Inquest into death of Anna Nicole's son begins

11 April 2012
The Weekender

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An inquest into the death of Anna Nicole Smith's son is due to begin today with the selection of a jury, a day after doctors revealed the former Playboy model was killed by an accidental overdose of medication.

Daniel was aged 20 when he died in September visiting his mother at the Bahamas hospital where she had given birth to a baby girl just three days earlier.

Smith was found dead five months later in a Florida hotel room.

In her absence her lawyer-turned-companion Howard Stern will be the star witness at Daniel's inquest in Nassau, which is expected to last three or four weeks.

A forensic pathologist hired by Smith's family concluded he was killed by the interaction of the painkiller methadone and two anti-depressant drugs in his system.

A jury of seven people will hear the inquest. Yesterday the Broward County medical examiner in Florida ended weeks of speculation over Smith's sudden death when he announced that she was killed by a lethal combination of an sleeping medication and other prescription drugs.

Foul play and suicide were ruled out and the case was effectively now closed, police said.

But Dr Joshua Perper said Smith might still be alive had she not refused to go to hospital when she was suffering from a raging fever three days earlier.

The sleeping medication chloral hydrate was ruled to be the main factor but it combined with some of eight other drugs found in the 39-year-old's blood to cause her death in February.

An infection in her left buttock stemming from a previous injection of drugs, together with a case of flu, also contributed.

Detectives checked a laptop computer belonging to Stern and discovered no evidence suggesting criminal activity.

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