Did Anna Nicole Smith Die From the Disease Lupus?
By Allie’s Gone Hollywood
Did Anna Nicole Smith die from a disease she kept from the world?
Tonight on ET, Anna’s longtime friend, FRANK RODRIGUEZ, drops a bombshell — claiming that the late TRIMSPA spokesmodel possibly died due to complications from the autoimmune disease, lupus.
A close friend of Anna Nicole’s since 1996 who also appeared on “The Anna Nicole Show,” the emotionally distraught Frank exclusively tells ET’s THEA ANDREWS, “I just remember her telling me she didn’t want her fans to remember her this way; that it couldn’t get out.”
Frank says Anna revealed her secret to him about two years after they met, in 1998. Lupus is a disease in which the body’s immune system attacks its own organs and tissues. It most often affects the joints, skin, kidneys, heart, lungs, blood or brain, which can result in achy joints, fever, prolonged fatigue and seizures.
“Her whole body would ache,” says Frank, who claims that Anna was in denial about her situation and may have not sought further treatment for the disease. “She would just shut down, basically; she would sleep for days. It was frightening at times, the seizures. She went into seizures a lot. She’d black out a lot of the times. She pulled me aside and she told me that she was on medication for it. She told me her condition.”
Frank says he believes Anna died because of lupus (”I think her body just shut down,” he says), and that he finally came forward because he wants to set the record straight and put the speculation to rest that Anna Nicole had been abusing drugs.
“[The public is] entitled to know the truth,” he says. “I mean, she’s gone and I don’t like what I hear about her. I don’t want people to remember her for what they say — that she was a drug addict. It angers me. It really, really upsets me.”
Frank says that Anna’s alleged former boyfriend, LARRY BIRKHEAD, did not know about the lupus until a little over a week ago. “I called Larry and told him; I thought that he should know,” says Frank. “I believe he’s the father [of DANNIELYNN] and I was concerned for his daughter. So I called him and I told him.” As for Anna’s partner, HOWARD K. STERN, “He may have known, he may have not, I didn’t know. Howard and I haven’t really talked.”
Today in the Bahamas, Howard acknowledged to ET’s MARK STEINES that Frank was a part of Anna’s inner circle, but he is skeptical about the lupus claim: “I’ve been told what Frankie said, and he may have believed it, but I don’t think it would be entirely accurate,” says Howard.
