Associated Press Writer
A pathologist who gained fame as a critic of the government's probe into John F. Kennedy's assassination and a consultant in Elvis Presley's death performed a second autopsy Sunday on the son of Anna Nicole Smith.
Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathologist from Pittsburgh said before the exam he would retrace the procedures of the local coroner's office, which labeled the 20-year-old's death "suspicious" because the cause was unclear.
"It's a simple examination," he said. "And even though it's the second (autopsy), it's basically the same."
Wecht was accompanied by Smith's Bahamian lawyer, Michael Scott, who told reporters the TV star had ordered the follow-up autopsy to end "media speculation surrounding the matter." He said he could not say when a cause of death would be issued from Wecht's autopsy.
"It could take weeks to get a definitive and final answer to that," Scott said.
Daniel Wayne Smith died Sept. 10 in a hospital room where the reality TV star and former Playboy model was recuperating from giving birth three days earlier. Investigators have said they did not find evidence of drugs in the room or obvious signs of a crime.
Bahamian pathologists performed an autopsy Tuesday and ordered further analysis, including a toxicology test to be completed this week.
Wecht, 75, is facing trial on charges he used his staff when he was the Allegheny County coroner to do work for his multimillion-dollar private pathology practice. He resigned from office in January and contends he did nothing wrong.
Wecht, who holds both law and medical degrees, received international prominence as a critic of the Warren Commission's single-gunman theory of John F. Kennedy's assassination. He has also worked as a consultant on cases such as Presley's death and the slayings of Laci Peterson and JonBenet Ramsey. He is regularly interviewed on television about high-profile cases.
Head coroner Linda Virgill said it was not unusual for families to ask for an independent examination.
Reginald Ferguson, assistant commissioner of the Royal Bahamas Police Force, has said that although there were no obvious signs of criminal wrongdoing in the death, it was too early to draw conclusions. An inquest is scheduled to begin Oct. 23.
Smith, 38, who came to the Bahamas during her pregnancy to avoid media scrutiny, is free to leave the Caribbean island chain, authorities have said.
Daniel Smith, who appeared several times on the E! reality series "The Anna Nicole Show," was the son of Anna Nicole and Bill Smith, who married in 1985 and divorced two years later.
The identity of the father of her newborn daughter has not been publicly released.
Smith married Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 1994, when she was 26 and he was 89. He died the following year and she has since been involved in legal disputes over the estate.
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