Film of Anna Nicole Smith’s Final Moments Auctioned by Media

Splash News & Picture Agency, a paparazzi outlet, sold a two-minute tape showing the final moments of Anna Nicole Smith’s life for more than $500,000 to an unknown buyer. The sale came after a bidding war among various media outlets. Splash News showed the videotape to potential buyers at their headquarters in Los Angeles Thursday afternoon, just a few hours after Smith’s death was announced.

The video, which lasts for about two minutes, was shot from three different angles, each about 50 feet away from Smith. The film shows paramedics working on Smith, who is lying on a gurney covered with a sheet and unresponsive. An oxygen mask over her face, Smith is being taken out of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida, where she collapsed Thursday afternoon.

The gurney is surrounded by a group of emergency responders, including paramedics and police. On two separate occasions the responders appear to be administering CPR unsuccessfully, according to FOX News Channel producer Christopher Spinder, who viewed the tape. "At one point they kind of started to look like they were going to put the gurney onto the ambulance and they kind of pulled the gurney back out a little bit so they could do a second administering of CPR," Spinder said.

Spinder offered details about Smith’s appearance. "You cannot see her face, you cannot see hair flowing out from underneath the mask," he said. "Again, if someone didn’t tell me this was Anna Nicole Smith, I totally would not have known it. You can’t even tell it’s a woman."

After the gurney is wheeled into the ambulance, the video shows the ambulance driving away from the hotel accompanied by a police escort. The next shot is of the ambulance at Memorial Regional Hospital.

"You do not see the ambulance pull into the hospital, and you do not see the body come out of the back of the ambulance," Spinder said. "You just see the ambulance sitting there. One would assume that the cameraman got there after the body had already been unloaded from the ambulance and was already in the hospital at that point."

Seminole Police Chief Charlie Tiger said that a private nurse called 911 after she found Smith collapsed and unresponsive in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel. There was no explanation as to why a private nurse was already on the scene. Tiger said that Smith’s bodyguard administered CPR, but Smith was declared dead upon arrival at the hospital. The cause of death is under investigation and an autopsy will be performed Friday.

Smith, who was 39, is survived by a 4-month old daughter, Dannielynn Hope Marshall. Smith’s son Daniel died in the Bahamas in September 2006, just three days after her daughter was born.