RIVIERA BEACH — In September 2001, a very lucky ex-con named David Lee Edwards arrived in Palm Beach County with $27 million and a history of drug abuse.The money was his take, after taxes, from the multistate Powerball lottery. Edwards was 46 and had been laid off shortly before buying his ticket - one of four winners of an advertised $295 million jackpot - at Clark's Pump N Shop in Ashland, Ky., a blue-collar town on the Ohio River.Edwards had been in and out of prison beginning in the early 1980s - on charges ranging from armed robbery to violating parole to drug possession - and was finally out for good in 1997.
With his sudden wealth, Edwards bought a $1.2 million home in Palm Beach Gardens' BallenIsles community, a $240,000 Bentley and a $250,000 Lamborghini. In December 2001, he married his fiancée, Shawna Renae Maddux, in Hawaii and bought her a $250,000 electric-blue Ferrari.  And then Edwards' troubled past apparently began to catch up with his would-be wealthy future.
In November 2005, he was charged with possession of cocaine and heroin. Edwards pleaded guilty to possession of narcotics paraphernalia, a first-degree misdemeanor, and the cocaine charge was dropped.  A court hearing is scheduled July 24 to determine the status of the heroin charge, according to the state attorney's office.  Last July, Edwards' $1.2 million home was auctioned for $400,000.  And Saturday, much of the home's contents will go on the auction block at a Riviera Beach warehouse where Edwards spent his final days in Palm Beach County.

"It's a no-reserve auction," said Doug Holladay, the Jupiter auctioneer who will open the bidding at 11 a.m. "If the highest bid is a dollar, it sells for a dollar. Everything goes on Saturday."  As he spoke, Holladay moved among Edwards' 120 "luxury furnishings and outdoor architectural pieces" with a bottle of lemon Pine-Sol and a polishing cloth, clearly amused by Edwards' taste.  In describing the furnishings, Holladay said it might be wise to use the word supposedly a lot.  "That's supposedly a King Louis tortoise-inlay dresser," he said. "He supposedly paid $140,000."
Not far away, a 10-foot hand-carved white marble fireplace mantel lay on the concrete floor. Huge wrought-iron gates, supposedly by Versace, leaned against one wall. Sphinxes with pedestals awaited a doorway, giant granite urns a garden.  There are figured urns that are real bronze, Holladay said, no supposedly about it. But the medieval shields, battle-ax and armor gauntlets are not, in fact, medieval.  Not far from the fake Tiffany lamps, a framed poster of Frank, Dean, Sammy and the rest of the Rat Pack posing in Las Vegas also will be up for bid.

"Gaudy," Holladay said, and he wasn't referring to the Rat Pack portrait alone.  On the other hand, the large partner desk is in almost perfect condition, and the marble-topped rosewood buffet is neither fake nor gaudy.  The entire collection probably cost about $500,000, Holladay said, and will bring in $70,000 to $100,000.  "I got a couple of 93-year-old women coming," he said with a chuckle. "I couldn't get off the phone with them."

Edwards' warehouse life

If the women do attend, they'll find an industrial warehouse that has undergone a good deal more cleaning than a mere bottle of Pine-Sol could provide.  "We found filthy clothes 3 feet high throughout the unit," said John Lutzon, vice president of leasing for the warehouse complex. "There were needles, so somebody in there was apparently using drugs. Whether they were legal or illegal I don't know, but people said his condition was horrible."

Edwards rented the unit several years ago, Lutzon said, but was chronically late with the rent. The company would start eviction proceedings, then Edwards would pay up.  "We would change the locks and give him back new keys, and a month later he'd default again," Lutzon said.  Finally, the owners claimed the contents, which are being auctioned to pay his debt.
"The word I got from surrounding tenants is that they would see him there day and night," Lutzon said, "so one could assume the guy had been sleeping there."  One of those tenants is Dana Martin, owner of Restoration by Nefco, a classic car restoration firm.  "I knew he was living here because I'd come in early in the morning and they'd be outside," Martin said. "It went on for months like that."  When they first met, Martin said, Edwards was storing the Ferrari and Lamborghini in the unit while trying to sell them. "He was liquidating his assets," Martin said. "I think he trusted a lot of people and was talked into some business investments that were not good investments, and when he lost his home he moved here."  Edwards and his wife had been sleeping in a small office.  "The last time I saw him, they were on the way back to Kentucky," Martin said. "He was in pretty bad health. We had to pick him up and put him in the back seat of the car to the airport."

The dirty clothes and discarded needles filled a 30-foot garbage bin, Holladay said. Supposedly.  "I threw out two needles this morning," he said. "His wedding album's back in the office if you want to see it."  Sitting alone on a table in the otherwise empty room where Edwards slept, the album is only slightly moldy and filled with professional photographs of David and Shawna Edwards smiling on a Hawaiian beach at sunset.  Inside, along with the pictures, are two faded receipts from a local pawnshop.  On Oct. 2, Edwards was given $40 each for an air compressor and a miter saw. The next day, he went back and was given $30 each for two swords.  One was copper, one brass.