Wife Of Poisoned Lottery Winner Questioned

By Samantha Abernethy in News on Jan 9, 2013 9:20PM

Authorities have questioned the wife of the lottery winner who died shortly after winning a jackpot on a scratch-off ticket.

"She's got nothing to hide," Khan's wife Shabana Ansari's attorney told the Tribune.

Urooj Khan, 46, won $1 million on a scratch-off ticket in June 2012. He opted for a lump sum and took home $425,000 on July 19. The next day he died. At the time, Khan's death was ruled "a result of the narrowing and hardening of coronary arteries."

An unnamed relative later asked authorities to investigate further, and a lethal amount of cyanide was found in the man's system. Khan's death is now under investigation as a homicide, and the medical examiner seeks to have Khan's body exhumed.

Ansari told the Sun-Times that she prepared Khan's final meal, a traditional Indian Kofta curry, also shared with a teenage daughter and Ansari's father. The Sun-Times writes:

“No, I loved him to death,” the 32-year-old said, leaning in close, her unblinking eyes locked on her visitor’s. “I loved him and he loved me the same way.”

And she is eager for investigators to dig up his body to learn “the truth.”

“I really want them to go for it because I really want to know what exactly happened,” the soft-spoken Ansari said. “I wish God will reveal the truth — the sooner the better.”

Ansari said later, in the middle of the night, her husband collapsed. Ansari told the Sun-Times that she is cooperating with investigators, which includes giving them access to chemicals used in the family dry-cleaning business. Khan's brother and Ansari are tangled in probate court over her husband's money. The Tribune writes:

The brother, Imtiaz, raised concern that because Khan left no will, his 17-year-old daughter from a previous marriage would not get "her fair share" of her father's estate. Khan and Ansari did not have children.

Al-Haroon Husain, an attorney for Ansari in the probate case, said the money was all accounted for and the estate was in the process of being divided up by the court. Under Illinois law, the estate typically would be split evenly between the surviving spouse and Khan's only child, he said.

Ansari's attorney Steven Kozicki said Ansari is actually in a worse financial position than before Khan died, and now she is maintaining his three dry-cleaning businesses.

"Now in addition to grieving her husband, she's struggling to run the business that he essentially ran while he was alive," Kozicki told the Tribune. "Once people analyze it, they (would) realize she's in a much worse financial position after his death than she was before."