LOS ANGELES: Former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith was buried in a melodramatic ceremony that reflected her life of tainted glamour, 22 days after her fatal collapse in a Florida hotel. The funeral on March 2 followed a protracted legal battle over the rights to her estate and body and came after a last ditch appeal by her mother to delay the burial was rejected.

The bitterness of the fight spilled over in a eulogy by Smith’s partner Howard K Stern. “The truth, there’s only one truth, and it’s not what people say in court, even if those people are your blood relatives,” said Stern. “It’s not what people who claim to be your friends say to the media.”

The service took place under tight security, with the celebrity TV show Entertainment Tonight reportedly paying around $4 million for the rights to the press coverage. Pictures posted on the website showed the church decorated with pink flowers and a closed mahogany coffin draped in a pink shawl. Smith was reportedly dressed in a pink couture gown emblazoned with a heart to signify that she died of a broken heart.

The mourners included Smith’s estranged mother Virgie Arthur, her companion Howard K Stern and former boyfriend Larry Birkhead.

Smith, 39, collapsed and died on February 8 in a Florida hotel. She was buried next to her son Daniel in Nassau’s Lakeview cemetery. She wore a tiara and clutched an urn containing the ashes of her late husband, oil tycoon J Howard Marshall II, whom she married when he was 89 and she 26.

Daniel tragically died at age 20 in his mother’s hospital room, where he was visiting her two days after Smith gave birth to her daughter Dannielynn in September.

Legal action will continue over custody of Dannielynn, who stands to inherit a fortune if courts uphold Smith’s claim to half of Marshall’s $1.6 billion estate. The key players in the custody battle are Arthur, Stern who is listed as the father on Dannielynn’s birth certificate, and Birkhead, who also claims paternity of the child.