US:A Florida judge yesterday added to the uncertainty over the paternity and the future of Anna Nicole Smith's baby when he said he was not sure he had the authority to decide the case. The former Playboy centrefold, who died on February 8th, listed her lawyer Howard Stern as the father, on her five-month-old daughter Dannielynn's birth certificate.
Two other men - Ms Smith's former boyfriend, photographer Larry Birkhead; and Frederic von Anhalt, the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor - also say they could be the child's father.
Florida judge Lawrence Korda said he did not know how the case landed with him, given that the child is in the Bahamas, although Ms Smith died in Florida.
"I'm trying to figure out what jurisdiction there could possibly be here . . . This child is in the Bahamas. The jurisdiction is in the Bahamas," he said.
Ms Smith, who married an 89-year-old billionaire when she was just 26, was a reality TV star and a staple of America's gossip magazines.
Yesterday's court hearing followed an extraordinary display by another circuit court judge, Larry Seidlin, who wept on Thursday as he ruled that Ms Smith should be buried in the Bahamas, where her 20-year-old son died last year.
"I want her buried with her son in the Bahamas. I want them to be together," he said.
Mr Stern wanted Ms Smith to be buried in the Bahamas but her mother wanted to bury the dead starlet in Texas.
The balding, 56-year-old judge became a national celebrity this week as he presided over a televised court hearing to determine where Ms Smith should to be buried. The six-day hearing, which sometimes looked more like an extended group encounter meeting than a court session, swelled figures for the cable TV stations that carried it live.
Mr Seidlin, who once worked as a New York taxi driver, played shamelessly to the cameras and an entertainment website reported that, before the Smith case began, he had sought an engagement on Court TV.
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner said he believed Ms Smith would have wished to be buried with her son, who died while visiting her after Dannielynn's birth. "I think she was a dear person. We miss her and I think probably that decision was the right one. I think she wanted to be there with her boy, with her son," he said.
Ms Smith, who was widowed 13 months after her 1994 marriage, was initially awarded $474 million (€360 million), but her husband's family contested the award and got it reduced, first to $89 million and finally to nothing at all. Last year, the US supreme court ruled that Ms Smith could continue to pursue her claim through the courts in California.
Her reality TV show The Anna Nicole Show was a short-lived hit but Ms Smith's fame owed much to her personal struggle with alcohol, drugs and weight-gain.
A separate hearing at the Fort Lauderdale court on Monday is to consider a claim from Ben Thompson, a South Carolina developer who once dated Ms Smith, who says he owns the mansion she was living in, according to Mr Thompson's Bahamian lawyer, Godfrey Pinder.
Mr Pinder said Mr Stern would have to leave the house "immediately" if his client wins the verdict. Mr Thompson says he loaned Ms Smith money for the house, but she did not honour an agreement to pay the debt.