The Lawyer Also Plays Her Lover

The facts are skeletal enough to be interpreted in vastly different ways.

"She had a lot of different people in her life," says Smith's longtime publicist, David Granoff. "This man had the patience of Job . . . I think he loved her."

"I don't think he loved her, ever," Smith friend Jackie Hatten says. "I think he was obsessed . . . just totally obsessed with her celebrity, her notoriety, her fame."

Larry Birkhead, who testified that he dated Smith from 2004 till 2006 and also says he is Dannielynn's father, has said Stern had a "fantasy" about being Smith's lover, but Smith never felt the same way. He said while he was in bed with Smith, Stern used to sleep on a couch on the floor below.

In an interview with Larry King, Birkhead said that he and Smith would have to lock the bedroom door sometimes to keep the lawyer out. Dannielynn's father would more likely be "the FedEx man" than Howard K. Stern, he said.

Birkhead testified that he and Smith had been trying to have a baby for a while. When Smith told him she was pregnant, he first asked if there was a chance the baby might belong to a man she'd been dating in South Carolina.

"She smacked me and said, 'I'm not a whore, you dummy!' "

Ah, love.

Birkhead testified that Stern continually interfered in their relationship. He also said that Stern kept Smith supplied with a duffel bag containing prescription drugs when she was pregnant and in a hospital trying to detox. He said he begged her to stop taking them.

Larry Seidlin, the judge who presided over the Florida hearing, speculated during one of his many courtroom soliloquies that Stern was "maybe an enabler."

(Hardly, says Bonnie Stern. "My brother doesn't use drugs and he doesn't promote using drugs.")

Meanwhile, Hatten and Smith friend Peter Nygard, a fashion designer, say that over time, Stern came to play "gatekeeper" with the phone in Smith's home, preventing her from getting certain calls.