The former boyfriend of late model
Anna Nicole Smith was hit with five more charges stemming from the late centerfold's 2007 death, court records showed Wednesday.
Howard K. Stern pleaded not guilty to four counts of obtaining fraudulent prescriptions and one count of administering a controlled substance to an addict, according to the court documents.
Stern and two doctors -- Sandeep Kapoor and psychiatrist Khristine Eroshevich -- had already denied earlier charges of funneling drugs to Smith, who died in February 2007 from an accidental overdose aged 39.
Prosecutors say Stern, Kapoor and psychiatrist Eroshevich "repeatedly and excessively" provided Smith with prescription drugs prior to her death.
Stern's lawyer, Steve Sadow, Wednesday decried the charges against his client, insisting he had been "concerned over
Anna Nicole's health and safety" throughout their relationship.
"They're throwing something against the wall and hoping that it sticks -- it makes no sense at all," Sadow said outside the court.
According to affidavits and search warrants unsealed in Los Angeles this week, pharmacists had raised the alarm about the drugs sought on Smith's behalf by Kapoor and Eroshevich.
One pharmacist was so concerned by a request for a combination of powerful drugs that he recalled thinking: "They are going to kill her with this," the documents showed.
The pharmacist told investigators he called one of Smith's physicians and said he had no intention of filling a prescription that amounted to "pharmaceutical suicide."
The unsealed affidavits also pointed to evidence suggesting improper conduct by Kapoor and Eroshevich, including a photo showing Smith and Eroshevich naked and embracing in a bathtub.
A 2007 autopsy found that Smith's death -- a worldwide media sensation at the time -- was due to a lethal cocktail of anti-anxiety medication, methadone, antibiotics and other prescription drugs.
It came just months after her son, 20-year-old Daniel, died from an overdose in the Bahamas in
September 2006.
Born Vickie Lynn Marshall, Smith in 1994 married Texas billionaire oil tycoon Howard Marshall, who she had met earlier while working at a strip club. She was 26 at the time and he was 89.
Marshall died in 1995 after a 14-month marriage. But his adult son E. Pierce Marshall contested Smith's claim to the billionaire's inheritance in a case that reached the US Supreme Court.
Source: AFP