Lottery Winners, Death and Murder Some lottery winners complain since winning the lottery their lives have become hell. That can be easily understood since they are probably fighting off distant relatives, friends and salesman with all kinds of schemes for getting their money. Just think of the amount of scam calls you get now and then think about how many you would get if it was known you won the lottery. Even people who have moved, changed their phone numbers and such have said they can’t escape the constant badgering of those who want a piece of the pie. There are worse things than this which have happened to lottery winners however. In 2006 a man named Abraham Shakespeare was an assistant truck driver. He asked his friend to get him some lottery tickets. One of the tickets was the big Florida winner and he collected $30,000,000. This was quite a haul. His friend thought he should have gotten some of the money since he purchased the ticked for Shakespeare and when he didn’t he sued his friend in court for $1,000,000 but lost the case. That seemed to be the end of the story but three years later Shakespeare disappeared and when his family went to the police they searched the property of his business partner. They found Shakespeare’s body under a fresh concrete walk. The partner was found guilty of murder. I guess Shakespeare might have been alive today if he didn’t win the lottery. There is a little more to this story, his former girlfriend bought a scratch off ticket years later and won $1,000,000. A man named Billy Bob Harrell Jr. was an employee of Home Depot until he won the Texas lottery in the amount of $31,000,000. Harrell was a very generous man and gave a lot of money to his friends and family. I guess this made them all very happy, but there was a problem. In under two years Harrell had no money left and became depressed. He was not only without money but also without a job. He got a hotel room and locked himself in it, and eventually got a shotgun and committed suicide. He had recently told someone winning the lottery was the worst thing that ever happened to him. Craigory Burch Jr. was a forklift operator from Georgia. He won the Fantasy 5 jackpot. It wasn’t in the millions but still was a nice piece of cash amounting to $434,272. Burch was said to be a very good person and would spend some of his money for Christmas presents for those in need. About one year after he won, masked men broke into his home and murdered him. Doris Murray had gotten a ticked to the Georgia lottery and she was lucky enough to have a winner, or was she lucky? She had won $5,000,000. She was not a big spender even with her ample winnings. One year after winning the lottery she was found dead in her apartment. Her boyfriend was charged with her murder. Her family members had spotted the boyfriend leaving the apartment with blood on him and called the police. This led to a car chase through several towns. Sometimes winning a lottery can be bad for your health. If you don’t believe me just ask Urooj Khan, oh wait you can’t because unfortunately he is dead. He purchased a lottery ticket in Chicago and hit the $1,000,000 jackpot. He had purchased many lottery tickets and seemed to love to buy them. The day after Khan won the lottery he dropped dead. Talk about bad timing. Kahn never got to spend one cent of his winnings. Tests later revealed he had been poisoned with cyanide. It isn’t just lottery winners in the United States who seem to have brought bad luck to themselves by winning the lottery, it happens in other countries also. Gerald Muswagon, won a Canadian Lottery in the amount of $10,000,000. He decided he had to share some of his good luck with his friends and bought them large screen televisions and even bought one a new house. Unfortunately, he now had enough money to purchase an endless supply of drugs and his life went downhill. He began to compile an arrest record. His business failed and he was arrested for a sexual assault. That was it for him, he decided he didn’t want to live any longer and hung himself. People can really turn on you when they realize you have a lot of money. Jeffrey Dampier found this out the hard way. He had won the Illinois state lottery in the amount of $20,000,000. He used some of the money to open a business. Dampier was also in an illicit relationship with his sister-in-law who turned on him when she saw dollar signs. She had a boyfriend on the side and the two of them conspired on how to get the rest of the money. They kidnapped Dampier and shot him to death. They were both convicted of the crime. Donald Savastano purchased a lottery ticket in New York. It turned out the ticket was a winner and he won $1,000,000. There is one thing about winning a lottery in New York which really disturbs me and it is the fact New York charges tax on the winnings. Anyway, back to the story. Mr. Savastano was ecstatic and mentioned the fact the winnings were going to change his life. Not to long after winning he began to feel ill and went to the doctor. He was told he had lung and brain cancer. He died three weeks after winning. It seems winning the lottery can really change one’s luck and not always for the better. Sometimes it isn’t even the winner that gets the bad luck but their spouse. That is what happened when one lottery winner had won a £9,000,000 jackpot. Her husband got bored and began to drink heavily. This led to his wife divorcing him and eventually him taking his own life. One would think just off the top of their head having this much money would make them happy, but just as money can make you happy, it seems it can also make you miserable. One of the things which seems to cause problems is some people who have never had money don’t seem to know how to handle it. Some seem to blow it all in a short period of time. One guy blew $31,000,000 in twenty months, others go broke in only a few years. As you can see this can lead to severe depression even if these people are back to the state they were in before their winnings and depression can lead to suicide.
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