone, "I don't like what I'm seeing. Anna has purple splotches on her face and body. She's not breathing and looks blue."
"Blue?" Moe asked.
Dr. Howard Adelman, former Deputy Chief Medical Examiner for Suffolk County, New York, said the purple splotches that Tas described on Anna's face is "because the blood is not oxygenating. They could appear as soon as three to four minutes after someone dies. Soon after the heart stops beating, you begin to see these."
"When I blew into her, I heard a gurgling sound," Tas remembered. "I told Moe I knew it was not good."
Tas "knew the gurgling sound was the sound you hear after people are already dead." She told private investigators, "I've seen many dead people. That's what happens when people are settling." She believes "Anna was already dead for some time" and even suggested that "Anna may have been dead for several hours." In fact, Tas recently confided to private investigators that, looking back, she now remembers "Anna's skin color didn't look right" when she first walked in the room, but she "didn't put it together until Brigitte looked closely at Anna later."
Brigitte Neven, the woman who found Anna's lifeless body and brought it to Tas's attention, told me Anna's body was still warm, which forensics experts say does not necessarily mean she just died. "She could've been dead anywhere from a few minutes up to twelve hours," Dr. Adelman said. "Because she was wrapped in a heavy bed cover, her body could remain warm for three to four hours after she died. She had a 105degree fever on Monday. Even if it dropped to 100 degrees on Tuesday, it could've spiked back up to 105 degrees or higher before she died, especially if she had an infection. Such a high fever right before death, as well as her being insulated in a heavy blanket, could cause her body to stay warm to the touch for up to twelve hours. It takes time for someone's temperature to drop, especially if they are wrapped in a warm blanket." Remember, Anna was found cocooned head to toe in a down comforter and duvet cover.
It was also many minutes or more until medical help was contacted. When private investigators asked Tas how as a nurse she could let so much time pass before 911 was called, she said, "I don't know. I just thought to call my husband. I was panicking."
Moe said that after the initial call from his wife,
there were no other calls between them before he got back to the room. This is false as there was a flurry of calls between all the parties, yet incredibly, no calls directly to 911. Remember that the reason Moe says he didn't call 911 directly was that his cell phone was registered to a different county in Florida and because he claimed he did not know the address of the Hard Rock, a place he'd been to frequently.
• • •
Tas said she was shocked that Dr. Perper asked her only a few questions: "Did you give Anna any medications?" "What did you see?" and "Did you see her move?" Dr. Perper didn't talk to Brigitte Neven according to his own report, and she was the woman who actually first found Anna unconscious.
A few other things have bothered Tas since that horrible day. When they all went into the room at 11:54 a.m. the morning Anna died, she says Howard did something that seemed calculated. He positioned his body between the two rooms in such a manner that his visitors—King Eric, Brigitte, and Tas— had a blocked view into Anna's bedroom. She also thought it was strange that Howard didn't want to leave Anna to go pick up King Eric and Brigitte at the airport, but then suddenly soon after that, left Anna to go look at the boat.
She also made a surprising discovery. When she sat in one of two chairs at the foot of Anna's bed to work on the computer, she noticed Howard's computer was on and open on the floor to the right of the chair. A $37,000 wire transfer he had made that morning was still illuminated on the screen. Tas says she was on the phone with Moe when she saw the wire transfer message. (Police did check Howard's computer for e-mails sometime after her death, but were not informed of any wire transfers and therefore did not check for any.) Both the boat broker and handyman know of no large amount like this that would have been associated with the boat.
Perhaps most disconcerting was that there was a baby bottle positioned on top of Anna with the same orange-brown residue in it as the jug on the nightstand. The contents of both the baby bottle and the jug were tested and it turned out to be Pedialyte, an oral electrolyte maintenance solution, specially formulated for children with diarrhea and vomiting. Tas said the baby bottle bothered her very much. It wasn't the contents that troubled her. She believes "the baby bottle was planted . . . if Anna was truly just sleeping, it would've fallen off the minute she moved because of the strange position it was in." The baby bottle was lying slanted on Anna's shoulder and neck on top of the covers. "There's no way she put it there herself."
• • •
In addition, Dr. Khris Eroshevich has cause for concern, which may be why she refused to talk to Seminole Police. To have someone under your medical supervision with a raging 105degree temperature and not take her to the hospital is deadly dangerous. "The only adults I have seen with a fever of 105 degrees are suffering from heat exhaustion/heat stroke, are extraordinarily ill, or near death," Dr. Keith Eddleman told me. His practice at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City sees more than 17,000 patients a year. "That is an astronomically high fever, seizure range. If someone arrives at the hospital with that high of a temperature, it's a medical emergency. You summon everybody to get that body temperature down. As a doctor, to not seek emergency care for one of your patients with a 105-degree temperature, you are asking for medical malpractice problems."
Add this to the laundry list of prescription drugs Dr. Khris provided for Anna under numerous names, and one can see why the California Medical Board and the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration opened an investigation into Dr. Khris.
Fox News quoted Dr. Chip Walls, a forensic toxicologist for the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami, who said chloral hydrate is rarely prescribed and is known to be fatal if combined with certain other drugs—including the sedative Lorazepam, which the autopsy showed Anna was taking, also given to her by Dr. Khris. "It's very toxic if you mix it with any other central nervous system depressant drugs," Walls said. "You could get profound sedation leading up to coma and respiratory arrest."
Though Dr. Khris refused to talk to Seminole Police, she was willing to talk to Entertainment Tonight. In fact, as the Entertainment Tonight crew, including host Mark Steines, boarded a plane to fly to Florida the night of Anna's death, Dr. Khris joined them. "When the news broke of Anna's death—I truly didn't believe it," Mark Steines wrote on his Internet blog. "We were all quite literally crushed when we were told the news by people close to Anna. I immediately boarded a plane to Florida along with Khristine Eroshevich, Anna's close confidant, who got me up to speed on the last moments of Anna's life. She told me who was there, what Howard was going through and why the paternity battle Anna had been suffering through was literally too much for her to bear."
It seemed as if Dr. Khris—like other "Anna close confidants," including Howard K. Stern, Alex Goen, and Ron Rale — was already positioning Anna's death as a suicide, or at least tied to her depression. In fact, I am aware that both Dr. Khris and Howard tried to convince Dr. Perper that Anna committed suicide, even before the autopsy was completed.
Howard's family meanwhile rallied around to defend Howard and suggest that Anna's drug use was only facilitated by Anna. "He was in love with her, why would he kill her?" Howard's sister, Bonnie Stern, was quick to tell People magazine after Anna's death. "My brother never fed her a drug in her life. Never! Howard couldn't control the situation. It was up to Anna. When someone wants to do something, you can't stop it."
Life After Death
Less than twenty-four hours after her death, Anna Nicole's Bahamian home, Horizons, was "broken into" and digital photos and home videos were taken, many of which, according to Ron Rale, were "extraordinarily personal in nature." Within days of her tragic demise, photos of Anna lying on a bed with Bahamian immigration minister Shane Gibson emerged in the media. Although both of them were fully clothed, they were gazing into each other's eyes with their faces just inches apart. It was enough to force his resignation. Then, before the circus-like trial over custody of her body was over, the infamous "clown" video Howard made of Anna in an obviously impaired state made its debut.
And it's only gotten even more peculiar from there.
Back in the Bahamas, something interesting happened the morning of Anna's death at the five-bedroom house she had bought in December and was remodeling on the opposite end of the island from the Horizons house. The new house, in an area known as Coral Harbor, was being gutted as well as having exterior cosmetic modifications done in Anna's favorite shade of pink. Neighbor Keshlia Lockhart had been watching the work progress and had been told by King Eric, who told her he had hired the crews, that Howard and Anna had plenty of money allotted for all the renovations.
Keshlia Lockhart's impression was that the renovations would take about three months to do. Every morning, approximately ten construction men had been working on the house for several weeks each day from 7:30 a.m. until four or four-thirty. In the week before Anna's death, they started spraying the outside of the house with a stucco type material. Anna wanted to change the light pink outside to a darker pink. They hadn't finished the spray job and had been there the day before, doing a typical day's work.
But interestingly they did not show up the morning of the day Anna died, and have not been back since. Keshlia Lockhart thinks the timing of that is strange. She also says the lights in the house remained on for months.
Cracker Ltd., the same company that bought the house, also bought Anna's boat. The Bahamian company was formed specifically for that purpose according to one of Howard K. Stern's attorneys, Wayne Munroe. Munroe told me that there are only two shareholders and directors for Cracker Ltd.— him and his associate attorney, Dion Smith. Dion Smith is the man who put his official signature on Dannielynn's birth certificate, which lists Howard K. Stern as the father.
On the Saturday morning after Anna's death at approximately 7 a.m., Mark Dekema says he went for supplies and had breakfast with King Eric, Brigitte, and their first mate. He says around 10:30–11 a.m. King Eric passed the phone to Dekema to talk to Howard. Dekema asked H
oward if he wanted to reconsider dealing with the boat right now after such a terrible loss. Dekema said under the circumstances, he'd understand if Howard decided that he didn't feel like caring for the boat anymore and would now want to sell it, which Dekema said he'd be happy to help him do. Howard told him his plans had not changed with the boat at all. King Eric would be taking it to Nassau right away.
Dekema also asked Brigitte what happened to Anna the day she died. "She collapsed," Brigitte told him. Dekema was genuinely surprised when I informed him that Anna was found dead while sleeping in her bed.
• • •
In June 2007, Larry Birkhead moved into Anna's house in Los Angeles, the one right next door to Dr. Khristine Eroshevich. And he did not contest Howard being the executor of Anna's estate.
A mutual friend of both Larry Birkhead and Howard K. Stern says he believes they reached a deal on behalf of Dannielynn and "on behalf of the almighty dollar." Regarding Anna's estate, he said, "Friends do not believe for a second that Anna only had ten thousand dollars in cash and seven hundred thousand dollars in assets [her Los Angeles house]." They wonder what happened to all the expensive jewelry Anna received from J. Howard Marshall, among other things. They believe the money is elsewhere in offshore accounts and with other companies, and friends have apparently warned Howard and Larry, "Whatever you do and say amongst yourselves, Dannielynn is going to know about it one day. Larry has America's baby now and everyone feels they have a stake in her."