Bruce Bryan was an alcoholic living at a garbage dump when he inherited nearly $1 million in January.
The 49-year-old got his teeth fixed, made some investments and moved with a friend to a secluded home in the Ozarks, flashing $100 bills and telling others about his fortune.On June 2, Bryan was found shot to death in his locked home.
Authorities have ruled out only suicide in trying to unravel the tragic end to his rags-to-riches tale.
"The money became a monster. All he did was worry about it," said Craig Henry Rogers, Bryan's former housemate and an early suspect in his death. "The more he tried to deal with it, the more he drank."
Bryan was killed with his own shotgun three or four days before his body was found, investigators said. Nothing was missing from the house, and $400 was in his wallet, police said.
People who knew him in California said Bryan had spent the past few years drinking heavily around Mammoth Lakes, a Sierra Nevada ski town 250 miles north of Los Angeles. He slept under culverts until a friend gave him a trailer to park at the Mono County dump, where he collected scrap metal for money.