Cradled by one of the men who claims to be her father, this is the tot caught in a tawdry tug of love following the death last week of her mother Anna Nicole Smith.

Lawyer Howard K Stern, pictured with his sister Bonnie, yesterday picked up five-month-old Dannielynn from the house in the Bahamas he shared with Miss Smith.

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• Anna Nicole's aunt battles for custody of Dannielynn, the star's £240m baby

The little girl stands to inherit an estimated £250 million of the £1 billion left to Miss Smith by her late husband, oil tycoon J Howard Marshall, who died 12 years ago at the age of 90.

Although Mr Stern is listed as Dannielyn's father on her birth certificate, Miss Smith's half-sister, Donna Hogan, claimed yesterday that the former Playboy model was inseminated with Mr Marshall's frozen sperm.

There are also rival claims to the child's paternity from Miss Smith's ex-boyfriend, celebrity photographer Larry Birkhead, and Zsa Zsa Gabor's 69-year-old husband Prince Frederic von Anhalt.

Mr Stern was filmed sobbing and clutching the little girl to him. He has secured a deal with two American tabloid TV shows.

Choking back tears, he said: "This is the only piece of Anna I have left. I wouldn't be here now, but I had to get back to Dannielynn. I know Anna loved her more than anything in the world."

But his tears quickly turned to venom as he lashed out angrily at Miss Smith's estranged mother, Virgie Arthur, who has blamed Mr Stern for her daughter's death from a suspected drug overdose.

Mrs Arthur spent the weekend trying to get Bahamian police and social services to intervene on her behalf and take Dannielynn into care so that Mr Stern could not get to her.

Yesterday Mr Stern hit back: "Anna despised that woman.

"As long as I have breath in my body, that woman will not see Dannielynn. She has no right. She can't take my baby. She can't take Anna's baby."