How Powerball Killed a Kentucky "Winner"

It's the fucking Hunger Games, complete with poor-on-poor violence, entertainment for the rich and dead bodies.

From the Ashland Daily Independent:

David Lee Edwards, who went from unemployed ex-con to Powerball millionaire and whose life became a testament to the seductive and destructive powers of sudden wealth and fame, died Saturday in Community Hospice Care Center in Ashland.

Edwards was 58. The cause of his death was not immediately known, but he had been widely reported to have been in failing health in recent years.

Edwards also had been out of the public eye since returning to the Ashland area in 2007 after being kicked out of his mansion in an exclusive gated community in Florida.

Edwards was thrust into the national spotlight in August 2001, when he won a one-fourth share of a $280 million Powerball jackpot. At the time, it was the third-largest lottery pot in U.S. history. He opted for a lump-sum payment of $41 million, banking $27 million after taxes.

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Edwards acknowledged that he'd made some mistakes in his life, but he said that was all behind him. He also said he planned to put his newfound fortune to the best and wisest use he possibly could.

"I didn't want to accept this money by saying I'm going to get mansions and I'm going to get cars, I'm going to do this and that," he said. "I would like to accept it with humility. I want this money to last, for me, for my future wife, for my daughter and future generations."

Then, in practically the next breath, he said he planned to buy himself a Rolls-Royce and that Maddux wanted a Ferrari.

In November 2001, Edwards and Maddux moved into a 6,000-square-foot, $1.5 million home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. The couple married in Maui on New Year's Day 2002.

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The Edwardses' life eventually began to spiral out of control, fueled, according to a Florida newspaper account, by their escalating drug use. Police were called to their home on one occasion in 2004 after Shawna Edwards stabbed her husband with a crack pipe.

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The Edwardses eventually lost their mansion to foreclosure and moved into a warehouse complex that David Edwards had rented to store his cars and furniture.