WHITTAKER BLAMES GRANDDAUGHTER'S FRIENDS FOR HER DEATH

Man Says He Plans To Track Down Whoever Gave Brandi Bragg The Drugs He Says
Killed Her.

HINTON -- Record Powerball winner Jack Whittaker said illegal drugs killed
his 17-year-old granddaughter, and he wants to find whoever gave them to her
and put them in jail.

Brandi Bragg was to be buried today at a family cemetery in
southeastern West Virginia, nearly two years after Whittaker won the
largest single-payout lottery jackpot in history on Christmas Day.
Brandi's body was found earlier this week, wrapped in a sheet and a
plastic tarp behind a junked van on property owned by a boyfriend's
father, more than two weeks after she was last seen.

In the days since the discovery, her family and others are trying to
piece together the circumstances that transformed Whittaker's only
grandchild from an avid softball player and Church of God member into
a 17-year-old whose sudden access to vast wealth brought new friends
and -- what Whittaker and others say -- dangerous habits.

"All of the problems I have had are because of my granddaughter's
friends, her drug using friends," Whittaker said Thursday while
preparing to attend Brandi's viewing at a Hinton funeral home. "I'm
going to find them and put them in jail.

"It's not her fault, it's the people who sold drugs because they
weren't taken off the street."

Whittaker said he was angered by his granddaughter's death. "She was
my world, you understand that?"

Putnam County Prosecutor Mark Sorsaia, who is investigating Brandi's
death, declined to comment on a possible drug involvement.

West Virginia State Police say Brandi's death is being treated as a
missing person case that ended in death, not a homicide. A toxicology
report pinpointing the cause is pending.

Brandi was a quiet 15-year-old with a big smile when her already
wealthy, doting grandfather won a $314.9 million Powerball jackpot in
2002, which he elected to take in a $113 million lump sum payment
after taxes. Her Dec. 5 death is the latest in a series of events that
have befallen Whittaker's family since then.

Those events include a rash of break-ins at his Scott Depot house and
the September death of Brandi's friend, 18-year-old Jesse Tribble, in
Whittaker's home. Also, Whittaker has been arrested twice this year
for drunken driving; a judge ordered him to enter an in-house
substance abuse treatment program by Jan. 2.

"Since she won the lottery she had too much money," says Becky Layton,
who once cared for Brandi when she lived with her grandparents. "I
could point fingers all day long; the money is the root of it all I
would say." Layton pointed to Brandi having her own apartment and
several vehicles, including a Hummer and Cadillac Escalade, as
indications of a teen with too much money to spend.

"The very first few weeks after she won the lottery, they would get
$10,000 out during the day. It was between all of them. Her mom would
get out $5,000 and Brandi would only get out five more," Layton said.
State Police believe Brandi died at the home of Steve Crosier near
Scott Depot and that Crosier's son, Brandon, moved her body outside
and placed it behind the van.

Steve Crosier told The Associated Press that Brandon, and Brandi were
friends and had dated. "All I know is she OD'd and Brandon freaked
out," he told reporters shortly after the body was found. He later
said he didn't know how Brandi died.

Jimmy Tribble, whose son's body was found in Whittaker's home on Sept.
17, said police reports he has seen indicate Brandi was with Jesse in
the hours before he died of an accidental drug overdose. Whittaker was
out of town at the time. Jesse and Brandi met in middle school and
renewed their friendship after her grandfather won the jackpot. At one
point, Tribble said his son announced he had been hired by Whittaker
to be Brandi's driver at $500 a day. While growing up, Brandi moved
between her mother's home in Hinton, a former railroad community of
2,800 in the New River area of southeastern West Virginia, and
Whittaker's home in Scott Depot, a bedroom community between the
state's two largest cities, Charleston and Huntington. Her father died
when she was young and her mother at one point was treated for cancer.

In an interview with The Associated Press last year, Whittaker said he
regretted the toll the jackpot win was taking on his family. Brandi
had lost most of her friends, he said.

"They want her for her money and not for her good personality,"
Whittaker told The AP then.