In Florida, 2006 lottery winner led a life filled with problems

February 15, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) — When Abraham Shakespeare cashed in a $30 million Florida Lottery ticket in 2006, the barely literate ex-con posed with a giant oversized check.

He promised the money wouldn’t change him. Three years later, his body was found under a 30-by-30 concrete slab behind a friend’s home.

That friend — Dorice “DeeDee” Moore — has been called a “con artist” by police. She’s also been charged as an accessory to Shakespeare’s murder, but she says she didn’t kill him. No one else has been arrested.

Shakespeare started handing out wads of cash days after he won the lottery, according to court documents from Polk County, where the 43-year-old was born and lived a problem-filled life.

When Shakespeare was 13, he was arrested for stealing. He was freed from a reform school at 18.

Over the next decade, he was arrested for everything from trespassing to assaulting his girlfriend, which landed him in prison. He was released in 1995.

He had another girlfriend, and they had a son but broke up. Police arrested him in October 2006 because he was behind on child support.

Upon getting out of jail, Shakespeare went back to his job as an assistant truck driver.

Less than a month after being released, the truck’s driver, Michael Ford, was asked by Shakespeare to get two lottery tickets.

That was Wednesday, Nov. 15. By Friday, Shakespeare was in Tallahassee, holding the big check.

Shakespeare took the lump sum rather than $1.5 million a year for two decades. Less than a week later, the man who had never had a bank account before winning received about $17 million.

In those last weeks of November 2006, Shakespeare was like the Santa Claus of Lakeland, giving away money.

And then he met “DeeDee” Moore, a heavyset, bleached-blonde woman with a criminal record. She said she wanted to write a book about Shakespeare’s life.

Shakespeare trusted Moore, and her company bought properties he owned, including Shakespeare’s home for $655,000 in January 2009. Three months later, detectives said he was killed and buried in the back of Moore’s home.