How Abraham Shakespeare Was Killed After Winning The Lottery

Abraham Lee Shakespeare, who was born in the US on April 24, 1966, won a $30 million lottery jackpot in Florida in 2006. He got $17 million. In 2009, his family reported him missing. In January 2010, his body was found in the backyard of a companion, buried under a concrete slab.

The Beginning

On November 15, 2006, the $30 million winning Florida Lotto ticket was sold at a Town Star convenience store in Frostproof, Florida. On that day, Abraham Lee Shakespeare and his coworker Michael Ford were on their way to Miami when they stopped briefly at a convenience store in Frostproof to buy drinks and cigarettes.

Ford got out of the car and asked Shakespeare if he wanted a soda. Instead, Shakespeare asked Ford to buy two lottery tickets for him. Shakespeare said that he gave Ford $2 of the $5 he had on him that day to pay for the tickets.

Ford subsequently went to Shakespeare and requested at least $1 million of the jackpot. Shakespeare refused, so Ford sued Shakespeare and said that he stole lottery tickets from his wallet. The jury did not believe Ford's story about how Abraham got the stolen lottery tickets, so Shakespeare won in court.

Shakespeare chose a one-time payment of $17 million in cash. He moved out of his working-class Lakeland neighborhood into a gated community.

Friends said that Shakespeare had gotten tired of people asking him for money all the time, whether they knew him or not. He told his brother, "I would have been better off being broke."

Dorice Donegan "Dee-Dee" Moore was one of the fake friends who came into his life. She started a business with Shakespeare called Abraham Shakespeare LLC and gave herself control of the firm's money.

Moore then took $1 million out of the joint business account and used it to buy a Hummer, a Chevrolet Corvette, and a truck before going on vacation. She later said that Shakespeare gave her the money.

Abraham Goes Missing

Shakespeare's family reported him missing on November 9, 2009. They said that they hadn't seen him since April of that year. At first, his family and friends thought he had taken his money and moved to a beach in the Caribbean. The investigators got a tip that led them to the backyard of a house Moore had just bought. There, they found Shakespeare's body buried under 9 feet of dirt and a freshly built concrete slab.

Soon after Shakespeare went missing, Moore, who was living in his house, kept using his cell phone to pretend she was Shakespeare and send text messages to his friends and family. People who got them thought they didn't sound like Shakespeare and were suspicious because he couldn't read or write. When people texted back on Shakespeare's phone with questions that Moore couldn't answer, there was no answer.

On February 2, 2010, Moore was arrested in connection with the murder of Shakespeare.  The police said Moore tried to persuade a friend a week after Shakespeare's death to dig up the body and move it to a different location. Moore also tried to persuade others that Shakespeare was still alive. Moore was charged with first-degree murder on February 19, 2010.

Moore tried to make it look like Shakespeare was still alive at the same time she tried to find someone who would take the blame for Shakespeare's death for $50,000.

She also offered to pay someone to dig up Shakespeare's body and move it to a different place. Moore's company, American Medical Professionals, bought Shakespeare's house, according to property records.

She also gave $5,000 to a relative of Shakespeare's to send a birthday card to his mother and make it look like it was from Shakespeare. She also paid someone $5000 to call Shakespeare's mother to make feel her son was still alive. It was this call that later led to the tip that had her arrested.

Moore was found guilty of first-degree murder on December 10, 2012, for killing Shakespeare. He was given a sentence of life in prison without the chance of parole.