Entertainment> Celebrities

Service held for Anna Nicole Smith's son

(AP)
2006-10-09 08:47

MEXIA, Texas - Family and friends gathered at a church in this small town to mourn Anna Nicole Smith's 20-year-old son Daniel, who died last month while visiting his mother in the Bahamas after she gave birth to a daughter.

About 50 people attended the hourlong memorial service Saturday at First Baptist Church of Mexia for the son of the former Playboy Playmate and reality television star and her former husband Billy Smith, who still lives in Mexia.

Billy Smith looked grief-stricken during and after the service, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported. Anna Nicole Smith did not attend and Daniel's body was not brought to Mexia for the service.

Most relatives hadn't seen Daniel in years, but they recalled that when he was a child he liked to wear cowboy apparel and ride horses in this town of about 6,000 people, some 85 miles south of Dallas. Cousins recalled playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with him, and full-size cutouts of the cartoon characters lined the front of the church, the newspaper said.

Daniel Smith died Sept. 10 in his mother's hospital room in the Bahamas. According to a private autopsy, he died of an accidental combination of methadone and two antidepressants.

Anna Nicole and Bill Smith married in 1985 and divorced two years later. She married Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 1994, when she was 26 and he was 89. Marshall died the following year.