Dr. Joshua Perper says he’s extracted enough tissue, blood and bone marrow to test dozens of Cinderella Daddys for DNA matches, though only four so far are publically vying for Anna Nicole’s daughter, Dannielynn. And…the ME has taken enough samples for toxicology tests, too, so that that in several weeks, he’ll have an answer to how Anna Nicole died, if not how she lived. He doesn’t need the body any longer.

He says Howard K. Stern is the only family member to ask for the body so far, but he’s keeping Anna Nicole locked away in a refrigerated drawer “as a courtesy” to the California judge conducting a paternity hearing next week. In fact, Dr. Perper has written a letter on behalf of Stern, telling the judge there’s no scientific need to hold the body any longer, that Anna Nicole can be buried without undermining his death investigation or any future DNA tests.

Stern says he wants to bury her next to her son in the Bahamas. Daniel died from a fatal mix of anti-depressants and methadone three days after Anna Nicole gave birth to daughter, Dannielynn.

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I’m dancing around puddles outside the Broward County morgue, where a dozen satellite television trucks have turned Southwest 31st Avenue into Sound Bite City and an erudite forensic pathologist with the thick Israeli accent into a media star. He’s sitting down now with The Insider’s Victoria Recano, then FOX News Channel’s Phil Keating, and soon he will be limo’d away to make the rounds of the evening shows: CNN’s Nancy Grace, Larry King Live, and the others, booked by his assistant, Sherri Baker, to sate the country’s appetite for Anna Nicole, all-the-time, in sickness and in health, ’til death dead or alive, in sicknes.

“You think I can get a job one day in casting?” laughs Sherri, marveling that her boss has achieved a white hot “Q” rating speaking for a dead celebrity, as he’s done for everyday people since he took this job in 1996 after two decades as a medical examiner in Pennsylvannia. As the new forensic star on the block, Dr. Perper joins the all-star bench of Dr. Henry Lee, Michael Baden and Cyril Wecht who have made cold cases cool and unsolved mysteries hot.

Asked to diagnose the public obsession with Anna Nicole, he says, ‘You could say America has caught a case of ‘Celebrity-it is.’”

As for Anna Nicole, he’s not sure what she caught, though she did report flu-like symptoms before she was found unconscious at the Hardrock Hotel, where I’m watching Perper on Nancy Grace (she’s invited me on tomorrow night) and writing this now one floor below where Anna Nicole died. When I checked in and caught the elevator up, a woman riding with me said she’d seen the stretcher racing through the lobby last Thursday, as the slots were humming, with gamblers barely looking up.

“I could tell she wasn’t breathing, but I didn’t know who she was,” said the guest who was here for a tribal rodeo, and only slightly curious what Dr. Perper might find.

He says he’s exploring a “number of possibilities” for cause of death, from natural, to drug reactions to a combo of both, including any role prescription drugs found in her room may have played. Police say there were no signs of foul play, and that Stern, the private nurse who found her unconscious and the bodyguard who tried cpr, have all been interviewed and “cooperated fully.”

“With the help of Mr. Stern and her doctor, I have a good grasp of the kinds of chemical examinations I have to do,” he tells me .

So how will a court determine who gets Anna Nicole’s body? “There’s a scale of closeness, “ he explains. “If you’re the wife or husband, you’re first in line…a mother is in line…a child is in line…It’s decided by the law who has the right.”

Dr. Perper is skeptical about questions raised suggesting links between the deaths of Anna Nicole and her son, Daniel, and doubts his investigators will attend the inquest into her son’s death in the Bahamas. “One is a young man who dies of an apparent drug overdose and the other is a middle aged woman, albeit beautiful and apparently healthy, who dies of reasons so far unknown.”

But he says it might be worth it for Bahamian officials to look at the son’s death after he gets the “final findings of the mother.” He’s just not buying the “Howard Did It” chorus. “There’s no evidence to suggest any foul play at this time,” he says.

He praises Seminole Police Chief Charlie Tiger, who’s department has jurisdiction because she died at the Hardrock Hotel on the Seminole Reservation nearbyu. “He’s doing a very responsible and professional investigation,” says Perper. And Gary Bitner, the chief’s spokesman, says investigators are waiting for the ME’s findings before proceeding with their probe.

What about anyone who might come forward to voice suspicions, would he be willing to listen? I ask. “As a general principle,” says Dr. Perper, pausing to reflect, “you don’t reject information, even if it doesn’t seem helpful at the time. You consider it and examine it’s weight. It’s very unwise to reject any information, from anyone who might have it.”

He’s yet to hear from Virgie Arthur, Anna Nicole’s estranged mother, who was rumored to be enroute to ask to view the body, or Gsa Gsa Gabor’s husband, who claims to have flung with the beauty queen, and mused he might be a Daddy, or Larry Birkhead, the Los Angeles photographer who insists he’s the one, still pushing for a DNA test and ties to the reported half billion dollar trust fund baby Dannielynn could become. But no man has called Dr. Perper to say he’s dreamed he’s the Daddy, though it’s early in this game.

“People do sometimes try to give me information from their dreams,” smiles Dr. Perper, “but I cannot put dreams under a microscope.”