In October of 2008, Abraham Shakespeare was contacted by a woman who said she was looking to write a book about his life.

The reason she wanted to do that, as she explained, was because his story had grabbed her attention so much.

After all, it wasn't every day that someone was plucked from the obscurity of living a life

of poverty in Florida after winning $31 million in the state lottery.

What Abraham didn't realize at the time, though, was that the woman he was about to meet

wasn't actually a writer at all.

No, she was someone with a history of problems with the law and someone who would soon bring about his untimely end.

This is Monsters.

This is Monsters. Abraham Shakespeare was born in the small central Florida town of Sebring on April 24, 1966 to parents, James, and Elizabeth.

The youngest of four children, Abraham generally struggled as a child, with him doing so poorly

in school that he decided to drop out after the seventh grade in order to go

to work with his father on a citrus grove. Even that proved hard for the young man to do,

largely on account of him being unable to read or write, and that led to him acting out in

ways that ultimately saw him get into trouble with the law and be sent off to a

reform school at 13 years old after being convicted of theft. Once Abraham was eventually

released back out into the world upon turning 18, his opportunities in life were limited. He tried to

keep his head down from there on in, moving back in with his father

until his death from heart disease in 2005 at the age of 84. After that, he followed his

mother over to nearby Lakeland, where the pair had hoped they might be able to find a better life

and escape some of the poverty they'd endured in Sebring. Unfortunately for both parties, however, they quickly discovered that in Lakeland,

things were not much better, especially if you were someone with no education to speak of

in a history of convictions as Abraham was.

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