Anna Nicole's partner 'in shock' over her death

Anna Nicole Smith’s longtime partner, Howard Stern, is in shock over the former Playboy Playmate’s death but her five-month-old daughter is doing well, a friend of the couple said.

Eric Gibson spoke to reporters briefly after visiting the oceanfront mansion in the Bahamas where Stern, a lawyer who represented Smith in various legal battles and starred on her reality TV show, has secluded himself.

“Howard’s shook up. He’s still in shock,” Gibson told reporters through the window of a car as he left the gated estate, known as Horizons, where the 39-year-old star lived before her death on February 8 in a hotel in Hollywood, Florida.

Gibson, the father of Bahamian Immigration Minister Shane Gibson, said he saw Smith’s daughter Dannielynn and that she appeared happy.

“She was playing with my moustache and smiling and laughing,” Gibson said of the infant.

The girl is at the centre of a three-way paternity battle and could inherit a multimillion-dollar fortune.

Since the 1995 death of her 90-year-old husband, Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, Smith had been waging an ongoing court battle over his estimated half-billion-dollar fortune.

Wayne Munroe, an attorney for Smith’s estate, said that he did not know who would care for the infant when Stern travels to Florida on Tuesday in an effort to get control of the late star’s remains, which are being refrigerated in a medical examiner’s office.

“I see a few responsible adults there when I go to the house,” Munroe said, referring to the Nassau mansion.

Earlier this week, Smith’s estranged mother, Virgie Arthur, won a partial victory when a judge barred Stern, who is listed as the father on Dannielynn’s birth certificate, from taking the infant out of the island nation until a decision is made on custody.

Stern claims he is the executor of Smith’s will and wants his late companion buried next to her son in the Bahamas. Arthur wants her buried in her home state of Texas.

Munroe has said the former model made plans to be buried in the Bahamas after her son, Daniel, died there.

The former model bought funeral plots for four people – including Daniel, Stern and herself – according to the lawyer.

Separately, Dr Duane Sands, a thoracic surgeon at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, where Smith was taken in late October and early November to recover from pneumonia, said yesterday he had been “shocked and saddened” to hear of Smith’s death.

Sands said Smith had one follow-up visit after the operation, in which a tube was placed in her chest to drain fluid from around her lungs. Asked if he was satisfied with Smith’s recuperation, he replied: “I can only say I never saw her again.”

When Smith checked into Doctors Hospital on October 30, she returned to the facility where she gave birth to Dannielynn on September 7 and where her son died while visiting her three days later.

Smith’s son died in her room at the hospital, the only private medical centre in Nassau. A private examiner said the cause was a lethal combination of methadone and antidepressants, but results of an official post-mortem examination have not been released.

The cause of Smith’s death is still under investigation.