Anna Nicole: No Lie

By Stephen M. Silverman

Thursday May 28, 1998 12:00 AM EDT

Outspoken as ever, former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith, 33, had to be asked by a Texas judge to stop lying in her testimony in a family battle over the $1.6 billion fortune of her late husband, oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall. Earlier this week, Probate Judge Mike Wood accused Smith of making wildly untruthful allegations against her stepson Pierce Marshall, 62, whom she accused of trying to kill his father. The jurist went so far as to threaten Smith with holding her in contempt of court if she did not answer questions accurately. "How am I contempting myself?" a bewildered Smith asked His Honor. "I'm sorry you think I'm a liar," she said. "The qualified privilege to testify does not allow you to make up stories," replied the judge. On Wednesday, reports Reuters, Smith said on the witness stand that she fears Pierce Marshall and that someone had wired her swimming pool to electrocute her. Yet when pressed by Marshall attorney Rusty Hardin, Smith admitted she had no proof of the booby trap.