Last night on her show, Nancy Grace asked me, “So, Art who came out the winner Wednesday in court?”

While he portrayed a beautiful starlet addicted to painkillers, methadone and more, he bore no malice. He wanted her to rest in peace, he testified, and has been struggling with his conflicted feelings that maybe the best place to lay her to rest would be the Bahamas, next to the son she adored. It was a stunning moment to watch the most likely biodad actually agreeing with the father Anna Nicole named on the birth certificate — Howard K. Stern.

Then it hit me, judicial wisdom taken from the Old Testament–Judge Larry Seidlin was asking asked Birkhead if he would split the baby, where would he bury Anna Nicole if he were the judge.
…a balding Solomon sizing up a parent by asking him to choose, and Birkhead said don’t separate Anna Nicole from the son she adored…he was figured why not bury Daniel in the Bahamas alongside her, even if it meant the daughter he hoped to help raise would have to one day travel there to mourn her mother…and her brother.

Here was Judge Larry playing Dr. Phil in the courtroom — cajoling and charming warring parties closer to an agreement they all can live with…setting a self-imposed deadline as the body starts to decompose further, demanding all lawyers to submit their proposed burial order by 5 p.m. He will rule on the body Friday.

As I told Nancy, it was Birkhead who won the day, choking up as he described his fears for the baby as Anna gobbled perscription drugs while pregnant, once taking pills from a duffle bag Howard Stern brought to the hospital where she was trying to detox, where the photographer and the then manager slept on cots in the hospital room for two weeks.

Ever the Southern Gentleman, Birkhead yes-sirred his way through testimony and won the day by refusing to split the baby. While he wanted the woman he loved and lived with for much of two years buried in California, where he hopes to one day raise the daughter he claims is theirs, he didn’t want to separate Anna Nicole from her beloved son, Daniel, who died of an overdose. That was class.

Imagine, Judge Larry orchestrating 18 lawyers, two competing fathers and an estranged mother in the final lap of the Anna Nicole Smith Classic–and learning Birkhead and Howard K. Stern might actually agree on the Bahamas. A lawyer in the back row told me this story of a case Judge Seidlin ruled on. He had two clients, both gay, and one died. The parents wanted the cremated remains to be shipped to New York, but the boyfriend wanted his lover to stay with him. The solution: Judge Seidlin split the baby in half, in other words, half the ashes went to one party and the half to the other.

He can’t split the body here, but he can honor Anna Nicole’s last wishes to be buried next to her son, and issue an order for all parties to get along and have access to the cemetery. To have Birkhead seeming to agree with Stern, with her mother now the odd man out, was quite amazing to watch, especially after he described living with her in a house that was dysfunctional with a capital D — Howard Stern crashing on the couch downstairs while LB slept with Anna Nicole upstairs, with both men agreeing to bar her son from the room when she was high on downers like dilaudid, valium, methadone and more.

“He doesn’t like Stern,” says John O’Quinn, the Texas lawyer for Vergie Arthur who the judge has nicknamed “Texas.” How does he know? “He cut me off mid-cross examination. That tells me he doesn’t like the witness.”

He liked Larry and called him charming, and over the last couple of days, I’ve talked with Larry in the hallways of the Broward County courthouse, and come away with a sense of a nice guy who cared for Anna Nicole and wants to be a hands-on father if he turns out to be Biodad.

“I want to use two hands, not one,” he tells me. “I want to raise her.” It was a moment I shared on The Insider with entertainment reporter Victoria Recano.

“She called him her angel,” his lawyer Debra Opri told me after I came off Nancy Grace. Opri was getting make up to go on Larry King. So many Larrys, so little time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 22nd, 2007 at 8:48 am and is filed under ANNA NICOLE SMITH, ART HARRIS REPORTS, LAW & ORDER. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.