By ARTESIA DAVIS,Guardian Senior Reporter,artesia@nasguard.com

Howard K. Stern hoped to make money from the sale of pictures of Daniel Smith's corpse, a coroner's court heard yesterday.

South Carolina real estate developer G. Ben Thompson Senior made the allegation during his testimony at the inquiry into the circumstances of the 20-year-old man's death. Smith died on September 10, 2006 while visiting his mother, Anna Nicole Smith, at Doctors Hospital where she had given birth three days earlier.

Thompson claimed that he was present when Stern, Ms. Smith's live-in lawyer, photographed Smith as he lay dead in a hospital bed. Smith died from an overdose of methadone, a synthetic heroin substitute that is sometimes used as a painkiller.

Thompson said he was shocked to see Stern taking photos. He claimed Stern said the pictures "might be worth some money one day." Thompson said he was surprised to hear that comment.

"I was totally shocked. He was taking pictures of a dead child in a bed. If he were taking pictures of my dead child, we would have fought," he said.

But Stern's lawyer, Shaka Serville, claimed that Thompson falsely attributed the comment to Stern. Thompson admitted that he did not tell police about the alleged remark during an interview with them. However, he pointed out that he did not tell police everything.

Serville suggested that Thompson felt Stern was standing in the way of sale of "Horizons", the mansion on Eastern Road that Anna Nicole Smith and Stern called home. But Thompson claimed he did not have a buyer for the property, which Ms. Smith claimed he had given her.

Thompson said that Daniel Smith seemed happy when he last saw him alive around 12:30 a.m. on September 10, when he left to return to "Horizons." He said he had asked Daniel to join him, but he decided to remain at the hospital with his mother and infant half-sister, Dannielynn.

Stern reportedly phoned Thompson around 8 a.m. and told him to hurry to the hospital. When he got there, Smith was already dead.