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Virgie Arthur Testifies in Florida, 2007, Talks to FOX’s Greta Van Sustern

By Art Harris, (c), www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

Within six short days of Daniel Smith’s death, Virgie Arthur hit television shows to accuse her long-estranged daughter, Anna Nicole Smith, of negligence, or murder in connection with the apparent accidental overdose of her own son, and warned her to be careful about companion Howard K. Stern, fingering him as a possible killer, too, out to make a buck.

Now shocking e mails from Arthur’s own photo agent, David Leigh of Splash News, obtained exclusively by The Bald Truth, reveal a grieving grandmother hustling her own media deals. In hawking exclusive rights to cover her own memorial service for Daniel in Texas, to TV shows and magazines like In Touch weekly, the e mails suggest a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

“If you do want to have exclusive coverage inside the church, we’re going to need a firm commitment pretty soon,” David Leigh writes Entertainment Tonight in an e mail dated Sept. 29, 2006. Read the rest of this entry »

By Art Harris, (c) www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

As we close out the year, we came across one of the 2007 turning points in the ugly Anna Nicole wars: Rita Cosby popped with a $60 million libel suit that raises serious questions about journalistic standards in the era of 24/7 cable news and the reporting of an Emmy award winner.

It happened outside a New York restaurant hosting a book party for Blonde Ambition, a so called expose that lead to Howard K. Stern’s lawsuit after Cosby detailed a purported gay tryst on tape between the Anna Nicole Smith executor and Larry Birkhead both men deny…

…A third-hand sex story Cosby concedes, under oath, that came from Virgie Arthur’s private investigators, and that she never spoke directly to the purported eye witnesses, Anna Nicole’s Haitian nannies, who deny the yarn, or eyeballed the mystery tape that has yet to turn up. Read the rest of this entry »

Legendary Litigator John O’Quinn With Admirers At Firm’s Annual Xmas Party Saturday

By Art Harris, www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

We were blown away Saturday night to have snagged an invite to the annual Christmas soiree thrown by legendary Texas litigator John O’Quinn, who, even by Texas standards, knows how to throw a 10-gallon party.

It took a while for our sultry correspondent to meander through the maze of black ties, cowboy boots and bejeweled designer belles–all required to flash an elite invite and procure an armband that, gasp, covered up some blinding Texas bling flashed by what writer Tom Wolfe might have dubbed mighty fine lemon tartes.

We counted maybe 1,000 of the law firm’s best friends, clients and colleagues. all co-mingling, fantasizing about sugar plum bonus checks and lining up at the giant martini bar by the giant Star of Texas ice sculpture to slake powerful thrists…Then, it was on to partaaaaaay! Read the rest of this entry »

By Art Harris, (c)www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

In this video flashback–we’re serving up the first in a series of memory jogs to offer inquest-watchers clues to the characters in the sad and twisted tragedy of Hollywood dreams, sex, drugs, greed and lies.

Check out the “good friend” who said Anna asked him to grab all her private items from her home should anything happen to her, then answer our poll questions:

Do you buy it? Did Anna consider FS a friend when she died? Should investigators trust him? Do YOU believe him? Do you think Ford and father in law, G. Ben Thompson, will actually show up for the inquest they have been so vocal about?

Oh, and please help us understand another Ford conundrum video at the end of our piece–in one interview, he says he’s well aware of Anna’s drugs and how to administer them, including methadone, and later, with my old friend, Geraldo Rivera, appears totally dumbfounded about her medicine chest. Read the rest of this entry »