Anna Nicole Smith’s Death Was Just the Start of Boyfriend Howard K. Stern’s 8-Year Struggle

Late Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith must have had a thing for guys named Howard! She was married to wealthy businessman J. Howard Marshall until his death in 1995, after which she started dating lawyer Howard K. Stern. That latter Howard became a tabloid fixture, especially after Anna’s deadly overdose in 2007, but where is he today?

Howard befriended Anna in the late 1990s, when he was working for a law firm that represented her modeling contracts, and they actually got hitched in a legally nonbonding ceremony in the Bahamas in 2006. After her death in 2007, Howard got ensnared in a three-way custody dispute along with Larry Birkhead and Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt; but DNA evidence eventually named Larry as the biological father of Anna’s daughter, Dannielynn.

That wasn’t Howard’s only legal battle, though — not by a long shot! In 2009, he and two others were hit with conspiracy charges regarding Anna’s prescriptions for controlled substances. In 2010, Howard was found guilty, but a year later, Judge Robert J. Perry dismissed that conviction, believing Howard didn’t intend on breaking a crime when he used fake names on the prescriptions to protect Anna’s privacy. The judge upheld that decision in 2015, too, when the cast was retried.

Deal of the Day

Only $12! — (And No One Will Know They Aren’t Designer) View Deal

“Everyone did it,” Judge Perry said, per CBS News. “Everyone did it to protect her privacy from the prying eyes of the ever-present press representatives in Ms. Smith’s life… Howard Stern simply has been through enough. I find there is no reason to permit this case to go forward.”

Since then, all we’ve gotten is radio silence from Howard. The website Law Finders does list a lawyer named Howard K. Stern in Santa Monica, CA, so perhaps the guy still practicing law. And perhaps there’s a new buxom blonde in his life, but if so, she must not be as famous (or infamous) as Anna was!