Shadow cast by death of missing lottery winner forces woman to move

For Debbie Munguia, living in one of the nation's most infamous crime scenes is bad enough.

Trying to make a go of a business there is impossible.

That's why the U-Haul was parked in the driveway Friday, and why she and her family and friends were packing and loading boxes onto the truck.

Standing in the garage of the brick house at 5732 S.R. 60 near Plant City, Munguia stopped what she was doing and took a deep drag off her cigarette.

"I can't wait to get out of here," she said.

Sometime between April 6 and 7, 2009, investigators say, Florida Lottery millionaire Abraham Lee Shakespeare was killed in this house.

On Jan. 11, having no clue about the ongoing investigation, Munguia and her family moved in from their place in Bonifay. A month before, Dee Dee Moore turned over American Medical Professionals - which provided group homes and senior care facilities with nurses and nursing assistants - to Munguia, who said she had run the day-to-day operations since 2008. The business was run out of the house on S.R. 60.

Munguia said she beseeched Moore for several years to give her the business. When she finally did, she wanted to move in to the brick house so she could be closer to it, Munguia said.

Exactly two weeks after moving in, though, Munguia was told to move out temporarily.

Investigators had to dig up the cement slab Dee Dee Moore had laid under a canopy of trees behind the adjacent property and needed to search the brick house and the bigger house next door at 5802 S.R. 60.

They had to find Shakespeare's body and figured out who killed him.

"I moved into a nightmare," Munguia said.

Until the end of January, business had been good, she said. But then Shakespeare's body was found and Moore was arrested. The business was mentioned in news articles and television broadcasts around the country.

The business suffered beyond a loss of clients, Munguia said. After the news broke, and TV trucks began camping out on the road just off the property, she began losing nurses.

"Who wants to work at a murder scene?" she asked rhetorically.

There are few remnants of the crime. Munguia said she there are no obvious indicators of where Shakespeare was killed. The most visible sign that something untoward happened here is out back, where the cement slab that covered Shakespeare is chopped into chunks and piled nearby.

The hole is now covered over and all that remains are the tire marks of the heavy equipment that dug him up, then filled in the hole.

No matter. Munguia wants out.

But there are complications to the move.

On Friday, a friend of Moore's - who would not give her name - was overseeing things because some of the items inside were purchased by Moore before she met Shakespeare, said Moore's mother, Linda Donegan.

Some belong to Moore's son, Robert James Moore, other items were purchased after Moore met Shakespeare. Same for the house at 5802 S.R. 60.

Donegan said the family is trying to sort everything out.

Anything purchased after her daughter met Shakespeare will be turned over to Shakespeare's family, Donegan said.

That includes the new carpets, a stainless steel refrigerator, new windows, new wiring and many other improvements, about $70,000 worth in all at the house 5802 S.R. 60, said Donegan. "I am making a list of all the things Dee Dee bought since she met Abraham,'' Donegan said. "It will all go to his family."