Judge orders trial in Anna Nicole Smith's death

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California judge on Friday ordered the boyfriend and two doctors for former Playboy model and actress Anna Nicole Smith to stand trial on charges of fueling her addiction to prescription drugs.

Smith, 39, died from a prescription drug overdose in February 2007.

Her longtime boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, is charged with 11 felony counts, including dispensing a controlled substance to an addict and obtaining a prescription for opiates by deceit.

Doctors Khristine Eroshevich and Sandeep Kapoor each face six felony counts, including unlawfully prescribing a controlled substance to an addict. All three defendants face charges of conspiracy to commit a crime.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Perry's decision on Friday to order Stern, Eroshevich and Kapoor to stand trial follows more than two weeks of lurid testimony that, in the court's view, established there was sufficient evidence to merit a criminal trial.

The famously buxom blond Smith died in Hollywood, Florida, shortly after the birth of her daughter and the death of her adult son, also from a drug overdose.

She was a Guess jeans model who gained fame by marrying an 89-year-old billionaire oil tycoon when she was 26.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Todd Eastham)