UPDATE: Inevitably, the plot thickens. Multiple sources are claiming at least one of the pics is actually the real deal.

Despite a cover line that screams, "ANNA NICOLE: THE LAST PHOTO!", a caption inside the latest issue of the National Enquirer notes that the images of a blue-lipped Smith in a partially zipped body bag are "photo re-creations based on eyewitness accounts."

For the tabloid that famously bribed one of Elvis Presley's cousins to shoot photos of his open casket, isn't this resort to Photoshop a bit cheap? "I don't think so, because it's so realistic and there's so much news in the story," argues Enquirer editor in chief David Perel. (The article claims it was pneumonia, not a drug overdose, that killed Smith.) "If you had our images side-by-side with the actual photos, I don't know if you'd be able to tell them apart."

Perel was cagey about the methods used to "re-create" Smith's rigor-mortised visage. "It's almost the way a sketch artist works. There were so many different layers of how to achieve it, I couldn't even begin to describe it to you."

[Full image after the jump!]

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