(Miami Herald (FL) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Apr. 6--With his girlfriend Anna Nicole Smith less than two weeks from giving birth, Howard K. Stern reached out to a Los Angeles County pharmacy.

Prosecutors allege he needed Methadone -- a powerful painkiller used to wean addicts off opiates such as heroin -- for his drug-addicted companion.

Just three days after Smith gave birth to a baby girl, her 20-year-old son, Daniel Wayne Smith, overdosed on a combination of powerful antidepressants and Methodone -- a drug he was never known to have taken or abused.

And five months later, Smith too would be dead, after taking a myriad of prescription medications that prosecutors say Stern and her two doctors had been warned were dangerous.

Details in a California criminal complaint against Stern and Drs. Khristine Eroshevich and Sandeep Kapoor, as well as other court documents obtained by The Miami Herald, raise questions about the deaths of both Smith and her son.

Questions the Broward's state attorney's office is also now asking in connection with the 39-year-old actress's death.

Earlier this month, California prosecutors blew open the bizarre legal Pandora's box when they arrested Stern, Eroshevich and Kapoor, filing a criminal complaint that outlines when and how the starlet acquired the numerous pills and medications that fueled her fatal habit.

Stern and Eroshevich are set to be arraigned on Tuesday; Kapoor on May 13, according to the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office. They face charges of prescribing a controlled substance to an addict; obtaining a controlled substance by fraud or deceit; and repeatedly and excessively giving drugs to Smith, among others.

According to the complaint, Stern and the doctors had secretly prescribed powerful medications to Smith for nearly three years.

Not pregnancy, a rehab and prenatal stint in a hospital -- or even the death of her son -- slowed the flow of drugs, according to California prosecutors.

J. Christopher Smith, part of a four-member defense team for Stern, said Stern "is 100 percent innocent," but would not comment on the specific charges his client is facing.

He added that the California case has upset Stern and that it should not affect Daniel's death in the Bahamas -- or the circumstances surrounding Anna Nicole's death at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino near Hollywood on Feb. 7, 2007.

Seminole police, which investigated Smith's death, the Broward County medical examiner and authorities in the Bahamas say they have no plans to reopen the cases or change their findings, which rule out foul play.

CORONER REMOVED Daniel Wayne Smith had enough Methodone in his system to kill him eight times over, an autopsy showed.

In the Bahamas, then-Coroner Linda Virgill called his death "suspicious" and "unnatural" during a press conference to announce an inquest.

One week later, the head of the Bahamian Supreme Court stripped Virgill of her designation as coroner and disbanded the Coroner's Court. No reason was given and the inquest was put on hold.

After several delays, the inquest ran its course, with an indeterminate cause of death.

In the days after the death of Smith's son, Stern continued to claim he was the father of her newborn, Dannielynn, the sole heiress to an estate potentially worth millions, pending an ongoing legal battle with the family of Smith's wealthy late-husband J. Howard Marshall II, whom she married when he was 89. A DNA test would eventually reveal that Smith's former boyfriend, Larry Birkhead, and not Stern, was the father.

Stern, who admitted during court proceedings to having lived off Smith's income for years, was named executor of her estate in Smith's 2001 will. He exchanged vows with his girlfriend in a mock wedding ceremony before Daniel was buried.

As for Smith's son, an independent pathologist's report said the 20-year-old was not a drug abuser. He was not known to take medications aside from Valium that he was prescribed for back pain and the Lexapro that Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, who met with Daniel four days before his death, had prescribed for his depression.

On the morning of Sept. 10, Smith, her son and Stern were all seen by a witness sleeping in hospital room 201. At 2 a.m., a nurse who was asked to bring extra pillows saw Smith in her bed, Stern on a second bed and Daniel in a chair.

About 9 a.m., Smith found her son unresponsive.

Nadine Carey, a registered nurse at Doctors Hospital who worked the "code blue" on Daniel Smith, told investigators she noticed two white pills on Stern's hospital bed when she and another nurse removed the bed to make room for the doctors and medical personnel attempting to revive Daniel.

"The room was very congested, so I, along with Nurse Jhancy Kota, pulled the bed that was near to the door out of the room and pushed it around the corner out of the way," Carey told the Bahamian authorities.

"After we had moved the bed I noticed in the middle of the bed on the top sheet two white tablets, one smaller than the other. I got both tablets off the bed and hold [sic] onto them until the doctors had finished their procedure." An October 16, 2006 report by a Bahamas lab identified the drugs as the muscle relaxant Carisoprodol and Methadone.

The Methadone tablet measured approximately 9.5 millimeters in diameter by 4.5 millimeters. "One side was scored in half," the report said. "No imprints seen. The tablet was partially dissolved." DANGEROUS DRUGS In the days that followed Daniel's death, prosecutors say Stern, Kapoor and Eroshevich funneled more pills to the Bahamas as doctors warned that the drugs they were prescribing to Anna Nicole were dangerous. The California complaint is unclear about which doctors warned of the danger and to whom they talked among the trio. The Attorney General's Office would not expand on the complaint.

The trio would continue giving her opiates, muscle relaxers and sleep aids, sometimes writing two prescriptions at a time, prosecutors say. Eroshevich and Kapoor would often prescribe the drugs in a Smith alias or in Stern's name and occasionally he would pay for them with Smith's credit cards. Stern would often pick up the medications or have them shipped to the Bahamas, prosecutors say.

"The thing that stands out is there was one person present both times," said Neil McCabe, attorney for Smith's mother, Virgie Arthur. "That same person, Howard K. Stern, was present and was known to have access to this whole drug pharmacy." Smith's mother and Birkhead -- both of whom declined to be interviewed -- have alleged in the past that Stern was controlling Smith with pills.

However, courtroom testimony and a coroner's report show she had a voracious appetite for medications and that she refused to go to a hospital after her temperature rose to 105 degrees as she suffered from the flu three days before her death.

Said Krista Barth, an attorney who is part of Stern's legal team: "He has been charged. No one will be happy until there is a public bloodletting of my client."

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