WTSP: Plant City, Florida - After days of digging, heavy equipment pushed back dirt and filled up the hole that was Abraham Shakespeare's premature grave.

On Friday, as expected, the Hillsborough Medical Examiner confirmed the human remains found buried five feet deep and under concrete belonged to the missing lottery winner.

Shakespeare's friends had long suspected he'd been killed; still, the news is hard to take.

"Now's the time for everyone to come together, his family and everything and give this man a decent burial," said Nathaniel Thomas. "From what I've seen and heard, he died in a bad way. No one deserves that."


A tip led investigators to the land off Highway 50. The house there is owned by the boyfriend of DeeDee Moore. She's the woman Polk Sheriff Grady Judd has called a "person of interest" in Shakespeare's disappearance.

After she befriended Shakespeare, Judd says Moore acquired nearly $2 million of his cash and assets.

"I tried to warn him," says Shakespeare's friend Eddie Dixon. "I said then, 'Something's not right with this woman,' and I kept telling my friend, 'Don't trust that lady.' "

Law enforcement says this is a very complicated case and so far, no one has been arrested.

Bartow lawyer Rusty Franklin had represented Moore in the past, but his office now says she is no longer his client.

Folks at a neighborhood market in Lakeland say they miss the man who used to hang out there and chat. They say Shakespeare had a heart of gold and now they want whoever took his life to pay.

Dixon believes that person is going to be Moore. "She needs to die in the Florida electric chair. That's where she needs to go."