FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Anna Nicole Smith's ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead took the witness stand in a Florida courtroom late Wednesday, where the judge presiding over the former Playboy Playmate's burial grilled him about his relationship with Smith and whether he had profited from her death.
Birkhead said he had received financial remuneration from the media, but only because he is a photographer and reporter by trade and he made royalties from archived photos he took of himself, Smith, her companion Howard K. Stern and Smith's late son Daniel.
There was one other instance of compensation. Birkhead said Stern appeared on a talk show and said Birkhead didn’t have a relationship with Smith, so Birkhead retaliated by selling a photo of himself and Smith as proof that they had a romantic relationship.
Birkhead said his exclusive romantic relationship with Smith began in 2004. He later moved in with her — a situation he said Stern interfered with by always being around and canceling public events that they planned to attend together.
He said Smith miscarried a pregnancy in which she was carrying his child in January 2005, and reiterated that he was the father of Smith's 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn. Stern maintains that he is the father, as does Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband Prince Frederic von Anhalt.
"Anna Nicole informed me we were expecting another child, in February right around Valentine's Day of 2006," Birkhead testified.
Birkhead added that there was one exception to their exclusive relationship, but Broward County Circuit Court Judge Larry Seidlin said he didn't want the details.
But at one point, Birkhead said that Smith left town to go to South Carolina to visit a "wealthy gentleman" that he had once introduced her to. The two were intimate for the month she was there, according to Birkhead, but he and Smith reconciled when she returned.
He said he questioned at first whether he was the father because she had been with the other man in South Carolina, but Smith assured him he was the baby's dad.
"I asked her that and she smacked me and said I'm not a wh---, you dummy," he testified.
Later, Birkhead said the man in South Carolina had had a vasectomy, so he couldn't be the father.
He said he and Smith picked out baby names, went shopping for "baby things" and even put their thumb prints in a baby book as the child's parents while Smith was in the hospital because of problems with prescription medication.
But her drug use was part of what tore them apart, Birkhead said.
"She was taking medications before and during the pregnancy. I was very concerned about that," Birkhead testified. He said they had several "clashes" over her drug use because he didn't want her to harm herself or the baby.
He also said that Smith did not, for the most part, get along with her mother, but that she did cry out for her mother when she found out she was pregnant with Dannielynn.
He also said that he had discussed marriage with Smith and that they had looked at rings.
Birkhead also testified that Smith and Stern didn't have a romantic or intimate relationship, at least while Birkhead was involved with her.
Stern, he said, was often sleeping on the couch downstairs in the house while Birkhead and Smith slept in her bed upstairs. And while Smith was in the hospital for drug detoxification, he said he slept next to her in the hospital bed while Stern slept in a cot in the corner.
Stern's name was entered into the baby book as "Uncle Howard," according to Birkhead.
"I felt sorry for Mr. Stern," said Birkhead. "He had no role. He had a romantic interest [in Smith]."
Birkhead said Smith would routinely take double the dosage of her prescription medication while she was pregnant. He testified that he would try to convince her to use over-the-counter drugs instead because they might be less harmful to her and the unborn child.
One time, an emotional Birkhead said, Smith had what amounted to a bad seizure and he had to help her to the bathroom.
He and Smith last saw each other in May of 2006, he said.
At the time, Smith was very pregnant and began telling Birkhead he might not be the father of her baby and asked Stern to talk to Birkhead on her behalf.
Birkhead said there was no point in his continuing to be her "caretaker" and get any more attached to her and the child if he wasn't the baby's dad.
He also said that he would ideally like Smith to buried in California, because he believes that he will be proven to be Dannielynn's father and that's where he and Dannielynn would live. But he also thinks she should be buried near her son Daniel, who is buried in the Bahamas.
With Birkhead still on the stand, court recessed until Thursday at 10:30 EST.
Stern: She Was My Whole World
Earlier, Stern returned to the witness stand, where a judge grilled him about Smith's drug use and whether he had profited from her death.
After being pushed by Seidlin, Stern admitted that Smith had used methadone, but not in his presence over the last five months.
He also said Smith took prescription drugs for depression, and that he encouraged her to scale back on those and she had.
"She did cut down a lot on medication she took. Can anyone really stop someone?" he testified. "Anna, when she made her decisions, was pretty clear on her decisions. I don't think that medication influenced her decisions. It's not like she took medication all the time. It's not like she couldn't talk," he said.
When she was more stressed out, she took more medication, Stern said. He also said her 20-year-old son Daniel, who died in September of a lethal combination of drugs, had talked to her about her drug use.
"Daniel talked to his mother about that, yes," Stern testified.
Click on FOXNews.com for live streaming video of the court proceedings.
Smith also saw psychologists and a psychiatrist and had various doctors who prescribed her different medications, according to Stern, who admitted he picked up those prescriptions for her sometimes.
Responding to questioning, Stern said Smith had several aliases she used — some for prescriptions, which her doctors knew about, and some for when she checked into hotels, like Mrs. Flintstone and Norma Jean (which was her idol Marilyn Monroe's real name).
An attorney for Birkhead dropped a bombshell Wednesday afternoon by hammering Stern about whether or not he was the biological father of the little girl.
She took issue with the fact that he'd earlier testified that he was the father according to Bahamian law, but hasn't said whether he actually fathered the child.
He shook his head and declined to answer and the judge ordered the lawyer, Debra Opri, to sit down.
"I'm not going there," Seidlin said. "You're finished."
Stern vs. Mom
Earlier, Smith's estranged mother took the witness stand for the second time on Wednesday after a lunch break, where lawyers continued to grill her about whether she profited from her daughter's death.
Virgie Arthur said she had only received round-trip plane fare from Houston to the Bahamas, which was paid for by David Lee, a journalist for Splash News who Arthur says is a close friend.
Lawyers then proceeded to grill Stern about whether he profited from her death.
Stern said the only compensation he received was in the form of a chartered jet from the television show "Entertainment Tonight," which aired a multiple-part interview with him after Smith's death about what he was going through. Stern said show producers were friends of his and Smith's, and he wasn't paid for the interview itself.
Seidlin asked Stern about his income while he was with Smith. Stern replied that he had no separate income.
"I was with Anna. My income was with her," he said.
He told the court that he stopped practicing law for his own firm in 2002, when "The Anna Nicole Show" — in which Stern had a role — began airing on E! Networks. He was paid about $12,500 or less each year that the reality program was on, he said. By 2005, it was no longer running; Stern said he had no income in 2006.
Answering Seidlin's questions, Stern testified that Smith paid his rent, dinners out and other expenses.
"Anna paid for everything, basically," he said.
After her death, Stern said his parents sent him a "substantial" sum of money to help support him until he got back on his feet and began working again.
Stern testified Tuesday that he is not looking for any money from Smith's estate and would waive his fee as the executor of her will.
"I do not intend to get one penny," Stern said.
During a lunch break in the hearing, Arthur, her husband and Stern went to the medical examiner's office to view Smith's body.
Earlier, Arthur lamented that she could not get her daughter off drugs in the last 10 years.
"I would have went and kidnapped her," to get her to stop abusing drugs, Arthur told a Florida courtroom on her second day of testimony.
"I knew she was going to be next [after her son Daniel died]," she said, explaining why she went on national television after Daniel died to talk about her daughter's drug use.
"My grandson did not overdose. Howard was there when he died and Howard was there when my daughter died — now he has my granddaughter — please help us," she said, crying.
Video: Anna's mom takes the stand
Stern is battling Arthur for custody of Smith's body. He wants to bury her beside her son in the Bahamas; Arthur wants to exhume Daniel and bury him with his mother in Smith's native Texas.
Stern's attorney Krista Barth said she had bank documentation proving Smith had agreed to pay for two double cemetery plots in the Bahamas.
'She Always Made Us Laugh'
Arthur also shed light Wednesday on Smith's personality.
"Frogs were her favorite thing — she was a tomboy," Arthur said. "She was a sweetheart — giving, loving. She was a great child. She always made us laugh."
And in spite of what Stern described Tuesday as Smith's obsession with death, Arthur painted a different picture.
"She loved life, even as she got older," Arthur told the court, adding that she and Smith were not completely estranged as has been alleged — including by Smith herself — but in fact spent time together "getting our nails done" and other "mother-daughter things." Arthur said she had pictures to prove it, which were entered as evidence.
"She wasn't estranged from me all those years. We were still in contact. It was when she was older, when she was with Howard Stern, that I was not able to get a hold of her. I still talked to her on the phone — just not as often."
Arthur also said she had a conversation with Smith about where she wanted to be buried when she was about 25 or 26. Smith said she wanted to be buried in the family plot in Texas, according to Arthur.
"She was a Texas girl," Arthur said.
Arthur said it wouldn't change her mind to know that Smith later said she didn't want to be buried in Texas, because in the last decade she's been on drugs like Valium and other "downers."
Arthur said a videotaped interview Smith did with Stern on "Entertainment Tonight" after Daniel's death "looked like my daughter, but that wasn't my daughter."
In the interview, shown in court Tuesday by Stern's lawyers, a trembling, crying Smith expressed hatred for her mother, accusing her and other members of her family of abuse and saying she never wanted to speak to her mother again.
Smith was reacting to reports that Arthur had gone to the media and said she or Stern had been responsible for Daniel's premature death.
"That person was not my daughter — not her free-loving spirit, not her mind," Arthur said. "She loved her family, all of them. That looked like her, it was her body, but it wasn't her."
Testimony also turned emotional when Arthur spoke of tracking down the grave of her grandson.
Arthur began sobbing, and a brief recess was called as she left the stand for a few minutes to compose herself.
Arthur said she and other members of Smith's family hadn't been allowed to attend Daniel's funeral, and she glared at Stern from the witness stand as she said it.
Arthur began weeping when she was describing finding and visiting Daniel's grave in the Bahamas.
"We did videotape it, we did, because none of us were allowed to come — none of us," Arthur said, crying and wiping her eyes.
Smith's mother said she helped raise Daniel in his early years.
"He was an angel," Arthur told the court. She also described the relationship her daughter and grandson had.
"She loved him, and he loved her," Arthur said. "She loved him with all her heart."
Without written proof of Smith's wishes, Seidlin was forced to hear testimony from those who claim to know what she wanted regarding her burial.
He said he would rule on the matter of who gets custody of Smith's body and where she should be buried by Friday.
The drawn-out court battle over what to do with Smith's body took on a new sense of urgency this week: The model's remains are decomposing more quickly than expected and a public viewing could be in danger.
That warning came from Broward County's medical examiner Tuesday and again on Wednesday as the judge spoke to Dr. Joshua Perper by conference call during the proceedings.
Also at issue in a California court is who fathered Dannielynn, who could inherit millions of dollars. A judge there refused to give up the paternity case but suggested there were still questions to be resolved before the courts can determine which state has jurisdiction.
There will also be a custody hearing Thursday in the Bahamas over Dannielynn. The hearing will be closed and the attorneys will be placed under a gag order. Arthur has filed a motion to postpone this hearing.
Smith was the widow of Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II. The two married in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26. She had been fighting his family over his estimated $500 million fortune since his death in 1995.
Smith died suddenly Feb. 8 at age 39 of causes that are under investigation.
FOX News' Catherine Donaldson-Evans and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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