by Rita Cosby
Thursday, February 8
Whether because of the insanity of the day—or the confusion of trying to keep a story straight—the times that certain things occurred on the day Anna died get blurry among all those involved. But there are two specific times that can't be denied. The first call for help came from room 607 at 1:38 p.m., and Anna Nicole Smith was pronounced dead at Memorial Regional Hospital at 2:49 p.m. It's what occurred before, during, and after that is troubling.
Big Moe has said that when he arrived back at the hotel the night before—sometime between eight and ten o'clock—Anna was on the couch in the living room of the suite watching television and Howard was in the master bedroom. According to Moe, Anna was no longer on the couch at 4 a.m. According to the Broward County Medical Examiner's report, it is believed Anna Nicole took chloral hydrate before falling asleep the night before. Howard told investigators he slept in bed with her and when she awoke around 9 a.m. he said she did not complain of pain, but felt very weak and asked him to help her get to the bathroom and back to bed.
Howard K. Stern also made a point to tell Seminole Police that he did not give Anna any medication that day and he told them that he "did not see her take medication, but believed she was taking her medication." Moe said he came into the room that morning sometime around 9 a.m. to tell Howard he was going to go have breakfast with his wife, Tas, and would be back shortly. Moe told the police that he "thought" he saw Anna moving in bed that morning, but later, when he discussed the morning with others, he said that Anna received medicine from Howard around 9 a.m. "like she always did."
But Moe says something was peculiar that morning. Howard's behavior.
At 10:45 a.m., Moe and Tas were waiting for the breakfast they ordered at the hotel restaurant when Moe's phone rang. It was Howard asking if Moe would mind going to the airport to pick up King Eric when he arrived. Seventy-three-year-old King Eric Gibson, the former husband of Mrs. Gerlene Gibson and father to Shane Gibson, is the Bahamian boat captain who was going to pilot Anna's new boat back to the Bahamas. Moe said he and Tas would go pick them up.
According to Tas's subsequent statements to private investigators, Howard called again a few minutes later to say it was time to go pick up King Eric and his party. "Howard wanted to stay with Anna because she was so sick," Tas said. Since she and Moe had planned to do some errands, Tas wondered aloud who was going to go to the boat.
"No way Howard is going to leave Anna," Moe said to Tas over breakfast. "No way he'll go to the boat." They decided King Eric and his boat hand could go alone then and they could still get to their errands as planned.
After picking up King Eric, his sixty-three-year-old common-law wife, Brigitte Neven, and King Eric's first mate at the airport, Moe and Tas brought them back to the Hard Rock a little before noon. They were waiting at the elevator bank to go up to the room when Howard came out of the elevator they were about to get into. Tas says he was "fidgety, strange acting" and that "he seemed surprised when he saw us."
"What's up?" Moe asked.
"I just came down to use my cell phone," Howard said.
"Why?" Moe asked. "It works just fine in the room."
Howard stuttered. "Ah, ah."
According to Tas, "He didn't say anything, and then just went upstairs in the elevator with all of us." When she thinks back on the day, she said, "I still cannot get over his behavior at that moment."
The entire group walked into Room 609 and Tas says Howard was "talking in a normal, in a loud voice, which in hindsight seems strange given that Anna was supposed to be sleeping. He wasn't whispering." He shouted out to Anna, saying, "Anna we have guests." Also, Howard did something that in retrospect seems "calculated," Tas says. "He stood in front of the living room area in between the two rooms, with his back to the master bedroom. So we could barely look into 607." Tas also recalled it was "like he was intentionally blocking our view of Anna inside the next room."
They were only in the room for a few minutes when Howard announced the boat appointment was at noon. "Noon?" King Eric asked. "It's twelve o'clock now."
"Oh," Howard said. "Then, we have to go."
Moe was surprised Howard said he was going to leave and asked, "Who's going to look after Anna?"
"Brigitte will look after Anna," Howard said.
Moe didn't like the idea of Brigitte staying alone with Anna when she was so sick, so he asked Tas to stay too. "Just stay for a little while, baby," he said. "Do you mind?"
Tas shrugged her shoulders and said, "Okay." Moe then told her she could take his computer and check her e-mails. Tas told private investigators that she was surprised about staying "since the plan was for me to do errands, not to babysit Anna."
Moe told the private investigators he thought it was strange that "at first Howard didn't want to leave her, but it was okay to leave her later?" Numerous people who are familiar with the relationships told me that both Howard and Moe leaving Anna while she was so sick was highly unusual. Typically, one or both would stay by her side. But the men all left the suite, leaving three women behind—the bodyguard's wife, the boat captain's companion, and Anna Nicole Smith, the world famous beauty, in bed and in trouble.
The strange thing about Howard's noon appointment was that it wasn't at noon at all. "Howard had a one o'clock appointment with me," the boat handyman told me. "Definitely one o'clock."
According to Mark Dekema, the yacht broker from "Reel Deal Yachts" who had sold Anna the boat in January for a little less than the advertised price of $129,000, Howard called several times during the week to reschedule the appointment. The Thursday appointment to inspect the boat had been originally scheduled for Tuesday but Howard had called on Monday to say that he needed to postpone a day because both he and Anna had "the stomach flu." Tuesday, he postponed again, but said, "Let's definitely make it Thursday." There were approximately five or six calls between the two men on Thursday, but Dekema said the time was always set for one o'clock. "Howard seemed normal," Dekema said. "Like an excited boat buyer."
• • •
Back at the Hard Rock, Tasma Brighthaupt and Brigitte Neven were getting acquainted in the luxury suite. Brigitte began thumbing through the promotional materials in the room. What she really wanted to do was go down where the hotel was gearing up for its annual Seminole Tribal Fair Powwow in which Native Americans stroll the halls in brightly colored attire, and hotel guests and busloads of schoolchildren learn about Native American culture and food. Brigitte was hungry. She hadn't eaten since early that morning before they left the Bahamas. But soon the two women realized they couldn't leave the room. Neither Brigitte nor Tas were left with a room key, and they needed a key to get past security at the elevators. So, if they went downstairs, they couldn't get back up. They were stuck in the suite.
The two women made small talk. Tas is Bahamian and grew up in Nassau. Brigitte, who has spent her adult life in the Bahamas, grew up in Germany. Tas is a trained nurse, having gotten her license a little more than a year before, in December 2005. Brigitte said she loved the Bahamas, its people, the weather, and the food . . . Food. Brigitte was really hungry, so she pulled out the room service menu and ordered up some food. Tas began working on her computer. A little while later, as Brigitte read a book, Tas said she was having problems with her computer, so she went into the bedroom where Anna slept, to the foot of the king size bed and used the computer on a table there.
• • •
Anna's new boat, a 39-foot 1995 Carver, had been paid for by wire transfer on January 19, and she had already christened it The Cracker, a name she used to call herself and her son, a tongue-in-cheek term for a white person living in a black community. The boat was ready and waiting at the Royal Palm Yacht Basin in Dania, Florida, directly south of the Ft. Lauderdale Airport, six miles east of the Hard Rock Hotel.
Though Anna had wanted to make the entire interior pink, her favorite color, boat broker Mark Dekema says he talked Howard out of this, giving them estimates of the retrof
itting changes they wanted of between $16,000 and $22,000. All of which Howard said was too high. Instead, they settled on adding two big screen TV's, including a 36 flat screen in the master salon.
Howard wasn't late for a noon appointment; he was early for a one o'clock appointment. When the handyman got to the boat basin promptly at 1 p.m., Howard and King Eric were waiting for him. The handyman, who had done the minor repairs and upgrades and had also managed the boat for the previous owner, greeted them and took them to the boat. The boat was scheduled to be put in the water later that day and was already in the lift, a crane-like mechanism that lowers boats into the water. The men climbed aboard and began looking around, and the handyman pointed out things about the boat as they went. The boat has two private staterooms, comfortable seating for six, and a wet bar with an icemaker, ideal for entertaining.
The handyman said he spoke about the boat for ten or so minutes, during which time Howard seemed very detached, only giving one-word answers and comments. "He was cold," the handyman told me. "He showed no emotion at all." The handyman told me he was surprised that Howard himself even came for the appointment, noting that the things to check could have been easily done by his captain, King Eric.
Right about 1:15 p.m. Howard was on his cell phone with Mark Dekema, the boat salesman; Dekema wanted to make sure everything was okay.
• • •
Things weren't okay back at the Hard Rock, even though, according to Tas, only five minutes prior she told Moe that they were. Shortly after 1:00 p.m., Moe had called his wife from his cell phone to talk about his errands and check on how Anna was doing. He originally told the media it was about fifteen minutes after he left the Hard Rock for a "twenty minute errand," but it had been, as we now know, at least an hour after all the men left the suite.
"How's she doing?" Moe asked.
"She's still sleeping," his wife told him as she worked on the computer, Anna lying in the bed behind her.
"Okay," he said, ending the call so he could continue running his errands.
Brigitte, hearing conversation in the master bedroom, thought that Anna had finally awoken, so she came into the room to say hello. The room was dark, completely veiled from sunny southern Florida. There was a light on in the bathroom, but the only light in the room was the glow of Tas's computer screen and the television broadcasting an afternoon soap opera, whose most dramatic moment could never surpass the chaos that was about to ensue in room 607.
"Please don't wake up Anna," Tas whispered to Brigitte. Brigitte realized that Tas was on her cell phone, not talking to Anna.
Brigitte didn't think sleeping into the afternoon this long was normal. She had spent the last few months in the Bahamas trying to bring Anna back to life again after her son Daniel's tragic, untimely death that was still clouded by many more questions than answers. Brigitte and her companion, King Eric Gibson, had befriended the depressed Anna, taking her out on King Eric's boat and cooking for her Bahamian style. Anna loved King Eric's fried fish, and the couple liked being with Anna. On her good days, they found her to be "adorable and childlike."
Brigitte would bring Anna out of the sheltered, overly airconditioned house for a boat ride or a walk on the beach. When they went out on the boat, Anna was happy, as happy and carefree as someone in her circumstances could be. Life for Anna hadn't been easy of late, if ever. She had lost her son three days after giving birth to her daughter in September; she was in the midst of a nasty custody feud over her newborn with Larry Birkhead, a former boyfriend claiming to be the father of her child; she was in the throes of a ten-year messy legal battle over her dead octogenarian husband's billion dollar estate; and she had mounting bills, user friends, troubles with her family, and the bane of her existence, her ever-fluctuating weight.
Brigitte delighted in bringing out Anna's childlike exuberance, in pulling her up from the depths of depression and getting her to do things she'd never done. She always brought baby Dannielynn along. Dannielynn loved the rocking of the boat. She'd smile a big toothless grin and open her big blue eyes wide with excitement. It did not go unnoticed that neither she nor her mother ever cried on these boat trips. They'd find the perfect spot near a secluded beach, anchor the boat, and carry the baby through the water high above their heads to the beach. Brigitte would put on her snorkel and mask and dive for seashells, presenting Anna with the most beautiful ones.
Anna began calling King Eric and Brigitte "Mommy" and "Daddy" shortly after she came to know them. They could see she was searching for something, something that she told them she never really had. She longed for family, for love, for someone she could lean on and trust. She was always happy to be a part of whatever Brigitte and King Eric were doing, whether it was boating or going to listen to King Eric play his steel drums at a club, as he is a famous musician known throughout the islands.
Perhaps it was the day watching her first Bahamian Regatta that Anna decided she was going to buy a boat. Rather than standing on shore, Brigitte took her out on a boat to watch the experience up close. Brigitte let Anna take the wheel. "Let's go up with Daddy," Anna giggled mischievously. "Let's go up with Daddy, I want him to see me drive the boat." She maneuvered the boat near King Eric's racing sloop, Lucayan Lady. "Look!" she screamed to him across the water. "I'm driving the boat!"
The plan for the week of February 8 was that the six of them—King Eric at the helm, his first mate, Brigitte, Howard, Anna, and Moe—would sail back to the Bahamas. But this plan had somehow gone terribly awry.
• • •
Back at the Hard Rock when Brigitte quietly approached Anna's bed, she noticed she could barely see her. Anna was bundled up in a heavy down comforter. Only a few strands of her blonde hair were visible. Brigitte moved the comforter back from her face. "Come here," Brigitte said to Tas as she stared at Anna's lifeless body. "You gotta come here! Something is wrong."
"What do you mean?" Tas asked, walking around the fourposter king size bed.
"Something is wrong," Brigitte said, pointing at Anna's face. "Look!" Tas pulled the thick comforter and white striped duvet farther down. Anna was lying on her right side and right shoulder, facing the left wall, atop soft Egyptian cotton sheets. She was naked. Friends and former boyfriends of Anna's told me that her sleeping in the nude was very strange—that Anna never slept in the nude, that she always wore a top and panties when she slept, and usually a bra to give her additional support even when she was sick. In fact, friends say she was obsessed with buying oversized t-shirts to sleep in. Besides comfort, there was also a vanity issue for Anna. Even though she was known for her voluptuous figure, she had several botched plastic surgeries, one of which scarred her left nipple leaving it quite deformed. Because of this they say she would never have been totally undressed, especially with people coming in and out of the hotel room. It is one of the many details that doesn't seem right about the scene in room
607 that day. But what the two women saw wasn't just not right, it was downright frightening. Anna Nicole's trademark pink lips had drained of color. They were now a pale blue.
"Wake up, Anna!" Tas screamed, shaking Anna's naked body. "Wake up!" She rolled her onto her back. Anna's overly enhanced breasts flopped to opposite sides of her chest. The two women, who had only known each other for a little more than an hour, together began to try to resuscitate the lifeless body of Anna Nicole Smith.
Tas ran into the bathroom to get some water. Brigitte says she hoped there was a "flicker of life still left," but quickly realized there was "nothing that we could do for her." They splashed Anna's face with water. No response. They put a mirror beneath her nose to see if there was any breath. There wasn't. The former Playboy Playmate was in dire straights.
"We were so busy," Brigitte told me. "We wanted to try—we still believed we could—you know, somehow. We yelled at her . . . it was terrible."
According to an interview Tas did with Entertainment Tonight, she hit the button on her earpiece "because my husband was the last person
I spoke to and that would ring back to his phone." She told private investigators that when she got Moe on the phone she told him right away, "I don't like what I'm seeing. Anna has purple splotches on her face and body. She's not breathing and looks blue."
"She's blue?" Moe asked.
"You need to get back here," she said. "And you need to call 911." She told investigators that when she blew air into Anna, "I heard a gurgling sound and I told Moe I knew it was not good."
Tas told private investigators that her husband said, "Don't do anything, I'll be right there. Don't worry, I'll handle it." He also told his wife he'd call 911. But he didn't. Who he called was Howard.
• • •
It has been reported that when Howard got the call from Moe—right after Moe learned from his wife that Anna wasn't breathing—Howard was still on the dry-docked boat in the marina talking on his cell phone to boat salesman Mark Dekema. He interrupted the conversation with an abrupt, "I have another call. I gotta take this." Dekema says Howard sounded urgent, "a little desperate, " with an "edge of concern" in his voice.
"Howard," Moe said, "you got to get back. Something's wrong with Anna." Moe later said that Howard was in disbelief. His only response was, "Oh, okay."
