KILLED FOR HIS LOTTERY $?
TAMPA, FLA. - Abraham Shakespeare could barely read, wrote his name in block letters and had given away most of his $17 million in lottery winnings when he became friends with Dorice "Dee Dee" Moore, a calculating woman who later became his financial adviser, prosecutors said Wednesday.
TAMPA, FLA. - Abraham Shakespeare could barely read, wrote his name in block letters and had given away most of his $17 million in lottery winnings when he became friends with Dorice "Dee Dee" Moore, a calculating woman who later became his financial adviser, prosecutors said Wednesday.
During opening statements in Moore's first-degree murder trial in Tampa, assistant state attorney Jay Pruner said that Moore swindled what was left of Shakespeare's winnings from his bank account in 2009, then killed him and buried his body under a concrete slab in her backyard.
Pruner said that when Shakespeare won the lottery, his life "drastically and dramatically changed" - and that the money caused all sorts of problems, eventually leading to his death. One detective testified that Moore told him that Shakespeare was tired of people asking him for money.
Moore, 40, wore a yellow button-down blouse and black pants to court, and her long, curly hair framed her face as she highlighted notes with a yellow marker during Wednesday's trial.
Her attorney, Byron Hileman, said that there is no evidence tying his client to the gun used to shoot Shakespeare.
Dr. Dollette White, the assistant medical examiner who worked on Shakespeare's autopsy, said that his body was "mummified" and partially skeletonized. She said that his body had been underground for a few months, but that it was difficult to pinpoint exactly how long based on decomposition.
Moore befriended Shakespeare in late 2008, claiming that she was writing a book "about how people were taking advantage of him," said Pruner.
Prosecutors said Moore became his financial adviser, eventually controlling every asset he had left, including an expensive home, the debt owed to him and a $1.5 million annuity. Pruner said that during the trial, he will prove that Moore shifted money from Shakespeare's bank accounts to her own, and that she formed a company in his name - yet didn't allow him to withdraw money from the bank account attached to that company.
In April 2009, Shakespeare disappeared. Family didn't report him missing for seven months. During that time, Pruner said Moore simultaneously lied to Shakespeare's friends and family about seeing him around town while trying to pay others to say that they had spotted him.