Within just three years of his massive win, he
would be broke and murdered by a conwoman who
buried him in her garden.
When kind-hearted Abraham Shakespeare won 30
million dollars on the lottery only his friends
noticed how afraid he looked as he collected the
giant cheque. The 6ft 5in labourer who could barely
read a word was known as a “soft touch” and
simply did not know how to deal with being so rich
so suddenly. He could not say no to people who
bombarded him with sob stories and requests for
cash.
Within just three years, he would be broke and
murdered by a conwoman who buried him in her
garden. Dorice Moore, 43, was this month jailed for
life for Abraham’s killing after convincing the
gentle giant she was writing a book about his woes.
Moore was described by Judge Emmett Battles as
“cold and calculating” and her own lawyer refused
to help her appeal because he felt “too sad for the
victim”.
Abraham, a former juvenile delinquent who had
been to prison twice for petty offences, announced
his win in Florida on November 17, 2006. It was the ­
equivalent of £18million.
Until then the 40-year-old lived with his mum in a
rough area of Lakeland and would get up at 4am to
compete for casual work. He scraped by doing odd
jobs for £4.90 an hour and did not have enough
cash to pay child support for his 10-year-old son
from a previous relationship.
He soon
moved to a
new
£600,000
home in a
gated
community and splashed out on three cars – a Ford
F-150 pickup, a BMW 750i and a Nissan Altima. But
he spent little more of his cash, preferring to live
the simple life he knew. A newspaper article
published two months after his win revealed he still
ate £4 dinners at the same down-market
restaurant.
“I’m not a material person,” he said. “I don’t let
material things ruin me. I’m on a tight budget.” He
did spend to set up a trust fund for his son and
gave £600,000 to his stepdad and £150,000 to
each of his three stepsisters. But it wasn’t long
before strangers began taking advantage of his
well-known goodwill. A former girlfriend, Sentorria
Butler, revealed how people would spot Abraham
on the street and tell him of their supposed
hardships, and how he would dish out his cash
without questioning.
Sentorria remembered one note from an inmate in
a state prison who asked for a thousand dollars.
She said: “We just laughed, what is he going to do
with a thousand dollars?
"But he ended up sending the man $50. He
thought with his heart, not with his head.”
AP
Abraham’s
brother,
Jeremee Reed,
told how
during one 30-
minute stretch when he was in Abraham’s house,
the lottery winner’s mobile rang eight times, each
with a stranger asking him for financial help.
He said: “We lived in a small town, and having all
that money was like being constantly in the
limelight.” Abraham also paid off a friend’s
£114,000 mortgage and even another £40,000
mortgage of a man whose last name he did not
know. He wrote numerous cheques for friends,
gave his brother’s son’s best friend £25,000 and
paid for funerals when people asked.
He told another newspaper: “I’ve buried people,
kept houses out of foreclosures, bought groceries
and paid rents”. Sheriff Grady Judd told a reporter
it was “common knowledge” around town that
people were “tugging on him”. It wasn’t just
strangers who got stuck into him. Work colleague,
Michael Ford, who had been with him when he had
bought the winning ticket, demanded a $1million
share of his jackpot. When he refused Ford took
him to court, claiming he had bought the tickets
and Abraham had stolen them from his wallet.
Abraham, who won the case, told a newspaper:
“That guy used to be a real good friend of mine. If
he only waited I could’ve given him $250,000.” He
also had a succession of girlfriends but Abraham
would soon realise that they were only interested in
his bank account.
AP
By 2008
Abraham had
spent or given
away much of
his winnings.
That was when another swindler came into his life,
Dorice Moore, known as Dee Dee. She claimed she
was writing a book “about how people were taking
advantage of him” and won his trust. She soon
became his financial adviser, helping him open a
company and giving herself the ability to sign for
his money. After withdrawing £600,000, which she
later claimed he had given her as a gift, Moore
bought herself a Hummer, a Corvette and a truck,
and went on expensive holidays.
Before long she controlled all Abraham’s assets
including about £2.1million, his mansion and the
debts owed to him. When he went missing in
November 2009, devious Moore claimed he had run
away to the Caribbean because he had become
exasperated with people pestering him for money.
AP
She said: “He planned on not coming back. He
intentionally did not want to be found. He didn’t
care what it took.” What had really happened was
that Moore had lured the lottery winner to her
home, shot him twice then buried his body under a
concrete slab in her yard. She was a highly-
experienced con artist who once staged her own
kidnap to fraudulently keep a car which was about
to be repossessed. For months Moore tried to
convince people Abraham was alive but hiding.
She used his mobile phone to send relatives text
messages saying he was OK and wrote letters to
his friends pretending to be him – even though he
was barely literate. When suspicious friends texted
back with questions Moore could not answer, the
messages fell silent. As the finger began to be
pointed at the woman who was now living in
Abraham’s house, driving his car and collecting his
debts, Moore became even more brazen in her
cover-up attempts.
She reportedly offered the mother of Abraham’s
young son a £125,000 house if she would lie and
say that he had dropped by one night. And she also
paid one of the missing man’s relatives £3,000 to
hand deliver a birthday card to his mother.
AP
While police continued to treat her as a murder
suspect she carried on giving interviews, playing
the innocent. She told a local newspaper: “The
money was like a curse to him.
“And now it’s become a curse to me. God knows I
would never take another human being’s life.”
Moore was finally unmasked as Abraham’s killer
after asking a man to help find someone willing to
take the blame for murdering him for £30,000. He
was in fact a sheriff’s informant working with
detectives to get close to her and gather
information.
In January 2010, investigators searched Moore’s
home in Plant City and they found Abraham’s body.
Following the gruesome discovery, Abraham’s
mother Elizabeth Walker said her son was too kind
and trusting to suddenly find himself with so much
money. She said: “Abraham was good-hearted, and
if he was here today, I would let him know. "I would
have to tell him how much I appreciate him for who
he was. “It’s too late now.”
A jury took just three hours to convict Moore of
murder. She was later jailed for life, finally
concluding the most tragic lottery story of them all.
Culled from Mirror.
Chido Onumah at 01:42
The lottery death sentence: How $30 million lotto
winner ended up broke and murdered
Abraham Shakespeare
Good-hearted: Victim Abraham Shakespeare
Big win: With family at presentation
Grief: His mum Elizabeth
Killer: Dorice Moore
Disguise: Dorice "DeeDee" Moore as a blonde
Trial: Judge Emmet Lamar Battles listens to
evidence