Anna Nicole Smith, Larry Birkhead

Nassau (Bahamas), April 11 (AP): DNA tests proved it: Larry Birkhead is the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s million-dollar baby.

“I told you so!” the Playboy playmate’s former boyfriend said yesterday after emerging from a closed court hearing. He added: “My baby’s going to be coming home pretty soon.”

Birkhead then hugged his rival, Howard K. Stern, Smith’s lawyer-turned-companion who has been caring for baby Dannielynn since Smith’s sudden death in February.

Stern said he wouldn’t fight for custody, but a lawyer for Smith’s mother, Virgie Arthur, indicated she might. The judge scheduled another hearing for Friday in the pink colonial courthouse to discuss who will raise the girl, who could inherit hundreds of millions of dollars.

Stern said he loved the baby despite the DNA results and would support Birkhead.

“I’m obviously very disappointed, but my feelings for Dannielynn have not changed,” he said, adding of Birkhead: “I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure he gets sole custody.” Birkhead, a California photographer, had been fighting for custody of Dannielynn even before Smith’s death.

“Nothing’s been determined except parentage and I’m the father,” Birkhead said.

A crowd of about 250 people, many of them tourists, cheered from behind police barricades when Birkhead announced the DNA test results. The court’s DNA expert, Dr Michael Baird, confirmed it. “Essentially, he’s the biological father,” Baird said. Smith gave birth to Dannielynn in September.

The baby, whose full name is Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern, could inherit millions from the estate of Smith’s late husband, J. Howard Marshall II.