Fatal Fortune: Abraham Shakespeare

0:15 Hey, everyone, and welcome back to Exposed Scandalous Files of the Elite. I'm your host, Jim Chapman, and today I am bringing you another subject in the Fatal Fortune series. You're gonna hear about the tragic demise of Abraham Shakespeare. Now, as I like to do, we're gonna jump right into it, and I'm gonna bring you to Polk County, Florida. And that may sound familiar to you. That is home of America's. Sheriff, Grady Judd. And we're gonna go specifically to the city of Lakeland. Now, Lakeland is a metropolitan area of Polk County and very diverse.

1:00 Have pockets of the community where people have a lot of money, and you have pockets of the community that are a little less privileged, much like you know any city in America these days. Now, the crime rate in Polk County is very low, especially as it relates to violent crime. I would say primarily that's due to the job that Sheriff jud has done in his many decades as sheriff. So stories like the one that I'm about to tell you, they don't happen often in the county. And this story centers around a man by the name of Abraham Shakespeare. So let's get into who this guy is and what made him a target. In two thousand and six, Abraham's life completely changed when he won the Florida Lottery, which at that point that he one it was up to thirty million dollars. Now, Abraham, prior to this, you might as well call hi a miracle of winning the lottery, was a man of pretty modest means. Friends would describe him as very respectful, very easy going, and although he wasn't formally educated, he had a really good work ethic and he worked various odd jobs around the community. Now,

2:31 he had dropped out of school in the seventh grade, so he wasn't going to perform heart surgeries for people. But this guy worked his ass off and he was a good dude. He would do things like unloading trucks, he would clean barber shops, and despite his limited financial means, he was content with his life and he was a lifelong resident of Lakeland, Florida. He was proud of his black heritage. He did not smoke, he did not drink, he did not do drugs, and at the time that he won the lottery, this miracle in his life. He was forty years. Old and he was making eight dollars an hour as a mover's assistant on a truck. So you can imagine how mind blown he was when he found out, Hey, I'm thirty million dollars richer. Now, word got around fast that Abraham had won, and of course people start circling the wagons, right, they start coming out of the woodwork.

3:38 They wanted a piece of that thirty million dollar pie, if you will. And a coworker actually sued Abraham, claiming that this coworker was the rightful owner of the ticket. Now, this guy's name was Michael Ford, and there was no denying that he was the one who rolled into a convenience store and he purchased two quick pick tickets from the cashier. However, there are always two sides to every story, right, And according to Michael Ford, after he bought the tickets, which he purchased while he and Shakespeare were making deliveries in that delivery truck, somehow Abraham must have got them out of his wallet, according to Michael Ford. However, Shakespeare he told a different story. He said that he asked Ford to get the tickets. When Ford stopped at the convenience store to buy a drink, and he gave him the money, the whole deal, And in the end a jury believed Abraham's story and he was ruled the rightful owner of that winning thirty million dollar lottery ticket. So, as with any time that someone wins the lottery, there are decisions to make. Right first and foremost is how you will actually get paid out that money, and there are typically two options.

5:10 Now. The first option is to get an annuity, and what that means is the payout is spread out over a set period of years. Usually it's like thirty years. Basically in Abraham's case, one million dollars every year minus taxes, so around seven hundred thousand a year for thirty years. Ton of money, especially for a guy of the limited means that Abraham had. But he did what most people do, and I would probably. Be included in this. I want the lump some payment because I'm to get hit by a truck tomorrow, right, And.

5:51 That's exactly what he did. He took that. Lump sum payment, which meant that after taxes, he would get a check for about twelve million dollars. Actually it was twelve million, seven hundred thousand, so a ton of money, and people in his inner circle they would take advantage in Shakespeare, being the guy that he was, he would help them out. Personally, he didn't splurge on himself nearly as much. He paid cash for a million dollar home, he bought a used car, he purchased a used roleax, mind you, from a pawnshop. But outside of that, he used a lot of the money just to help people.

6:38 He just struggled to tell people no when they would ask him for money. So in two thousand and eight, he meets a woman and her name is d D. Moore, and d D. Moore had a friend who knew Shakespeare. In d D found out that her friend had known him, and she asked that friend for an ear introduction. Now this was under the pretense of helping Shakespeare write a book on his life story. And keep in mind that D. D had absolutely no experience in book publishing or writing of any kind. But despite that, she was introduced to Shakespeare under that pretense. So let me tell you a little bit about D. D.

7:27 Moore. Her first name was Dorriese, her nickname was d D. And she was a local businesswoman in the Lakeland, Florida area, and she owned a pretty successful business. She would manage nursing home contracts and she had some pretty large contracts. So she was financially pretty well off. So on paper, it didn't necessarily look like DD was trying to take advantage of Shakespeare. I mean, she had her own money. It wasn't that much millions like that, but it was. She was comfortable and she lived like it too. She went on lavish vacations, she bought high end designer clothing.

8:08 She was very smart, and she was very business savvy. She was a nice looking lady. So this lady knew how to conduct herself. So she meets Shakespeare again under the pretense of writing that book, and it was during that meeting that she discovered Shakespeare had given away a substantial portion of his lottery winnings. As I said, he helped numerous people. He gave his stepfather over a million dollars. As a matter of fact, at the time Shakespeare met d d in two thousand and eight, just two years after winning and taking home that seventeen million dollar payout, he only had about one point five million in cash and about three million in assets left. He convinces Shakespeare to let her become kind of like his manager, his money manager of sorts, his personal assistant, all those things. And she says, look, you've only got this much money left before you lose all of your remaining money. Let's help each other out here.

9:19 So Shakespeare, he's down with it. As I said, she's a smart lady. She handles herself well, she takes care of herself, she's got a successful business. He had no reason to think it was anything nefarious, and she was convincing. Now time moves on and something strange happens. In November of two thousand and nine, Shakespeare's family contacts police. Then they were concerned because they had not spoke to Abraham since April of two thousand and nine, seven months prior to when they reported this. Now you may be thinking the same thing I was. Why would it take seven months for someone to report him missing? Well, as I told you earlier, a ton of people were constantly hitting Abraham up for money, and he would bitch about it to family and friends more than once, and he would say things when he was venting, if you will, like, I just want to get away for a little while where no one could call me or find me. So his family they assumed that's what he did, went off to some island somewhere to decompress and get away from all these hands reaching in this man's pocket. But after seven months of time, they figured, m it may be time to contact police because one thing about Abraham was he was very close to his mother, and he hadn't

10:51 called his mother in seven months either, which was very strange. So police they start investigating, and of course you art with the people closest to Abraham. You start in that inner circle and you move your way out. And police discover that Abraham actually had an older child. His name was Jeremiah, and Jeremiah had a trust fund that Abraham had set up. He had actually put a million dollars in that trust fund account and that would be collectible to his child when that child turned eighteen. It was also discovered that after winning the lottery, he had fathered another child who was just a year old when Abraham went missing. Now that relationship not so good, at least with the mother of that child. In Abraham, they were a little bit as strange when he went missing at the time, But they investigate all those leads and it turned up nothing as far as foul play would be concerned with these people. So one of the people that they already looking into was Deedy Moore and they called her into the station to speak with her.

12:07 So she goes. In to interview and she tells police that Abraham is not missing. As a matter of fact, she says that she talks to him on a weekly basis, and she tells police that he's fine and that he just wanted to get away from all these people that are constantly asking him for money. And her story was that he went on a cruise and that he was traveling to several different areas of the world after that cruise, and she even sends him a text in front of the police at the police station, and basically that text said for him to call her, that she needed to talk to him, that the police were concerned something was wrong with him, and she was pretty convincing in this interview with the police. So at this point they are pretty much much buying what d Edie Moore.

13:02 Is selling them. And the police said, Hey, meet back with us in the morning after Abraham gets back to you and let you know where he's at and how we can contact him, so she agrees to do that. The next morning, she does return to the police station, but she tells police that Abraham never texted her back, so police they get a little. Suspicious of dB at this point. The story she was telling them the day before is that she talked to him via text all the time, and even he would call her sometimes, but it was always a weekly thing, and when she would text him, he would get back with her promptly. And then she's coming back and she's saying, he won't even respond back to me, and police knew, well, if you talk to him all the time and you tell him the police have hauled you in to question you and he just needs to kind of like check in with the police, he would have done that. So at this point she leaves the police station again and they're like, yeah, we need to start looking into d. D. Moore. And the first thing they do is they start kind of looking into the financial aspects of the relationship between Abraham and d. D. Moore, and they discover that d D was able to gain control of all of Abraham's assets through what is known as a asset purchase agreement. She paid eight hundred and

14:36 seventy five thousand dollars cash for all of his assets. Well, that raised a red flag because his home alone was worth over a million dollars. As I told you earlier. He had over three point one million dollars in assets, and she basically bought control of all of that for less than a million dollars. And when they asked d D about this, she claimed it was so he could avoid paying a gift tax. Now, look, this makes zero sense. So the police at this point they knew we need to do like a forensic audit of all of Abraham's finances.

15:22 And this is no simple, easy, quick process. I mean a forensic audit is like going through all of your financial records with a fine tooth comb, tracking every single cent, and you're talking mins of dollars. In this case, most of it not tracked with a receipt of any sort. I mean, he had loans out that he had loaned people money, and there was no paper trail there. So this was quite the task. Jim, did you see what happened in Texas today? Wait before you tell me that, let me tell you what happened in New York. It cannot be as crazy as the case I told you about yesterday in Louisiana.

16:06 You know what, we should do a podcast about it, and with that we did. Crime War Weekly covers the crime news headlines that have dominated the week. We cover trending crimes from all over the country and even sprinkle in a few globally. Crime War Weekly is available now wherever you listen to your podcasts, simply by searching Crime War Weekly or clicking the link in the description of this podcast. But they do that, and they find that d D had started moving large sums of money from Abraham's accounts into her accounts, and this money was used to pay for vehicles, It was used to pay for vacations, clothes, you name it. She was using that money to pay for that stuff. So it wasn't going into a nest egg or an investment somewhere.

17:03 Now it gets even more wild as police continue investigating and they discover that while Abraham had been missing all this time, de D had actually moved into Abraham's home. Not only herself, her son and her boyfriend also moved in to Abraham's home. Now she also moved anything Abraham related inside of that home out of the home, all his shit. Then she moved all her stuff in there was basically no sign that Abraham had ever even lived in this million dollar home. If you walked in there, it was just D. D.

17:51 Moore's shit. So at this point police did something pretty smart. They remembered during that first interview with dd that she had sent a text in front of them, remember I told you about that to Shakespeare, So they knew his number was still active, so they would start calling the number and they would check to see what cell towers it would ping off of, and lo and behold, they discover when they would call it, the cell phone pings would come from wherever DEDI was at the same time, but Abraham was nowhere around her. They knew this because they were surveilling her and they would call the cell phone as she traveled throughout town. And police also learned that Dede would send and get text supposedly from Abraham saying he was in this country or he was in that country, everywhere but in Lakeland, Florida, and she would pass this information along to Abraham's family. However, once again those towers would show those texts back and forth were coming from the same area. So police they meet with Dede and they lay it all out there. They show her actual charts of the cell phone pings from cell towers, and

19:23 they tell her they know she is lying, and she basically at this point knows she's caught, and she admits that she had Abraham's phone, but she tells police that Shakespeare told her before he left town that he knew this would come up with police at some point, that they would start looking for him, and so I'm going to leave my cell phone with you so you can pretend like it's me. Basically, she was saying this was all intentional for him not to take his Again, everyone knew that this made absolutely zero sense and that it was bullshit, and they just let her keep hanging herself.

20:15 And it's at this time that it is officially announced in one of Sheriff Grady Judd's famous press conferences, that Abraham Shakespeare is missing, foul play is expected, and the police have opened up an official investigation. And it's also at this point that police start really amping up the pressure on d. D Moore and they go to her and they say, look, there's no way that Abraham is not going to at the very least contact his mother for Christmas.

20:55 As I told you earlier. He was very close with his mother. The police knew that, all of his family knew that, even d D knew that. And Christmas happened to be right around the corner from this conversation that police had with her. So they tell her, you need to tell Abraham to call his mom for Christmas, and if he does not, we're going to know that you're responsible for this and we're gonna come after you even harder. So get this. The day after Christmas, Abraham's mom calls the police and she said, hey, I spoke to my son, which, honestly, this shocks the shit out of the police.

21:44 But she also said it sounded weird. It sounded like him, but it was something off about it, and she said it could have been him. There was just something very strange about his response when he would talk to her, and his voice sounded a little bit different. So police asked her about what number that he called from, and she said it was a block number. However, and let this be a lesson to you. Even if you block your number, police can subpoena the cell provider and they'll supply. The actual number.

22:24 So just because it's blocked, when it comes through on somebody's end at and Tier, Verizon or whoever you have, they know who that number was that. Blocked that number. So police they subpoena those cell phone records and they discover that this number belongs to a guy after they traced it by the name of Greg Smith. And not only that, but the cell provider also up and says, if you would like, we can also give you the live GPS track information for the phone that was used to call Abraham's mom where the number was blocked.

23:09 And police are like, hell yeah. And as luck would have it, when they get that GPS tracking information, which was almost immediate as they were talking to this cell phone company. The fact at the time was only a few minutes away from where the police were was at a mall right by the station. So the two detectives say, shit, we're going to go over there and see who this person is. They jump in. The car, they pull up at that mall and guess what, and this is just crazy timing. They pull up and as soon as they do, they look up and there's d D. Moore of all people pulling in that mall.

23:56 She parks, she gets out, she walks over to a gentleman in a vehicle and she hands him a big, thick wad of cash. They talked for a minute, she gets back in her car, she pulls out. Well, the detectives they kind of let her leave and they start following this other car. They pull him over and basically they question him. They say, how do you know D. D. Moore? What was that want of cash? For the whole deal? They then tell him you need to come to the station.

24:39 We need to talk to you further. And during this conversation slash interviews slash interrogation if you will, they discover that he had a long connection with Abraham. This guy Greg Smith, he actually owned a barber shop where a would sweep up and clean up around the barber shop. Remember I told you he did a lot of odd jobs before he won the lottery. And he even mentioned that after Abraham won the lottery, he borrowed one thousand dollars from Abraham to halt a foreclosure from one of his properties that this guy Greg Smith owned. So that's what kind of guy Abraham was. He even loaned this guy money. Now, after hearing this, detectives ask him straight up, straight out, why did ded he give you that big wat of money, and he responds honestly that he was asked by d D to make a phone call and pretend to be Abraham. So detectives at this point they pretty much tell Greg Smith everything they knew about d D.

25:59 Number one, they said, do you realize Abraham's dead? He's not really missing, We think d D did it, all this sort of stuff. And the truth was, Greg Smith, he had no idea Shakespeare was dead. He believed what Dede told him and told everybody else that Abraham just didn't want to deal with people anymore. The investigator makes a proposition at. This point to Greg to work with them, and he said, look, if you don't work with us, then once we proved that Abraham is not missing, that he's actually dead, and we're going to get some evidence to prove that, you're going to be implicated in the disappearance and murder of Shakespeare after the fact. So Greg he's like, fuck that, what do you need me to do? And investigators tell Greg, look, you're going to have to wear a wire and you're going to have to continue talking to DD and of course not mentioning anything about ever having a meeting with us, and we're going to see what kind of evidence we can bring to the table on a recording. So for about two weeks, nothing major transpires on that wire. It's just kind of bullshit conversations back and forth between d D and this guy and then investigators.

27:26 They get another great idea. So they called d D and they tell her on the phone that something shady was going on because Abraham's mom called them and said whoever called her at Christmas time did not sound like Abraham. Now they did this because they were trying to induce panic in DD, and it worked. DD goes straight to Greg Smith and she tells him things like you didn't do a good job with your voice because his mom did not think you were Abraham. And Greg plays it off and he's like, well, what do we do now? And d D comes up with an idea and it just gets crazier to write Abraham's mom a letter. So DEDI rents a hotel room, she brings Greg up there, and y'all, she's thinking she's covering all the bases, even down to wearing a hairnut while typing this letter up to avoid a DNA issue. Now, of course, she had no clue that Greg was wired up to the gills the entire time, and she types his shit up and she dictates it to Greg the whole time. So as she's writing a Senate she'll to

29:00 Greg and she's wanted to get feedback from him. You know, do you think this makes sense, doesn't make sense, et cetera. But keep in mind he's wired up. So police are gathering all of this information on recording, and at this point the pressure continues to mount. Indeed, he makes her biggest mistake yet she loses it with panting. She knows the police are closing in and she approaches Greg again and this time her idea gets even crazier. And remember any conversations with Greg, he's wired up. So she asked him if he knew anyone who would take the fall for the murder of Abraham. So Greg, he tells d D that he knows a guy and this guy is going to jail for thirty years on drug charges, but that he's wanting to ensure that when he goes to jail that his family is going to be taken care of.

30:06 So he tells her she's willing. To pay he can get it done. This guy will take the right for that. So what police do is they have a detective go under cover, and he plays this character if you will, and of course he's wired to the gills and this character slash undercover police officer. He meets with d D and Greg in a parking lot and it's in this conversation that d D claims that Abraham got killed over a drug deal gone bad. That's what she tells this undercover cop. So, mister undercover, he tells d D. For fifty grand, I'll take the charge.

30:54 And DD's like done, and she says, can you taken in payments? And and he says, look, I want a little bit upfront and the rest when it's done. And twenty four hours later, she gives him a weapon and she says, this is the actual gun that killed Abraham Shakespeare. So guess what. Now police have the murder weapon. They trace it and they figure out who the original purchaser of that gun was and it was none other than Dedie Moore. So on June twenty eighth of twenty ten, she takes mister undercover out to a wooded area on a property that she owned. It was actually in the back of a home that she owned, and she tells this undercover cop who she thinks is about to go to jail, right, she tells him she needs him to dig up something that needed to be destroyed. So they go in the back of that property. She points to an open shed and she says, Abraham's body is underneath that slab, and.

32:14 All of this of course on wire. So he says he'll take care of that, but they need to meet up and exchange money, and at that point they agreed to meet up later on that night in a parking lot, which they do and police are waiting and they arrest D. D. Moore. So over the next three days they concentrate on digging that slab up, and after those three days they start smelling human remains and sure enough, the body of Abraham Shakespeare. Now, the cause of death was determined to be a gunshot to the chest area, which police had the gun and kind of a weird thing here, but police knew D. D.

33:03 Could not have dug that hole. It was really deep. It was like nine feet deep. They discovered that her ex. Husband, a guy by the name of James, had actually dug that hole. So they go to James and they say, what do you know about this? And Apparently this wasn't uncommon for James to do. He did. He used to do favors for d D quite often around her home for cash. And so he told them that she called him one day and said she needed to dig a hole to bury trash. And she said it was hazardous material type stuff that she couldn't throw in a trash can or a dumpster, and she wanted to bury it in the ground. And he knew how to run a back hoe, and so he dug a nine foot hole for her, and she paid him one hundred dollars cash to do that, and police knew this guy had nothing to do with it. So to tell you how clueless that Dede was about the evidence that police compiled during this investigation. When police questioned her again, she attempted to tell them she attempted to blame everything on the undercover that she did not know was an undercover cop. She basically said, oh, no, he's the one who killed Abraham, and so he's trying to pin all this on me now. And when police tell her, uh, you know, you got a problem here because he works for us, he's an undercover cop and he definitely did

34:36 not kill Abraham he's been wired up this whole time. We have you on recording. Her face was absolutely priceless. When she found that out, she had no clue at all. So this chick tries to then blame her own son for the murder. She said that Abraham shoved her in an argum and her son pulled out a gun and shot him, I mean her own son. Now, when it was all said and done, she blamed five or six different people. This woman was an absolute pathological liar. And of course police they weren't buying any of his shit.

35:20 And Didy Moore she goes into jail and she is arrested for first degree murder. Now, police theorized that Abraham noticed that money was being shuffled from one account to her account and another account to her account, and he confronted her about this and she shot him and killed him. So she goes to trial in twenty twelve, and it runs about two and a half weeks that trial, and in the end, all of that recorded wiretap information, of course, was played in trial, and they had a body, and they had a gun that was registered to her, and all of that was enough to convict d. D. Moore in the killing of Abraham Shakespeare. So d D is sentenced to life in prison with no parole. So I'm going to play a quick clip for you.

36:25 This is only about a minute in length, but it's d D. Moore in prison many years after she was convicted, and she talks about Abraham Shakespeare and her. Thoughts several years later. Listen to this, Hey. How are you. I'm fine. I've been working on my case and I've got my appeals out, so I'm waiting patiently. How long have you been incarcerated in jail and in prison at this point fourteen years? You still do not admit that you murder to Abe Shakespeare. Absolutely not. I didn't fourteen years. There's a lot of time to think.

37:05 Do you ever go back and think about Abe? About Abraham Shakespeare? Absolutely it was wrong. There was no reason for him to. Pass away over money, but for them to lie in public and say. That I took his money. The whole situation was so stupid. You murdered him, and you've taken zero responsibility, and you're saying, like in past tense, that he's so said he had to pass away. Abraham Shakespeare did not pass away. Abraham Shakespeare was shot at close range. Everything they said in jury trials was not true. I thought that you might, more than a decade after our interview, have some yeah, some remorse, some reflection about what had happened, that maybe there was a little bit of softness in your heart about Abraham and about your responsibility here.

38:03 There is plenty of softness in my heart. So there you have it. Still denying this after four teen years just crazy to me. So there you have it. The case of Abraham Shakespeare another fatal fortune subject. I hope you enjoyed that. Thank you so much for listening. If you're so inclined, check out Crime Wire Weekly. It's on its own channel. We play previews on this particular feed, but if you want to hear the old episode, it's usually between an hour and an hour and a half in length. It drops every Friday. You have to go to crime Wire Weekly and follow it on that particular feed.

38:53 There's no cost for it, but it'll alert you when we drop episodes. I hope everyone had a fantastic labor day. I hope you didn't work too hard. I'm actually recording this on a Friday, so I don't know if my team LSU won or not this weekend, but it is the opening up football season, my favorite season of the year, and they got a lot of good games this weekend. So although I can't talk about my team winning or losing or any of the other games, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you had at least. Sometime with family and friends this past weekend and of course over the Labor Day holiday.

39:36 I appreciate y'all so much. Check out the Patreon commercial free early releases, bonus episodes, clips, all kinds of stuff files, Patreon dot com, slash exposed podcast files. I'm actually putting a substantial amount of files on there concerning this case that I didn't even cover on this episode. We had a ton of letters the d D. Moore wrote to the judge that are just unbelievable. She drove this guy completely crazy, so much so I'm like, I don't even need to cover all this. Just trust me. She's a nutcase, this lady, and you'll see what. I'm talking about.

40:16 Check it out on Patreon before I close out today. I'm late on my quarterly gifts for my Patreon members, but there's a legit reason for this. The company that I deal with for my printing and all of my swag stuff. Actually screwed up my order and they misspelled the name of my podcast on nearly one hundred different items, so I had to send all that back. It took several weeks to even get it back to them before they would credit me back and start the process pretty much all over again. So I'm on that, but I promise you'd give me just a couple of weeks and we will get those to you as well. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, I'm Jim Chapman, your host of Exposed Scandalous Files of the Elite.

41:17 Much love,