Not mundane and pointless but I didn’t know where else to put this …
We’ve had some fun at Jack Whittaker’s expense here on the boards, but this is truly awful.
If this was a murder, I hope they find the SOB who did it and nail 'em.
His wife said a week earlier that winning the lottery has been nothing but trouble and she wishes they had never won. And the guy was a millionaire before he won anyway so its not like they needed the money.
There’s an interesting article in GQ this month about him. It outlines all the times he’s been robbed because he leaves thousands of dollars in his car and blabs his mouth to everyone about how he carries so much cash around. The police are getting really tired of having to deal with such an idiot.
Is there a book or an insightful web site about how lottery winners in general do after their big wins? If not, it is a book that needs to be written.
I’ve read before, maybe in a newspaper article, that in general lottery winners lead very happy lives. There are a few schmucks plus a few people who are just generally overwhelmed by the magnitude of money and it screws up their lives. I’ll see if I can find a cite.
Here’s an interesting response to a similar query in Google Answers, with several sublinks to studies and articles:
I have no basis for this, other than intuition, but could this have been a kidnap-for-ransom gone horribly wrong?
At this early time, it looks like probably not.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/21/whittaker.granddaughter.ap/index.html
I read somewhere that people who had problems managing money prior to winning the lottery have problems after winning the lottery. But those who were sensible about money before do OK. In other words, the lottery doesn’t change people’s nature.
The more I read about this case the madder I get. Here’s what I want to know:
- If she accidentally OD’d, how stupid is this boyfriend of hers to think that he can just dump the body, keep quiet all this time and everyone will believe him when he tells them it was an accident?
It probably was an OD. But I’d be a lot more likely to believe this boy if he had called 911 on December 4th, instead of letting everyone worry until they found her body.
- Where were the parents? The article says Brandi was living in Hurricane, and her mother lives in Beckley. That’s about 80 miles. I realize kids don’t always live with their parents, but so far there’s been no mention of her father. Maybe she was living with her grandparents?
The articles I’ve read have indicated that this kid had a habit of disappearing for a few days, and that’s why Whittaker waited 5 days to report her missing. They figured she’d come back. Who gives a 17 year old that much freedom?!
About 15-20 years ago I remember reading an article about lottery winners in Germany. The upswing was that a huge percentage of them were flat broke in about 3-5 years. Lots of idiots went out and bought 3 or more high end luxury cars and proceeded to smash them to bits after a night out drinking with their buddies. Very few of them were wise enough to invest in property or real estate, although a few invested in some businesses that failed. For the most part, it was a pretty bleak article. I think it implied that if you were an idiot before you won the money, the windfall just made you a richer idiot (albiet for only a short time before you were a poor idiot again.)
But this family in W. Va has to take the cake…sounds like they were a little strange before the big win, and the money doesn’t seem to have helped them an iota. Sorry to hear about the granddaughter, but her drug overdose and wild lifestyle probably had less to do with the lottery win that simply some bad choices as a teenager…although I don’t know her background so that is just MHO.
Well I know a few people that know Whittaker personally and it’s hard to explain why he become such a disappointment.
The guy has always acted and dressed like a cowboy, gambled, drank, et cetera. But from everything I’ve heard he ran a succesful company and could have retired and lived out his life with a good degree of happiness and ease before he ever won the lottery. So the guy did party, but lots of responsible people get loose during the weekends, there’s really no reason I can see that he went off the deep end with the lottery winnings.