The curse of winning the lottery?

The New Hampshire woman who won the $559.7 million Powerball jackpot last month is refusing to claim her prize until she's assured anonymity. And she may have a compelling reason to seek the guarantee.

It turns out winning a jackpot of millions or even thousands of dollars can lead to financial ruin -- or even death. Several recent lottery winners have turned up dead in communities across the country.

Abraham Shakespeare, who won $30 million in Florida’s lottery in 2009, was found buried in a makeshift grave under a concrete slab less than three years later. A woman who befriended him and offered to help manage what remained of his winnings instead murdered him; she was sentenced to life in prison.

In Ohio, 47-year-old Deborah McDonald was run over and killed after leaving a bar where she’d been celebrating with friends. McDonald had won $5,520 in the Ohio lottery’s TV game show in 2010 and had purchased wedding rings for her and her husband that she couldn’t previously afford.

Jeffrey Dampier won an Illinois lottery jackpot of $20 million in 1996. He eventually moved with his family to Florida and invested some of his earnings in a business there. On July 26, 2005, Dampier was murdered by his sister-in-law, Victoria Jackson, and her boyfriend.

A 2007 Georgia lottery winner, Doris Murray, 42, had planned to use her $5 million winnings to start a trust fund for her grandchildren, according to lottery officials. However, she was found stabbed to death in her home a year later, in May 2008. Murray’s ex-boyfriend was charged in her death.