Or, you know, a cold, grossly exploitative book with a title to match. Anna Nicole Smith’s sister, Donna Hogan, revealed her new book, titled — I am dead fucking serious here — Train Wreck: The Life and Death of Anna Nicole Smith in New York City on Tuesday. Oh. My. God. I don’t know what is more nauseating here, Donna: the fact that you have compared the life and death of your sister to a train wreck, or the fact that you did so two months after her death. I don’t know how long it takes to write and publish a book like this, but I’m sure it takes more than a couple weeks, meaning that this bitch has been planning this shit since before her sister’s body was buried. I’d expect this from some random journalist hack who’d covered her life and death, but from her sister? Jesus. No wonder that woman was willing to do anything to get out of Mexia.

After spending almost two hours in a Bahamian courtroom sans cameras, Larry Birkhead emerged victorious on Tuesday afternoon, as a doctor told the judge that the DNA tests revealed that he was the father of Anna Nicole’s baby, Dannielynn, with “99.9999% certainty.”

When asked about the paternity results, Howard K. Stern, who is currently listed on the birth certificate as Dannielynn’s father, stayed true to his word. “I am obviously very disappointed … I am not going to fight Larry Birkhead for custody. I will do everything I can to make sure he gets sole custody.” Stern and Birkhead hugged after leaving the courtroom, and Stern invited Birkhead to his house, where Dannielynn currently resides, to spend as much time with the baby as he wants.

The only reason Birkhead would not get custody at this point is Anna’s mother, Virgie Arthur, who had no role in this child’s life before Anna’s death, because Anna hated her. I don’t know much about family law, but I have no idea how this kid could possibly go to Arthur when there’s a healthy adult parent who wants her. Arthur’s custody case is expected to be heard on Friday in the same Bahamian court.

We’ll of course keep you posted as the story develops…

I have no idea why I’m running this story. Maybe because everyone else is running it. It’s like the night before the Oscars, when everyone’s running these “It’s the Night Before the Oscars” stories and it doesn’t really matter because the decisions have been made and are sitting in an envelope at PricewaterhouseCoopers and the only thing that could possibly make the whole mess interesting is if somehow Talladega Nights won Best Picture as a write-in candidate. I think everyone kind of knows Larry Birkhead is the daddy right now. Even Howard K. Stern is starting to backpedal. Personally, I hope something more exciting happens. I hope, like, the Broward County Medical Examiner happened to have, say, Matt Lauer’s DNA on file, and the kid turns out to be his. I want it to be something like that.

Maybe we should liveblog the Dannielynn paternity revealing. Do you think the whole thing will be televised? Probably. Lars, you want this one?

Anyway, we’ll get the results of the DNA testing tomorrow. We’ll keep you posted around here.

The race has begun for ownership of the Anna Nicole Smith diaries. The floor auction will take place April 14-15 in Dallas, TX, but the online auction has already begun. For sale are two diaries were written by Anna between 1992 and 1994. Smith divorced her first husband (and Daniel’s father) in February 1993, and married J. Howard Marshall in June of 1994.

It’s pretty heartbreaking to read these diaries and remember that Smith was not always the larger-than-life caricature of herself that we all remember. “Someone ran over my cat yesterday I was real sad,” she writes in 1992. “Clay came over last nite to give me some sleeping pills… I need to diet Going to try out for a movie part. Hope I get it. I could be a great actress… Everybody went crazy when I went on stage It felt so good… Paul Marciana [Guess co-chairman] sent me a package!! He’s comming to meet me on Sun. Cant wait!!…Please God let him love me!!…This could be it.” The diaries are filled with smiley faces and angry faces, depending on Smith’s mood.

She also discusses her love of her second husband, billionaire J. Howard Marshall. In 1994, she writes “My husbands very sick and weak, Theres nothing I can do I want each hour to comfort him with medicines and prayers… When you touch him Im afraid he might break… Sometimes he tries to smile and give me such hope, he a fighter and I believe he can make it…If Jesus desides to take him I dont no what I’ll do. I love him so much… Sometimes I think of awlful things like hes going to die…I dont think I would be stable enough to go to his funeral if he died… I need some support and I have none… I can’t dare sleep cause he will pull out that breathing tube. No one else stays here but a few minutes. But im his wife and I want to be here… Ive cried so much I dont have any tears…”

There are additional mentions of the struggles with pills that eventually killed her. On June 13, 1992, she writes, “Hung over!! Feel like shit! Stayed home watched movie! Took a Zandrex!” I assume that here she either is referring to Xanax, the anti-anxiety drug, or Zantrex, the weight-loss drug. Probably Xanax.

Special thanks to Celebitchy for the screen shots of the diaries.

Anna Nicole Died of an accidental overdose, no sign of foul play.

From CNN:

Broward County Medical Examiner Joshua Perper said Smith was taking nine different kinds of medication in the days before her death, including a sleeping aid.

He also said Methadone was not in her blood, suggesting no use at the time of death, but was in her body, suggesting usage at some point in the recent past.

Commentary: Nine prescription drugs seems like too many.

SOME OF THE DRUGS:
Valium (sedative)
Chloral Hydrate (sleeping pill)
D12 (allergies, immune system booster)
Benadryl (c’mon, that’s ok)
Tylenol (I’m on this now)

The Dr. on MSNBC said she should have been in the hospital (just in general) if she was on that many prescriptions. The news folks are now talking “criminal negligence” for not taking her to the hospital although that seems unlikely.

Some of the prescriptions were evidently obtained under aliases.

Who needs a medical examiner when you have Star magazine? While the Broward County coroner is scheduled to make an announcement with the cause of Anna Nicole’s death on Monday morning, Star and National Enquirer (in a “joint newsgathering operation,” because they’re both owned by AMI and Star couldn’t find a celeb scoop with two hands and flashlight) are claiming to have already solved the mystery: Anna died of an overdose of chloral hydrate, a sleeping medication, which she was probably taking in very high doses because she was suffering from a blood infection, which would have eventually killed her not long after the sleeping pills did.

That good enough for ya? Honestly, that’s pretty damn good. So we’ll back up a little and give you some choice quotes from Star’s article.

[J]ust before she left the Bahamas for Florida on February 5 … Anna Nicole received an injection in her left buttock. Tests did not reveal what that substance was. “As she boarded the plane for Miami, Anna Nicole developed a painful abscess at the site of the injection,” said a source with knowledge of the case. “The needle wasn’t sterile. The pain kept getting worse as the abscess got larger and larger very quickly.”

Anna Nicole, unaware that her blood was being poisoned by infection, had also developed a second infection from a virulent form of norovirus, which causes intestinal problems.

Anna Nicole — and her entourage — made a fatal mistake. She refused to go to a hospital, a decision that would have saved her life. Instead, Anna’s people gave her an ice bath to control the fever, administered the antibiotic ciprofloxacin by mouth and gave her an over-the-counter flu medicine. As the needle-caused infection took over her body, she began vomiting, had severe diarrhea and could not urinate.

Anna just wanted some respite from the pain, so she took way too much chloral hydrate (this is the same stuff you see in suspense movies when the bad guy puts a cloth over the victim’s mouth and they pass out — that’s how intense this stuff is). She fell asleep, and never woke up.

Is it true? I’m going with yes. First off, it’s a fairly complex story to have been invented. I mean, a septic abscess? You can’t make that up. You just wouldn’t. There’s nothing glamorous about it. It’s a fantastically plebian way to die. Perhaps most importantly, AMI is so confident they’re right that they pinned both Star and National Enquirer’s name on it. When these mags are not sure, they hedge their bets and have their titles run different stories. So my guess is we’ll hear a very similar story from the mouth of the Broward County coroner on Monday morning, but only time will tell.

Woo hoo! I read, like, three articles about the Anna Nicole Smith saga today. Somebody give me a cookie! It really hurts my head to follow this stuff these days, but this seemed like an intriguing turn of events, so I decided to read up on it.

Anna Nicole loverboy and sometime Ari Gold henchman Larry Birkhead has parted ways with his attorney, Debra Opri, resulting in an eruption of finger-pointing.

“I just had enough,” Opri told Extra. “I can’t represent a client who has a middle man by the name of Howard K. Stern. I feel very comfortable in my decision, and I wish Larry the best. But I am worried about him. I couldn’t continue with the way things were going…I don’t want anyone to think that I’m jumping ship. He’s close enough…I didn’t abandon Larry.”

Larry tells a different story to Access Hollywood (what, the Wall Street Journal wasn’t interested?). “I have chosen to go in a different direction. I have complete confidence in my attorney, Emerick Knowles, who’s handling the Bahamas portion of my case.”

For what it’s worth, TMZ seems fairly confident that Birkhead was the one initiating the split. They’re also being all “we’re such insiders” about it, stating that Birkhead and Opri “were butting heads over various issues for weeks. Because of confidences, TMZ cannot be more specific.”

So what’s up with Larry and Howard K. Stern being all buddy-buddy these days? I thought they hated each other. There’s something very, very strange going on here, and, I’d bet, quite a bit of ass-covering. I’ve heard some very strange rumors these past weeks, the most disturbing (and recurring) of which is that some evidence suggests the real father of Dannielynn is actually Anna’s son, Daniel. Ew and gross.

Having bravely delved into this story in order to bring it to you, I shall now return to the relative safety and simplicity of making easy jokes about how Ryan Seacrest may occasionally enjoy doing sex stuff with men until we get the results of this paternity case.