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Earlier on Thursday, a judge ruled that an expert working for ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead will be allowed to review DNA samples taken from the body to make sure no one will substitute other samples in the paternity fight over Smith's daughter Dannielynn.
Probate Judge Larry Seidlin also ordered the medical examiner – at the request of Birkhead's attorneys – to take one more oral swab of Smith's body for review by Birkhead's expert, as the former boyfriend wages his fight to prove that he, and not Smith's companion Howard K. Stern, is the child's father.
The order came after nearly three hours of argument and testimony. Attorneys for Birkhead, Stern and Smith's mother Virgie Arthur gathered in Fort Lauderdale to lobby for control of Smith's body.
The hearing, held in a crowded conference roon attended by at least six lawyers, with another on the phone, took a midday break but will resume later today.
During the hearing, Joshua Perper, the medical examiner who has Smith's body in cold storage following her death Feb. 8, repeated that he has saved enough samples for the death investigation and to prove eventual paternity. "There is absolutely no justification for additional tests," he said.
But attorneys for Birkhead, who repeatedly say they fear a "bait-and-switch" of DNA samples that might work against Birkhead, pushed for review of those tests along with more testing, and asked the judge not to release the body just yet. Birkhead's DNA expert, Michael Baird, pushed for the additional oral swab, and the judge agreed after Perper said it was a simple process that could be done today.
Still unresolved is the matter of who will get the body, a decision the judge hinted may not come for several days. Smith's mother, who wants to bury Smith in her native Texas, sat silently through the hearing.
Neither Birkhead nor Stern – who wants to return the body to the Bahamas to be buried next to Smith's son Daniel, who died last September – were present.
