ANNA NICOLE SMITH IS DEAD

Anna Nicole Smith died today after collapsing at the Seminole Hard Rock Cafe Hotel and Casino in south Florida.  She was rushed to a hospital but never regained consciousness.  It is reported she complained of a fever last night but no further details are known at this time.  MSNBC says of her life:

Smith had been a tabloid staple even before she became Playboy's playmate of the year in 1993. Readers were fascinated by her bombshell good looks, her marriage to an elderly billionaire and subsequent court fight over his estate, her weight fluctuations, and last year, the sudden death of her 20-year-old son, Daniel Smith.

No funeral is planned yet, but at the wake, it would be nice if some woman showed up in a fur and a little dog on a diamond leash and then threw champagne in another woman's face and called her a whore for sleeping with her lover and then they wrestled in a fountain.  It's the way Anna Nicole would have wanted it.

UPDATE FROM MSNBC – Dr. Cyril Wecht, forensic toxicologist who performed the autopsy on her son Daniel, who died last September, suggested several possibilities for her death, including viral pneumonia, drug-related causes or a genetic heart defect which also played a factor in her son’s death.  “When you have sudden, unexpected death, there aren’t too many things that can do that,” said Wecht. “You look to the heart and see what produces the cardiac arrhythmia.” It has been alleged that Smith used methadone, a powerful opiate-based treatment, while pregnant.  “Drugs could be involved here,” Wecht told MSNBC. “They may not be the total answer, but coupled with a genetic predisposition, methadone is a drug that is known to produce that kind of a problem in which the heart begins to beat irregularly.”

UPDATE – her former lawyer was asked about her substance abuse and depression, ""Anna always had problems with her weight going up and down, and there's no question she used alcohol."  (It's no scecret) she had a very troubled life … so many, many problems."

UPDATE – Chief Coroner Johnson of the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office says an autopsy on Anna Nicole Smith will take place early tomorrow morning. Her body is now in their Ft. Lauderdale office.