Blonde Ambition Read Online Free PDF

approximately fifteen-minute car ride back from the boat basin. "He didn't say anything," King Eric said. "He wasn't calm. He was fidgety. He didn't know what to do. At that point, we thought she just collapsed. I thought maybe she didn't eat or something." But when Howard got back to the hotel in front of a crowd of eyewitnesses, his response was much more heightened. He was seen running through the hotel and was very upset, quite different from his initial response when he received the call at the boat basin.
       Room 607 had become a very hectic scene. Moe has said Howard was emotional and everyone was trying to calm him down. He asked, "Moe, is Anna all right?"
       "She's in good hands," Moe said, referring to the slew of emergency personnel in the room.
       Hotel surveillance tapes show Howard in the hallway, throwing his arms up and down and pacing feverishly in a circle. An emergency official at the scene told me Howard said, "I can't believe it." At first, he was not crying, but mumbling to himself, hitting his leg in disbelief. One eyewitness told me, "It wasn't like he was in mourning or sad. He wasn't grieving, it was more panicking."
       "Don't go!" Howard shouted into the room at Anna's body. "Stay!" Brigitte hugged him and she remembers him screaming out, "Ah, Anna! Without you I'm nothing!"
       Approximately 2:15 p.m., it was Moe, rather than Howard, who ran beside the gurney carrying the tabloid icon to the waiting ambulance below. Eyewitnesses say Howard ran down the hallway following the gurney up to the elevator. Once Anna had been rolled inside and the elevator door closed, Howard turned around, fell to his knees, put his hands on his face and began crying. But it was Moe, rather than Howard, who took the ride in the ambulance with Anna to the hospital. And it was Moe, about a half an hour later in the emergency room of Memorial Regional Hospital, who gave doctors the nod to stop their resuscitation efforts.
       At 2:49 p.m. Anna Nicole Smith was pronounced dead. Since the hospital chaplain wasn't available, Moe leaned down and whispered a prayer over the body of the former Playboy Playmate he had been in charge of guarding. He gave Anna her last rites and told her to go be with her son.
       Howard eventually went to the hospital, but not at his request. An eyewitness says after thirty minutes to an hour of him being in the room and talking to detectives, the hospital called and asked for Howard's presence. Another person on scene told me, "He was in no rush to go."

    • • •

    Howard K. Stern had been quite busy. He began talking to his media contacts right away, which surprised several people around him. The timing of this detail has never been made public before. Entertainment Tonight , which had previously made exclusive "deals" with the couple, was already en route to Hollywood, Florida, and was confirmed for a block of rooms at the Hard Rock that Howard personally called to reserve before 4 p.m. Given that Anna had just been pronounced dead at 2:49 p.m., it was shocking to many of those present that Howard could even think of any media at that moment, much less make an exclusive deal so soon after her death pronouncement. But he did. "Right away," said an eyewitness, "Howard was ready to make his next deal. It showed us that to Howard it was all about money."

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chapter 2

    Next of Kin

    "I just want her to be with Daniel," Howard K. Stern cried to Entertainment Tonight cameras on his flight from Florida to the Bahamas on Entertainment Tonight 's private plane. Even though Howard testified under oath during the Florida court hearing over Anna's burial that he only received the free flight, he was reportedly paid one million dollars to allow the entertainment news magazine to exclusively tape him and tag along as he went back to the Bahamas to secure Anna's five-monthold baby, Dannielynn—the baby he was claiming to be the father of.
       Anna would, as Howard hoped, soon