David Lee Edwards was a high-school drop out from Westwood, Kentucky. He was an ex-con who had spent a third of his life in jail for robbing a gas station.
Divorced and jobless, the only good thing in his life was his daughter, Tiffani.Then, on Saturday 25 August 2001 he took home $27m after winning the Powerball jackpot.
But Edwards was not one of life’s winners. And winning a share in the third largest Powerball jackpot in American history, spectacularly failed to change that fact. Edwards died three months ago at the age of 58--alone and penniless in a Kentucky hospice.
Today, in an exclusive interview with MailOnline, his daughter, Tiffani, has broken her silence to give her own account of the man, the cash and the chaos of drug addiction and reckless spending that saw him burn through it all within five years and dead in just over a decade.
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Flying high: Ex-con and robber David Edwards (left) won $27m on the Powerball in 2001. Here he is pictured with his daughter, Tiffani, then 11, and second wife Shawna on the private Learjet he bought after the win
Baby drive my cars: Edwards spent $1m on cars almost immediately and moved the family from Kentucky to a mansion in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. He had so many neighbors complained it looked like a parking lot
Impulse: Edwards began spending recklessly days after his win and the fortune would be all gone within just five years. Tiffani is pictured here with some of his huge sword and armor collection - after a visit to Cinderella's Castle in Disneyland he bought every one for sale
For the first time she has revealed the life of excess and ruin which held America in horrified thrall and that she witnessed first hand. And she has spoken movingly of the complicated troubled man she knew and loved as her father.
Speaking from her home in West Virginia, she said: ‘I didn’t know we was broke until we was broke but when I knew it was done I felt so relieved that part of our lives was finally over.
‘In the beginning it was good. I had a dad. That’s all I’d wanted. In the end I was devastated because I’d lost my dad and I knew it.’
Tiffani’s life today is very different from the one she hoped for when her father scooped the jackpot, because it is precisely the same as the one she could have expected had he not. She lives only a handful of miles from where she was born.
At 23 she is a stay-at-home mother of three, Isabella, 5, Bradlee, 4, and baby Alexis, 3 months, who was born the day after her father’s funeral.
She lives with Brandon, her partner of six years in his mother’s house, though they hope to move into a place of their own soon. They have no car and slender means. They have struggled with their own drug use but claim today to be three years clean. Their lives are like those of millions of others - not easy.
‘In the beginning it was good. I had a dad. That’s all I’d wanted. In the end I was devastated because I’d lost my dad and I knew it’
But she said: ‘I wouldn’t trade this life for that one because there was so much sadness that came with it.’
Eleven-year-old Tiffani was the first person Edwards called early on the Sunday morning after his win.
Her mother, Gail, had divorced Edwards when Tiffani was one-year-old and in a bizarre twist remarried on the very day of her ex-husband’s big win.
Tiffani recalled: ‘I was staying at my aunt’s because my mom was on her honeymoon. The phone went real early.
‘It was my dad, he said, “Are you sitting down? Daddy’s won the lottery baby. I’m sending some people to come get you”. I just freaked out and went running through the house yelling and screaming.’
But even in that moment of excitement there was a hint of a dark reality of Edwards’s life that no amount of money could change.
Tiffani explained: ‘The reason my dad sent people to get me was because of the security risk. He was known around here by people who knew I was his only daughter. He was worried they would kidnap me for money.’
Regrets: Tiffani today, aged 23. She is a broke mother-of-three unable to afford to drive a car in West Virginia
Future: 'I know he (Edwards) wanted more for me than this,' said Tiffani, pictured with her youngest Alexis, and partner Brandon. 'But I’ve seen what more does and I’m happy'
Tiffani was driven by the ‘associates’ sent by her father, to the nearby Ashland Plaza Hotel.
She said: ‘There were so many presents. My favorite was a Gameboy Advance and he’d got all the Pokémon games I loved. And he got me a little teardrop diamond ring. Of course I don’t have that anymore.’
On the day he accepted his winning check Edwards stood next to then fiancée Shawna wearing a suit, his long hair slicked back into a ponytail and said, ‘You know a lot of people they’re out of work. Don’t have hardly anything.
‘And so I didn’t want to accept this money saying I’m going to get mansions and I’m going to get cars, I’m going to do this and that. 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 he went to Las Vegas and blew $200,000 in six days. When he came home he bought a $1.5million, 6,000-square-foot house in a gated community in Palm Beach Gardens.
He spent $78,000 on a gold and diamond wristwatch and $159,000 for a bracelet he fancied. He also bought a $600,000 home in Palm Springs for a family member and a $250,000 home in West Virginia for Shawna’s mother.
And when Tiffani said she wanted to live with him he flew her and her mother from Kentucky to Florida on his $1.9 million Learjet and later claimed to have paid his ex-wife $500,000 in a revised settlement allowing the child to stay with him.
He bought a Chevrolet camper van and a Lamborghini Diablo. Within just months of his win he had more than a million dollars worth of cars sitting in front of his Palm Beach Gardens home. Neighbors complained he was bringing down the tone. His place looked like a car dealership.
From the very start he was spending money at an unsustainable rate. And it only got faster.
But in the beginning, for Tiffani, it was a golden time. She recalled: ‘I was growing up, reaching adolescence so my mum and I butt heads. She had baby twins by her new husband, I wasn’t the focus anymore and so I just wanted my dad for a while.
Opulence: Tiffani enjoyed a charmed life at the Florida mansion she moved into with her father and his fiance. Before his win she had been living with her mother but Edwards paid her $500k to ensure Tiffani lived with him
Gilded: Tiffani had a huge princess bed in a room with 30ft ceiling. She was looked after by nannies and maids
Posh: After she moved in to the mansion, Tiffani was sent to a $16,000-a-year private school that she 'hated'
‘Just before he won the lottery he’d been poorer than he’d ever been. He’d lost his job and he didn’t even have the utilities turned on in his home so I couldn’t go over there very often.
‘But he would always try to be there for me. He’d come round. He’d bring me clothes. He did his best.
‘Now he had this big house, a pool, and my room was just done like any girl’s dream room.’
The walls were covered in angels, she recalled, the ceiling was 30ft high and her bed had a pink princess canopy princess. She had a flat screen TV on the wall and a computer at her desk.
Edwards hired help to look after Tiffani and her younger stepbrother, Matt, then 4, one of Shawna’s three children from a previous relationship.
‘Now he had this big house, a pool, and my room was just done like any girl’s dream room... it was just normal to me to have that jet on standby to see my mother'
She said: ‘We had nannies and maids and a butler. My dad was out a lot, trying to set up businesses or I don’t know what. He was trying to do it right.’
Part of that meant enrolling Tiffani in The Batt Private School, where annual tuition was more than $16,000.
She said: ‘I hated it. I’d been at public school till then and I hated the idea of wearing uniform. I rebelled. I got into trouble and I got moved pretty soon to Juno Beach Prep. I stayed there for two years.’
Tiffani recalled: ‘I remember dad sitting me down and making me write an apology letter to the school and to a boy I’d hit one time. He could be lenient and fun but he was strict too. He always tried to instill a right way of behaving. He wanted me to be educated in a way that he wasn’t.’
Pausing to reflect, she added: ‘That’s something I gained from all this, was a good education and that’s because of him.’
Every month Tiffani would board the private jet and fly to see her mother. She said: ‘It was just normal to me to have that jet on standby.
Show off: Edwards was so free with his money that he would give wait staff $10,000 tips and was bilked out of hundreds of thousands in dubious business deals. Pictured here are more of his suits of armor and swords
Class: Every month Tiffani would board the private jet and fly to see her mother. She said: ‘It was just normal to me to have that jet on standby'. Pictured here is Shawna's mother, Ethel, inside the Learjet
‘We were friends with the pilot; we would go on his yacht. That was the way it was. I can look back now on that time and say it was a great experience. It was crazy but my dad took care of me.’
For her thirteenth birthday he flew her back to Ashland to where many of her friends still lived and rented out the presidential suite of the Ashland Plaza Hotel for a slumber party.
But however much he wanted to care for his daughter, Edward’s spending was lavish and feckless. A trip to Cinderella’s Castle in Disneyland, left Edwards fascinated by the suits of armor and Knights’ swords he saw there.
Tiffani said: ‘He bought every single one of them. He loved swords and armor.’
He had a collection of more than 200 swords. What he didn’t spend he gave away to friends, charities and even strangers on a whim.
Tiffani recalled one occasion when she and her father were at a Denny’s diner being served by a trainee waitress. She told them that her mother was ill and she was caring for her. When it came time to tip Edwards handed her a $500 bill.
Tiffani said: ‘She was freaking out. Then we got out to the car and took a $10,000 stack from the glove compartment and told me to go give it to her. That’s the sort of thing he did all the time.
‘He donated $50,000 to the Boys’ Club here because he grew up around it and he wanted to help boys who were like him. There’s a plaque on the wall of the hospice where he ended up dying because he had donated so much to it they could build a new wing.’
He received begging letters every day and fell for many of them. And he was bilked out of hundreds of thousands in dubious business deals.
At the very beginning a financial advisor had put $16million of Edwards’s winnings into extremely safe bonds and annuities in order to protect him from himself. But he cashed them out at the first opportunity.
According to Tiffani: ‘My dad had a soft heart and that was his downfall really. I know he made his choices and he was responsible too but his biggest problem was he tried to help Shawna when he should have tried to help himself.’
Gentle: Tiffani said that her father's 'soft heart' was to turn out to be his biggest downfall. Here they are pictured together before the big win when the family lived in Ashland, Kentucky
Split: Edwards and his first wife Gail with Tiffani in 1991. Edwards spent a lot of his adult life in prison before hitting the jackpot. He went on to develop a drug problem too. Gail divorced him when Tiffani was a year old
Both Shawna and Edwards had struggled with drug addiction in the past. At first it was the shadow over their often volatile relationship. Ultimately it was all that was left of their relationship.
Tiffani explained: ‘Within a couple of years it was clear that Shawna was using more and more. I don’t know about my dad at that stage. At first he was careful to keep his use hidden from me but later he got more careless.’
Things started disappearing from the house – her father’s Rolex, her jewelry, Shawna’s jewelry, Shawna drove off in her Escalade and returned without it, Edwards’s Bentley disappeared from its space in front of the house.
Edwards was getting more absent from his daughter’s life.
‘At first we were still looked after by the nannies and butlers and what have you but then they left because they weren’t getting paid and it just went downhill from there’
She said: ‘At first we were still looked after by the nannies and butlers and what have you but then they left because they weren’t getting paid and it just went downhill from there.’
Edwards had hovered on the brink of addiction ever since a car accident back in 1988 had left him with chronic back pain and a thirst for Oxytocin.
But according to his daughter it was Shawna who dragged her father back into that world.
She said: ‘Shawna just started acting crazy. It was drugs that’s all. People kept telling my dad he should get rid of her but he never could.
‘He tried to get her into rehab and she went a few times. He told me, near the end, that his one regret was not getting rid of Shawna and looking after himself but they were hooked on each other. And then they were just hooked on drugs.’
Prize: Edwards used some of the money to buy this rare Chevrolet, of which only 200 were ever made
Debts: When the cash ran dry all of the status symbols of their wealth - including this $90,000 Dodge Viper - began to disappear. Tiffani assumes to was to buy more drugs or pay off mounting debts
Edwards filed for divorce in 2002 but the couple reconciled.
A few months later Shawna's mother asked the state to intervene and put her in involuntary care after dozens of rehab attempts had failed. In 2004 Edwards himself asked a judge to commit Shawna to a rehab program, afraid that her ‘extreme’ drug use would see her accidentally overdose.
Tiffani recalled: ‘During all this time when he was just looking after Shawna he was getting sucked in too. I started rebelling but they didn’t notice. I got into trouble and smoked pot and went joy-riding but it didn’t matter to them.’
At night Tiffani and her little brother Matt would hide outside to escape the violent fights that broke out between their parents usually, she said, when Shawna wanted to get high and her father refused to give her money.
On one occasion she stabbed him in the leg with her crack pipe. In September 2005 just four years after his lottery win, police were called to Edwards’s Palm Beach home.
‘I heard her on the phone to drug dealers telling them they could come round and cook up at our house. I was scared'
It was Tiffani who had made the call, she revealed: ‘It was the final straw. My dad was in the hospital because of his back, the CPS already knew about us because we weren’t enrolled in school three months after term started [it turned out Edwards couldn’t afford the tuition fees] and Shawna was meant to be taking care of us because all the help had quit.
‘I heard her on the phone to drug dealers telling them they could come round and cook up at our house. I was scared.
‘I called a relative in California and he said, “You have to call the police. You don’t know what these people are capable of.”
‘So I did. I didn’t expect them to turn up with the whole task force, in unmarked cars, with their tactical weapons with lights on and drug dogs.’
Tiffani never slept in her princess canopy bed again after that night, though it had long since ceased to be the fairytale existence it once was.
She admitted: ‘I broke back into the house a while later to get some of my stuff and I don’t know why they had done it but Shawna and my dad had just taken everything and trashed it.
‘Everything in my room was out of drawers, on the floor, broken, everything everywhere in the house – just trashed. To this day I don’t know what was going through their minds.’
Hope: Edwards and Shawna enjoyed a lavish wedding soon after his win. But they both began to use drugs heavily. It was Oxycontin at first, then when the money ran out they moved on to cheaper crack
Busted and broke: In 2005 police officers broke down the door to the mansion in a drugs raid. Shawna and Edwards were arrested. Tiffani and her brother Matt were put in foster care, never to return to the house
Officers on the scene that night found cocaine in Edwards’s and Shawna’s bedroom, which was littered with used syringes.
Tiffani said: ‘He liked Oxytocin but when the money ran out he used heroin because it was cheaper.’
Tiffani, then 15, and Matt, just eight, were placed in foster care. ‘I got lucky,’ she said, ‘A neighbor was allowed to take me in and he was a good man, his maid became my foster mom.
‘I remember on my sixteenth birthday, we’d moved to a different neighborhood by then, he let me drive round to my dad’s house in his 1950s Rolls Royce.
‘It was one of my dad’s favorite cars and I was so excited to see him and to show it to him. We still spoke on the phone so he knew I was coming but he wasn’t there. He was just never there anymore.’
‘He said he’d set aside $1million and I’d get it when I was 18. Then it was, when I was 21, then 25, then 30. Turned out he’d never even opened the account’
Tiffani fought to stay in Florida for as long as possible. She admitted: ‘I actually kept it from my mom that I was in the care system at all. I kept my phone and I called her and pretended everything was okay. I just didn’t want to go back there. I wanted to stay in Florida. I wanted to have a life.’
But the truth was always going to come out.
She recalled: ‘My dad didn’t show up to any of the custody hearings. He didn’t fight for me. He’d gone.’
Tiffani didn’t see her father for more than three years. When she did it was on the news – he was auctioning off the contents of his storage unit, a warehouse of possessions.
She said: ‘He’d bought all this stuff thinking he’d sell it like a business but that never happened.’
She didn’t know it at the time but he and Shawna had been living in the unit. In April 2006 the Palm Beach community had foreclosed on Edwards’s home with him owing $8,642.75. When the new owner moved in, Edwards was still there and had to be physically removed. She later discovered he owed $50,849. 63 in back taxes.
Separation: Tiffani didn’t see her father for more than three years. When she did it was on the news – he was auctioning off the contents of his storage unit, a warehouse of possessions
Care: Edwards was paralyzed after an operation to remove an abcess on his spine in 2007. In 2009, after she graduated high school and turned 18, Tiffani returned to nurse her ailing father in a hospice
The money hadn’t just gone – it had more than gone and Edwards was in debt.
After the auction – which raised a fraction of the millions he had spent on what turned out to be largely worthless reproduction pieces - Edwards and Shawna lived for a while in his van. He was now suffering from hepatitis.
Meanwhile Tiffani said: ‘When I was put in care they appointed a guardian for me and he searched to find the account my dad said he’d set up for me.
‘He said he’d set aside $1million and I’d get it when I was 18. Then it was, when I was 21, then 25, then 30. Turned out he’d never even opened the account.’
At the beginning of 2007, Shawna took Edwards to a hospital in Orlando. He could barely walk. He had an abscess on his spine and the decision was made to operate. As his next of kin Shawna, Tiffani said, signed it off.
‘I know he wanted more for me than this. But I’ve seen what more does and I’m happy'
She said: ‘It left him paralyzed. He called my mom and she went to get him. What else could she do?’
Shawna was in and out of his life for the next couple of years during which Edwards stayed in her mother’s house. The van was sold. A refinance of $200,000 from the California house was blown in two months.
As for Tiffani, by 2009 she had graduated high school having finally returned to live with her mother. She had met Brandon and they were, she said, ‘just starting out on life.’
It should have been the beginning of something fresh for them. Instead it was the beginning of two years of caring for her paralyzed father when nobody else could or would.
She said; ‘My mother had twins boys from her second marriage, they were six years old and she couldn’t take him in. So I did and we cared for him as long as we could until it was just too much.’
Edwards spent his final years in a nursing home in Lucasville before he was moved to a hospice after suffering a series of strokes.
Tiffani said: ‘I used to see my dad as much as I could. We never really spoke a whole lot about what happened. He just said it was fun while it lasted and he’d had a wild ride.’
His only regret, she said, was not fighting to get her back when he lost her.
Rollercoaster: Tiffani said: 'I used to see my dad as much as I could. We never really spoke a whole lot about what happened. He just said it was fun while it lasted and he’d had a wild ride'
All that remains: The family had such little money left that they couldn't afford to bury Edwards. They had him cremated and his ashes are kept in Tiffani's bedroom in a simple box - they couldn't pay for a nice urn
Tiffani saw her father the day before he died but when that moment came he was alone – the one thing, Tiffani said, he had never wanted to be.
His funeral was small, she said: ‘There was hardly anyone there and that’s what I wanted. I didn’t want it to be a circus like his life was.’
He was cremated because they couldn’t afford to bury him and Tiffani keeps his ashes in a simple box with his picture stuck on the side because she can’t afford an urn.
She said: ‘I took him with me to the hospital when Alexis was born. My waters broke straight after the funeral. I’d just got home and she was born the next morning.
‘I told the nurse, “My daddy’s here,” and when she asked me where, I pointed to the box and said, “There in the window.” I think she thought I was crazy.’
But maybe it isn’t so crazy to find it hard to let go of the father she only had so fleetingly.
‘He was a good man,’ she said. ‘I know he made wrong choices but he was a good man. Would he still be alive if he hadn’t won? Yes, I think he would.’
Looking around at the cluttered front room with its jumble of toys and belongings she said: ‘I know he wanted more for me than this. But I’ve seen what more does and I’m happy. Being at home and being a mommy is enough for me.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2574188/Tiffanis-father-won-27m-Powerball-jackpot-11-A-decade-later-died-broke-blowing-Lear-jet-fast-cars-bad-deals-drugs-Here-tells-RELIEF-wild-ride-over.html#ixzz2vHd7AU66
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