Zsa Zsa Gabor's Husband Claims He Fathered Anna Nicole Smith's Baby Girl
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The line of those claiming to be the father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter — a baby who could wind up being worth nearly a half-billion dollars — got a little longer Friday when the husband of 90-year-old Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor made the incredible claim that he fathered the child, and not two other men already wrangling over her paternity.
German native Prince Frederick von Anhalt, whose age has been reported to between 58 and 64, told FOX News that he had a decade-long affair with Smith.
"Two guys tried for the father and they're not the father at all," von Anhalt said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"It could be 20 men who are the father," von Anhalt said. "I liked her a lot ... she was a hot girl. If I had sex with her I don't talk about it ... I'm a married man," he said.
"If you go back from September, she wasn't with one of those guys, she was with me," von Anhalt said. A source close to Gabor and von Anhalt told FOX News he had no idea why the prince would make such a claim.
The bizarre news came after a judge on Friday refused to order an emergency DNA test on the body of Smith as part of a paternity suit involving the child, but he ordered the body be preserved until a hearing in 10 days, attorneys said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Two men have been contesting the paternity of 5-month-old Dannielynn, and experts say the custody decision could determine the child's inheritance. Smith's legacy could take years to untangle and could leave the baby girl with hundreds of millions of dollars or nothing at all.
In 1994, Smith married oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall, when she was 26 and he was 89. Marshall, who was worth $1.6 billion, died 14 months later and Smith spent much of the following decade battling his family over the estate.
A California court awarded her $474 million, but another court cut the award to $88 million and an appeals court then ruled she was entitled to nothing. The U.S. Supreme Court last May overturned that ruling and gave Smith a chance to pursue Marshall's fortune.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Larry Birkhead, a former boyfriend of Smith, claims he is the father of her baby, though another man, Howard K. Stern, is listed on the birth certificate.
Von Anhalt, Gabor's eighth husband, said he would file a lawsuit if Dannielynn is turned over to Stern or Birkhead.
Dannielynn, meanwhile, was being cared for in the Bahamas by the mother of Shane Gibson, the Bahamian immigration minister who is a close friend of Smith's, People magazine reported on its Web site, citing unidentified sources.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Birkhead's attorney Debra Opri requested in Friday's hearing that the judge order that DNA be immediately collected from the Smith, who died Thursday in Florida.
"Nothing was granted. Nothing was denied," Opri said after the hearing. "Everything is up in the air right now."
She said another hearing had been set for Feb. 20. The DNA was needed to connect Smith with Dannielynn "so that no one can switch the babies," Opri said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Opri also asked the judge to take jurisdiction over the child — reported to be in the Bahamas with friends of Smith — until her paternity is established. The judge did not rule on that request.
Stern, Smith's most recent companion, is listed on Dannielynn's birth certificate as her father. If it is determined he is the biological father and if he was legally married to Smith — which has yet to be established — Stern, not Dannielynn, would likely inherit Smith's estate, experts say.
Smith's sister, Donna Hogan, told FOX News that even if Stern is determined to be the baby's father, he isn't fit to care for the child and shouldn't get custody of her.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"It's usually his name on all the drugs," Hogan told FOX.
Ron Rale, an attorney for Smith, decried the push for the test so soon after her death. He said there was no urgency because his client's DNA would be irrelevant in determining who fathered the child.
"It is despicable that we would have an emergency notice and appear right now," Rale said outside court. "Just because my client is a celebrity, doesn't mean you have to appear in court and say, hey, give me your DNA."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Rale said he doesn't dispute that Birkhead has the right to know the child's paternity.
"We're OK with the DNA of the baby. It's going to occur," Rale told reporters. "I think Mr. Birkhead is entitled to that."
Von Anhalt and Gabor have been married for more than 20 years. Gabor, a onetime sex symbol herself and star of such 1950s films as "Moulin Rouge" and "Queen of Outer Space," has been in declining health in recent years and suffered a stroke in 2005. She was partially paralyzed in a car crash in 2002.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Von Anhalt said he and Smith first met in the 1990s when Smith was still married to elderly oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II. He said Smith approached him and Gabor at the Plaza Hotel in New York.
"She was a very big fan of Zsa Zsa and wanted to be like Zsa Zsa," he said. "She wanted to be a princess."
Von Anhalt's royal credentials have been the cause of speculation over the years. According to stories in the British press, he was born Robert Lichtenberg, the son of a German policeman, and bought his title after being adopted as an adult by a bankrupt daughter-in-law of the last kaiser.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He said the two started an affair soon after, meeting over the years in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. For much of that time, he said, Smith urged him to make her a princess like his wife.
But short of divorcing the actress, he said the only solution would have been adopting Smith. Von Anhalt said he did consider that and even filled out adoption papers, but Gabor refused to sign them.
He said he never admitted the affair to his wife, but that he's sure she knows. She would sometimes answer the phone when Smith called him, von Anhalt said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The next morning my wife would always ask 'Who are you talking to?"' he said. "'Oh Europe.' I always said it was Europe."
Von Anhalt expressed some regret about the affair, saying "Men do things we shouldn't do."
"She was a very sexy woman," he added. "To have an affair with her is the top, you know."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Von Anhalt and Gabor were married in 1986. Some records list him as her ninth husband but one of those marriages was annulled.
If Smith left no will, and if she and Stern weren't married, then the baby's father and child likely would split her assets, according to Christopher Cline, an estate planning lawyer with the firm of Holland and Knight.
"It's a really large legal quagmire," said Cline, who enumerated some of the many questions hanging in the balance.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I've never seen a case with more moving parts," he said, comparing the legal morass in its complexity with unraveling the estate of billionaire Howard Hughes — albeit with less money involved.
Cline outlined a series of crucial questions that range from the paternity of the child to Smith's country of residency and, most importantly, whether she had a will. If there was a will, Cline said, questions would arise about where it was drafted and signed. If she did not have a will, the laws of her country of residence would apply.
Smith had been living in the Bahamas recently and gave birth to her daughter there in September.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}It also wasn't clear how her death affects the lawsuit still pending against the estate of her late husband, J. Howard Marshall II. Experts in Texas, where Smith fought for millions of dollars in inheritance, said the court battles will go on.
"The claims will survive to her estate," said Charles W. "Rocky" Rhodes, a South Texas College of Law professor who has followed the complicated series of lawsuits involving Smith and the family of her dead husband.
"In criminal cases like we had with Ken Lay, where the defendant died, it was over," he said. "But in civil cases where the claim is for money, your estate and the heirs you have from the estate are able to continue the litigation in the name of the representatives of the estate."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}E. Pierce Marshall, her late husband's son who had been fighting her over his father's estate, died in June. But the Marshall family vowed to continue the fight.
Family lawyer Mark Vincent Kaplan of Los Angeles, who has handled many celebrity paternity cases, said he believes Stern initially will receive custody of the child because he is listed on the birth certificate.
"The paternity test should be expedited," he said, "because if he is not the bio dad he has no rights to custody. But I predict there will be a will saying that Howard K. Stern is the father."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Another complication could arise if Stern was the lawyer who drew up the will and may be listed as the executor, he added.
"By law, he can't be both the executor and the beneficiary," Kaplan said.
The Smith saga has been filled with so many deaths, Kaplan said, that lawyers are beginning to talk about a curse on the litigation. Just five months ago, Smith's 20-year-old son Daniel died suddenly in the Bahamas in what was believed to be a drug-related death.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}FOX News' Catherine Donaldson-Evans and The Associated Press contributed to this report.