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[theme music] DAVID CLARK: Polk
County is what most people consider a rural county.
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We have a lot of orange groves. We have a lot of cow
pastures, a lot of houses with large acreage, but we
also have Metropolitan areas
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such as the city of Lakeland. Lakeland is a very diverse city. You have pockets of Lakeland
that are influential people,
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very affluent people. The crime rate in Polk
County is one of the lower counties in Florida.
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We don't have a lot
of violent crime. On the spectrum of Florida, I
would put us in the lower 10%
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GREG THOMAS: The Polk
County Sheriff's Office advised that they may need
our assistance in our county,
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as they were investigating
the disappearance of Abraham Shakespeare
in their jurisdiction.
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DAVID CLARK: It's a bit
of a high profile case, could become a little complex. Abraham Shakespeare
won $31, 32 million.
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And he accepted a payout
after taxes, which would equate to about $17 million. Me and Abraham was
basically childhood friends.
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To describe Abraham
as a person, he was a gentle, kind, loving person. He was heartfelt, hard giving.
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If he had it, he was
willing to share it. I heard Abraham won
the lottery by TV,
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and the news, and the streets. Let's put it that way. He didn't grab his wealth
and immediately run.
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He stayed in the
community where he lived. MERISSA GREEN: I would
say probably a year
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and a half passed after Abraham
won the Florida Lottery. And it just got real quiet.
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So the last time he seen in
around April of 2009, family, his mother, his close
friends, his cousins
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that he was close
with were calling his cell phone in hopes of
reaching him and talking to him.
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Abraham wasn't answering
his cell phones. GREG MASSEY: I want to say,
like, about two or three months,
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that Abraham been
missing before the report was made that he was
now a missing person.
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The missing persons report
on Abraham Shakespeare came out from the Polk
County Sheriff's Office
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on November 9, 2009. That is when we learned that
he was officially missing. [tense music]
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DAVID CLARK: I knew who
Abraham Shakespeare was. Whenever a person
in the community
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or in the county
you live in wins $30 plus million dollars in the
lottery, it makes, at least,
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local news. GREG THOMAS: He had purchased
this small mansion in a very wealthy area of Lakeland,
a state-of-the-art
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home with all the nice fixtures,
and so forth, pool, and whatnot. The home was beyond
his wildest dreams
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because it had everything
that he wasn't even used to. GREG MASSEY: Everybody
knew Abraham, who he was.
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And everybody talked
about Abraham winning such a large amount of money. MERISSA GREEN: He was able
to wear designer labels.
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He really cleaned himself up. And he looked like
a different person from what he used to look like
before winning the lottery.
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And had pretty much been a
day laborer his whole life. You know, he would take odds
and ends jobs, sweeping up
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floors of different businesses. Abraham Shakespeare
couldn't read or write, so he really did not understand
how much money he really had.
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What he did know was that he
now had the resources to pretty much do whatever he wanted.
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He could come and go and
do just about anything. GREG THOMAS: He was known to
just give out handfuls of cash
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to homeless people. At grocery stores, he would
buy groceries for, like, a single mother with children.
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MERISSA GREEN: Abraham
became the Bank of the hood. So he would loan people
in the community money
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with the verbal agreement,
hey, you must pay me back. GREG THOMAS: He would
even have parties.
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And he would suspend nets
of cash up in the ceiling and make it rain down money.
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After seeing Abraham
for the first time after officially knowing he won,
my conversation with Abraham
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was be mindful. A saying that we have is
that everything that's shine isn't gold.
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And everybody that smiles isn't
in the best interest for you. My thought when they
said Abraham was missing
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that he was just
somewhere remotely that he didn't want to be bothered. MERISSA GREEN: He told
me he had to change
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his cellular number
several times because people were
pestering him for money. He also told me how
people would wait
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for him outside of his mother's
home, hoping to get a glimpse or catch him. DAVID CLARK: At
that point, we met
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with the Missing Persons Unit. And we got all the
information they had. And we sat down and
reviewed what they had.
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And then made a determination
that we were just going to start over, start
interviews over, and just
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get to the bottom of the case. GREG THOMAS: They start looking
at everything surrounding
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the fact that he was a known
person in the Lakeland, Florida area because he
was a lottery winner,
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that he was generous
with his money. And obviously beginning the
background into everybody
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associated with him. DAVID CLARK: Abraham
had a older child that he had fathered prior
to winning the lottery
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by the name of Jeremiah. We knew one thing that he did
was when he won the lottery was
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he got $1 million
bond for him that he could have when he was 18. We knew after winning the
lottery, he had met a young lady
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and fathered a child with her. And I think the child was less
than a year old or maybe a year.
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And they were a
little bit estranged. Their relationship was
one of a lot of domestic
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arguing, fussing, fighting. So while we're
looking into all this, we're talking to everybody, his
mother, everybody that we can.
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GREG MASSEY: Abraham and
his mom was very close. The relationship with a mom and
a son is a very bonding thing.
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Abraham has other siblings,
but Abraham and his mom, was very close. He did everything consistently
over, and over, and over again,
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including calling to
check up on his mother. So when he went from
all of a sudden,
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his mom was able to talk to him
every day to all of a sudden, it went radio silent,
that was very odd for her.
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DAVID CLARK: Once we
reviewed everything from the missing
persons case, we knew that we needed to
talk to the person who
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reported him missing. GREG THOMAS: In about
November of 2009, the cousin decided to approach
the Polk County Sheriff's Office
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and make a report
of a missing person. DAVID CLARK: Cedric tells us
he last saw him in early April
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and hasn't heard from him since,
but there was this lady that hears from him all the time.
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GREG THOMAS: Dee Dee Moore
was a local businesswoman. She had actually owned a pretty
successful nurse staffing
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business, and had some
pretty large contracts, and was doing financially well. She had her own designer
labels and the like.
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She pulled no punches
on the type of lifestyle that she lived. She went on lavish
vacations to Las Vegas.
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GREG MASSEY: She was
very educational. She's a nice looking woman, very
attractive, business oriented,
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business sense. So she knew how to conduct
and handle herself. She had approached Abraham
Shakespeare about a year prior
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and said that she wanted
to write a book about him winning the Florida Lottery. GREG MASSEY: She
studied Abraham.
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And she knew what he wanted and
what she felt he might want. So she knew exactly
how to maneuver
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herself directly into his life. Let's call Dee Dee Moore in. And then that's the next
person we talked to.
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In the first hour of
the interview with Dee Dee and talking to
her, we kind of feel,
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well, maybe she is helping him. And on the up and
up, she tells us that she talks to Abraham
on a at least weekly basis,
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sometimes on a daily basis. And that he's fine,
that he wanted to get away from all these
people asking him for money.
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She told us that he had
went off, went on a cruise. And that he was just
traveling on his own,
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that she didn't know
his exact location. Dee Dee told us that she was
enlisted by Abraham to help him
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escape Polk County so
that people wouldn't be pestering him for money. DAVID CLARK: And then we
sit there and watch her.
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She sends him a text message. Abraham, I need to talk to you. Please call me. And so we take her at her word.
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And she's like, he'll call me. Don't worry. So I guess, probably, in that
first day, we're like, well,
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maybe it's going to work out. So we said, hey, meet back up
in the morning and let us know.
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Which she did. And she said, I haven't
heard back from him. Now we got to find out why.
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[tense music] We start looking at the
financial aspect of everything. Pulling Abraham's finances,
pulling Dee Dee' finances.
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Dee Dee played a more
prominent role in his life, with his finances
and everything else,
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to help collect on a
lot of his bad debts. DAVID CLARK: Abraham's assets
included a million dollar home
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that he had bought
in Lakeland, which was his dream home,
numerous other homes that he
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bought to help people out. Once he got the
things that he needed, he said that I want
to help other people.
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MERISSA GREEN: She started to
look at his financial records and was saying, hey, you
need to do this and do that.
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GREG THOMAS: She was able to
gain control of all his assets through what was known as
an asset purchase agreement.
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I think she said
she paid $875,000 cash for all of his assets,
so we got suspicious of that.
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At that point, we knew
we probably needed to do a full financial investigation. [tense music]
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GREG THOMAS: So she totally
took advantage of him and started moving the
large sums of money
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from the different
banking institutions into her accounts, her business
accounts, and so forth.
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And basically started
spending the money, buying expensive vehicles,
taking expensive vacations
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with her boyfriend. One thing that really
caught their attention was that Abraham
Shakespeare obviously
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was nowhere to be found. And that Dee Dee Moore had
actually moved into his home.
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She just emptied it out like
all his personal belongings, basically just trying to wipe
his existence out of that home
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and make it her home. She moves her son in
there, her boyfriend. Yeah, she totally just moved
in like it was nothing.
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Like he didn't ever exist. They started to use
cell phone technology to see the placement of Abraham
Shakespeare's cell phone,
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pinging off of this
particular tower, knowing that it was with Dee
Dee Moore at the same time.
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And they would do
surveillance and not see Abraham Shakespeare with her. So they knew something was awry.
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DAVID CLARK: Now they've
got text messages from him or they've heard that
he was in Jamaica.
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They've heard that
he is in Orlando. They've heard that he went
to the Cayman Islands.
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They heard he's in
Cozumel, Mexico. And then we also learned that
every bit of these rumors
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or what have you, it all
goes back to Dee Dee Moore. All this information has
came from Dee Dee Moore.
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Abraham was getting
3, 4, 500 calls a day. It was just crazy. After April 4, that stops.
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And the only person that phone
communicates with after April 4 is Dee Dee Moore.
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The cell phone tower data gives
us the location of the phones when they're communicating.
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MERISSA GREEN: We learned that
the phone that Dee Dee was using to communicate with
Shakespeare was
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in the same vicinity of
Shakespeare's cell phone, was pinging from the same tower.
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Which basically says that
either Dee Dee and Abraham are sitting in a car next
to each other driving,
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texting each other
back and forth or Dee Dee has Abraham's phone. We say, Dee Dee, listen.
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We're a little smarter than
you give us credit for. We've pulled all this data. And we had a chart made up,
color coded chart and show her.
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So at this point, she's
just lied about everything. And we're pretty confident that
Abraham's probably not alive.
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And she kind of puts her
head down and she's like, OK, you got me. I have Abraham's phone.
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Before he went missing, he told
me, police are going to do this. They do cell phone
investigations.
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Ding ding. Oh, my god. And so he wanted
us-- he wanted me to use his phone to
send out messages
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to make it look like it. So yeah, this was all planned. And we're like, this
makes no sense, Dee Dee.
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But I mean, what
evidence do we have. I mean, we don't have a body. We don't have anything other
than this scatterbrained lady
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that's giving us a
million different stories. So we kind of sit
down collectively
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and maybe we can bait
her into some stuff. We hope that would put
some pressure on her.
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And it did. We had our Sheriff
hold a press conference and officially
announced Abraham's
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missing and officially
announced that we think that he's met with foul play. MERISSA GREEN: And
so one day when
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I was sitting in the newsroom,
I received a phone call. And who would you know it was?
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Dee Dee Moore. I said, you know, Dee Dee,
I'm hearing a lot of stories from people in the community
that Abraham is missing.
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And so she emphatically
said, well, he's not dead. And I said oh, really? Well, I need to
prove that he's still
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alive because these stories
are running very rampant. And I need some
proof that he's OK.
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And so she said, oh, I can
set up the interview for you. And I said, OK, now I
want to do this next week.
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And I just felt better
about the interview because I just heard so
many different rumors.
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So I was very excited that
Dee Dee said that she could help me reconnect
with Abraham so I
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could prove that he was alive. And so I tried several times
to get in contact with her
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and I didn't get a response
and didn't know why. So it just made me really mad
that, OK, we went from I can
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produce him to, all of a sudden,
I can't get in contact with him. DAVID CLARK: So
we kind of wanted
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to create something
in Dee Dee's mind where we knew we
put pressure on her. So a few days before
Christmas, I called Dee Dee up.
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So I actually wore
a wire that day. I actually put a
recording device on. And I know that Abraham
loved his mother.
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So we have the Christmas
holidays coming up. And if you can do
anything to get Abraham to at least call his
mother, that would really help.
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But if Abraham doesn't
call his mother or reach out to his
mother during Christmas,
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I'm going to probably believe
what my partner is saying and what the press
conference said, that you're
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a person of interest. The day after Christmas,
Abraham's mother called me. And she told me that she
had spoken with her son.
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Of course, I was shocked. MERISSA GREEN: She said, that
did not sound like her son.
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One thing a mother knows if
they don't know anything else is their child's voice.
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DAVID CLARK: She said
that he was very short, but he said he was fine, that
he knew the police were looking
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for him, but he just wanted
her to know that he loved her and that Merry Christmas.
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I said, well, what number
did he call you from? And she said, well,
it said private.
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But I can subpoena those records
and find out what number it is. It belongs to a guy by
the name of Greg Smith.
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And here's the live GPS
tracking location of it. The phone is at the
Lakeland Square Mall.
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So I tell my
partner, oh, my god. I can tell you
where this phone is. Let's go. So we jump in the car.
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We drive to the
Lakeland Square Mall. Pull into a spot and
we just sit there. It's like the gods were with us.
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We look up and we see
Dee Dee Moore pulling in the dang parking lot. She parks next to this car.
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And she gets out and she meets-- and the only thing we
can see is that it's a black gentleman in the car.
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Well, we see her hand a
wad of cash to this guy. And they talk for a minute. The car with the guy in
it, it turns to the north.
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Her car turns to the south. So we follow the guy. Your heart's beating. You don't know, I
mean, who is this?
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What are we running into? I mean, is this a
contract killer? So we say, hey,
let's stop the car.
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We grab the guy and
throw him in our car. And now we're going
to go talk to him and find out what's
going on with him.
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MERISSA GREEN: Investigators
learn that it was Greg Smith. And he owned a barber shop.
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And him and Shakespeare
were really good friends. GREG MASSEY: Gregory
Smith was the barber
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that Abraham attended, that
he went to get his hair cut. I began to go there because
I was with Abraham every day.
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Gregory Smith also borrowed
$63,000 from Abraham to pay off some land they had in Plant
City, a property, to stop
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from being in foreclosure. And I'm the one who
did the contract. I didn't look at him
as being anything
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but just an admirable man
who was in need of some help. DAVID CLARK: So we
asked him straight up,
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why did Dee Dee give you money? And he said, well, she asked
me to make a phone call.
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I called Abraham's mother
and pretended to be Abraham. We don't give him all
of our investigation,
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but we tell him everything. And he truly was a
little surprised by it. Investigators made a
proposition to Greg Smith.
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Hey, you either
play on our team or if you continue to
play on Dee Dee's team, you're going to jail.
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And he stepped back and said,
what do you want me to do? We want you to continue
talking to Dee Dee.
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And we want you to wear a wire. MERISSA GREEN: Greg chose
wisely and decided to work
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on behalf of the investigators. DAVID CLARK: For probably the
next 11 days, that went on.
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And we could tell that
through those conversations that Dee Dee was very
trustworthy of Greg.
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We know we have to push
something because we're not really getting any evidence
that he's dead, or alive,
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or whatever. And so I tell Dee
Dee, listen, there's something shady going on here.
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Abraham's mother said she
got a call from Abraham, but she says that
it wasn't Abraham.
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That she feels like somebody's
playing a game with her. And she's like, oh, my goodness.
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You know Abraham's
mother, she's elderly. I'm sure it was Abraham. Lo and behold, she
meets with Greg.
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We're listening. And she tells Greg, you didn't
do a good job with your voice because she knew it wasn't you.
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And she told the cops that
she didn't think it was. And Greg's like, oh, my god.
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What are we going to do now? So then comes the
elaborate letter scheme. MERISSA GREEN: She purchased
a laptop and a printer
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to write a phony
letter to his mother. Rents a hotel room, brings
Greg up there, all while we're
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listening, and types up this
elaborate letter while wearing a hairnet to keep
her DNA off gloves
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and basically types this
letter in what she thinks is Abraham's voice. And she's literally
dictating this letter
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to Gregg, what she's typing,
while we're listening to it. So we, of course,
retrieve the letter.
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Then we call Greg in. And we say, Greg, we
know she's stressed out. We can tell from talking to you.
00:26:15
At this point, we
want you to completely interject yourself in this. They decided to deploy
their confidential informant
00:26:23
as their ruse had started
to take effect, which would have been about January 24, 25.
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GREG MASSEY: She entrusted
Gregory Smith to find someone she said that was
willing to take a fall
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for Abraham's disappearing. MERISSA GREEN: Greg told Dee
Dee that, hey, he knows somebody
00:26:45
who was going to jail for life. And he could take the rap
for Abraham's disappearance.
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And Greg did a great job. He did just that. And we listen. And he tells Dee Dee,
hey, what's going on?
00:27:02
Is Abraham dead or alive? I really don't care at this
point because I'm all in. And she's like, well,
what do you mean?
00:27:08
He's like, well, if he's
dead, I got a cousin that just got popped
and is about to go
00:27:13
to prison for 30 years in the
federal system on drug charges. If you got money and you
obviously got money, Dee Dee,
00:27:20
he'll take a murder rap. She agreed to it. And I mean, we are, like,
secretly high fiving each other.
00:27:42
We're like, yes, it worked. What's our next step? And so we know we have
to find someone that Greg
00:27:50
can introduce to Dee Dee. Mike Smith was the best
undercover narcotics cop ever.
00:28:00
I mean, when you
look at him, you think he's coming to kill you. GREG THOMAS: He had
covert recording devices
00:28:06
placed on him by the detective. So we had all the evidence. We had all the
recorded interaction.
00:28:11
We knew this was a real thing. DAVID CLARK: So Dee Dee
meets with Mike and Greg in the parking lot.
00:28:19
And we're listening
to the whole thing. So she tells Mike
Smith that there's a drug dealer by
the name of Ronald
00:28:26
that shot Abraham
and killed him. So Mike's, like,
keeping it business. I tell you what,
I want 50 grand.
00:28:56
50 grand, I'll take
care of my family. You give me 50
grand, I'll take it. She's like, done.
00:29:50
And Dee Dee's like,
give me 24 hours. And it wasn't even 24 hours. Probably 16 hours later,
she calls Mike and she says,
00:30:01
I need to meet with you. [tense music] So she meets him in a
gas station parking lot.
00:30:12
GREG THOMAS: She hands
Greg Smith this weapon. So at this point, he
knows, OK, this is probably
00:30:18
truly the murder weapon. DAVID CLARK: 38 caliber handgun. And she tells him this is it.
00:30:24
This is it. This is what killed him. So now we have
the murder weapon. The original
purchaser of that gun
00:30:32
was Dorice Donegan
Moore, Dee Dee Moore. [tense music] GREG THOMAS: Evening
of January 25, 2010.
00:30:45
She took the confidential
informant out to a wooded area, behind one of the
properties that she owned.
00:30:52
GREG MASSEY: She enlisted him to
come to where Abraham had been buried and indicate
she needed him
00:30:59
to basically dig up something
that needed to be destroyed. They get out. And they walk towards the
far back of the house.
00:31:09
And she says, Abraham's
body is right here, right underneath
this concrete slab.
00:31:16
And Greg says, OK. We're going to do it tonight. They part ways. And we follow Dee Dee.
00:31:26
Dee Dee tells Greg to meet her
in the parking lot of the mall. We rush in. We throw Greg into handcuffs.
00:31:33
And I go to Dee Dee. I go, Dee Dee, we've
got some problems. She goes, yes, we do.
00:31:41
[tense music] GREG THOMAS: That night, we put
all the information together. We were able to get it approved
through the state attorney's
00:31:52
office in my jurisdiction. At that point, when the
search warrants are physically
00:31:56
signed by the judge,
we were able to take control of that property. MERISSA GREEN: There was
yellow tape everywhere.
00:32:05
There was law enforcement
all over that property. GREG THOMAS: We had
arranged that night
00:32:09
to have county maintenance
services bring out heavy equipment, because
we knew we were dealing
00:32:14
with a large plank of concrete
that had to be broken up and removed. It took them three
days to find his body.
00:32:22
They dug for three days
beneath a concrete slab. We came down to a
point in the exhumation
00:32:32
where we started to smell
decomposition of human remains. After his body was placed
in this grave that was dug,
00:32:41
Dee Dee Moore then
put on top of the body some bags of lime, maybe limit
the smell of decomposition
00:32:50
and so forth. We also found receipts
and video surveillance of her purchasing the lime.
00:32:56
And they had to go
through the necessary steps, you know, taking the
remains to the coroner
00:33:05
to determine if who they had
was indeed Abraham Shakespeare. I drove to Florida
Southern College, where
00:33:17
Abraham's mother
was, let her know that we had recovered a body. Didn't want her to go home
and see it on the news.
00:33:24
And that we were pretty
confident it was Abraham. She was emotional, but I mean, I
think, she was prepared for it.
00:33:31
The feeling that I got knowing
is that Abraham was now gone was a feeling of disbelief.
00:33:39
The relationship he had with
his mother was now gone. The relationship
with the community
00:33:43
had now-- was now gone. The relationship he
had with the people that he reached out and
helped was now gone.
00:33:51
The question was, why? GREG THOMAS: The cause of
death was the gunshot wounds to his chest region with
the perforation of his lung
00:34:06
and I think the liver was
the actual cause of death. Then they
positively identified
00:34:11
Abraham by dental records. We know he was shot. We know that deed
gave us the gun,
00:34:18
but we don't know if
there's anyone else involved or how did this hole get dug? How did this happen?
00:34:24
So Dee Dee's ex-husband, James. We had talked to him early in
the investigation for a very
00:34:35
only on just preliminary
stuff about, what was your relationship
like with Dee Dee?
00:34:41
So we're like, let's go talk-- let's go talk to James. Maybe James has some
more information.
00:34:46
She asked him to
come over and dig a hole with her front end loader
so that she could bury trash.
00:34:52
And this was not
out of the swords. He would come over and do this
for $100 cash, periodically.
00:35:00
So her ex-husband hops
on the front end loader, digs a hole about
9 or 10 feet deep
00:35:05
and then leaves the property. He would have had
no reason to stay and assist her with anything.
00:35:11
Plus, we felt very
confident in his interviews. We didn't need to
press him any further.
00:35:18
Dee Dee Moore had an
open, great metal trailer that was hooked up to the ATV. And it appeared that
she might have placed
00:35:26
his body in this open trailer. And it would be nothing
for her to basically roll him out of the trailer
and put him in this hole.
00:35:34
So what does she do? She calls her ex-husband. Hey, I need you to come
back and push the dirt back
00:35:40
in and fill the hole in. It's getting dark. He arrives in his truck. He goes to get on
the front end loader
00:35:48
and never looked into the
hole because he's assuming it's just garbage in there.
00:35:52
Collects his $200 that she
was paying him and goes home. Never saw anything in the hole.
00:35:58
Never realized what
he just buried. We drive to our substation. Take her to an interview room.
00:36:12
Sit her down. She's like, I am
just so grateful. You guys are such
great detectives.
00:36:18
The guy you just handcuffed,
he killed Abraham. And I'm so scared for my
life and my family's life.
00:36:27
Thank God. Make sure this guy
goes to prison forever. He killed Abraham. And I said, you're
talking about Greg Smith.
00:36:39
She's like, yes. Is that his name? That's the guy you handcuffed? And I said, yeah.
00:36:43
She's like, yes. And I go, well, you
got bad news, Dee Dee. How do you think
I know his name?
00:36:51
I know Greg Smith. Ever since that day that
you paid him to make that phone call to
Abraham's mother.
00:37:23
I've heard every conversation
you've had with him. Every time you talk to him,
I listen to the recordings.
00:37:30
I know everything. And she completely
pivoted right away. She's like, yeah, but
I was only doing all
00:37:45
that because I'm scared of him. He has a cousin. And his cousin is a
dangerous drug dealing guy.
00:37:51
He's going to prison. And I go, yeah. His name is Mike Smith, Dee Dee. I know him, too.
00:38:03
I used to work with him. He's an undercover cop. And I said, Dee
Dee, you're done.
00:38:14
GREG THOMAS: She wanted
to profess her innocence, that she had nothing
to do with this.
00:38:18
She would put on the sob story. She would cry. You know, Abraham was my friend. I wouldn't harm him.
00:38:32
And she gave several
accounts of what happened. She gave one story of her
14-year-old son at the time
00:38:42
shooting Abraham Shakespeare,
because her account was she was arguing with Abraham.
00:38:46
Abraham had placed hands
on her, becoming violent. Her son was scared
for her safety.
00:38:52
So he reached into her
open safe and pulled out her 38 caliber Smith
and Wesson handgun--
00:39:04
--and shot him twice
in his chest area. She gave us probably about
five or six different versions
00:39:11
of what occurred, but blaming
other people for the shooting. But they all took
place in her office.
00:40:01
I ended up authoring a 21 page
charging document, 17 search warrants for bank accounts,
for properties, for computers,
00:40:10
for video cameras,
cell phones, you name it, to basically
continue to link Dee Dee Moore to the homicide.
00:40:30
She finally snapped out of it. And then just was like,
I want to go home. Can I go home?
00:40:36
And I go, yeah, I mean,
you can go home, Dee Dee. We let her go home,
but we are not
00:40:42
letting her out of our sight. I know, eventually, she's
going to be going to jail.
00:40:48
So once we had confirmation
on the body, we had the gun, we had everything. We had Mike Smith.
00:40:55
We had Greg Smith. We had all these
people together. We put it all into
an arrest affidavit,
00:41:01
took it to the judge who
approved an arrest affidavit. We had 24 hour
surveillance on her.
00:41:08
And it just so
happened that she was leaving her complex where she
lived, in Abraham's mansion.
00:41:15
Stopped her vehicle and
took her into custody and charged her with
first degree murder.
00:41:27
GREG THOMAS: The Polk
County detectives and myself theorize that Abraham
Shakespeare started to catch on
00:41:33
that he was being swindled, that
he was being taken advantage of because he would
go to an ATM and not
00:41:39
be able to withdraw money. The account was closed. The account was empty. The money had been
moved, such as that.
00:41:46
So we theorized
that he confronted Dee Dee Moore about this. And as a result, she
shot and killed him.
00:41:54
[gun shots] It was theorized that this
argument around April 6 of 2009, when he was last seen, took
place in one of the residences
00:42:06
on the property where
he was exhumed from. Dee Dee, herself, had a large
office area in this residence.
00:42:15
And she had a large gun
safe at one end of the wall. And so she was known to keep
this particular firearm, which
00:42:21
turned out to be a
Smith and Wesson 38 caliber revolver in this safe. So I think what simply sums
up the motive or the reason
00:42:33
for this case was access
to his millions of dollars or what money was left over.
00:42:38
He went from the
payout of $17 million down to maybe 1.5
million, maybe 2. And she was trying to
get every penny of that.
00:43:00
The trial took place
towards the end of 2012. The total length of the trial,
it was about 2 and 1/2 weeks.
00:43:08
The most critical evidence
that I think the jury saw was, number one, the
numerous stories she told.
00:43:15
Number two, the complete
control over the finances she had for this guy. And just the vast amount of lies
she told, of excuses she gave.
00:43:30
But you basically hand the
police the murder weapon, the gun that killed a man,
and then you go and show
00:43:37
him where a body is buried. How much more definitive or
stronger can the case get?
00:43:43
So once the jury saw these
recordings from our interview room and just how
she acted, they could
00:43:51
tell how manipulative she was. Lack of empathy,
just didn't care. Only cared about herself.
00:43:57
Closing arguments
were presented. And then the jury goes
out to deliberate. It was only probably about
three hours of deliberation.
00:44:09
So at that point, we're
trying to decide, well, is that a good sign or a bad sign.
00:44:12
The jury is brought back in. The jury foreman presents
the verdict to the clerk.
00:44:20
And the judge
announced that she was guilty of first degree murder. The sentence
was life in prison
00:44:32
without the chance of parole. And that's because
it was a first degree murder with a firearm.
00:44:37
She's not eligible for parole. GREG THOMAS: I think
it was Judge Battle. He looked at her
and said, you are
00:44:44
one of the most sickest,
manipulative persons I've ever had in my courtroom. [somber music]
00:45:01
Everybody wanted to see this
woman go down, including me because we knew she was guilty.
00:45:07
We knew. We just needed everything to
come together, all of the pieces to the puzzle, to
get that conviction.
00:45:19
It was very gratifying,
very gratifying. She got what she deserved. To kill a man helplessly
who had been there
00:45:31
to do so great things for
the people in the community, it wasn't really enough. She should have gotten
the death penalty.
00:45:38
He was manipulated, taken
advantage of for his money by just an evil person. And she thought
she could get away
00:45:44
with it, outsmart everybody. And she didn't. She got caught. Abraham never hurt no one.
00:45:51
Never tried to hurt no one. Just a simple man that
didn't deserve this. And in the end,
you know, winning
00:46:03
this money took his life. [theme music]