Lorenzen Wright was an American professional basketball player who played 13 seasons in the National Basketball Association.
He was drafted seventh overall in the 1996 NBA draft by the Los Angeles Clippers, and also played for the Atlanta Hawks, Memphis Grizzlies, Sacramento Kings, and Cleveland Cavaliers.
Wright went missing on July 18, 2010, and his body was found 10 days later, having been shot to death. In December 2017, seven years after his death, Wright's ex-wife Sherra Wright-Robinson was charged with facilitating his murder; a year and a half later, she pleaded guilty.
Her friend, Billy Ray Turner, was convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and attempted first-degree murder in March 2022, and has been given a life sentence in prison.
Widespread coverage of his disappearance, as well as his status as a popular Memphis figure, led to the prosecution of his murder is among the most publicized in Memphis history.
According to his ex-wife (who was later convicted of facilitating his murder), Wright left his home in Collierville, Tennessee, on the night of July 18, 2010, with drugs and an unspecified amount of money, and was not seen or heard from again.
His family filed a missing-persons report on July 22.
After Wright's body was found on July 28 in a wooded area on Callis-Cutoff Road just west of Hacks Cross Road, a 9-1-1 call reportedly had been received from his cell phone in the early morning of July 19 by the Germantown, Tennessee, 911 dispatch center.
The caller was speaking with the dispatcher when 11 gunshots rang out.
The dispatcher did not report the call to her supervisor until eight days later, hindering the police investigation and resulting in a payout to Wright's family.
The case was investigated as a homicide.
Wright's body is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee.
In 2011, a reward for information related to the killing stood at $21,000; the state of Tennessee contributed $10,000, the city of Memphis and the Memphis Grizzlies each promised $5,000, and Crime Stoppers promised $1,000.
On November 9, 2017, the gun believed to have been used to murder Wright was found in a Walnut, Mississippi, lake.
On December 5, 2017, Billy R. Turner, Shelby County landscaper and church deacon at Mt. Olive No. 1 Missionary Baptist Church in Collierville, was indicted on first-degree murder charges and held on $1 million bond.
On December 15, 2017, Wright's ex-wife, Sherra Wright-Robinson, was arrested in California in connection with the murder. Wright-Robinson was a former member of Turner's church.
The seven-year investigation into his death was one of the Memphis Police Department's most high-profile unsolved cases.
Wright's mother, Deborah Marion, told The Commercial Appeal newspaper that a police official told her Wright-Robinson would be charged with first-degree murder, the same charge Turner faces.
Marion said she believes her former daughter-in-law was motivated by money, specifically a $1-million life insurance policy held by Lorenzen Wright.
In a 2015 article in The Commercial Appeal, Wright-Robinson explained how she inquired early in the investigation whether she was a suspect. "They was like, no, you know," she said. "It was just kind of a person of interest. They said that the list was long and wide and they didn't have any real suspects if you want to quote that."
Records showed that on August 1, 2010, Memphis police searched her home and found burned pieces of metal and a letter addressed to Lorenzen Wright and her, but law enforcement at that time did not say what the items meant to investigators.
In 2014, Wright-Robinson agreed to a confidential settlement of a dispute in circuit court over how she spent the $1 million of insurance money meant to benefit their six children.
On July 25, 2019, Wright-Robinson pleaded guilty to facilitation of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Lorenzen Wright and was sentenced to 30 ye
