Rumors And Other Sensational Details About Anna Nicole Smith We Couldn't Ignore

This article contains mentions of addiction and sexual assault.

It's almost hard to believe that Anna Nicole Smith was real. She was a larger-than-life figure, who was better known for her looks than for anything she ever said, and was accused of being a gold digger until the day she died. Smith grew up in Texas, but felt as though something was missing from her life. "I've always liked attention. I didn't get it very much growing up, and I always wanted to be, you know, noticed," Smith once told Los Angeles magazine, as reported by Forbes. When she grew up, attention is exactly what she got.

There were plenty of tragic details surrounding Anna Nicole Smith's life, but that only scratches the surface of her persona. For every tragedy in her life, there was another lie being told, or there was something told that seemed like a lie but was totally true. Thus, Anna Nicole Smith's life was sensationalized, often mired by rumors that are still hard to ignore.

Anna Nicole Smith's life was unique even before she was in the spotlight. The model grew up in Houston, Texas, and after struggling at home — getting into fights and dropping out of school at 14 — she moved in with her aunt, who lived in Mexia, Texas. The teenager got a job as a waitress at Jim's Krispy Fried Chicken, and there she met a fry cook named Billy Wayne Smith.

"He drove me crazy. I chased him and chased him the way young girls do until I finally got him and married him. By then, of course, I wasn't interested," Anna Nicole once said of Billy (via the Daily Mail). In 1984, after 11 months of dating, Anna Nicole and Billy got married. The future model was 17, and her husband was 16.

Wedded bliss didn't last long. Anna Nicole claimed that shortly after tying the knot, Billy became controlling. "I wasn't allowed to go out of the house or go to the store. He was so jealous," she said. In 1986, the pair welcomed a son, Daniel Wayne Smith. But a year after Daniel's birth, Anna Nicole and Billy separated. By 1993, they were officially divorced.

Much of Anna Nicole Smith's fame was centered around her spouses. However, reports that surfaced years after her death claimed that her former co-worker and best friend Missy Byrum was also married to Anna Nicole Smith in secret. According to Byrum, she and Smith first met in the 1980s while working at a strip club. They became best friends and then lovers. "I was not her first female lover. But I knew it would not last. She needed more love than any one human being could give her," Byrum told People. "I would say she was fluid. We just did not have a name for it back then," Smith's friend Pol' Atteu told the publication of Smith's sexuality.

According to Byrum, she and Smith got married in 1993, though their marriage was not legal. "She gave me a set of wedding rings and we got married in the backyard by the pool with champagne," Byrum revealed. But the relationship didn't last. "I wore the rings. She wanted me to have a baby with her. But I always knew it wasn't ever going to work out. Because she was never, ever going to settle down with one person," Byrum added, noting that she became responsible for caring for Smith's son much of the time. Byrum said she ultimately left Smith due to her addiction and needed more attention that Byrum was able to give her.

It wasn't long after officially divorcing Billy Wayne Smith that Anna Nicole Smith's marital status changed again. While working at a strip club in the 1980s, she met J. Howard Marshall, a billionaire octogenarian. They went on their first date in 1991 and would meet for lunch at Red Lobster. In 1994, at age 26, Anna Nicole married 89-year-old Marshall.

Anna Nicole and Marshall's relationship was scrutinized the moment it became public. The details — like reports that Marshall paid for Smith to have a fourth breast augmentation and that Anna Nicole left Marshall just hours after their wedding to travel to Greece — only made the scrutiny worse. Still, Anna Nicole insisted she loved Marshall and that their relationship wasn't fueled by his bank account. Some close to Anna Nicole believed her. 

An uncle, George Beall, told People, "She really loved him! The way he took care of her and looked out for her. She cared about him a lot. She didn't want people to think that she was after his money. Aunt Kay and I both said to Vickie Lynn, 'If you love him, to heck with what people think!'" Even Larry Birkhead, the father of Anna Nicole's daughter, believed that Anna Nicole truly loved Marshall, sharing that she often compared Birkhead to her late husband.

When Anna Nicole Smith met J. Howard Marshall, she had already been supporting herself for years. Thanks to modeling gigs with Playboy and Guess, she was only making herself richer. However, she didn't have nearly the kind of funds her oil tycoon lover had and made a habit of spending his money even before they got married. Some of Smith's reported purchases included a diamond ring worth $456,000, a diamond necklace worth $493,000, and a diamond bracelet worth $273,000, all of which were purchased at Harry Winston in New York City. Within less than an hour, Smith spent over $2 million.

Smith's spending was all at Marshall's behest, though. He apparently wanted to treat her well, and he wanted her to spend his money. Marshall reportedly put Smith on his company's payroll and gave her access to his credit cards, and made purchases for her, too. Marshall bought Smith a convertible Mercedes, a house in Brentwood, an apartment in New York City, an estate outside of Houston, and a house in downtown Houston. He also created a company for her, which was used to rent Marilyn Monroe's former Los Angeles bungalow. Still, Smith claimed that their relationship was not about money, even insisting that she declined multiple proposals from Marshall as she wanted to focus on her career. "I'm not marrying him for his money. He's been begging me to marry him for over four years. But I wanted to get my own career started first. I have my own money," Smith told Texas Monthly in 1994.

Anna Nicole Smith's second marriage didn't last long. Just over a year after their wedding, J. Howard Marshall died at 90. The last few months of their marriage reportedly weren't particularly blissful, either. Just a few months before Marshall died, Smith went to visit her husband, who had been diagnosed with stomach cancer. Marshall was supposed to be fed through a tube, but Smith reportedly fed him chicken broth, causing him to choke and subsequently be hospitalized. After the incident, one of Marshall's sons became his legal guardian and prohibited Smith from visiting her husband except once a day for 30 minutes.

Things only got worse for Smith. After losing her husband and the lifestyle she had become accustomed to, it was revealed that Smith had not been included in Marshall's will. Smith claimed, however, that Marshall had promised to leave her half of his estate, and she and one of Marshall's sons, who also had been excluded from the will, took legal action in an effort to claim what they believed was rightfully theirs.

Anna Nicole Smith didn't go down without a fight. After being excluded from her late husband's will, she took legal action in an effort to obtain half of J. Howard Marshall's estate which Smith claimed he promised her before he died. Smith lost her first legal battle, which she took on with one of her stepsons who'd also been excluded from Marshall's will. She went on to file for bankruptcy and was later awarded $474 million in damages, though that was reduced to $88 million. That award was appealed at every level until it reached the United States Supreme Court.

Initially, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Smith, however, some legal technicalities sent Smith's case back to a circuit court, and soon after that, Marshall's son (the one who was included in his father's will) died, so his widow continued the legal battle against Smith. Tragically, though, in less than a year after Marshall's son died, Smith died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs. 

Months prior to her death, Smith had given birth to her daughter, Dannielynn Birkhead, and the court case continued on her behalf. Eventually the United States Supreme Court heard Smith's case again, and it ruled against Smith's estate, finally bringing an end to the legal battle that had begun over a decade prior. "We conclude that, although the Bankruptcy Court had the statutory authority to enter judgment on [Anna Nicole Smith's ] counterclaim, it lacked the constitutional authority to do so," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote of the ruling, per ABC News.

Life in Anna Nicole Smith's orbit was just as sensational after her death as it was when she was alive. When Smith gave birth to her daughter, Dannielynn Birkhead, she was in a relationship with Howard K. Stern, who was listed on Dannielynn's birth certificate as the father. However, another man, Larry Birkhead, claimed to be Dannielynn's father. Larry Birkhead and Anna Nicole Smith had been involved in a relationship prior to her death, and the paternity had to be determined by the courts.

The paternity case moved much faster than the other legal battle surrounding Smith. Within months the matter was resolved, and it was found that Larry was Dannielynn's father. "I hate to be the one to tell you this but, I told you so. Nothing's really determined except parentage and I'm the father. I'm going to the toy store," Larry said outside of a Bahamian courthouse where the hearing took place after learning the results of the paternity test, as reported by Reuters. Aside from Larry and Dannielynn Birkhead's annual trip to the Kentucky Derby, Larry has raised his and Anna Nicole's daughter away from the public eye.

Anna Nicole Smith's relationship with her husband J. Howard Marshall caused a lot of tension with his family, but it took a particularly dark turn in 2000, which the public didn't learn about until many years later. According to reports made public by the Associated Press, Smith was investigated by the FBI for allegedly plotting a murder-for-hire scheme against her late husband's son E. Pierce Marshall. Per the reports, agents spoke with Smith about the allegations in 2000 and 2001, and when she was first told about the reason for the investigation, "Smith began crying and denied ever making such plans," an agent wrote, per The Guardian.

Smith stuck to her story, and eventually the investigation closed. "Smith adamantly denied ever contemplating such a crime. [It was] determined that there is insufficient evidence to establish that there was a murder-for-hire plot by Ms. Smith to kill Pierce Marshall," the reports read. People close to the situation echoed the findings of the investigation. "Unequivocally, there was never a murder-for-hire plot that Anna was involved in. Absolutely false. Never happened. End of story," Smith's former attorney Ron Rale told the New York Post. Rusty Hardin, an attorney and friend of the Marshall family, laughed off the idea. "I don't think I ever saw any credible evidence. I do not remember ever being concerned about whether she was trying to have him killed," he said.

Anna Nicole Smith was born Vickie Lynn Hogan, and the persona that became known to the public was largely created while Smith was working at a strip club in the '90s, according to her friend and lover Missy Byrum. "Nicki adapted to get what she needed ... She learned from stripping that guys like to believe you're stupid if you're that pretty. She always said, 'It takes a smart person to be really dumb,'" Byrum told People. According to Byrum, her intellect wasn't all that Smith lied about. "All of us girls were abused in some way and we shared about it. She didn't have any of that in her past," Byrum said of Smith, adding that she tried to pass off Byrum's past abuse as her own.

Other parts of Smith's life were enhanced, too. Though it was well known that Smith had plastic surgery, according to those who knew her personally, she may have had more procedures than she shared with the public. Smith apparently adapted parts of her personality to get what she wanted, too, and certain quotes from Smith made it seem as though she knew exactly what she was doing. "It's terrible the things I have to do to be me," she once said. As "Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me" director Ursula Macfarlane said of the late model, "Throughout her life, she was just trying to be what she thought other people wanted her to be. I don't know if Anna Nicole truly knew who she herself was."

Anna Nicole Smith's friend did believe some of the abuse she claimed to be true. In the early 1990s, Anna Nicole reportedly told Missy Byrum that her father tried to have sex with her when they met as adults. Anna Nicole's biological father, Donald Hogan, was kicked out of the house when she was a baby after he raped Anna Nicole's aunt. He spent time in jail and subsequently began a new family, leaving Anna Nicole to grow up without him in her life. As an adult, the model tried to reconnect with her father, and hired a private investigator to find him. 

Upon success, she invited him to accompany her to the Playboy Mansion to celebrate her being named 1993 Playmate of the Year. Donald obliged, but as Anna Nicole told Byrum, Donald tried to make a move after the party. In the documentary "Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me" on Netflix, Anna Nicole's brother Donnie Hogan, who attended the Playmate of the Year party with his sister and Donald, gave his thoughts on Anna Nicole's claim, first denying that it could've happened then changing his mind. "I wouldn't put it past him ... I guess I wasn't there all the time. So it could be true," Donnie said. "My father is not a type of guy you want to be alone with. You're not gonna feel safe. I mean, he's a monster," Donnie said of his father.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).