Anna Nicole Smith gave a friend, the son of the guy who owned her squatter mansion in the Bahamas, the password for her laptop computer and told him to make sure to retrieve her computer and diary if “something ever happens… and if Howard is not around.” The guy followed her instructions and got her stuff after her untimely death, and this seems to have been the “robbery” by the rightful owners of the mansion that Howard K. Stern reported. Anna’s friend has turned over all of her things to the Seminole authorities investigating her death. (Anna died in Broward county, Florida, but she was on Seminole property, which is a sovereign nation with its own laws.)

A friend of Anna Nicole Smith who said she asked him to secure her belongings if “something ever happens” to her, turned them over to authorities in South Carolina because he feared her death was drug-related and a crime, the man’s attorney said Friday.

The friend, Ford Shelley, who lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C., wants prosecutors to determine if Smith’s computer equipment offers any evidence of a crime, Shelley’s Fort Lauderdale attorney, Walter “Skip” Campbell, said Friday.

“He has concerns . . . that something might have occurred that led to the death of Ms. Smith,” Campbell said. “He had some evidence and he wants it looked at by the authorities.”

On Feb. 22, Shelley testified in Broward Circuit Court that Smith entrusted him with protecting her personal belongings.

“She looked at me and said, `Ford, if something ever happens to me, and Howard is not around, take the computers and passports,'” Shelley said in court. “She gave me the password.”

The day after Smith died, Shelley went through the Bahamas home.

Shelley has said he found liquid methadone in a refrigerator in Smith’s bedroom, but left it behind.

He took two laptop computers, an external hard drive, eight or nine mini-videocassettes and documents and turned them over to the Horry County Sheriff’s Office in South Carolina on Feb. 13, Chief Deputy Paul Butler said Friday.

“He came in and said that she wanted to keep these items from falling into the wrong hands,” Butler said.

Horry County authorities turned the items over to the Seminole Police Department on Feb. 15 after talking with tribal police and Broward County homicide prosecutors. Campbell and authorities have declined to identify what the potential evidence is.

Campbell said law enforcement has not examined the contents of the computer equipment because of several legal issues:

Does law enforcement need a warrant to access the computer information?

What can be legally done with property surrendered to the Seminole Tribe, a sovereign nation not subject to Florida laws?

If the computer equipment contains evidence of a crime, Broward prosecutors want to be sure they follow the appropriate laws to ensure they could use it if criminal charges are filed.

Considering that Anna requested this favor, I would bet there’s some incriminating evidence somewhere. While I want to think that Howard killed her, and that her computer and diaries detailed her suspicions of his behavior before her death, the fact that she told her friend “if Howard is not around” suggests that she either trusted Howard – or that she was warning her friend Ford to only get her stuff when Howard was away.

The coroner in Broward County, who was expected to state the results of Anna’s Nicole Smith’s autopsy late last week, said he’s delaying an announcement on the cause of death due to new evidence that the sheriff has brought to light. He did not specify the evidence, but I would suspect that the computer and diary may be what he’s talking about.

There’s also a recent story from The National Enquirer that claims that Daniel’s autopsy results were fudged and that he had ten times the amount of methadone in his system than was reported, which indicates murder or suicide. (Now why would he kill himself after just meeting his baby sister?)

I predict an Enron-type suicide for Howard K. Stern within the next six weeks. The walls are caving in on this creep and he doesn’t have the wherewithal to stand trial, not to mention serve a life sentence for his sneaky crimes.

Then again, with all the twists in this case, maybe we’ll see another character emerge who plotted to kill the dugged-out former Playboy. It seems there were many people in Anna’s life that could have benefitted from her death, including a Native American guy who claims to have a five year old son by Anna. His evidence is compelling, but his prose is a little too blue to be convincing.

Some pictures from CelNet’s Flickr.