Original subtitles

♫♫

Griffith: When I first discovered the online true crime forums,

I couldn´t believe it.

These were people just like me.

We have a community of people

from all over the world investigating things.

One day, I´m reading a post about a missing man in Florida,

a man named Abraham Shakespeare.

It was at this convenience store that Abraham Shakespeare

bought the lotto ticket that changed his life.

Woman: $30 million.

Man: ...then disappeared.

Man #2: Have you seen this millionaire?

We were convinced that there was foul play involved.

The love of money is the root of all evil.

It´s about greed.

-Greed. -Greed. -Greed.

So greedy.

The problems came when the money came.

I really would like my old life back.

I got people asking for money.

Everything started to feel weird.

This had all the ingredients of a who-done-it mystery.

Man: Where is Abraham Shakespeare?

It was a rags-to-riches to murder.

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫

[ Notification chime ]

Griffith: The reason why I love true crime

and the-true crime community

is because I can make a difference.

Okay.

We´re ready.

I look okay? Okay.

My name is Tricia Griffith,

and I am the owner of websleuths.com.

It´s a huge true-crime discussion forum.

We have over 200,000 members and over 16 million posts.

[ Notification chime ]

We have thousands of cases on there

that people are investigating.

It´s just all-consuming.

And unless you´re with somebody that has that same passion,

it´s very hard to understand.

♫♫

I´m very fortunate that I have a part-time job,

which is voiceover work.

You´re rolling on take number one.

Whenever you´re ready. Okay.

And you know, how when you call a company

and you want to talk to a human being

and you can´t get to them because there´s a computer voice

giving you all kinds of other options?

Well, I´m one of those voices.

Welcome to private banking.

To speak with a representative, please say "representative."

We´re sorry, but this feature is no longer available.

I do that a couple of times a month, and it funds Websleuths.

Thank you for calling.

I don´t go out. I don´t date. Goodbye.

People say, "Well, what else do you do?"

And I just give them a blank stare and I´m like,

well, that´s it. [ Chuckles ]

♫♫

This is so typical Dallas.

No instruction. Just boom.

Where do I go? Now, see? Look. I can´t even go there.

There are so many cases that I am proud of

what the Websleuths members have done.

But there´s one case I´ll never forget,

and that´s the disappearance of Abraham Shakespeare.

[ Notification chime ]

One day a post comes up

and it´s about a missing man from Lakeland, Florida.

Unfortunately, very common.

But what made this particularly interesting

was Abraham Shakespeare had won $30 million

in the Florida lottery.

Are you kidding me?

♫♫

Smith: The first time I came across Abraham Shakespeare

was roughly around 2005 before he hit the lottery.

Back then, I had a barber shop.

Abraham Shakespeare was just a walk-by guy.

He didn´t have no money.

Well, this is the barber shop.

This is the place where me and Abraham first met.

Well, he used to sit out here asking people for money.

So I said, "Hey, man, listen. You good, dude.

Man, I´m gonna give you a job."

So I actually gave him a job cleaning up the barber shop.

He´d sweep the floor, empty the garbage, clean the toilets.

He made my barber shop a barber shop.

[ Clippers buzzing ]

He only had a sixth-grade education

because his family was poor, like a lot of us around here.

His parents was orange pickers,

and he actually quit school to help his mom and his dad

support his brothers and sisters.

So he didn´t get a chance.

He didn´t get a fair chance at education.

Abraham was a hard-working individual.

And as well as working in my barber shop,

he had a part-time job working on a truck.

[ Truck horn blows ]

At the end of the day, I just think he wanted to be

somebody like everybody else was somebody.

♫♫

Woman: And now, we have your all-important lottery numbers.

This week we have 12, 13, 42, 6, 52, 34.

♫♫

Woman: This is Florida.

You never know what´s going to happen.

Man: Millionaire lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare.

Woman: Abraham Shakespeare.

Man: The colorful name -- Abraham Shakespeare.

Man #2: Abraham Shakespeare won $30 million

in the Florida lottery.

Coleman: I do remember the day that Abraham came and bought

the winning lottery ticket.

He actually purchased several tickets,

and he decided at the last minute

that he wanted another ticket.

And he was, like, actually a dollar short.

And he went to his guy friend, his coworker,

to get the dollar to come back and to purchase the ticket.

And it was actually the winning ticket.

Green: He was traveling with his coworker, Michael Ford,

when he won $30 million in a jackpot.

And after taxes, that equated to 17 million.

It was the largest jackpot in the county´s history.

♫♫

His life story basically got from going from rags to riches.

I met Abraham back in the ´80s.

He was always more of a subtle type guy.

I didn´t say that I feared the worst for him.

I was glad for him.

But winning that amount of money is, for anybody,

is a life-changing event.

Smith: When Abraham first won that money,

it wasn´t only Abraham Shakespeare.

It was the community that won the lottery.

♫♫

Massey: He was very generous.

He began to look out for people

that had been a part of his life.

He gave his stepfather a million dollars.

His stepsisters $250,000 each.

He gave his godfather a million dollars.

He loaned money to his cousins to help them purchase a house.

This money brought a stature

Abraham Shakespeare never had before.

He became the bank of the hood.

He helped senior citizens get caught up on their bills.

He helped people who didn´t have life insurance

bury their loved ones.

He would loan folks money to buy a car, to buy a house.

Smith: Even myself.

I didn´t ask him for a loan, but he gave it to me anyway.

He´s one of a kind. He got a heart of gold.

Green: I am a former reporter with The Ledger.

And I´ve covered a lot of people

who have won the lottery here in Polk County.

And immediately after Abraham won,

he became one of Lakeland´s most prominent figures.

So I arranged to meet him for an interview,

and soon as he walked in, I felt a little intimidated

because he stood 6´4" tall.

He had the sideburns.

He was dressing really nice.

And so he became very attractive.

His money allowed him to really transform himself.

And he bought a home that cost him a million dollars

in North Lakeland.

Well, here we are to the Redhawk Bend --

gated community.

Who lives in Red Hawk that comes out of the hood?

It was an amazing place.

I remember the first time I walked in the house.

I seen the biggest flat-screen TV I ever seen in my life.

The cars, the girls, the drinks.

He had fun. We all had fun.

♫♫

Butler: I first met Abraham

when I went to his house for a party.

It was just like a spur of the moment thing.

And he was showing me around his house.

But he was just so humble about it.

♫♫

We spent the night talking.

And from that moment on, it was just no looking back.

[ Giggles ]

And he was a person that made sure

to give you time and attention.

There was nothing in the world he wouldn´t do for you.

And I just felt like,

oh, this is what it feels like to be in love.

♫♫

[ Heartbeat thudding ]

When me and Abraham found out I was pregnant,

he was so excited.

He would take pictures the whole way through.

Oh, as the belly grew.

When Jeremiah was born, he cut the cord.

He was so excited.

You could see he had pure joy.

He was living for the first time.

♫♫

Smith: But after a while,

things start changing for Abraham.

He became a target for handouts.

Butler: There was no privacy in his house.

There was always someone there, always.

They were there early mornings waiting for him to surface.

Oh, I´m starting a business.

I would like for you to invest in it.

Oh, come donate to my church.

It was real stressful,

the pressure that people was applying.

Smith: I knew that people was leeching off of him,

and I knew the people that was there was leechers.

Butler: There was a lot of chaos with money.

It started to weigh on him really bad.

It got to the point where he realized, like,

there is no way for me to enjoy life like this.

I really would like my old life back

where I could walk the streets like a normal person,

but I got people coming up asking for money.

Smith: But the situation was so bad,

Abraham got a financial advisor.

Butler: It was something that he really wanted.

Like, I need to get these people out of my pocket.

Our relationship suffered a lot.

Me and Jeremiah, my newborn, we live in our apartment

and Abraham is at the Redhawk Bend Drive house.

It was entirely too much to have a newborn there.

And you have all this company all the time coming over.

And girls will wave their phone number on napkins.

It was just, like, daily contests.

And it was just, like, a lot to break us up.

I remember him telling me, "I´m tired.

Man, I wish this was your money."

"I just want to get away from everybody."

♫♫

Butler: He came to visit one night,

and there was something about his demeanor that was off.

So I kept asking him, like, "Is everything okay?"

And he´ll be like, "Yeah, it´s all right.

I´m just -- I´m tired."

So I´m like, "Okay, well, you can stay here tonight."

He´s like, "No, I got to go back to the house."

And I never did see him again.

♫♫

Griffith: Abraham was reported missing on November 9, 2009,

exactly three years after he won the lottery.

♫♫

I knew this was not a normal missing-persons case.

I thought right then,

this is not going to turn out well.

♫♫

♫♫

Griffith: Okay. Let´s see. Where do I go after that?

Uh, 400 feet, turn on Fairmont.

GPS: In 800 feet, turn right on Wilton Road.

I auditioned to be the Google lady voice,

which would have been great to have my ex-husband hear me

giving him directions -- would have been lovely.

[ Laughs ]

I grew up in Salt Lake City.

And in the ´70s, I had this weird thing happen to me.

I was shopping in a place called Fashion Place Mall,

and this guy comes up and he´s gorgeous.

And he wanted me to go to his car

to show him how to get to another mall.

I put my head down. I said no. And I kept walking.

And three or four weeks after that,

this woman was kidnapped from Fashion Place Mall.

Couple of years later, I see these pictures

on the front page of the newspaper.

And I said, "Oh, my God, that´s that guy in Fashion Place."

And it was Ted Bundy.

♫♫

That incident got me obsessed with true crime.

And when I first discovered the true-crime forums,

I felt like, my people, I am home. [ Laughs ]

Man: Where is Abraham Shakespeare?

Man #2: We have no idea where Abraham Shakespeare is.

Griffith: Abraham Shakespeare´s story garnered a lot of interest

amongst the Websleuthers,

and they just unleashed and went in and started digging.

Parrott: I´ve always been an inquisitive person.

My name is Cindi, but my username is Sleuthster.

It intrigued me, what could have happened to him.

Griffith: There was a plethora of information on the Internet,

and it was fascinating.

Parrott: I started searching local media sites,

public records, property search engines.

Griffith: Newspaper articles, property records, deeds.

Parrott: Social media.

Griffith: Business records.

Parrott: I just knew that this case was special.

Sleuthster, man, she´s like a dog with a bone.

There was no stopping her.

[ Notification chime ]

Parrott: We looked into purchases Abraham made,

who he had been lending money to,

and we discovered that he was going through the money

really quick.

♫♫

Green: We also discovered that

no one had seen Abraham physically

from April to November

when his cousin, Cedric Edom, reported him missing.

So, there´s a huge gap.

Initially, no one gets suspicious

because the money is still flowing.

Those who are used to giving money,

they´re continuing to do so.

And everybody just figured

that maybe he really did want to disappear.

♫♫

Smith: I´m one of those people that didn´t take it seriously.

I just thought maybe he just got away for a while.

He was overwhelmed with a lot of stressful things

that he just wanted to relax away from.

Judd: If Abraham´s alive and well someplace, let us know.

We won´t tell anyone

where you are

if you want to remain anonymous.

We just want to close our investigation

and go on to something else.

Parrott: At first, I thought maybe he did go off

and was on some tropical island drinking a margarita.

But then, as I delved into it,

I discovered that he had a small child

and was close to his mother.

Didn´t seem like a man that would just take off.

Even if he was leaving town,

I believe he would have called me and said,

"Mom, I´m fixin´ to leave."

or he would have came back and let me know.

Parrott: I´m really worried about this guy.

I think that something has happened to Abraham

and probably happened way before November.

We started looking into some of the people

that were involved with Abraham at that time.

Were his friends jealous?

Was there somebody that was so envious

that maybe he didn´t share his money?

So we put a list of people together.

Parrott: And we were wondering

are law enforcement looking into them, also?

My name is David Clark, and I was a detective

for the Polk County Sheriff´s Office.

I was in the Cold Case Homicide Unit at the time.

So, in the beginning of the investigation,

we looked at Mr. Shakespeare´s life,

not only after the lottery, but before he won the lottery.

And we went and talked to people

that either were associated to Abraham or owed him money.

Everyone was a suspect in the case.

Massey: They really didn´t have any leads.

They were just looking at the people

that was in his inner circle and around him.

♫♫

And, in fact, I was one of the people

that they interviewed and looked at.

Clark: We looked at Michael Ford.

Michael Ford was a person that Abraham was actually with

when the lottery ticket was bought.

Green: In 2007, Michael Ford

had decided to sue him in court.

Bailiff: ...presiding.

Please be seated, ladies and gentlemen.

Again, If you have a cellphone or pager, please make sure --

There was a dispute over who owned the lottery ticket.

Michael Ford loaned him a dollar to buy it.

♫♫

Green: He claimed that Abraham stole the winning ticket

from his wallet.

Abraham Shakespeare said that was further from the truth.

And he was going to give Michael $250,000 of his own winnings.

But I think Michael said to himself,

"I can´t believe I let that winning lottery ticket

slip through my fingers."

Is he bitter? Is he pissed off?

Ding, ding, ding -- You could hear the bells going off.

♫♫

Parrott: He could have felt ripped off --

that he felt that he deserved something out of it,

and he was given nothing.

We sent a detective up to Georgia

where Michael Ford was living.

We conducted a lengthy interview with him.

And with his truck records,

he was ultimately able to prove that he had not been in Florida

since April of 2009,

and there was no way he could have been involved.

Parrott: Another person of interest was his cousin,

Cedric Edom.

Griffith: He had a bit of a shady background,

but he was the one that reported Abraham missing.

But then later on, he changed his story and said,

"I didn´t report him missing," letting off a lot of red flags.

♫♫

Clark: Cedric owed Abraham

for the house that he bought for him on the lake.

And Cedric was difficult to deal with.

Cedric was an [bleep]hole.

He felt that Abraham owed him something because he was family.

Clark: Cedric had a very large debt to Abraham.

Griffith: Now, that is definitely a suspect.

You look long and hard at a guy like Cedric Edom.

Clark: After talking to him numerous times,

we determined that Cedric´s true intention

was to report his cousin missing,

and we were able to eliminate him.

♫♫

Coleman: The police had already contacted me,

and they say something weird is going on.

"Abraham, we can´t find him. We´ve been looking.

It´s not adding up. What do you know?"

And I´m like, "Well, no, I haven´t seen him.

I´ve got texts from his phone, but I haven´t seen him."

Green: As part of my own investigation,

I immediately took it to the streets.

And one of Abraham´s friends tells me,

there´s this white woman that everybody knows,

and she has been acting as Shakespeare´s business partner.

♫♫

So I start searching public records,

looking for the paper trail of who she is.

Her name is Dorice Moore, and she goes by Dee Dee Moore.

She´s a financial advisor

and has a company called American Medical Professionals,

and it´s based out of Plant City.

She was seen frequently all around town with Abraham.

Griffith: Our members found Dee Dee Moore´s social media.

"I like to enjoy each and every day life gives me."

"I´m a Leo. I´m a leader, not a follower."

"My friend Trish says,

I believe all things are possible.

I set my mind to something and I just do it

and believe everyone can do the same.

I like to laugh and have a lot of fun.

Serious when it comes to business."

And she just really seems full of herself there.

♫♫

Green: Dee Dee Moore first meet Abraham Shakespeare

at a business conference.

And she was so enamored about him being a lottery winner.

She said that she wanted to write a book.

And so that excited him, and they kept in contact.

It went from wanting to write a book to being his friend.

She would send over limousines to take him over to the casino.

The more that they spent time around one another,

she started looking into his financial affairs.

Butler: She was saying, I can´t believe

all these people take advantage of him,

and I´m going to try to help him financially,

to she´s going to help him get all his business

straightened out and taken care of.

Smith: She was brought in to collect the money

people owed him.

She was a debt collector.

That was her job.

Winton: It was at this convenience store

that Abraham Shakespeare bought the lotto ticket

that changed his life.

But it´s a life that officials now fear may have ended.

Green: I was sitting in the newsroom

when I get a call from Dee Dee Moore.

And I said, "Dee Dee,

I´m hearing from several different people

who said Abraham is missing or he´s dead."

And she emphatically said back to me, "He´s not dead."

And she said that he was dating a Jamaican girl.

They were living together in Orlando.

And I was like, "Okay, well, can you set up the interview?"

And she said, "Sure, no problem."

When Abraham first disappeared,

it was just a lot of craziness going on.

There were text messages from Abraham saying,

"I left you for another woman. We´re going to Jamaica."

And he didn´t want nothing to do with me.

Everything about the situation started to feel weird.

Smith: People say they was hearing from him.

I was calling his phone. He wouldn´t answer the phone.

But I would get a text back.

"I´m okay" or "I´ll call you later."

♫♫

But there´s a problem with those text messages.

Massey: Because of his educational background,

texting is not something that he did,

especially with some of the words that was being used.

Something´s not adding up.

We think there is more than meets the eye

with Dee Dee Moore.

♫♫

♫♫

Griffith: Where did Abraham Shakespeare go?

So our members are looking into Dee Dee Moore.

One of our posters found some very interesting information.

Dee Dee Moore´s company, American Medical Professionals,

is now the owner

of Abraham Shakespeare´s million-dollar home.

Seems a bit shady.

Griffith: Then we find out on Dee Dee´s social media,

she´s now living in it.

She´s posting pictures inside the home, living it up.

It started raising eyebrows.

And we started really focusing on Dee Dee Moore at that point.

♫♫

I get on the Internet,

and I come across this Websleuths forum.

You have 10 or 15 people finding property,

purchase agreements, financial records.

I question, how are they getting this information?

I need a subpoena to get it, but they´ve got it.

Green: As I was scrolling through

the Websleuth message boards,

what became very clear was Dee Dee started moving

all of Abraham´s property into her company´s name.

We know Abraham Shakespeare

dropped out of school at a young age.

He´s not going to understand about transferring

from one company to another.

Then we find out that Dee Dee Moore has access

to Abraham Shakespeare´s bank account

and to a safety deposit box.

And here is Dee Dee Moore,

and she´s got control of all of Abraham´s assets.

She´s taken over his life.

And we´re thinking, police, come on, get with it.

Hello?

Clark: So, in one of our initial interviews with Dee Dee,

we talked to her for about three or four hours,

wanted to kind of go over the financial stuff with her.

Dee Dee was very cooperative.

She shows us this asset purchase agreement

where she paid $655,000 for his house,

and everything that he owned and that was owed to him.

And, you know, she tells us, "I talk to Abraham all the time,

and I don´t know why anybody is reporting him missing.

He´s missing because he wants to be missing."

She said she was helping him get his finances under control

so that he could get away and disappear.

Dee Dee gave us a video that she had made as proof.

♫♫

We watched it numerous times and she just led him on.

At one point, he kind of waves his hand

and tells her to go away.

I mean, it was Dee Dee questioning him

and giving him leading answers.

♫♫

We think we will have a very good chance

of finding more skeletons.

So, in looking at Dee Dee Morris´ transactions,

we find out that the Dee Dee´s filed for bankruptcy...

...and that she owed the IRS money.

Green: This started to paint a picture

that she wasn´t so upstanding

as she presented herself to the public.

Griffith: And then Abraham Shakespeare

comes in her life shortly after the bankruptcy.

We are slowly connecting these dots.

♫♫

Clark: The Websleuths absolutely kept me on my toes.

I felt the necessity to let them know that all the hard work

they were doing wasn´t going unnoticed.

I wanted them to find more stuff.

That´s when I created a name investigating the case.

[ Notification chime ]

And I became part of that forum.

Wow!

I´ve spent the last hour reading these posts,

and I will say that I´m impressed.

Understand there´s a lot more to this case than meets the eye.

Keep looking, because there are some things being missed.

Of course, there are many things in this case I cannot discuss,

but in the end, the truth will be known.

♫♫

[ Notification chime ]

Griffith: We couldn´t believe it.

We were speechless, or we were typeless.

What a trip. That was great.

We are not at all used to having praise from law enforcement.

Usually, they interfere. They drive us crazy.

This was like, wow.

First time we just practically cried.

That was pretty cool that we had a detective

working right alongside of us.

So I was even more determined

to find out what happened to Abraham.

♫♫

[ Indistinct conversations ]

It does start to absorb you, some of the cases.

Forget about what´s going on around you.

I´ve had days working on Abraham´s case,

sometimes working into the night.

My husband would ask me if I was coming to bed.

"Don´t stay up too long ´cause you got to get up

and take our daughter to school and stuff," you know?

I just felt for Abraham, and I felt for his family.

I wanted to find an answer for his mother

and his son and his girlfriend.

So I did some more digging.

Nobody had seen Abraham since April that year.

Yet, people were getting cards and gifts from him

during that period of time.

So we started searching arrest records.

Griffith: Lo and behold, our members find out

Dee Dee has a criminal record, and it´s a doozy.

♫♫

Green: In 2001, Dee Dee had filed this insurance claim

that her car was stolen.

She was beaten and bound by two Hispanic men.

She was thrown in a ditch.

And she tried to acquire $60,000 from the insurance company.

But there was one problem. None of it happened.

♫♫

Clark: Once I initially reached out to the forum,

I kept a pretty constant communication with Tricia.

We talked offline about our private thoughts on the case.

And, you know, we were both on the same page in that

Dee Dee knows what happened to Abraham.

♫♫

We had subpoenaed her phone records

and Abraham´s phone records, as well.

And then we start matching up things.

What we realized is that after April 6th,

both phones are hitting the same tower.

So we have to say either Abraham and Dee Dee

are riding in the same car,

or Dee Dee has both these phones sending the texts herself.

I actually went to her home --

well, Abraham´s home that she lived in and searched it,

but we found nothing.

And so we´re at a dead end in the case.

♫♫

Green: It was important for me to tell every step

of this investigation.

The readers were starting to eat it up.

And so there was a voracious appetite.

And then all of a sudden I get a call from Dee Dee,

very angry about the stories and how it made her look.

And I told her, I said, "Look, if you want to clear your name,

you need to come in and you need to speak with myself,

my editors."

And she took the bait on the hook.

I couldn´t believe it.

Her stories just started to unravel right before our eyes.

Hearing Dee Dee Moore cry --

I have a rage coming up in me that I´m trying to control.

This is why I take blood pressure medicine.

Parrott: Poor little me.

That´s what she´s trying to do.

And we felt no sympathy.

Griffith: One day, I´m sitting at my computer,

which I do most of my life,

and I hear a ping. [ Notification chime ]

We have a new poster, and I couldn´t believe it.

Hello, this is Dee Dee Moore.

Since so many of you are interested in my life.

I´m not a turtle that pulls my head in my shell.

I also don´t have anything to hide.

I bought Mr. Shakespeare´s assets because everyone

had already borrowed almost all of his money.

"I would advise all of those

that have negative comments to remove them now."

I will take any legal action...

Griffith: For deformation of character.

I think she means defamation.

This is what´s wrong with our economy now.

Instead of you working on a solution to help

solve our nationwide problems,

you´re on a web page making comments...

Both: "About people you do not even know."

Well, that stirred things up, you might say.

♫♫

Nail tech: Have you picked your color already?

It´s either this kind of pink-ish one.

Mm-hmm.

Or this kind of plum-ish one.

You like that one? I like this one better.

Okay, we´ll get that one.

It´s gonna match your shirt. Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

Every time my husband walks into the room and I´m watching TV,

I´m watching something crime related.

You got to go to websleuths.com.

Everybody that goes there gets addicted.

The day that Dee Dee Moore came on the forum,

we were in shock.

That´s what we were thinking at first.

And then it was, let´s go.

Let´s find out everything we can about this person.

Parrott: So the members start to ask her questions,

and they´re coming fast and furious.

You could see the numbers of how many people were watching,

and there was just this banter going back and forth.

Hello. Just to state the facts,

I bought Mr. Shakespeare´s assets

months before he even left.

Dee Dee Moore is one of those people

that has an answer for everything.

I made sure everything was read to him

and he had his own witness to protect him.

"I was writing a book on this man,

and only wanted to help him."

Not have my name slandered.

Dave Clark was so thrilled that Dee Dee Moore was posting.

He couldn´t believe it either.

How does she even find this? I mean, is she Googling herself?

If she´s truly an innocent person,

what is she doing on the forum? [ Notification chime ]

Griffith: Sleuthster starts to ask...

Parrott: Do you know where he is hiding?

If you do, you really should tell law enforcement

so that he can be found and this can be cleared up.

Then, Susan1 responded,

"When did you last have contact with Abraham?"

Green: "If by phone, where did he say he was?

When you took possession of his home,

where did he go to live?"

Dee Dee Moore posted...

Trust me, I would be sad if I thought for one minute

something could have actually happened to this man.

Dee Dee Moore thought she could fool us all

and convince us that Dee Dee was the only one that was helping

Abraham Shakespeare.

Dee Dee thought she was smarter than everybody,

but I knew that she wasn´t as smart as these people.

Whenever anybody would challenge her, she´d jump right back on.

Usually within minutes.

I could see her brain in overdrive,

trying to paint a different picture of who she really is.

But the thing that drove her the most crazy

is when we said, "She´s just in it for the money."

♫♫

The people that knew Abraham

had a whole different lifestyle that I did not understand.

Seems like her tone is shifting.

We all pay so much in taxes.

But here in Lakeland, on the South Side,

they are on Easy Street.

Most of them don´t have jobs.

They live off Social Security disability

by considering themselves crazy.

Griffith: She thinks she´s saying the right thing,

but she´s coming across as a heartless racist.

One person writes, "He may have shady friends,

but to my knowledge, they are not the ones

who are living in his million-dollar house.

They are not the ones who have gotten an order

to get his money from his bank.

How did they benefit from his departure?"

Parrott: Scanner says,

"Why are you talking about Abraham in the past tense?

You want out of this nightmare? Tell the truth!"

Now Dee Dee realizes that she´s not winning us over,

and here, she writes,

"I´m not even going to bother posting anymore...

Since you already convicted me.

I hope you enjoy ruining my life on here.

In a real investigation, they look at all sides of the story.

"But you´re really not interested in finding him

because the newspaper only gave you one lead."

One lead. And that´s me.

I really can´t believe that she is challenging my reporting.

She put herself at the center of attention. I didn´t.

"The investigators are real good in this case.

Thank God for..."

The Sheriff´s Department.

And I will pray for all of you.

That was nice of her to pray for us all.

[ Laughs ]

Then we had another weird twist.

[ Notification chime ]

♫♫

Griffith: All of a sudden, I get an email from Dee Dee Moore

claiming it wasn´t her on Websleuths.

You never verified this was me.

My friend got upset with your post

and decided to add some comments to your site.

I want all comments from Dmoore removed.

♫♫

Fortunately, there are some really smart people

on Websleuths,

and they showed me how to look at the IP address on the email,

and I had her IP address from the forum,

and both were the exact same number.

She was busted.

And she wrote back, "Well, my friend

must have broken in my house and did this."

Green: She just digged a deeper ditch,

and she can´t seem to keep

all the elements of her story together.

Griffith: Then things get even crazier.

[ Notification chime ]

There´s another post under Dmoore´s account.

Hello. You may be wondering who I am.

My name is Robert James Moore,

and I´m 14 years old.

The son of Dee Dee Moore and James D. Moore.

Supposedly, her son was posting.

I could feel the whole forum´s eyes start rolling.

You could be some fat guy behind a desk

reading this message.

But I ask, please stop commenting

on my mother and relatives.

It is not healthy to sit for hours at a time looking up

what you think is the truth about my mother

while you guzzle down your potato chips

putting on pounds after pounds.

JLMcKenna83 says, "Robert, you write very well

for being 14."

And Dmoore responds...

Thank you. I´m a straight A student.

Clark: Through those back and forths,

I felt that the poster could kind of get a feel

of what I was feeling in the interview room.

She was very defensive

and maybe somewhat of a manipulator.

We´re at the point where we feel that

Dee Dee has done something sinister to Abraham.

So we are looking at every angle of being able to prove that.

♫♫

Green: Around the Christmas holidays,

Dee Dee takes Abraham´s mother to the Cracker Barrel.

[ Cellphone rings ]

And she gets a phone call from an individual

claiming to be Abraham.

Clark: I said, "You just talked to your son."

And she´s like, "Well, it didn´t really sound like him,

but he said he´s really sick."

With the subpoena, we were able to determine

that the phone that called Abraham´s mother,

that´s registered to someone named Greg Smith.

♫♫

Polk County Sheriff´s Department

asked me would I come with them and talk to them.

And I did.

Clark: You know, Greg was very suspicious to us.

So we sat there and we asked him

about his relationship with Dee Dee Moore.

He said, "How did you know Dee Dee?"

I said, "She paid me to make a phone call."

He said, "Do you know what´s going on?"

I said, "No."

He said, "Well, we suspect

Dee Dee did something to Abraham."

Clark: I think Greg believed Dee Dee in that

Abraham wanted to be missing

and that there was nothing wrong with him.

But after we started giving Greg information,

we were pretty quickly able to convince Greg

that there was definitely something going on.

I´m hearing the lies that she got me to tell.

Then my mind is running backwards now

to see what did happen to Abraham Shakespeare.

From that point forward,

we told him we wanted him to be our eyes and ears,

and we wanted him to get as close as he could to Dee Dee.

And I agreed to help them and wear a wire.

♫♫

Clark: This is the Home Depot parking lot

we used to always meet Greg Smith in

after any undercover operation

or recordings that he did with her.

He would talk to her about Abraham,

and she would maintain that, "Listen, I don´t know.

Hopefully Abraham is going to show up."

But slowly but surely, Greg was able to earn her trust.

Then Dee Dee comes up with a story

that Abraham was involved in some drug trafficking.

Smith: She created this character, this Ronald dude.

According to Dee Dee Moore, Ronald was a drug dealer.

That story just doesn´t make sense at all.

I said, "Well, Abraham is dead?"

I said, "Are you sure?"

♫♫

Clark: Dee Dee now had complete trust in Greg,

so we decided that we would push it a little bit more,

and we instructed Greg to tell Dee Dee,

"Well, look, if anything happened to Abraham,

I have a cousin going to prison for 20 years,

and for the right amount of money,

he´d take a murder rap."

Dee Dee immediately says, "Okay, I want to meet him."

So we reached out to Mike Smith,

who was one of the best undercover officers

here in Central Florida,

and asked him if he´d be willing to assist us.

And he said, "Of course."

[ Camera shutter clicking ]

Mike kind of sells it to her. "I´ll take it."

And she asked him, "Okay. Well, what do you want?"

The undercover officer tells Dee Dee

that he wants to know where Abraham´s body is.

[ Cellphone rings ]

♫♫

Smith: The very next day, she called.

"Ronald told me where the body is,

and I´m gonna take you."

♫♫

Clark: We followed their car,

and she takes him to the property in Plant City

that Dee Dee bought with Abraham´s money.

♫♫

♫♫

She actually took Greg Smith out here.

They walked up in the cover of night,

and Dee Dee comes to this spot.

We were actually across the street with our lights out.

We could hear everything that´s going on.

And she actually comes here.

She goes down on her knee,

and she takes a piece of angle iron

and she sticks it in the ground

and she whispers to Greg, "Abraham is here."

"Tell your cousin to dig here and he´ll find him."

♫♫

♫♫

Woman: Sheriffs from two counties are now involved,

along with forensics experts.

They used ground sonar to search for bones.

Now they´re digging, and they´ll keep digging

until they finally know what happened.

Clark: Once we secured the search warrant,

the press coverage just got enormous.

Our deputies gathered information recently

that led us to believe that Abraham Shakespeare

may very well be buried on this property.

And here´s where we are --

We don´t know whether or not Mr. Shakespeare

is here or not yet.

I pray to God that he´s not there,

but my heart tells me that there´s a strong possibility

that they will find Abraham now.

I didn´t want to face the reality of --

That someone had physically done something to Abraham.

Clark: And it was just crazy how this case went from

a missing-persons case

to being discussed in the Websleuths form

to now this national case

that´s being broadcast all over the nation.

Griffith: Now our Websleuths are following

what the police are doing.

And our hearts are sinking

as the police are digging around Dee Dee´s property.

Green: After months of covering this story

and trying to piece all of the information together,

I´ve said to myself,

"Wow, this is finally going to come to a conclusion."

Butler: It´s, like, a lot of stress because

it´s an earth-shattering moment in my life,

but it´s just like everybody wants to,

you know, gawk at it.

It´s hard to be on public display at a time

when you have nobody,

and it´s just you and your newborn.

Clark: We dug that entire day, and didn´t find anything.

Came back the next morning and dug.

And finally, about 2:00 in the afternoon,

we find Abraham´s body.

♫♫

♫♫

Butler: The police called and they were like,

"Yeah, we did a positive identity, and it is him."

I just feel bad for his mom

not to be able to look at him one last time...

´cause he is identified as remains.

It was like everything stopped.

♫♫

It was a very sad moment.

Massey: It was heartbreaking.

Here´s a guy that was murdered for

apparently no reason.

A guy who had a good heart.

♫♫

Clark: The clothes Abraham

was wearing

when we cleared away the dirt

were the same clothes that we observed him wearing

in the April 6th videotape that Dee Dee made of him.

Parrott: That was very disturbing

because those were probably

Abraham Shakespeare´s last moments caught on film.

Female reporter: The body of Abraham Shakespeare

has been positively identified as...

Male reporter: Dee Dee Moore now lives in and owns

the million-dollar house

that Shakespeare bought in this gated community.

Female reporter: 37-year-old Dee Dee Moore says

she was just an aspiring author with a knack for bookkeeping

when she met millionaire lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare.

I´m only coming out because the media will not leave.

And this is an intrusion on all my neighbors.

It shouldn´t be about me. It should be about him.

A man has died, and he´s finally getting a proper funeral.

He did not deserve to be buried in a backyard

like a piece of trash.

I would never, ever pull a gun on another human being.

God up above knows I didn´t shoot that man.

And that´s the only person I have to answer to.

♫♫

Clark: After she pulled away,

we pulled her over and took her into custody

and charged her with first degree murder.

Woman: Hey, Dee Dee, they´re calling you a murderer.

Are you a murderer? No.

Reporter: The authorities now say Shakespeare

was shot twice in the chest

by a .38 caliber pistol that belonged to Moore.

Clark: Once Dee Dee is arrested,

she claims that what we determined to be

fictitious drug-dealer Ronald is the one who killed him.

Moore: You know I´m not the one that shot him.

Then who did, Dee Dee? Tell us.

Tell us.

You were able to contact Ronald,

and Ronald told you right where that body was at.

Really? Ronald doesn´t --

But you can´t get ahold of Ronald.

But you got ahold of Ronald then.

Come on. It´s over.

There´s no Ronald. You didn´t talk to a Ronald.

But I´m telling you the truth about the guy being there,

and you don´t -- You haven´t told me the truth about anything yet.

Nothing that we can prove.

Nothing that could be proven in court. Ronald does not exist.

That´s a ghost. That´s a figment.

That´s a concocted individual... Okay.

A guy. A guy. ...to solidify your entire plot.

We were able to track Dee Dee and Abraham´s phone

from the Redhawk Bend address in Lakeland

to Dee Dee´s house in Plant City.

From there, we know that they entered into the house.

There was a huge safe there.

Dee Dee opened that safe.

Inside the safe was a .38 caliber revolver.

♫♫

Abraham was shot in that room.

We cut the carpet out of the room,

and there were bloodstains

that were positive for Abraham´s blood in there.

The sole purpose of Dee Dee killing Abraham was greed.

And I think once he questioned her,

she knew that it was just a matter of time

before he said something to somebody else,

and her whole scheme fell down on her, and, um,

she killed him.

Griffith: When I heard that Dee Dee was arrested,

I made these posts on Websleuths.

"Guys, I just spoke with the detective in the case,

and he wanted to make sure you all knew

how much he appreciated your help.

He specifically said ´your work, the sleuthing you did,

will help bring justice to Abraham.´"

Clark: I don´t know if any other detectives

would acknowledge the huge impact

that the Websleuths´ investigation

had on our case.

But I will acknowledge it.

The Websleuths were very instrumental

in helping us in the case.

Some of the stuff they uncovered was extremely helpful to us.

Griffith: And the best thing of all,

our sleuths tongue-tied the main suspect.

They got her tied up in knots.

She was spinning in all different directions

because they kept going at her

and she just talked herself into a conviction, practically.

Our Websleuths members were relentless.

And I´m very proud of them.

This will be the case that will go down in history

on Websleuths.

♫♫

♫♫

Judge Battles: Number 10CF001733.

You are cold, calculated, cruel.

Probably the most manipulative person that this court has seen.

Man: The defendant is guilty of first degree murder.

Griffith: That´s it.

Dee Dee was convicted.

♫♫

I´m surprised I´m crying.

I just think of this sweet man winning the lottery,

getting his chance, and this evil, horrid woman.

Man: ...who died in vain in the Lord.

Smith: I´ll never forget it.

I´ll never forget the fun we had,

the talks we had,

the individual that Abraham was.

So it´s hard to sit here and say,

oh, I´m at ease.

Nah, I don´t think I´ll ever be at ease.

It just seemed like he always had such a kind heart.

And that kind heart got him murdered.

♫♫

Butler: I have days I wake up full of just tears.

I have days that I look at our son and I wonder, like,

"How much better would your life have been had your dad been here

to share all the firsts -- you walking and you talking

and you going to school?"

I don´t think you ever really do move on

because you always searching for that energy

that you had with that person.

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫

♫♫