Best American Crime Writing 2006 - Mark Bowden [86]
Right before Christmas 2002, the Powerball prize climbed to record size. People in twenty-three states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands fattened the pot in anticipation of the televised drawing Christmas night. On the morning of December 23, Jack stopped by C&L Super Serve in the town of Hurricane, where Brenda Higginbotham cooked the food that sat under the heat lamp. Like most mornings, she fixed Jack a bacon-and-tomato biscuit to go, pulling out the biscuit guts to help him with his cholesterol. She called him her “cowboy man” and knew him about as well as you can know anyone who stays long enough to order breakfast and comment on the weather. That morning, along with the biscuit, Jack bought $100 worth of lottery tickets.
By Christmas Eve, the pot reached beyond $280 million, and by Christmas Day, $314.9 million. The odds of winning were 120 million to 1. When the winning numbers were announced, Jack had all but one. He went to bed Christmas night thinking he’d won five grand. The next morning he learned that the TV had misreported it. He and Jewell checked and checked again—Jack had the sole winning combo: 5-14-16-29-53, Powerball 7.
Jack took the onetime payment of $170 million and walked away with $113 million post-tax. He accepted his easy money before a battery of cameras, dressed in a black outfit and hat, as Jewell, Ginger, and Brandi stood alongside him. The governor handed Jack the big poster-board check and said what a good ambassador Andrew Jackson Whittaker Jr. would make for the state of West Virginia. And for a while, that’s what Jack was. Right away, he thanked God for giving him the right numbers. He immediately pledged $17 million to several franchises of the Church of God; then he started giving away millions to various charities. Jack bought people houses and cars and college educations, gave money to old people and poor people and Little Leaguers. He was feted and filmed and generally hailed as the pride of West Virginia but “real down-to-earth,” which is just about the best thing one West Virginian can say about another.
You could hardly turn on the TV or open a newspaper without seeing Jack in his big black cowboy hat playing the role of Christian do-gooder with down-home brio. He went on Good Morning America and Today and let the perky morning-talk-show hosts slobber over him; then he went back to West Virginia and impressed his friends and neighbors by working the same long hours at the same old job.
He cut checks to the churches as promised. He bought Higginbotham, the biscuit-maker, a three-bedroom home and a used Jeep Grand Cherokee, and did about the same for the clerk who’d sold him the winning ticket. He promised Brandi he’d spend more time with her and do his best to help her fulfill her dream of meeting the rapper Nelly. He set up the Jack Whittaker Foundation and started handing out what his staff says was $60,000 a month in food, clothing, and household items to needy families across the state, which seems implausible until you remember Jack Whittaker won enough money to give away $1 million a year for the next 113 years. He started getting so many letters of need, he had to hire people just to open them. His neighbors had to deal with extra traffic because half the state wanted a look at the home of an honest-to-God dream come true. Jewell told CNN she literally got sick when Jack won the Powerball but has since decided the money is a good thing because of all the people they can help. She has said her greatest desire is to visit Israel so she can see “where Jesus walked,” but other than that, all of this just made her want to run and hide. Jack, on the other hand, decided to come out and play.
FROM A FRONTAGE ROAD WEST OF CHARLESTON, near a carpet outlet and the local Bob Evans, the club with the hot-pink awning calls out to the road-weary, marriage-weary, flesh-starved men of Interstate 64. One night Jack Whittaker heeds the call. He strides right into the Pink Pony and throws