Dee Dee Moore pleads not guilty

In the most recent development in the Abraham Shakespeare murder case, Dee Dee Moore has pleaded not guilty and claims God knows she’s innocent. One article says:

“I have an impetuous notion to let my voice be heard,” she writes, “because there’s got to be a reason for this life-altering trauma happening to me. I inwardly chastises myself for opening up so please don’t criticize me. The picture you paint of me in the news, I would not want to hang around myself.”

The media, she writes, have treated her harshly.

Maybe the this “life-altering trauma” is happening to her is because she is, by her own admission, a liar, and almost certainly a thief and a murderer in the bargain. It’s not as if Dee Dee’s voice hasn’t been heard before; she gave extensive media interviews before her arrest. And no wonder the media has treated her “harshly,” seeing as how she fed them a pack of lies before his body was found, then admitted she’d known its location all along. I think the thing to do that would make her most unhappy now is to cease paying attention to her and to cease printing her garbage in the news. Shakespeare’s brother anticipates more arrests and the police have said as much; it’s unlikely she acted alone.

If Dee Dee is smart — and she doesn’t seem to be — she’ll cop a plea. Florida is a death penalty state and this is the kind of murder the death penalty is designed for: premeditated, calculating, a vulnerable victim (illiterate and naive), and committed for financial gain. Whoever actually pulled the trigger (and maybe it wasn’t Dee Dee) shot Shakespeare in the chest, meaning they had to look at his face when he died. And they shot him twice — hard to explain that away as an accident.

Articles:
Palm Beach Post
Tampa Tribune
MyFox Tampa Bay
CNN

Dee Dee Moore charged with Abraham Shakespeare’s murder

Ladies and gentlemen, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Dee Dee Moore has FINALLY been charged with Abraham Shakespeare’s murder. Ten months after he disappeared, four months after his disappearance was reported, almost a month after his body turned up under a concrete slab on Moore’s boyfriend’s property. It’s a fair guess that others were involved in this as well, but so far Moore’s the only one facing charges.

The more I hear about this case the sadder it seems to become. Shakespeare sounds like an unpretentious, genuinely nice man. Too nice to keep his money. Too nice to live. A lot of people tried to help him by recommending accountants and financial advisers, but Shakespeare was barely literate (one article says he didn’t even know how many zeroes were in a thousand) and he was intimidated by finance people and tried to avoid them. But I think even a more educated person would easily get in over his head, with that kind of money and those kinds of people circling him like sharks anxious for a piece.

Now Shakespeare’s older son is in counseling, the other is only a baby and will never know his father. And his mother, Elizabeth Walker, is now saying she has to forgive Dee Dee Moore because it’s what God wants, and in any case she will never get her son back.

Good luck on that, Mrs. Walker.

Articles:

About.com Crime and Punishment
The Lakeland Ledger
MyFox Tampa Bay
The Lakeland Ledger again

Abraham Shakespeare’s funeral

Abraham Shakespeare’s funeral was today. Dozens of relatives attended, including Shakespeare’s eight-year-old son. (I’m not sure just how many kids he had; at least two.) There were a lot of very angry people there crying out for justice. They’re not ready to forgive yet. Two of the cops who investigated the case got a standing ovation.

It seems unlikely that there will be much in his estate, and no doubt the lawyers will spend forever squabbling over it. I really hope Shakespeare’s children will not be left in poverty. I read he created a $1 million trust fund for one of his sons; I hope that fund still exists and didn’t get stolen also.

Another article says Dee Dee Moore will not be getting any support from her family:

Her parents, Linda and Patrick Donegan, said Wednesday night that the [bail] money won’t be coming from them. “None of our family has any money to bail her out,” the mother said.

The Donegans said they feel bad for Shakespeare’s family.

“If she’s responsible for it, she’s going to answer to the man upstairs,” Moore’s father said.

People tend to get bailed out of jail this way: they contact a bail bondsman and give him ten percent of whatever the bail might be — in Dee Dee’s case, her bail is $1 million, so she must give a bondsman $100,000 (I believe this can be cash, or property in the equivalent). This money is his to keep, forever. The bondsman comes up with the remaining 90%. He gets it back at the end of the trial, provided the defendant doesn’t skip town. As one of the commenters noted, Even if she comes up with the 100,000, she’s still got to find a bondsman willing to take a 900,000 chance. The woman sounds like she’s a bottle short of a six pack and, given the likelihood of a murder charge, a real flight risk. So, yeah, Dee Dee isn’t going anywhere.

But in the meantime…when will someone actually be charged with Shakespeare’s murder? That hasn’t happened yet.

Dee Dee Moore finally charged in Shakespeare’s death

I realize that, as Shakespeare is no longer missing, technically he isn’t within the provence of this blog anymore. However, I’m always talking about off-topic stuff. It’s my blog. So *phhbt*

So Dee Dee Moore has been charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact. I guess that’s all they can pin on her right now, but she’s not getting out of jail anytime soon. Her bond is set at one million dollars, and she’d have to come up with ten percent of that — $100,000 — in cash before she can be released. And I bet they won’t let her use any of Shakespeare’s money for that purpose.

A quote from this article: Asked if she had been cooperative, prosecutors said Moore has given four different stories about who killed Shakespeare. She has blamed a relative of Shakespeare’s, her 14-year-old son, a drug dealer, and finally herself in an act of self-defense. Ooh, nice one lady, try to send your own kid to jail for murder. She claims he was shot, but so far the cops are only saying he died of “homicidal violence.” Well, duhhh. It also says she tried to find someone who would take the rap for murder in exchange for $50,000.

The woman is clearly a psychopath. She has no regard for anyone but herself.

Dee Dee Moore tries to dig her way out

Dee Dee Moore, getting ever more desperate, has now admitted to covering up Abraham Shakespeare’s death. However, she swears she did not personally kill him. That part may actually be true. Dee Dee doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would get her hands dirty if she could avoid it. But it doesn’t really matter — under American law, if Dee Dee Moore was an accomplice in Shakespeare’s death, she gets punished just the same as if she were the actual killer.

This is like the ten billionth story she’s told about Shakespeare. First he was alive and still hanging around the area. Then he was alive and she’d helped him disappear and didn’t know where he was. Then he was dead, but she didn’t do it, no, it was Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with the wrench!

The police were calling her a “person of interest” which is a euphemism for “suspect.” Now, it seems, they’re calling her a “person of intense interest.” What’s that a euphemism for? “Person who is guiltier than OJ” perhaps? Though I really don’t like that article/editorial. The author seems to be saying that Shakespeare deserved what happened to him because he couldn’t handle all his money. Shakespeare couldn’t have read the guy’s advice book anyway.

There’s a good article in the Lakeland Ledger about the latest developments. I love how the headline is just “Moore Denies Killing Him.” No more specifics needed. You can also view the video Dee Dee made as evidence that Shakespeare had just walked out of his life.

Me, I think Dee Dee Moore is an excellent candidate for a profile on People You’ll See in Hell. Of course her deadly sin would be Greed.

Dee Dee Moore has some ‘splaining to do

The Plant City Courier and Tribune interviewed Dee Dee Moore, who claims it was HER tip that lead the cops to Abraham Shakespeare’s body on her boyfriend’s property. Of course, she’s innocent of murder and any other wrongdoing, and only guilty of trying to help a guy out. She doesn’t explain how she knew Shakespeare’s body would be buried under that concrete slab (which she admits she had poured).

Keep digging, Dee Dee.

Shakespeare’s cause of death probably known by tomorrow

A Plant City Courier and Tribune article says the police hope to learn Abraham Shakespeare’s cause of death today, which probably means they will announce it tomorrow. Toxicology results won’t be back for some weeks, but the cutting-him-open-and-looking-inside part of the autopsy is over. I hope there’s some kind of obvious indication of murder — not that it’ll be hard to prove. The guy didn’t dig himself a five-foot hole, bury himself and pour a concrete slab on top of himself, now did he?

The aforementioned article has some discussion going on in the comments section, including a few people who claim to have known Abraham Shakespeare or DeeDee Moore personally. One commenter asks, “Doesn’t anybody use lime any more? Or is that quicklime?? I keep forgetting which one gets rid of the evidence and which one preserves it.” For your information, commenter, quicklime can both preserve a body and help disintegrate it faster. Plain quicklime sprinkled on a body acts as a preservative; it mummifies instead of rotting. You must mix the quicklime with water if you want it to speed up the decomposition.

Not that I, personally, know anything about that. I’ve just heard stuff. There’s no reason to go looking underneath the concrete floor of my basement. None whatsoever.

And it ain’t no surprise…

Fingerprints have identified the body as Abraham Shakespeare. A correction from my last entry — it seems the body was found on Dee Dee Moore’s boyfriend’s property, not her own property. Not that that will make much difference, will it?

I think it’s likely that more than one person was involved in Shakespeare’s murder. Unless he was shot, I think it would take more than one person to overpower a 6’5, 185-pound man. I’m sure charges will be shortly forthcoming.

Abraham Shakespeare’s remains probably found

The police have found a body buried on property owned by Dorice “Dee Dee” Moore, the prime suspect in the disappearance of Abraham Shakespeare. They have yet to identify the body, but if it turns out it isn’t Shakespeare’s I will be very surprised.

If you’re trying to identify a body, there are certainly advantages to burying it on your own land. You will probably get privacy during the internment, and, unless the cops can get a search warrant (which isn’t easy), it’s unlikely the body will be discovered as long as you maintain control of the property. However, there’s a pretty huge disadvantage: if and when the body is found, it will be very easy to tie it back to you.

Cop arrested in Abraham Shakespeare case

I wrote earlier about the disappearance last spring of jackpot lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare. Well, the police have made an arrest in his case, and it’s one of their own, a twenty-year veteran of the Lakeland Police Department. There’s a press release about it.

The story isn’t as exciting as it appeared from the headlines: the cop in question is only charged with taking bribes from DeeDee Moore, the main suspect in Shakespeare’s disappearance, and providing her with confidential information from law enforcement databases. She gave him license plate numbers and he gave her information about the car owners. So far, anyway, it looks like the officer, Troy Young, wasn’t involved in Shakespeare’s actual disappearance.

What strikes me about this: this article says Moore gave “a $200 check to Young and bought a roundtrip ticket for his daughter to travel from Texas to Florida.” That seems like an awfully pitiful bribe to me, seeing as how Young supposedly committed a felony and also risked his job (and a nice civil servant’s pension) for this woman. What an idiot. But this doesn’t seem like an idiot — another article says his “dedication to his job has earned him 16 awards and commendations” since he joined the department in 1990.

Was there something more, I wonder? Not necessarily money — maybe Young and Moore were involved romantically or what? Guys tend to go kind of insane when it comes to women they’re sleeping with. Or maybe Young really didn’t see it as that big a deal. Maybe he thought: I’m just looking up a couple of license plate numbers is all, she’s hardly asking me to destroy evidence or help someone escape from jail.

Well, whatever there was between Officer Young and Dee Dee Moore, I’m sure that by now he’s quite sorry he ever met her.