Posted on 05/09/2008 3:19:46 PM PDT by arbooz
The world, or at least a small corner of it, was hers a year ago. Doris Murray, mother of four, had won $5 million in the Georgia Lottery on her 41st birthday.
She posed for a photograph with big ceremonial check at the Amba Food Store in East Dublin, where she had bought her winning lottery ticket. And, according to a press release from the Georgia Lottery Corp., she declared "This is the best birthday ever."
On Monday, Murray was found dead in the same modest block home she had lived in on Barnes Road in the south-central Georgia town since before she hit the jackpot. On Tuesday, police charged her ex-boyfriend, Derrick Lorenzo Stanley, 51, with her murder.
"To be honest with you, we still don't know what happened, because he hasn't given us a statement yet," Sgt. Stan Wright, an investigator with the Laurens County Sheriff's Office, said Wednesday.
A witness said he saw Stanley arguing in the front yard with Murray early Monday afternoon. Somebody called the sheriff. When deputies arrived a few minutes later, Stanley was gone. Murray was found dead inside her home, stabbed multiple times.
Investigators spotted Stanley driving later Monday afternoon and tried to pull him over. The man allegedly sped off. The police gave chase, and he crashed. The suspect remained in an undisclosed hospital Wednesday, Wright said, "but his injuries are not life threatening."
Investigators said Murray never flaunted her new riches. "As far as I know, she didn't even have a new car," Wright said.
The woman didn't take the $5 million in a lump sum. Instead, she opted to collect about $172,000, after taxes, every year for 20 years. Murray told lottery officials she planned to use the money to start a trust fund for her grandchildren, according to a Lottery news release issued at the time of her winning.
Lottery spokeswoman Tandi Reddick said Wednesday that the money will continued to be paid to whoever is in Murray's will. Murray's family could not be reached for comment.
Wright said he believed the argument between Murray and Stanley may have been about a break-up.
"Her family said they had been boyfriend and girlfriend for some time," he said. "Then she told him she wanted to break it off and she wanted to be friends and that was it. From what they told me, he didn't want to accept that."
Crime doesn’t pay (I had to say it).
She sounds like she was a fine person.
What a shame. Seems like she was doing the right thing, didn’t go on a wild spending spree, just set up a trust fund for her grand kids and this idiot ex-boyfriend murders her. God rest her soul.
It must be...
BUSH’S FAULT!
“Then she told him she wanted to break it off and she wanted to be friends and that was it. From what they told me, he didn’t want to accept that.”
So stabbing her to death was his ‘solution’. Good thinking there... idiot.
Agreed.
the money obviously meant a lot more to him then it did to her.
Agree 100% !
The guy is a lizard brain.
God rest her soul.
It’s a shame she had a lowlife boyfriend who wouldn’t let her out of his grasp. He probably killed her when he realized she wasn’t going to take care of his freeloading ass anymore. He wanted to live large and do hood rat things with her money.
Amen. She has greater riches now, than she could ever accumulate on earth.
It is such a shame -- in this age of transient relationships -- so many reach midlife age without an established life partner. One who would defend their mate to their own death and not the opposite.
Sounds like a lovely lady who didn’t let newfound wealth corrupt her. However the inheritance works out, I’d say the world is poorer in her absence. Too bad the boyfriend is such a turd.
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