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A Powerball winner has died broke and all alone in hospice care, just 12 years after raking in $27million cash from a lottery jackpot.
David Lee Edwards, a convicted felon from Ashland, Kentucky, bought a mansion in a gated community, dozens of expensive cars and even a LearJet with the share of a record $280million jackpot he won in August 2001. But drug addiction and his free-spending ways left
Edwards and his wife Shawna broke and living in a squalid storage unit contaminated with human feces within five years. Shawna left him not long after and remarried.
Unhappy ending: David Lee Edwards, pictured with his new wife Shawna at their Malibu wedding shortly after winning the lottery, died Saturday in hospice at age 58
Edwards bought this 6,000-square-foot mansion in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, for $1.5million. He lost it five years later
Big spender: Edwards spent $1.9million on this LearJet to ferry him between his mansion in Florida and his hometown in Kentucky. He even had a personal pilot In the end, Edwards’ first ex-wife and her husband drove him from Florida back home to Ashland. He died in hospice care Saturday at age 58. Edwards’ friends and family say his tragic story can serve as a parable about the corrupting influence of money. By the end of his life he had lost every last penny of his $27million fortune and died owing thousands of dollars to friends. Both Edwards and Shawna contracted hepatitis from their needle drug use and both were arrested multiple times and had numerous run-ins with police for possession of crack cocaine, prescription pills and heroin, the Broward-Palm Beach New Times reported in 2007.
http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2007-08-16/news/powerfall/full/
David Lee Edwards, a convicted felon from Ashland, Kentucky, bought a mansion in a gated community, dozens of expensive cars and even a LearJet with the share of a record $280million jackpot he won in August 2001. But drug addiction and his free-spending ways left
Edwards and his wife Shawna broke and living in a squalid storage unit contaminated with human feces within five years. Shawna left him not long after and remarried.
Unhappy ending: David Lee Edwards, pictured with his new wife Shawna at their Malibu wedding shortly after winning the lottery, died Saturday in hospice at age 58
Edwards bought this 6,000-square-foot mansion in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, for $1.5million. He lost it five years later
Big spender: Edwards spent $1.9million on this LearJet to ferry him between his mansion in Florida and his hometown in Kentucky. He even had a personal pilot In the end, Edwards’ first ex-wife and her husband drove him from Florida back home to Ashland. He died in hospice care Saturday at age 58. Edwards’ friends and family say his tragic story can serve as a parable about the corrupting influence of money. By the end of his life he had lost every last penny of his $27million fortune and died owing thousands of dollars to friends. Both Edwards and Shawna contracted hepatitis from their needle drug use and both were arrested multiple times and had numerous run-ins with police for possession of crack cocaine, prescription pills and heroin, the Broward-Palm Beach New Times reported in 2007.
http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2007-08-16/news/powerfall/full/