Anna Nicole Weeps in Court, Cries Murder

January 31, 2001 -- Looks like all those acting classes have paid off for Anna Nicole Smith. The Playmate-turned-model provided ample entertainment in a Texas courtroom Tuesday, as she sobbed, yelled, and even accused the son of her late husband of murder.

Smith dropped out of the lawsuit over oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall's estate last month after a California bankruptcy judge awarded her $475 million of her husband's money. However, she was called back to testify by attorneys for Marshall's son Pierce Marshall, who previously tried to shut Smith out of the estate, claiming she was a gold digger.

Now Smith must testify against her late spouse's other son, Howard Marshall III. Pierce Marshall, 62, manages his father's estimated $1.6 billion fortune and is being sued for trying to keep his older brother from getting a cut of it. Pierce Marshall stated that his brother was excluded from his father's will because of an old business dispute.

Though relations between Smith and Pierce are far from amicable, his attorneys believe that her testimony will help their case against Howard. They spend much of the trial trying to discredit the former Mrs. Marshall.

During the heated trial, Smith claimed that Pierce had tried to let his father die by telling others not to help the debilitated old man if he happened to choke on his food.

Smith said she saved her husband's life one night when he began choking on soup she'd made him for dinner. "That's the night he died on me and I brought him back to life," she cried out. "It was Pierce — Pierce was the one who made the order not to do anything because it wouldn't do any good.

"He killed my husband," she wept.

It all seems so … Dallas-like, doesn't it?

Marshall's attorneys calmed Smith's accusation by pointing out that the elderly Marshall's 1995 death was caused by heart failure, not choking.

Texas native Smith wed the wheelchair-bound J. Howard Marshall in 1994, when she was 26 and he was 89. The pair met at the Houston club where she was a stripper.

Rusty Hardin, Pierce Marshall's attorney, told the court that his client had given his father the best possible medical care. "Do you seriously swear under oath that Pierce Marshall ordered people to let his father choke to death?" he asked Smith incredulously.

"Yes," a teary Smith replied.

"Miss Marshall, have you been taking new acting lessons?" Hardin asked.

"Screw you, Rusty," she said, in one of many angry exchanges between the two.

But Smith, who brought a photo of Marshall to the stand, said they had loved each other and had a sexual relationship despite his age. In describing a typical night with her then 89-year-old husband, she said, "We probably had sex, and then we went to sleep." (Like you needed to know that.)

Reuters contributed to this story.