Anna Nicole Smith: The Latest

J. Howard Marshall, the late husband of former Playboy playmate Anna Nicole Smith, 33, was suffering from dementia caused by age and illness, a lawyer said on Wednesday in closing arguments of the trial to determine who gets Marshall’s multi-million dollar fortune, reports Reuters. Attorney Terry Giles, who represents Marshall’s elder son, Howard, who is seeking a share of the money, said “something happened” to J. Howard Marshall that transformed him from a frugal and private man into a “public laughingstock” who spent wildly on strippers. “There’s no fool like an old fool,” Giles said as lawyers began wrapping up their cases in the five-month-long Texas trial. Marshall married Smith in 1994 when he was 89 and she was a 26-year-old Houston stripper. Giles said the marriage was evidence of the elderly man’s increasing senility and made him an object of pity and ridicule. All of Marshall’s money is now controlled by younger son Pierce. Smith sued Pierce for half the money, but dropped the matter after a California bankruptcy judge said in a separate proceeding that she was entitled to $475 million of it. Pierce Marshall is appealing that decision. Closing arguments were expected to last until Friday, with jury deliberations to begin afterward.