Missing $30M Lottery Winner Likely Murdered

Fla. woman a person of interest in 'odd and bizarre' case
By Jane Yager,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 7, 2010 8:51 AM CST
Missing $30M Lottery Winner Likely Murdered
This undated photo provided by the Polk County Sheriff's Office shows Abraham Shakespeare, 43, a truck driver's assistant who lived with his mother who was reported missing Nov. 9, 2009.   (AP Photo/Polk County Sheriff's Office)

When a Florida lottery winner vanished months ago, his mother hoped he'd gone to a Caribbean island to escape the hangers-on who plagued him—but authorities now believe that he was in fact murdered by one of them. A woman who befriended former truck driver's assistant Abraham Shakespeare after he won $30 million in 2006 is a "person of interest" in the "odd and bizarre circumstance" of his disappearance, a sheriff says.

DeeDee Moore, 37, fashioned herself as Shakespeare's financial adviser and bought his million-dollar home shortly before he disappeared in April, AP reports. After he vanished, she is believed to have texted friends from his cell phone and to have offered people money to make false reports to police about sightings of Shakespeare and to deliver a birthday card, supposedly from him, to his mother. "We fear and are preparing for the worst," the sheriff said. "We're working this case as if it were a homicide." (More Abraham Shakespeare stories.)

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