Accidental Overdose Killed Anna Nicole

Mar 27, 08:30 PM

Current Headlines: By Matt Sedensky

Anna Nicole Smith accidentally overdosed on at least nine prescription drugs -- including a powerful sleep syrup she was known to swig from the bottle -- after a miserable few days with stomach flu, a 105-degree fever, pungent sweating and an infection on her buttocks from repeated injections.

In an autopsy report released Monday, a medical examiner noted the former Playboy playmate refused to go to a hospital three days before her Feb. 8 death. She chose to ride out her illness in a hotel suite littered with pill bottles, soda cans, SlimFast, nicotine gum and a box of Tamiflu tablets.

Dr. Joshua Perper, Broward County medical examiner, found that in the days leading up to her death, Smith, 39, had been taking large amounts of the seldom-prescribed sedative chloral hydrate, which also contributed to the 1962 overdose death of Smith's idol, Marilyn Monroe.

Police found no apparent signs of foul play, and the medical examiner also ruled that Smith's death probably was not a suicide because people who take their own lives typically use much more lethal drugs.

Rather, he said, Smith might have been simply unaware that the sedative could be fatal in combination with multiple other prescriptions she was taking in normal doses.

Perper said Smith could have been saved had she been hospitalized earlier.

A high school dropout in Texas, Smith married 89-year-old oilman J. Howard Marshall II, and after his death took her fight for Marshall's estimated $500 million fortune as far as the Supreme Court. That ongoing battle could make her infant daughter, Dannielynn, very wealthy.

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