The world’s been a sadder place since Anna Nicole Smith died. Well, not sadder – quieter and less booby, mainly.

But she’s at peace now. The world can remember Anna Nicole Smith the way she wanted – as the giganto-titted clown-faced porno model who married that nearly-dead billionaire once – knowing that her name and reputation won’t be dragged up again.

Except they are. Anna Nicole Smith’s former boyfriend Howard K Stern and two of her doctors have been charged with conspiring to furnish her with drugs. Their sentence if convicted? To be haunted by Anna Nicole’s big face and silly voice forever.

Anna Nicole Smith died over two years ago, but the legacy she’s left behind is enormous. It’s because of Anna Nicole Smith that we’ve learnt to deeply mistrust spurious-sounding German princes. It’s because of Anna Nicole Smith that we’ve learnt the importance of leaving your will in order when you die. And, most of all, it’s because of Anna Nicole Smith that up to four generations of human adults now suffer from an oppressive phobia of clowns.

And it’s still not over, because although we know where Anna Nicole Smith got to be buried and who the father of her child was and even how her son died, we don’t know who gave her the drugs that she accidentally overdosed on.

Although we might be a little closer to finding out, because Anna Nicole Smith’s ex-boyfriend Howard K Stern and two of her doctors have just been charged with conspiring to furnish her with drugs. Reuters reports:

California Attorney General Jerry Brown said the trio furnished thousands of prescription pills to Smith, “often for no legitimate medical purpose.” “There is ample evidence that Doctor Eroshevich and Doctor Kapoor violated their ethical obligations as physicians, while Mr. Stern funneled highly addictive drugs to Ms. Smith,” Brown said.

OK, so we knew the doctors’ charges were coming – the offices of Khristine Eroshevich were raided back in 2007 for exactly this reason – but we genuinely didn’t think that Howard K Stern would be charged. He always seemed like such a trustworthy gentleman, in that he pretended to get married to Anna Nicole Smith, claimed that he’d fathered her baby even though he clearly hadn’t and generally spent most of his life hanging round her like some sort of creepy Nosferatu figure. We always had him down as a bang-up guy.

What happens now remains to be seen, but if Howard K Stern and the doctors did get convicted of conspiring to furnish Anna Nicole Smith with drugs, we’d be able to remember her in a much purer light.

No longer would the public image of Anna Nicole Smith be that of a drug-crazed topless bimbo with clear psychological defects, a tendency to paint her face like an actual nightmare and a desperate, grasping need for attention; but rather that of a topless bimbo with clear psychological defects, a tendency to paint her face like an actual nightmare and a desperate, grasping need for attention who was only drug-crazed because people gave her drugs when she asked them.

It’s how she would have wanted to be remembered. Let justice be done, we say.

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