[ad_1]
A DEVASTATING twist left a millionaire lottery winner utterly penniless and residing in a shed lined with human poo.
David Lee Edwards, from Ashland, Kentucky, was unemployed when he took residence £21million ($27 million) in lottery winnings in 2001.
However a poisonous mixture of frivolous spending and drug addiction resulted within the ex-convict splurging over half of his earnings within the first 12 months.
“You realize, lots of people, they’re out of labor. Would not have hardly something,” he mentioned on the time.
“And so I did not need to settle for this cash by saying I’ll get mansions and I’ll get automobiles, I am going to do that and that. I wish to settle for it with humility.”
Shortly after his lucrative triumph, the spendthrift bought an opulent mansion, a non-public jet, and a bevy of luxurious motors.
He bought a £1.2million, 6,000-square-foot home in a non-public tennis and golf group in Palm Seashore Gardens, Florida, then spent £480,000 on one other residence close by.
Edwards then paid £1.5million for a LearJet, purchased three shedding racehorses and even invested a fibre optics set up firm and a limo enterprise for £3.5million.
However the luxurious residing rapidly floor to a halt.
Earlier than lengthy, he was reportedly hunched in a squalid storage shed in California surrounded by human faeces, collectively together with his spouse Shawna Maddux.
Ms Maddux quickly left and re-married however his first ex-wife and her new husband took pity on David and located him an area at a hospice care centre the place he died aged 58.
It was later revealed that not solely had Edwards spent his total fortune, however he additionally owed in excess of thousands to others.
He had even reportedly borrowed cash from a pal to pay his water invoice and after his water was turned on, he used the remainder to purchase a pizza and £7 value of lotto tickets from a neighborhood retailer.
The profligate had additionally traditionally struggled with drug habit.
After a automotive accident left him with lingering again ache, Edwards developed a reliance on OxyContin.
This fuelled a spate of arrests for possession of unlawful medication together with crack cocaine.
He even contracted hepatitis from the usage of intravenous needles.
However earlier than shedding each penny of his fortune in 2006, he paid half 1,000,000 to his ex-wife and her husband over custody of Edwards’ then-teenage daughter, Tiffani.
However speaking to Mail Online, Tiffani alleged that it was Maddux who ought to shoulder the blame for her father’s demise.
She mentioned: “Shawna simply began appearing loopy. It was medication that’s all.
“Folks saved telling my dad he ought to eliminate her however he by no means might.
“He tried to get her into rehab and he or she went a couple of occasions.
“He instructed me, close to the top, that his one remorse was not eliminating Shawna and taking care of himself however they have been hooked on one another.
“After which they have been simply hooked on medication.”
In 2004 Edwards himself requested a choose to commit Shawna to a rehab program, afraid that her “excessive” drug use would see her by accident overdose.
The distraught daughter additionally recalled her dad promising to “put aside $1million and I’d get it after I was 18. Then it was, after I was 21, then 25, then 30.
“Turned out he’d by no means even opened the account,” she mentioned.
However regardless of this, Tiffany later instructed how her dad had left her with nothing – not even a life insurance coverage coverage.
“There may be NO MONEY anyplace!!!!” she wrote on Fb.
Tiffani, was enrolled in a non-public faculty prep academy in South Florida throughout her dad’s quick brush with wealth, and now works as a clerk at an amusement park in West Virginia.
She noticed her dad the day earlier than he died and however mentioned he was “on their lonesome” – the one factor Tiffani mentioned he had by no means needed to be.


The lady mentioned the funeral was small, as she did not need the event to be a “circus like his life was”.
“He was an excellent man,” she added, “I do know he made fallacious decisions however he was an excellent man. Would he nonetheless be alive if he hadn’t received? Sure, I believe he would.”
[ad_2]