News writer; Opinion columnist
Few people in Lakeland, Florida, needed money more than Abraham Shakespeare. With only an elementary school education, he struggled to find work and would take odd jobs for low wages, such as sweeping floors or moving furniture.
He was forty years old, had no hope for his future, and needed a miracle if he wanted his life to change. And then, one day, a miracle happened, or at least that's what it felt like at first.
Shakespeare won a fortune in the lottery, and while he enjoyed his newfound wealth, he quickly felt overwhelmed by the incessant pressure from the people around him who constantly asked and pressured him to give them money.
That’s why some people weren't surprised when Shakespeare disappeared. No one knew where he was, but he would still text and occasionally send money. People in Lakeland thought that maybe he had taken off for an island where no one knew who he was and could be free of the incessant requests from friends and strangers.
However, the truth behind his disappearance was far darker.
Humble beginnings
Shakespeare was born into a close but poor family in Lakeland, Florida. His parents worked as fruit pickers and struggled with money. Shakespeare dropped out of school in the sixth grade to help support them.
Without an education, he worked odd jobs and frequently panhandled on the street, begging strangers for money. He was well-liked and willing to work, but as a poor man living in a poor neighborhood, he didn't see any path toward prosperity.
While on his way to Miami for work, he and his co-worker, Michael Ford, stopped at a convenience store in Frostproof, Florida. When Ford went inside for a drink, Shakespeare asked him to purchase two tickets for the November 2006 Florida Lotto drawing.
Miraculously, one of Shakespeare's tickets won, and he took home the $30 million jackpot. He opted for the lump sum payout; after taxes, he collected a check for about $17 million.
Suddenly, a man who had lived in poverty all his life had more money than he thought he would earn in his lifetime.
The giver
Overnight, Shakespeare went from one of the poorest men in Lakeland to one of the wealthiest. While he had always worked hard to care for the people around him, he never had much to give.
Now, with millions of dollars in his bank account, he went to work helping the people he felt had always been there for him.
He gave one million dollars each to his stepfather and godfather and another $250,000 to his sisters. For a time, it seemed that he would give or loan money to almost anyone who asked, and he helped finance cars and new houses for his friends and family. His friend Greg Smith said on the Hulu show Web of Death:
When Abraham first won that money, it wasn't only Abraham Shakespeare. It was the community that won the lottery.
He also took care of himself and bought a million-dollar home in a gated community with a large yard and a game room, where he would throw lavish parties. From the outside, it appeared that Shakespeare was living his best life, but friends said he wasn't as happy as he appeared.
Some people grew angry when he turned down their requests for money, and Michael Ford, the co-worker who purchased the ticket for Shakespeare, demanded that he pay him $1 million, and he sued Shakespeare when he was turned down.
While he wanted to help people, he felt an endless pressure to give money to everyone who asked. He was reluctant to even go out in public because he knew he'd be approached for money. Sometimes, he even said he missed his old life because it was easier.
"'I'd have been better off broke.' He said that to me all the time," said his brother Robert Brown.
In addition, between giving money away and his own inexperience in managing wealth, his fortune was quickly dwindling. While struggling with his new life, he met someone who promised to help.
Shakespeare met Dorice Donegan "Dee Dee" Moore at a business conference. She presented herself as a successful businesswoman running a staffing company called American Medical Professionals.
She told Shakespeare she wanted to write a book about him and would send limos to pick him up and take him to casinos. Their relationship grew closer, and eventually, she became his most trusted financial advisor.
Up in smoke
Dee Dee started her work by forming the company Abraham Shakespeare LLC, which she said would help her manage his money and prevent people from taking advantage of him. While Shakespeare was initially grateful to have her help, he became suspicious when he realized she had more control over his money than he did.
On November 9, 2009, the Lakeland police department received a report from Shakespeare's brother that he was missing. Further investigation revealed that no one had seen him since April 2009.
Detectives spoke with Dee Dee, who told them that Shakespeare was fine and traveling around the country. At various times, she claimed he was in Texas, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Orlando. She even showed police a video she had made on April 6, in which he expressed an interest in moving somewhere new where he could be anonymous and people would leave him alone.
While the police repeatedly pressured her to arrange a meeting with him so that they could verify that he was well, she would constantly make excuses for why he wasn't interested in speaking with them.
Friends and family members reported that they could only communicate with Shakespeare through texts on his phone, but they found this suspicious because he was barely literate and didn't like to write.
The police grew frustrated because they had almost no evidence to work with and no idea where to find the missing Florida Lottery winner.
However, as they repeatedly encountered dead ends, they took advantage of an unusual resource in their investigation: a group of amateur true crime enthusiasts who gathered on a website called Web Sleuths.
Internet detectives
Web Sleuths is a web forum where people discuss true crimes, and the Shakespeare case immediately caught everyone's attention. The group, which was scattered around the country, initiated its own web-based investigation and learned a lot of information that would ultimately prove valuable to the Lakeland PD.
The web detectives quickly zeroed in on Dee Dee Moore, using property records and social media accounts to show that she had purchased and was living in Shakespeare's house.
They also learned that Dee Dee wasn't the upstanding businesswoman she appeared to be on the surface. The Web Sleuths discovered that she was once arrested for insurance fraud after staging a fake carjacking and kidnapping. She even taped her wrists and threw herself from a car to make her story appear convincing.
Additionally, they learned that she had serious money problems. She had filed for bankruptcy at least once and still owed money to the IRS.
A Polk County detective investigating the case, David Clark, said he was impressed with how much information the Web Sleuth investigators could find. He stated:
I get on the internet and I come across this Websleuths forum. You have 10 or 15 people finding property purchase agreements, financial records. I questioned how are they getting this information? I need a subpoena to get it, but they've got it.
The cover-up
While many people were questioned about Shakespeare's disappearance, the evidence from Web Sleuths helped police lock in on Dee Dee.
She could feel the walls closing in on her, and she took desperate measures to protect herself. She even posted on the Web Sleuths forums and threatened the people investigating her. Clark recalled:
Dee Dee thought she was smarter than everybody, but I knew that she wasn't as smart as these people.
The case had a breakthrough when investigators learned that Dee Dee paid Greg Smith, Shakespeare's friend, to make a phone call pretending to be Shakespeare. When detectives confronted Smith, he agreed to become a police informant and wear a wire when speaking with Dee Dee.
The two met at a Home Depot, and Smith told her that for $50,000, he had a friend who would take the blame for killing Shakespeare. Dee Dee agreed, and Smith arranged a meeting with his friend, who was actually an undercover police officer.
The undercover officer said he would take the money and confess to the police that he was responsible for Shakespeare's disappearance, but first, Dee Dee had to tell him where the body was.
She agreed and drove the entire group to a house she owned in Plant City, Florida. Then, she walked everyone into the backyard, drove a stick into the ground, and said that's where they could find Shakespeare.
Later, the police returned with a search warrant and a backhoe. They dug where Dee Dee planted the stick. Underneath a concrete slab buried six feet underground, they found the remains of Abraham Shakespeare, who was wearing the same clothes he had on in the April 6 video she made of him talking about leaving Florida.
The trial
Dee Dee was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, but she continued to maintain her innocence.
At trial, the prosecution showed that after April 7, Dee Dee and Shakespeare's phones would always ping from the same cell towers, even when she claimed he was texting from Jamaica or Texas. This strongly implied that it was Dee Dee texting Shakespeare's friends and family, pretending that he was still alive.
Additionally, forensic investigators found Shakespeare's blood in her Plant City house. Prosecutors claim that shortly after Dee Dee filmed the video where Shakespeare claimed he planned to leave town, she drove him to her home, shot him in her living room with a .38 revolver, and buried him in the backyard.
While Dee Dee claims she was only trying to help Shakespeare, the jury thought her story unconvincing, and she was found guilty of murder in the first degree. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and received an additional 25 years for using a firearm.
At her sentencing, presiding judge Emmet Lamar Battles said that she was “the most manipulative person” he had seen, adding that she was “cold,” “calculated,” and “cruel.”
Moore remains in prison today, and all of her appeals for release or a retrial have been rejected.
Comments