(AP)March 16, 2009
LOS ANGELES - Psychiatrist Khristine Eroshevich surrendered Monday to face charges of excessively prescribing drugs to Anna Nicole Smith before the former model's overdose death at 39.
Eroshevich turned herself in at the Van Nuys police station, said police spokeswoman Rosario Herrera. She was released several hours later after posting $20,000 bail, according to a statement from her attorney Adam Braun's office.
After a lengthy investigation by the attorney general and other state and federal agencies, Los Angeles County prosecutors charged Eroshevich last week with conspiring with another doctor, Sandeep Kapoor, and Smith's lawyer-turned-boyfriend Howard K. Stern to provide Smith with thousands of prescription pills.
Attorney General Jerry Brown said Friday that the doctors wrote prescriptions in fictitious names and prescribed unwarranted amounts of highly addictive medications to Smith, knowing that she was an addict.
Brown described Stern as the "principal enabler" in the alleged conspiracy. Stern and Kapoor turned themselves in last week and were each freed on $20,000 bond.
Braun has said Eroshevich was only protecting Smith's privacy by writing prescriptions in false names and did not intend to commit fraud.
The psychiatrist, who had treated Smith since 2006, traveled several times over six months to the Bahamas, where the former Playboy playmate was living with Stern and wrote the prescriptions.
Smith died Feb. 8, 2007, in Florida after collapsing at a hotel. At the time, she was embroiled in a battle to inherit millions of dollars from her late billionaire husband's estate; her 20-year-old son Daniel had died of an overdose in the Bahamas just five months earlier in Smith's hospital room a few days after Smith gave birth to a girl, Dannielynn.
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1 comment:
This is so sad but would have happened just this way if Stern or these doctors had not been involved. Anna Nichole would have dumped anyone who did not do her bidding and would have gone through hundreds of friends and doctors to get her drugs. I think Howard really loved her and tried to protect her anyway he could. He knew if he did not do exactly as she asked he would be out just like Larry when he tried to get her off drugs. Addiction is a terrible disease and more do not get the help they need than those who do. Some cannot be helped. This does not mean we should not do everything possible to find new ways to help the addict.
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