Smith Says Family Ostracized Her

Tuesday, February 13th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

HOUSTON (AP) â€” Former stripper and Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith wept on the witness stand Tuesday as she told of being so ostracized by the family of her multimillionaire husband that she wasn't even told when the elderly ill man was dying.

``Everyone hated me and no one gave me a chance,'' Smith said during a second day of testimony in a trial over the estate of her late husband, Howard Marshall II.

Smith met Marshall while she was dancing in a Houston topless bar. They married in 1994, when she was 26 and he was 89. He died the next year.

Smith, 33, along with disinherited stepson J. Howard Marshall III, sued designated heir E. Pierce Marshall over the estate of her late husband. Smith dropped her Texas claim after a California bankruptcy judge awarded her $475 million in a separate case, but Pierce Marshall, 61, is appealing that decision and countersuing, claiming she interfered with his inheritance.

Two weeks ago, Smith spent three days on the witness stand before going to a modeling job in New York City. She returned to the stand Monday.

Under questioning Tuesday by her attorney, Tom Cunningham, she discussed her relationship with her husband and his illness in the spring of 1995, and said stepson Pierce Marshall won legal guardianship and limited her to 30-minute visits with her husband.

She said she was not told in May 1995 that doctors believed her husband could survive only six to 12 more months.

Asked why she was not told, she replied: ``I only know one word, and that's 'Pierce.'''