Be Careful What You Wish For

Some couple of days ago I was watching a documentary on fox Life titled: the murder of Abraham Lee Shakespeare. It was a peculiar or should I say strange story because what was meant to be a life changing experience of chance and fortune turned out to be something unexpected. Abraham Lee Shakespeare was a menial laborer from the USA who won a thirty million dollars lottery jackpot in Florida, but in the space of three years his body was found buried under a concrete slab.

The Florida lotto winning ticket worth thirty million dollars was sold at a Town star convenience store in Frostproof, Florida, on November 15, 2006. On that day Abraham Shakespeare and a coworker were headed toward Miami when they stopped briefly at the convenience store in Frostproof to buy drinks and cigarettes. His coworker got out of the delivery truck and asked Shakespeare if he wanted a soda. Shakespeare instead asked him to buy him two lottery tickets for $2 out of the $5 he had on him that day.

Shakespeare did not believe his luck when he found that he was in possession of the winning ticket and from that moment his most ardent wish came true of winning the lottery to end a menial existence. The first misery after winning the lottery was his coworker demanding a share of the jackpot of no less than $1 million, which Shakespeare refused to pay, prompting the coworker to sue Shakespeare alleging that Shakespeare stole the tickets out of his wallet. The jury did not believe such story and Shakespeare prevailed in the courts.

When Shakespeare was paid $17 million in cash he moved out of his low class neighborhood in Florida to a million dollars neighborhood where he bought a home for $1 million. As time went on Shakespeare became frustrated with the apparently constant appeals for money both from hangers on and strangers. He told his brother in a heart to heart conversation that he had been better off broke, all the people around him were not his friends, all they wanted was just his money.

One of these people was Dee Dee Moore who launched a business with Shakespeare giving herself control of all the firms funds. Moore subsequently withdrew $1 million and bought herself three luxury vehicles before going on vacation which she claimed was a gift from Shakespeare. On November 9, 2009, Shakespeare’s family declared him missing and stated that they had not seen him since April of that year. They once thought he had taken his money and moved to the Caribbean but when they tried to reach him, it seemed someone else was handling his phone.

Soon after the disappearance of Abraham Lee Shakespeare, Moore began to live in Shakespeare’s house, using his phone and sending text messages to his friends and family, pretending she was Shakespeare. Friends and relatives thought it did not sound like him and became suspicious. To cut the story short Abraham Lee Shakespeare was murdered by his business associate Dee Dee Moore three years after he won the lottery. She took possession of all his assets and money, only later after a long investigation by the police to find his body buried in one of her many homes under a concrete slab.

Abraham Lee Shakespeare wished to win a lottery and when his wish was finally granted it became the source of all his troubles and led to an early death at age 42. We should all be careful what we wish for because when they are finally granted it may not end as we thought.