She turned to shoplifting and had a lengthy criminal file when she died in Darby, PA, from an

Mail Online has pieced together full story of how she divorced her felon husband, then suffered a car crash and became addicted to painkillers

Smiling shyly for the camera, her arm gently cradling her little brother, this is the tragic sister about whom Senator Ted Cruz has never publicly spoken until now.

Since announcing his candidacy in March, Sen Cruz has made much of his family's triumphs over adversities.

His Cuban father's struggle against and escape from Castro; his 'pioneering' mother who came from a strict Irish Italian Catholic family but went onto 'break glass ceilings all over the place' as a computer programmer; and his own childhood as the son of a turbulent marriage scarred by alcohol abuse and bankruptcy.

But there is one story of adversity that remained untold. It is the story of the senator's half-sister, Miriam, pictured here for the first time, neatly turned out in her purple dress photographed alongside her sister Roxana, right, and brother Ted, center.

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'Loving': Miriam Cruz (left) with her younger brother Ted and their other sister, Roxana. Cruz describes how she was a loving sister but describes how she was always 'angry' and made bad decision in life

Frank: Cruz's memoir is upfront about the challenges which drug addiction posed to his family and how he and his father tried - and failed - to come to the aid of his sister. He paid for her son's education when he was already heavily in debt from student loans

Scene of tragedy: This is the now abandoned house where Miriam Cruz died of a drug overdose. Her brother, the Republican senator and White House contender, describes visiting it to try to help her in his new book

Miriam's is a story of drug addiction, crime and jail time and one on which Sen Cruz touches for the first time in his newly published memoir, 'A Time for Truth.'

In it he describes Miriam as 'beautiful...quite intelligent and incredibly loving'. She was the sister who would play with him 'for hours on end' when he was a toddler.

But, he writes, 'Though she was a sweet person with a good heart, she slowly surrendered to her wild side.'

Now a Daily Mail Online investigation has uncovered the full story of Miriam's 'wild side' and her pitiful descent into addiction ending with her premature death from an accidental overdose of a cocktail of prescription medication, alone in a crack house age just 49.

Ultimately, Sen Cruz admits: 'I found it hard to reconcile the bright, fun, charismatic sister I adored with the person who would lie to me without hesitation and who stole money from her teenage brother to feed her various addictions.'

Both Sen Cruz's parents were married when they met each other. Ted is his mother's only child but his father, Rafael, 76, had two daughters, Miriam and Roxana by his first wife, Julia.

Julia, who died in May 2013, was a respected professor of Spanish linguistics and Latin American literature for 17 years at CSU Stanislaus and imbued in both her daughters the importance of education.

Today Roxanna, 52, is a doctor who works in Dallas, Texas and lives in a neat bungalow shaded by trees in a leafy street. She declined to comment when approached by Daily Mail Online.

Growing up Roxana, Miriam and Sen Cruz were 'very close' to each other despite a twelve-year age gap between Miriam and Ted. They often spent summers together.

Impoverished: Miriam Cruz died in Darby, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia, on 11 January 2011. With no history of suicide in the family and no note of other indication that she might have taken her own life

Criminal history: Just some of the files held by Delaware County under Miriam Cruz's name, illustrating the scale of the tragedy which engulfed her

Men in her life: Miriam Cruz married Larry Maykopet (left); her brother writes that she was 'angry' at her father Rafael Cruz, as he had divorced her mother - his first wife - in difficult circumstances

According to Miriam's ex-husband, Larry Maykopet: 'Ted and Miriam were very close. There wasn't much family, just the three of them and they were all very, very close.'

Miriam married Larry in 1984. She was 22, Ted was just 13. The following year Miriam gave birth to a son, Joe, now 30 but her relationship with Larry was not an easy one.

Maykopet, who now lives in Granite City, Illinois, was in and out of prison and, Joe has since described his uncle, Ted, as 'probably one of the bigger male figures in my life.'

In an act of striking largesse revealed in his memoir Sen Cruz recounts how he took out a $20,000 cash advance on his credit card to send Joe to military school, Valley Forge Military Academy.

Sen Cruz gives no reason for his sister's drug addiction, merely stating that she 'developed a serious drug and alcohol addiction.'

But her former husband, Maykopet, has told Daily Mail Online the tragic cause of her descent: 'She was in a car wreck and hurt her back. The doctor put her on prescription medication for the pain. It was just for a month but she got hooked.

'They put her into rehab to try to get her off the medication but it didn't work.'

Cruz himself accuses Maykopet of being physically abusive towards Miriam. Maykopet, who now lives in Granite City, Illinois, has felony convictions for burglary and firearms offenses.

After six years of marriage Miriam and Maykopet split in 1990. Their divorce was finalized in 1993 and Miriam moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

A friend at the time told Daily Mail Online that Miriam was a 'lovely lady,' but Delaware County court records seen by Daily Mail Online reveal just how rapid Miriam's descent into petty crime was following that fateful car wreck and the injuries she sustained.

In 1996 she pled guilty to retail theft in Darby. Sen Cruz and his father attempted to step in. She was raising Joe, then in his sixth grade, as a single parent and just couldn't cope.

In his book Sen Cruz gives his own account of the family's futile battle to save Miriam from the grips of her addiction.

Sen Cruz recalls: 'My dad flew from Texas to DC, and he and I together drove to Philadelphia…I remember my dad and me leaving our watches, rings, money and wallets in DC because we didn't know if we'd be robbed or shot at the crack house where Miriam was living.'

The attempted intervention failed. Miriam was 'angry' at everything – her parents' divorce when she was a child, various perceived childhood slights. Sen Cruz admits that he wasn't very sympathetic.

Three years later, in 1999, she was arrested in nearby Haverford and sentence to two years probably for the same crime.

Happy family: Ted Cruz, his wife Heidi Nelson Cruz and daughters Catherine and Caroline Cruz

Influential: Rafael Cruz (right) is one of his son's major supporters. In his memoir he described the two going to the crack den where his sister lived and trying to persuade her

In 2003 she had a string of traffic offenses. In August 2004 she was picked up again in Ridley Township, Pennsylvania then once more in September of that year back in Darby Township.

On that occasion she was caught shop-lifting from the Pathmark Store in Darby. The total goods taken amounted to just $123.91 but, with an already significant criminal record, Miriam was sentenced to between two and 23 months in jail. She served just two before being released on parole.

On her release from prison, her brother writes, '…she had hooked up with a man with a serious drug problem, and they moved into a crack house'.

That home stands on a ramshackle street of run-down houses, some abandoned, all a world away from the lives or promise and ambition being led by her siblings. While his sister was battling drug addiction Sen Cruz was busying himself establishing a successful legal practice.

In total there are 19 criminal filings linked to Miriam. But two of the most troubling and revealing took place in 2010.

The first was on Friday 11 June when, at approximately 10.30pm, Collingdale, PA, police were called to the local Wawa Convenience store where a woman had been seen concealing merchandise – candy and coffee cups – in her jacket and purse.

When cops searched Miriam's purse records show that, as well as stolen candy, they found, 'a plastic pink box containing 13 loose pills, an Altoids tin canister containing opaque colored skin patches labelled Fentanyl 50 mcg/hr, three white and maroon oblong capsules labelled PGN 75 and later identified as Lyrica 75mg, two white circular pills stamped Mylan A4 identified as Alprazolam 3mg and two smaller white circular pills that could not be identified.'

Scene of crime: Walmart in Darby, PA, was one of the places Miriam Cruz was charged with shoplifting from

Scene of crime: Police were called to the local Wawa Convenience store where a woman had been seen concealing merchandise – candy and coffee cups – in her jacket and purse

Scene of crime: CVS in Darby was one of the locations for the 19 crimes listed under Miriam Cruz's name

Lengthy record: One of the police records for Miriam Cruz, this one relating to shoplifting and suspected possession of drugs paraphernalia

Fentanyl is a pain killer and Schedule II narcotic, meaning there is a high potential for abuse. Lyrica is also a pain killer and a Schedule IV narcotic meaning it is a controlled substance with a lower potential for abuse. Alprazolam is used to treat anxiety and panic disorders and is also a Schedule IV narcotic.

Three months later, on 7 September 2010, Miriam was arrested again, this time in Glenolden Borough, PA, at 3.44 in the afternoon.

She was charged with taking items worth $110.00 from a CVS pharmacy but also for 'public drunkenness or similar'. In his report the arresting officer noted: 'In speaking to Cruz, her eyes were fixed and glassy and her speech was slow and slurred. Cruz did admit to taking too much of her prescription medication.'

The charges were ultimately dismissed as, while she was awaiting trial, Miriam's downward spiral reached its tragic conclusion.

On 11 January 2011 she was found dead. With no history of suicide in the family and no note of other indication that she might have taken her own life, the official cause was given by Delaware County Medical Examiner's Office as 'Mixed Drug Intoxication' and the manner noted as, 'Accidental.'

According to Sen Cruz he finds 'great solace' in knowing that her son, whom he knows as Joey, has grown into a 'strong and responsible young man'.

When he addressed the audience at Liberty University in March, announcing his candidacy, Sen Cruz dwelled on the family history of which he was proud – the battles won. Miriam did not rate a mention.

Yet he could have been talking about her when he stated, with sorrow, that 'for so many Americans the promise of America seems more and more distant'. For Miriam that promise, glimpsed in her childhood picture, remained distant – permanently out of her reach.