Did Anna Nicole Have A Secret Love Child?
Just when you thought the Anna Nicole Smith saga couldn't get any weirder, a Phoenix newspaper prints a story that another child may be linked to the deceased Playboy Playmate.
According to a report in the Phoenix New Times, a man named Johnny Soto, a member of the Tohono O'odham Native American tribe, claims his son Marshall is the result of an affair he had with Smith while she was vacationing at Paradise Valley's Sanctuary Resort and Spa in 2001. Soto says Smith concealed the pregnancy and allowed him to raise the son she bore.
Soto tells the New Times that he has the birth certificate and other documents to prove his story is true.
Is it a prank by the paper or a hoax by Soto?
The paper has printed phony stories in the past in honor of April Fool's Day.
Most of the New Times Web site's readers commenting on the article said that they were hip to the hoax. A few pointed to the paper's history of phony stories, as well as several "facts" in the article.
Charles Tatum is the name on the byline of the far-fetched story, which is the only article on the New Times Web site with that name.
Tatum — or at least a man at the New Times offices claiming to be Tatum — spoke to The Showbuzz insisting that the story was true and that he went to Soto's home.
In the story, Soto says the boy is named for Anna's deceased husband, J. Howard Marshall, who died in 1995.Timeline: Anna Nicole Smith
Soto says that Smith seduced him when he was a maintenance worker at Arizona's Sanctuary Resort and Spa on Camelback Mountain. The couple then engaged in "three-week sessions of lovemaking" with Smith.
Soto says Smith concealed her pregnancy in 2001 by putting on excessive weight — the extra pounds were visible in her E! Entertainment show, "The Anna Nicole Show."
Photos: Anna Nicole Smith — Tragedy Strikes
The newspaper says Soto has a birth certificate from Burbank's Providence Saint Joseph's Hospital listing Smith as the mother of Marshall Black Deer Soto, as well as numerous boarding passes for round-trip flights from Phoenix to Burbank, where the model resided.
Smith, who collapsed and died last month in a Hollywood, Fla., hotel, kept the pregnancy a secret from her lawyer-companion Howard K. Stern, says the newspaper, until about a month before the delivery.
Soto says they had kept in touch over the years.
"The last time she called in January, she didn't sound right," Soto tells the newspaper. "I knew she was again back on the drugs. Her speech was slurred, and she was saying crazy stuff about how there were rats under her bed trying to eat her feet, and that the Mafia was out to kill her for her money. Before I heard the news, I got a letter in the mail from her, written in lipstick, with a photo of her shaving Howard K. Stern's butt. I thought maybe she needed to be institutionalized. Obviously, the birth of Dannielynn and Daniel's overdose — it was just too much for her."
It sounds like a bizarre tale — especially the part about that final photo.
But, in a real life storyline that includes Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband and O.J. Simpson both claiming to have fathered Anna Nicole's daughter, anything is possible.
"Anna Nicole Smith is a tabloid-machine so our readers are neither surprised nor shocked," says Danielle Friedland of Celebrity Baby Blog. "Especially considering the drama both before and after her death and because Anna's will intentionally excluded future children, our readers are willing to buy Johnny Soto's story. Some think the boy even looks like Anna! But, others are reserving judgment until they have more information."