(July 9) -- For all his multimillion-dollar lottery winnings, Jack Whittaker can't seem to do anything but lose.
The man who landed a $315 million jackpot on Christmas Day seven years ago has since lost his wife to divorce, his granddaughter to drugs and now his daughter, found dead in her West Virginia home on July 5, according to the Charleston Daily Mail.
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Whittaker has also been arrested on charges of driving drunk, lost more than $500,000 in cash to thieves and settled with the parents of a teenage friend of his granddaughter's who died at his house from a drug overdose.
A surprising number of other lottery winners share his pain.
According to a health study reported this week in London's Daily Mail, winners smoked and drank far more two years after winning then they did before, countering the notion that more money means better health. The paper cites the tragedy of Phil Kitchen, a jobless carpenter who won big in 1999, turned to binge drinking and died three years later, at age 58, of self-neglect.
Perhaps he can serve as a lesson to the latest massive jackpot winner, someone who hasn't yet come forward to claim the $133 million Mega Millions prize with a ticket that was sold in New York City's Queens borough, as reported in the New York Daily News.
The Raleigh County, W.Va., Sheriff's Office said Thursday that investigators don't know Ginger Whittaker Bragg's cause of death, and autopsy results are expected to take at least a few weeks. They don't suspect foul play.
Bragg, 42, had battled Hodgkin's lymphoma, The Associated Press reported in 2007.
Her daughter, Brandi Bragg, died just before Christmas, 2004. She was 17.
Less than six months after Brandi's death, Whittaker's wife, Jewell, started divorce proceedings.
Even before the recent blow of his daughter's death, Whittaker told ABC News in 2007, "Since I won the lottery, I think there is no control for greed.
"I think if you have something, there's always someone else that wants it," he said.
"I wish I'd torn that ticket up."
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