True Crime Campfire - Bad Luck: The Murder of Abraham Shakespeare, Pt 1

Episode Date: March 13, 2020

In his play King John, William Shakespeare wrote, “There is no sure foundation set on blood; no certain life achieved by others’ death.” It’s a shame the killer in today’s story didn’t get the memo on that. Money is one of the oldest, most common motives for murder, and in our opinion, one of the coldest. It requires the killer to look at a living, laughing, vital human being and break that life—all the likes and loves and pet peeves, all the dad jokes and kindnesses and little heartbreaks—into dollars and cents. I mean, most of us like money. Most of us daydream of scoring big someday so we can live out our passions, support the people we love, see the world, not have to worry any more. But a sudden change in fortune often brings more trouble than it’s worth. Most people would never consider hurting anyone else just to add some zeros to their bank balance. But for one kindhearted man, all his sudden windfall did for him was put a target on his back.Sources:Book, Unlucky Number by Deborah MathisCNBC's "American Greed," Episode "The Lady Killer"ABC's "20/20," Episode "Lotto Hangover: Big Money, Big Problems"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes a day early, ad-free, an extra episode a month, a free sticker and more!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. In his plague, King John, William Shakespeare wrote, There is no sure foundation set on blood, no certain life achieved by others' death. It's a shame that the killer in today's story didn't get the memo on that. Money is one of the oldest, most common motives for murder, and in our opinion, one of the coldest. It requires the killer to look at a living, laughing, vital human being and break that life. All the likes and loves and pet peeves, all the dad jokes and kindnesses and little heartbreaks, into dollars and cents. I mean, most of us like money.

Most of us daydream of scoring big someday so we can live out our passions, support the people we love, see the world, not have to worry anymore. But a sudden change in fortune often brings more trouble than its worth. Most people would never consider hurting anyone else just to add some zeros to their bank balance. But for one kind-hearted man, all his sudden windfall did for him was put a target on his back. This is Bad Luck, the murder of Abraham Shakespeare. So, campers, we're in Lakeland, Florida, 2006. A guy named Abraham Shakespeare, 40-year-old delivery assistant for a food distribution, company was out on his lunch break with his co-worker when they stopped for gas.

Abraham knew there was a big lottery drawing coming up, so he gave his co-worker a few bucks and asked him to go buy him a lottery ticket in the mini-mart. So the guy said, sure, got Abe his ticket, bought one for himself too, and that night, as Abe sat in front of the TV eating his dinner and watching those little white balls pop up on the screen one by one, he actually experienced that moment we've all day dreamed about. The first number came up, match. the second number match the third number match can you even imagine oh and so on and so on until ab realized he just won the 30 million dollar lotto holy shit wow

yeah now in most states when you win the lottery you can choose between getting a sum of money every year for 30 years or whatever or you can take a lump sum payout for less money Abraham chose the lump sum payout I probably would too actually and ended up with a check for $17 million Thank you and overnight he went from being a guy who'd always had to struggle for money a guy who had dropped out of school in the eighth grade

and had trouble reading and writing and had never had much success finding decent paying work because it's hard without a high school diploma to a multimillionaire big deal right I mean I can't even imagine a change in fortunes like that like overnight. And although that description that I just gave you makes it sound like Abe was kind of downtrodden,

he'd actually always been known around town as a pretty cheerful, happy-go-lucky guy. He was really close with his family, especially his mom, Elizabeth. He had moved in with her after his dad died to take care of her, so, you know, obviously this is somebody who had a good heart. He had a child with an ex-girlfriend, and friends say he was a loving, active dad. Abe had always struck the people who knew him as a really good guy and once he got this money man did he prove them right he bought himself a few nice things as most of us would

he bought a big $1.5 million home a $100,000 BMW but he spent way more on other people lottery winners will usually tell you that after they won people came out of the woodwork to ask for loans or gifts or to ask them to invest in their great idea for a food truck that only sells artisanal animal crackers or whatever. And A was no exception to this. One reporter described post-lottery-win Abraham Shakespeare

as Lakeland's stimulus package, single-handedly. He was incredibly generous. He paid people's rent. He bought people cars. He paid for funerals, medical expenses, college tuition. He gave people money for groceries. And on top of that, this man bought 10 homes that were about, to go into foreclosure.

And he just told the people who owned them, look, just pay back what you can afford when you can afford it. And some of these people were family or friends, but some of them he barely knew. So he would just be doing this for complete strangers or just acquaintances some of the time. He gave his former stepdad a million dollars outright. Just wrote him a check.

It was just an unbelievable level of generosity. I mean, I just get a little bit choked up even thinking about it. Oh, yeah. and interestingly he wanted to buy his mom a new house but his mom elizabeth was not having it she said i don't want any part of that devil money she had a feeling from day one that this money was going to bring abraham nothing but trouble and i wish i could say she was wrong but she wasn't as i'm sure y'all were expecting so sometimes your mom right sometimes you just listen to your mom my mom would be like give me give me give me why i mean i can't blame and mom if you're listening you know I'm right so don't even be getting your hackles up here you know

you'd be like give me give me as what I if you won the lottery she'd be like okay I want this house and this car and these diamonds I'm pretty sure her feeling would be I raised you and I hand it over what would you do if you won the lottery Katie I don't know I think I'd start us up a little murder nerd community little true crime campfire plan community like build us a bunch of pretty little houses move all the campers in and have a little screening room where we can watch Dateline and pay John Douglas and Candace along to come talk to us about profiling. That would just be awesome, possum. That's the funnest thing I can think to do.

And, like, rescue tons and tons of animals and forgive a bunch of people's loans. It depends on how much money I want, you know. Oh, yeah. No, I think both of us are pretty low maintenance that, like, I just want a space to call my own and then just to be lived comfortably. Yeah. And, you know, like, retire my parents, maybe. Yeah, I, I, you, we now have it on recording that if I ever win, like, $30 million

I'm buying you a house. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. So now you can hold me to it because I've said it on the show. Right. It's a verbal contract, you know. That's right. And then we can both just do this full time.

Oh, my God. Can you imagine? We would have, like, four shows minimum. Oh, yeah. If we could do this full time. Like, y'all would just be getting sick of us. We would inundate you with, like, we'd have all kinds of different. specialty shows. I'd like to do one that's just the when nerds attack cases. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

This is fascinate me. Maybe we could just do one about the bad bitches. Like basically every category, we'd have a different show. Yeah. And we would just work our asses off for you. An episode per day per week. For sure. So keep that in mind if you're deciding whether to be on our Patreon. Anyway, so some people who knew Abe have said that they got the impression he didn't really have a clear picture of how much money he was giving away. His feeling seemed to be that $17 million was so much money that he was never going to run out. And he wanted to share the wealth because he was apparently a sweetheart on an epic scale. And man, I wish all rich folks had that attitude. I suspect we'd have a lot fewer problems than we do now if they did.

I mean, for example, contrast this guy with those jack wagons in our Trouble O7 episode in season to, you know, the ones who, like, drained that charitable trust of 50-some million dollars in, like, eight months just so they could play with airplanes and pretend to be spies, right? Remember those guys? And on top of wanting to help his community, Abe was also gaining quite a bit of local celebrity, and that had to be fun for a guy who'd never gotten much attention before. I mean, it would be fun for most of us, right? Sure.

Anywho, so as Abe's friends have said, he wasn't really keeping track of the money. he'd always struggled a little bit with numbers and I do too I am like comically embarrassingly bad at math and he didn't hire a financial advisor or anything like that so for a while he pretty much just spent lavishly without realizing how much and how fast he was cutting into his fortune and within just a few years this is going to kill you all dead I mean it physically hurts me Abe had whittled his fortune down from 17 million to about 1.5 million dollars And we're just talking about a couple of years here. Doesn't that just hurt your soul?

I mean, obviously $1.5 million is still a pretty sweet nest egg, but damn, you know. And a big chunk of that was just from throwing money at everybody, bless his heart. So by the spring of 2009, he'd reunited with a former on again, off again girlfriend named Centoria Butler, who everybody called Tori, and they had a brand new baby boy. and you would think that given that everything would be coming up roses even with the lotto winnings down to 1.5 mil but the truth was things weren't going so well for abraham first of all he and tory were having some issues now this shouldn't surprise us i mean anybody who has the kind of money that abe had not to mention the local celebrity is likely to have potential romantic partners

sexual partners just crawling all over him and abe you know strayed now and then and on top of his and tory's issues abe was starting to be to feel sort of hunted. Since day one of his new life as a millionaire, there had been just an endless crowd of pushy people just clamoring for his attention, asking for loans, asking for handouts, asking to pitch business ideas, sharing their troubles, playing on his heartstrings. It was a lot. And Abe confided in his good friend Greg that nobody wanted to take no for an answer.

People would just hound him. And, you know, the impression I get from reading about it is it must have felt sometimes like he was one of the main characters in that show The Walking Dead where there's a zombie apocalypse and people are always just like holing up somewhere and trying to fend off the horde, you know? And even when people wanted loans rather than outright gifts, it was just kind of exhausting and demoralizing for Abe to chase people down for repayment. He didn't want to do it. You know, he had a sense, I didn't do anything to earn this money.

And he felt like, I think that in a lot of ways, it was like his responsibility to, to help people out. And he just didn't want to hound people for repayment. So he ended up feeling guilty. And a lot of the time he would just drop it. This would be me too. I guarantee you. I would be so awkward about, you know, if I had that kind of money, I would be so awkward about like, it's a gift. I would have to give people gifts, not loans. I would hate that. So I get that, you know. But he knew he couldn't afford to do that forever because he had already depleted his funds so badly. And by the way, campers, did you know that 70% of lottery winners go bankrupt within five years.

70%. That is just banana pants to me. But apparently, Abe is not unusual here. People tend to lose that money fast, obviously, for all kinds of reasons. And mostly, I suspect it's just because, you know, it's a lot of money really fast. People aren't used to it, and they don't hire good financial advisors, and they don't plan ahead, which is understandable. Yeah, and it's like that show My Dream Lotto Home, which I've sometimes watched at like

three in the morning. I've never heard of this show, but now I'm probably going to look it up. Absolutely. It's basically like HGTV, they get recent lotto winners and they hook them up with a realtor to show them houses that they want to buy. And it's always like, he just won $30 million. And the home he's looking at, his budget is $29 million. And I'm like, well, that's the thing with HDTV, right? Because it's like there's this running joke about if you watch that house hunter's show it's like um hi i'm jeff and i brew artisanal beers and i make you know five dollars a year doing that and you know this is my wife jessica and she sells essential oils and you know she makes ten dollars a year oh what's our budget for our house oh uh 1.5 million

like what how like the people like always have these jobs where you're like i know you can't afford this house. What are you doing? There you go. They're all trust fund kids. They've got to be, right? Absolutely. They are. Yes. Anyway, we're getting off topic. So, in addition to Abe's problems with Tori and the constant stream of people asking for money, he got sued. Oh, great. Remember the coworker he'd asked to buy him the ticket that day on their lunch break? Well, this guy tried to claim that the ticket he'd bought for himself was the the winning one. And that Abe had taken his ticket and cashed it in. Uh-huh. Not surprisingly, the court sided with Abe, but it was a huge unpleasant hassle. I mean, Abe had considered this

guy a friend. When he'd first won the money, this guy asked him for a million dollars to start a business. And Abe had said, I can't give you that much, but I could give you a couple hundred thousand. Sold. Thank you. Oh, my God. That's so generous. I'm sure is what he said, right? Yeah, definitely, except no, he was super pissed, Whitney. And then he brought this lawsuit. Unbelievable. Abe had to spend almost $800,000 fighting it, which is just bananas money. And that may have been what the guy wanted in the first place, just cause him as much stress and cost him as much money as possible, which brings me to a bit of true crime campfire advice, folks, because I know you love it. If you ever have somebody else buy you a ticket or you go in with other people

in a lottery pool or something like that, just make sure you can prove that ticket is yours, because otherwise you're just going to end up blowing a substantial chunk of your winnings on legal fees like poor Abraham Shakespeare. Yep. So Abe was being besieged. And on top of that, he had a falling out with a friend of his who had been helping him manage his money and collect on the loans he'd made to people around town. So basically, at this point, Abe Shakespeare was ripe for the picking. He was stressed, he was hassled, and he had no one helping him manage the money. His good friend, Greg Smith, was worried about him. And then, in April of 2009, Abe went missing. Just poof. Gone. Nobody knew where he was.

But let's put a pin in that for a bit and talk about a few of the other players in the story. First, let's talk about Abe's friend Greg Smith. Greg owned a barbershop, and it was sort of a social center in Lakeland. The two guys had met when Abe was down on his luck and wandered into Greg's barbershop one day. to ask if he could do any odd jobs around the place. Now, Greg's initial impression of Abe was that he was bad news and probably wouldn't be a good worker. But Greg had been raised by a granddaddy who emphasized kindness and generosity. And when Abe came around asking for work that day, Greg heard granddaddy's voice in his ears.

Aw. Yeah. And he decided to take a chance on the guy. He said, okay, sure. You can sweep up around the place. and, as it turned out, he really liked Abe. Before long, they were good buds. Greg had a bit of a checkered past. In high school, he'd been a star athlete, a football player. He'd been scattered by colleges, and he'd hoped for an athletic scholarship.

But the problem was, Greg had a huge temper. He got into fights all the time. eventually his hot head got expelled from his high school and those dreams of playing college football went right down the crapper Greg was humiliated when they kicked him out of school he couldn't stand granddaddy being disappointed in him so he went to night school he got his GED and went to barber school

and lo and behold he was a damn good barber It's fun when you find a totally unexpected talent like that. You know, like I never knew I was good at telling murder stories until a couple of years ago, and now I have a podcast. You know, who'd have thought? You just never know what's going to pop up. It's amazing. Try stuff. Yeah, it never hurts.

Unless it's like bungee jumping and you die, but you didn't hear that from us. Okay, so don't try that, I guess. So, Greg had a cousin who played in the NFL, and. when Greg was in his early 20s, this guy helped him open his own barbershop. At first, it went swimmingly. But after a while, Greg's daredevil streak took over. Uh-oh. This was Greg's Achilles' heel.

He just got bored. He needed that adrenaline rush. And he started using the shop as a front for all kinds of various criminal activities. First fencing and selling stolen property, then dealing crack. Oey. So, surprise, surprise, Greg got arrested for drug dealing. And he did three years in prison. He got out on parole.

He violated parole. And he got sent back for another two years. Oh. Greg. Greg. Dude. But the second time he got out of prison, something changed. He decided he really wanted to turn things around.

And soon, he met and married his wife, Lakeisha. He reopened the barbershop and started doing pretty well right away. His shop again became a social hub for the neighborhood, a place to gossip and hang out and shoot the shit. And it was around this time when he met Abe Shakespeare. After Abe won the lottery, he still came around to visit Greg and the crowd of the barbershop. And in 2007, Greg found out that his late mother's house,

which he and his siblings wanted to keep in the family, was in danger of foreclosure. So he went to his credit union to apply for a $60,000 loan. But when Abe got wind at this, he said, dude, do not go to the credit union. They're just going to charge you a ton of interest. Let me loan you the money. And Greg was hesitant, but Abe was persistent.

So he finally said, okay, sure, thank you. They made an arrangement that Greg would pay Abe just $540 a month, and Greg was already a little uncomfy at the thought of owing a friend money, so he made sure to pay even more than that most months. All was well for a while. But then, in 2009, Abe started talking about a white lady he'd met who was helping him with his financial affairs and loan collections. This lady was even talking about writing a book about Abe and his generosity with the Lakeland

community. Greg was a little concerned right from the start. Who was this person? How did you meet her? It seemed like she'd just come out of nowhere. He tried to tell Abe to be wary of this woman, but Abe didn't seem to want to listen. And at the end of the day, it wasn't really any of Greg's business. Then one day, Abe brought the lady to the barbershop to introduce her to Greg. Her name was D.D. Moore. Greg's first impression of D.D. was unimpressive. She seemed a bit like a shrinking violet with a clammy limp fish handshake.

By the way, if there's anything my father taught me, it's the can't trust a limpfish handshake. It's awful. It is so unpleasant. Strong handshakes, campers. I know. I just don't even touch me if you're just going to hand me that little limp nonsense, especially if it's all so clammy. That's just gross.

Yeah. Clammy and firm is one thing. Clammy and limp. Yeah. Firm handshakes campers. Yes. She also didn't have a briefcase or any papers. She didn't seem like the self-made businesswoman that Abe had described.

Greg's spidey senses were tingling. Yeah, and the fact that D.D. was showing this kind of nervousness and awkwardness that day is interesting to me, because as we will soon see, D.D. is anything but a shrinking violet. This is not her normal affect at all. So I'm wondering, was this tactic to disarm Greg, whom she may have known had some influence over Abe? Maybe she wanted to seem non-threatening. Or was this just D.D. being racist and gross and uncomfortable around black people? That would not surprise me either, given what we're going to find out about her. So I don't know which it is, but it's interesting. Yeah, my vote is for that last one. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it's very likely. Anyway, she met Greg that day, and Abe seemed excited to introduce her.

Little did Greg Smith know that this would be the last time he'd ever see his friend. But let's put a pin in that and get some background on Miss D.D. Moore. Oh, y'all. Boy. We're doing some stretches here, cracking our knuckles, shadow boxing a little. This bitch deserves a roasting like we rarely get a chance to do. And we're planning on delivering like dominoes. Oh, boy.

You ready, Whitney? Bitch, please. I was born ready. We're going to fry this woman up and eat her. So Doris, Dede Moore, was born in 1972. in Florida. And on the day she was born, the story of the Tuskegee experiment was on the front page of every newspaper. Now, campers, if you aren't familiar with this despicable, quote unquote, experiment, it's one of the most shameful blots on our American history. The government,

and by this I mean our government, promised free treatment to poor black men with syphilis in Alabama. And then, instead of the medicine that they promised, they gave the men a placebo. so they could study what happens when you leave syphilis untreated. And they were planning to follow these men for the next 40 years in a longitudinal study. Just let that sink in for a second, just the awfulness of that. And some of these guys that they did this to were veterans, too, as if it wasn't bad enough already. And there are really no words. No.

That I can say about this, about how it makes me feel, except that I want to set every everyone involved on fire. Yes. So on the day Didi was born, Americans became aware that their government had taken this outrageous, monstrous advantage of low-income

black men. And this is a bit ironic given that this is exactly what Ms. Dedy herself would grow up to do to Abraham Shakespeare. Now, by all accounts, Didi had a normal, happy-go-lucky childhood. She was a bubbly kid,

bright, friendly. She was happy. She was a brownie. She was a Girl Scout. And she was in a Bible study group called the missionettes, which just sounds to me like the name of a burlesque group, but okay. So does. The missionettes. But in middle and high school, Dee Dee became fixated on status and class. Her family was working class, like not poor really, but they didn't have many extras. They didn't have fancy stuff. And Dee hated it. She hated it so much, in fact, that she made her mom drop her off a block away from school so her classmates didn't see their families like just perfectly reasonable non-fancy car. Not a good sign. Not a good sign of what was to come.

This is the first indication in Dee Dee's history of what would turn into a toxic, bottomless need for wealth at any cost. After high school, she got a job as a nursing assistant and by all accounts she was great at it. She seemed compassionate, and she got her reputation for being especially good with developmentally disabled patients, which is really interesting to me because, and I'm pretty sure y'all are going to agree with me before we're done here, I am fairly confident that Ms. Deity does not have an ounce of compassion or genuine care for other human beings in her. So if she appears to be compassionate and kind, is it possible she's doing that for a payoff? Is it just part of a mask that she's wearing to gain something?

What do we think? Yeah, I think there is something to be said about needing to be powerful over someone that is helpless. Yeah, sure. Oh, yeah. And I think we see that actually a lot with nurses that are serial killers. Mm-hmm, sure. Angels at Death. And then I think it was also part of.

she wanted to be praised like oh my god good for you yeah but i do not think it was a genuine need to help people oh no i don't think she has that in her so yeah i think i think you're right actually that there could have been some element of i am clearly the one in charge here because you you know need me to survive to get your pain meds to not be miserable that might have been satisfying to her on some level as you said and also Of course, when you're perceived as an angel of mercy, then you're going to get praise. Didi like praise. So, Didi got married just a couple months shy of her 20th birthday. Her husband James was a construction worker.

They lived in a trailer, which I'm sure wasn't good enough for Didi, and they had a kit, Robert James, whom they named RJ. And in 1995, when she was 22, Didi was involved in a pretty serious car accident. A Pontiac Sunfire crossed the center line and hit her head on. And Dede was pretty much unscased. She was treated for some injuries, but she survived. But interestingly, her mom, who doesn't seem to have any illusions about her daughter, has wondered aloud in interviews whether she received an undetected brain injury that night and that it may have contributed somewhat to what was to come.

And we do see head injuries pop up quite a bit in true crime stories. Remember Dyson Koft and his football injury in high school and his personality changed after that? So this is an element that we see. sometimes. But also I think it's fair to remember that she had started this greedy stuff before that happened. So we don't necessarily have any evidence that she was doing anything underhanded, but she had already developed that obsession with status and well. So soon Dede started selling cell phones and calling plans as kind of a side hustle to make extra money because she always wanted extra money and she was good at that too. So good in fact that her boss Karen noticed her

business acumen and decided to partner with her in a business venture selling phones. They called it all about cellular, and Karen was president, and Dee Dee was vice president. Whoa, wait, wait, wait. Her manager's name was Karen? Yep, ironic, no. So, like, when Karen is the manager, like, who does she speak to? If a Karen asks to see the manager in the woods and there's nobody there to hear it. Does it make a sound?

What is the sound of one Karen complaining? These are the philosophical questions of our times. Listeners name Karen, by the way, we're sorry. People have called your name for that meme. It'll pass. Okay. We love you, Karen's. Anywho, this partnership was relatively short-lived, though, because D.D. soon became obsessed with a new venture, opening a new healthcare services branch in a sleepy little town called Paint Rock. Now, this was a branch of Arcadia Health, where she... She worked, and her employers soon noticed that the books at Dee's new clinic seemed really

off, like spending was just through the roof. So they did an audit, and a con artist's worst fear, and embezzler's worst fears, that word audit, right? And the audit revealed that Didi had embezzled $60,000 from payroll in a pretty short amount of time. And worse than that, she was in cahoots with some of her employees. So basically what they did was she patted their paycheck. and then she and the employee would split the difference.

So for a while there, everybody made out nicely, but then, of course, they caught on to her, and when the company started pursuing charges, mysteriously, the clinic burned down. Huh. What an coincidence. And also, interestingly, the only things that were destroyed in this totally random and I'm sure completely accidental fire were documents and records, because Ms. Didy had, presciently, psychically almost,

had the very, very good fortune of thinking to order some valuable equipment moved to another office, just a few days before the fire. So, few, right? Only some, you know, insignificant paperwork lost. You know, stuff like payroll stuff, no big deal, just, you know, any actual evidence of Dee's scam that might have been used to prosecute her. So, Didi and Arcadia eventually settled out of court for $25,000 of the $60 that she had embezzled. But some people close to Didi say she never even paid that. She never paid a dime.

And there wasn't enough evidence to nail her for the arson, but I don't think it takes Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened here, right, Camper? So that was the first big thing. And then the next year, Didi was arrested for shoplifting. Now, you would think that with an embezzlement allegation and investigation still going on in a suspicious fire in her very recent past, the court might actually impose some real consequences for this, right? Not so much. Ms. Deity got probation. So, so far, this bitch has been bulletproof, which is one of my major pet peeves in the entirety of true crime and makes me so mad I could spit-flippin napalm. Remember Dante Soutorious who got away with like setting a guy

on fire and burning down another guy's house and like a bunch of other stuff? I swear to God, these bitches in their fire setting. I don't know what it is about fire that these women like so much, but whatever. So that happened. And then around then her landlord was threatening to evict her and James for non-payment of rent. So she told the landlord that someone was after her. And she got all weepy. This bitch loves to burst into tears when she thinks that it'll help her get away with something.

You guys are going to see her just cries and cries and cries. And she said, someone's been stalking me. They left a sign on my front porch and said warning and it was on fire. I had to stomp it out. Now, what the hell that would have to do with her not paying her damn rent? Like, even if that were true, I can't imagine. I guess she just thought that the landlord would hear that and say, oh, it's okay. You can stay rent free.

Yeah, not how the world works. And it didn't work and he evicted him anyway. Yeah. So this landlord has a tenant that is not paying rent. And on top of that, she has a stalker that is apparently willing to destroy his property. Right? Like, why would he want to let her stay? Like, oh, good. Someone's after you and setting fires on this property that I own. By all means, please stay. She's not that bright, is she bless her heart? Not at all. So shortly after this, she was caught writing bad checks. Consequences time now, eh? Yeah? No.

She just got more probation, because we know how well it seems to work. for her, right? And campers, strap down your valuables and hold on to your nearest and dearest because this next bit is going to blow your marshmallows off. I'm just saying, in 2001, despite the fact that she had a $25,000 judgment against her from Arcadia Health for the embezzlement, and she and her husband had just been kicked out of their trailer, and she was on probation for stealing and writing bad checks, D.D. decided that this would be a great time to buy herself a $50,000 Lincoln Navigator. Huh. You know, like you do.

Because, you know, you got to treat yourself sometimes, right? And when she inevitably started missing payments, they called and told her, you know, we're going to repo this car. And Didi got all defiant on the phone and said, I'll do whatever it takes to keep this vehicle. Like she's talking about her firstborn child or something. And damn, if she wasn't telling the truth, because two days later, a motorist was heading home after work at night and his headlights suddenly illuminated a disheveled, half naked, scraped up and bruised Ms. Didy Moore on the side of the road in a heap.

So, sobbing, of course, because, again, always weeping. So he picked her up, took her to the police station, and she told them that she had been carjacked. Oh, yeah. And this is the most charming part. She told the investigators that it was two Hispanic men who did it. Oh, of course she did. God, this bitch is the literal worst. And if it's not clear, this is a racial hoax. which is my biggest pet peeve in the entire world of true crime. It's flippin awful.

If you're going to make it up, why do you have to blame a person of color? So she said they'd carjacked her at gunpoint, beaten her, sexually assaulted her, and she said they'd been planning to kill her. But at that last minute, they decided to let her go. And campers, this is the weirdest shit. I've ever, ever, ever hurted my life. She said they'd told her she'd better dye her hair blonde and that they'd better never see her around these parts again.

You know, like violent carjackers always do. Now get out of my sight, bitch. I better never see you around here again. But if I do, you better be rocking some highlights where I'm going to slit your throat. It's just so weird. Why would they care what color our hair is? She just needed an excuse to go to the... That's what I think, too.

She must have just been wanting to go blonde, and, like, maybe your husband was like, no, I like your hair the way it is. And, well, I have to now. The carjackers said so. God, you're a freaking weirdo, D.D. So that was odd. Yeah, it's odd. But when investigators asked her for more details,

she'd get hysterical and start, like, dry heaving and saying she was going to throw up if they kept making her talk about it. And, of course, the detectives didn't want to further traumatize a victim, so they dropped it for the moment and let Didi go. But then, the story made its way to the news. They didn't mention Dede's name, but they said a woman had been violently carjacked and the police were looking for a Lincoln navigator. And soon, a guy called the police station and said, look, I just saw the supposed carjacking and assault story on the news, and I need to tell you something. I just realized I've been had here because that Lincoln Navigator y'all are looking

for is in my garage. He said, here's what happened. A friend of mine asked if I could store this car in my garage for a friend of his, a lady named D.D. Moore. And apparently, D.D. had told this guy that a co-worker of hers had framed her for embezzlement. And she wanted to get back at them for ruining her life and her reputation. So her friend agreed to help her because, A, he really thought she'd been wronged. And B, she offered to pay him. Campers, this hot mess of a woman had these guys drive her out to the boonies in the Lincoln. And I shit you not.

She said she wanted to make sure it looked like a real carjacking. So she taped up her own wrists with duct tape. And then said, okay, now slow the car down. And when they did, this psychopath threw herself out of the moving car to make sure she got banged up a little. That is just bonkers. Oh, my God. And I wonder if it could be an indicator that D.D. could actually be a psychopath. One of the defining characteristics of psychopathy is that these folks are not afraid to take risks.

They're not too worried about avoiding pain if it gets them what they want, et cetera. And we can't diagnose anybody, but it's an interesting thing to consider. Yeah, so this guy told the police, obviously, my friend and I have been victims of some kind of con here. And you'd think a false report of a carjacking and sexual assault would be a pretty serious crime, right? Mm-hmm. You'd think that maybe now, D.D. would do some jail time. I'm optimistic. Mm-hmm. Yeah, but yet again, she got one year of probation.

One year. One year. That's all she got. And to top it all off, she lost the navigator. And that was probably the first thing so far that's really gotten to her. Yeah. Like we said, bulletproof. I'm glad she lost the damn car, at least, because she actually took. I didn't care about that. Clearly.

She's shit about the probation, obviously. All righty. So, Dedy's next venture was to start a new business. American medical professionals, AMP, a medical staffing company. One of her employees,

an older lady, had saved a nesting of $60,000 with her husband. They wanted to use it to start a small business, and when Didi got wind of this, she's told them, oh, hey, I can help

with that. Just give you the money and I'll do my businessy magic to open you a special kind of account. And blah, blah, blah. Nope. And as Whitney says, bless their hearts. This couple gave Dee Dee Dee the entire 60K to deposit for them. And campers, we are not trying to victim blame. The blame here is 100% on DD. But again, these are cautionary tales and it does us no favors if we don't learn from them. Yeah. So if you're ever in a situation like this where somebody offers to help you with your finances, for the love of all that is holy on earth, check them out first. I know, right? I mean, she was on probation. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Even if you've known them for years. Absolutely. Talk to an attorney or a financial advisor or both.

Mm-hmm. Get stuff in writing before you hand over your life savings. Yeah, that's the most important part is it gets in writing. So I'm sure this is going to shock you. Instead of depositing their money for them, Dee-Dee just stole it. Oh, my God, I hate her so bad. And yet again, because there was no paper trail, nothing in writing, she got away with it.

She couldn't be prosecuted because it's her word against the couples. I remember this was like an older couple, so not people who had time to recover that. Like, you know, if somebody steals 60K from you when you're 35, it's going to suck, it's going to be awful, but you've got time to make that money back. If you're in your 60s, and that's your nest egg, and you've been saving that for decades, and somebody steals it, well, now what are you supposed to do? You don't have the time to recoup that. It's just horrendous. And these were supposedly people that she was

friends with. Right. Unbelievable this woman. On top of this, Dede was getting sued, left, right, center because she never paid her company's damn bills. She owed like $30,000 in fees for radio ads. There were all kinds of things like that. And people who knew Dee Dee knew she was a liar. Her dad told a reporter, Didi tells the fib-yest fibs. Yeah, dad, fibs.

That's what they are. I mean, on the one hand, her parents don't seem to be under any big illusions about their kid. I mean, her dad has also said that he had quote-unquote grave suspicions about the fire at Arcadia Health. But these are not fibs, my dude. Let's call them what they are. These are great, big,

massive, malicious lies with, like, glitter all over them, okay? Yeah, they're like glitter bombs. Phoebe fibs, yeah. And people knew she was a drama queen, too. She thrived on chaos. She

always seemed to default to playing the victim, any time she was painted into a corner. So by 2006, 2007, D.D. had committed lots of crime. But she hadn't really seen a lot of payoff for it. She didn't have the fancy lifestyle she wanted, but she was learning that no matter what she did, she always seemed to get away with it.

Yep. So we're going to leave it there for Part 1, Campers, but because we release both halves of an episode on the same day. Go ahead and listen to Part 2 now if you want. Or save it for later, whatever max your cheese. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. You can follow us on Twitter at TC Campfire, Instagram at True Crime Campfire, and be sure to like our Facebook page. If you want to support the show and get access to extras, please consider becoming a patron

at patreon.com slash True Crime Campfire.