The Murder of Lorenzen Wright

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Speaker 2 Tonight on Dateline.

Speaker 10 He was larger than life. He was a hometown hero.
Very humble beginnings to the NBA. And then he's murdered.
I mean, this is Lorenzen Wright. It was as if an explosion went off.

Speaker 10 Hello?

Speaker 10 Someone is running for their life and there's multiple gunshots.

Speaker 11 It made the hero back your next turn up.

Speaker 10 You and Lorenzen were so close.

Speaker 12 Life wasn't worth living after they killed my firstborn.

Speaker 13 Who would do this to him?

Speaker 11 You look at everybody, every friend, every family member.

Speaker 10 The divorced spouse, she was the last person known to have seen him.

Speaker 11 We had to dig into them.

Speaker 14 There are these mysterious gunmen showing up looking for Lorenzen.

Speaker 15 Who are these people that came by the house?

Speaker 10 Gosh. Do you think they'll ever figure this out?

Speaker 2 Fame, fortune, and a fatal plot. Who killed the basketball star? Now, a chilling new ending.

Speaker 12 How is this possible? It just blew me away.

Speaker 10 He was under under everybody's noses the whole time.

Speaker 15 Yeah. How's that for a kicker?

Speaker 15 Just the ultimate evil.

Speaker 2 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 7 Here's Andrea Canning with the murder of Lorenzen Wright.

Speaker 10 It was just after midnight in Memphis,

Speaker 10 as Sunday turned into Monday.

Speaker 10 On Beale Street, the blues clubs were blaring.

Speaker 10 Barbecue joints still sizzling.

Speaker 10 Even the lights of nearby Graceland were a glow.

Speaker 10 But just outside of town, in this tree-lined field, it was quiet, peaceful, not a soul in sight.

Speaker 10 Then suddenly, an unmistakable sound echoed through the trees.

Speaker 10 That's the actual sound of a murder in progress caught on audiotape. The crime conceived weeks earlier was now complete.

Speaker 10 It all began in July 2010 when one of the city's favorite sons returned to town.

Speaker 10 Lorenzen Wright, or simply Wren, played high school and college basketball here in Memphis, then later starred for the hometown NBA Grizzlies.

Speaker 10 Just 34 years old, Wren was larger than life, according to close friend Bill Adkins. How popular was he here in Memphis?

Speaker 9 Extremely, extremely.

Speaker 13 Everybody loved Lorenzen. He was just popular.
I mean, you couldn't, you had to notice him. I mean, 6'11, 6'10.
You know, he walks in the door. Everybody knows it's him.

Speaker 10 Charismatic, yet humble, Wren was as generous as he was outgoing.

Speaker 13 He was kind to everyone. I never saw a time when he would shun people away or say crude or rude things to people.
The guy would give you the shirt off his back.

Speaker 10 Movie star looks?

Speaker 5 Oh, yeah, charming.

Speaker 13 Quite charming. Handsome guy.

Speaker 10 Lorenzen was at the end of a solid NBA career, now divorced and living in Atlanta.

Speaker 10 But he would often come back to Memphis to visit. So on a Sunday in late July, Wren arrived and spent part of the day with close buddy Phil Dotson and some other old friends.

Speaker 15 The perfect Sunday afternoon of just, you know, the guys hanging, bonding.

Speaker 10 A few hours later, Phil took Wren to pick up his oldest son at a local gym and then dropped them off at the home of Shara Wright, Lorenzen's ex-wife, where Wren sometimes visited when he was in town.

Speaker 15 He said, I'll call you later.

Speaker 15 And so that being about 10 p.m., I left. I got home and I I never heard from him.

Speaker 10 Sunday night passed, but no call from Wren.

Speaker 15 And so I shot him a text and he didn't reply.

Speaker 10 So I'm sure you tried to reach him the next day?

Speaker 15 The next day. And

Speaker 15 nothing.

Speaker 10 Was that odd? Or still thinking he's just busy with the family?

Speaker 15 I just thought he was still busy with the family. It wasn't a big deal.

Speaker 10 Wren was known to go off the grid occasionally. Plus, he had a scheduled trip to Las Vegas later that week.

Speaker 10 Maybe he just left early.

Speaker 15 When you're in Vegas in the casino, you don't get a signal. I thought it was kind of weird that he didn't text me back,

Speaker 15 but I didn't think anything about it.

Speaker 10 But Ren's mother, Deborah Marion, was already worrying. She'd been trying to reach him all week.

Speaker 12 He never not answered my call. He never not called me back.

Speaker 10 Did you just think maybe he's in Vegas having a really good time? Not in my time.

Speaker 12 He didn't call me. Uh-uh.

Speaker 10 Lorenzen's mother filed a missing persons report with police while Phil sounded his own personal alarm.

Speaker 15 I'm sending him our SOS code that we had for each other. We really needed one another.
And I didn't hear anything from him.

Speaker 10 Was this where things turned for you when he didn't respond to that?

Speaker 15 I started getting worried.

Speaker 14 I was like, man, where is he?

Speaker 10 He just basically has like vanished.

Speaker 15 Vanished from the face of the earth. Yes.

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 15 It was starting to get scary.

Speaker 11 Somebody called me in the middle of the night and said, hey, did you know Lorenzen Riley was missing?

Speaker 11 Former Memphis police chief Tony Armstrong worked worked on the case and I'm going what do you mean missing you know how cause a guy that's 6'11 and how can a guy that's been on TV every week for most of his adult life go missing that's impossible

Speaker 10 at 6'11 and 255 pounds Lorenzen Wright is hard to miss but he has been missing for a week police are searching for former Memphis basketball players by now the local media was all over the story he hasn't surfaced anywhere the disappearance of Lorenzen Wright investigators say there is nothing to suggest that Wright is not alive.

Speaker 18 However, as time passes, the situation grows more worrisome.

Speaker 10 It was shocking. It was just, what do you mean Lorenz and Wright is missing?

Speaker 10 Conjie Anthony covered the story for NBC affiliate WMC TV in Memphis. The whole town was a buzz.

Speaker 10 Lorenzen's former wife, Shara, told reporters he was fine the last night she saw him.

Speaker 19 I'm not gonna believe anything other than that he's fine now. I just need somebody to call if they've seen him or anything from him.

Speaker 10 But Ren's mother was already expecting the worst.

Speaker 12 I told the police when I first reported him missing, y'all, my son is not going to be good when y'all find him.

Speaker 10 Your intuition was telling you.

Speaker 12 Y'all weren't feeling him nowhere. He wasn't nowhere.

Speaker 10 You must normally feel kind of a spiritual connection to your son.

Speaker 12 I told the police, I don't know how to explain it to y'all, but he's dead.

Speaker 10 Memphis police needed more than a mother's intuition.

Speaker 10 Then they found that terrifying recording.

Speaker 11 He was literally running for his life at that point.

Speaker 17 Tonight, police are searching for former Memphis basketball player Lorenzen Wright.

Speaker 10 Seven long days and still no sign of Lorenzen Wright.

Speaker 10 One of the last to see him alive was his ex-wife Shara.

Speaker 20 There are no new leads or anything. It's mind-boggling.

Speaker 21 We're hopeful.

Speaker 20 Today is one of the worst days for me because it's an entire week.

Speaker 10 With each passing day, Wren's mother became more fearful. You must be frantic.
Yes.

Speaker 12 I don't call everybody, everywhere that he would be associated with. Nobody, no nothing.

Speaker 10 But police did find a clue, a big one, buried in Wren's phone records. The last call Lorenz and Wright ever made was to 911.

Speaker 22 Security on 911, where's your emergency?

Speaker 10 Detectives traced that call to Germantown, a Memphis suburb. Police there were not able to geolocate the call and never followed up on it.

Speaker 10 That's the voice of Lorenzen Wright as he faced his killer.

Speaker 10 It would take eight days from the time he went missing for Memphis police to find that recording.

Speaker 11 It made the Harold Meback your neck stand up. That was probably his last spoken words.
And listening to that tape, it just kind of brought it all home that you knew that he was beyond distress.

Speaker 10 That's no joke when someone is running for their life and there's multiple gunshots being fired.

Speaker 11 I had never heard a 911 call like that one before.

Speaker 23 Live pictures here from Chopper 5. Police are not saying anything official at this point.

Speaker 10 Police were able to trace the 911 call from nearby cell phone towers and soon swarmed a field on the outskirts of town looking for Lorenzen.

Speaker 10 The information led a Shelby County Sheriff's search crew to a wooded area near Hacks Cross and Winchester Road.

Speaker 10 And it didn't take long. The search team suddenly noticed something very disturbing.

Speaker 23 Breaking news, Memphis police are in southeast Memphis where a body has been found.

Speaker 10 And the word went around town like wildfire. Anyone who knew Lorenzen literally hopped into their car and drove to that scene.

Speaker 26 News of the discovery spread quickly and crowds of Wrights friends on and off the court steadily grew.

Speaker 10 It was still a full-on crime scene when Lorenzen's mother arrived.

Speaker 10 Then crossed the police line to where the body was being recovered.

Speaker 12 I wanted to walk in his last walk so I can get that feeling like what happened. Just let me walk the last path he walked.

Speaker 10 Why did you want to do that?

Speaker 12 Because I wanted to feel what he left for me. Because I knew.

Speaker 10 Of course she knew.

Speaker 10 It was her firstborn son, Lorenzen.

Speaker 27 Police have notified immediate family that Lorenzen Riott was found dead here. We have not

Speaker 10 by now a large crowd was holding an impromptu memorial at the grim site. Among them was Wren's friend and NBA star Penny Hardaway.

Speaker 28 It's just a great loss for the city of Memphis for his family.

Speaker 28 Such an early age. I mean, it's just senseless.

Speaker 10 Then, Lorenzen's body, which had been left in the searing Memphis sun for 10 long days, was taken in for an autopsy.

Speaker 11 I've seen decomposed bodies before.

Speaker 11 But I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't ready for

Speaker 11 Lorenzen's remains. I would not have known that that was him.

Speaker 10 Lorenzen Wright was just 34, the father of six young children. Now police confirmed the horrible news with the rest of his family and close friends.

Speaker 15 I literally remember freezing.

Speaker 15 I dropped the phone and my mind went blank. I'm like, what do you mean?

Speaker 11 He's dead.

Speaker 15 And then he told me he's been in the field for some days and it was bad. It was bad.
And I hung the phone up

Speaker 15 and

Speaker 15 I cried. Felt like someone had pulled my heart out of my chest and just stomped on it.

Speaker 10 This was your best friend. Yeah.

Speaker 30 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Word also spread south to Atlanta where Wren's old friend and roommate, Mike Gibson, was anxiously awaiting any news.

Speaker 31 When I found out about it, I was just out to my knees. I

Speaker 9 couldn't walk.

Speaker 9 I was like paralyzed.

Speaker 11 I'm like, this can't be true.

Speaker 10 At first, nobody knew what exactly had happened to Wren. Was there any thought that perhaps Lorenzen had been robbed? He's a really rich guy.

Speaker 11 He is a rich guy, but at the time of his death, there was jury recovered, other personal belongings recovered.

Speaker 10 Then there was what the autopsy revealed. He had been shot multiple times.
with wounds to the chest and even his face.

Speaker 11 It was an assassination. He was murdered.

Speaker 15 The number of times that he was shot and then to know that those shots were

Speaker 9 to his

Speaker 14 face. That's personal.
That's personal.

Speaker 15 That's a deep-rooted

Speaker 29 hate.

Speaker 10 So hateful and so personal, which suggested the killer might have actually known Lorenzen.

Speaker 13 I just could not imagine anybody wanting to harm him.

Speaker 10 Did you think he was targeted?

Speaker 13 No, I thought maybe somebody wanted to rob him, but who would do this to him?

Speaker 10 And why?

Speaker 10 A few tiny clues left behind at the crime scene would provide a huge lead. Because it appeared not only did someone want Lorenzen dead, maybe there was more than one person involved in his murder.

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Speaker 10 Memphis was in mourning.

Speaker 10 It was a sad day in the summer of 2010 when the city paid its last respects to Lorenzen Wright. The funeral was such a big deal, it was televised by several local stations.
His funeral, oh boy.

Speaker 10 Well, it was pretty much the who's who of Memphis.

Speaker 10 Lorenzen's mother could barely keep it together, never imagining she'd have to bury her oldest child.

Speaker 12 I just didn't want to live.

Speaker 10 You and Lorenzen were so close.

Speaker 12 I promise you, life wasn't worth living after they killed my firstborn. It just...

Speaker 10 You two had been through so much together.

Speaker 9 Yes, indeed.

Speaker 12 You see, I was young when I had them, so we kind of like grew up together.

Speaker 10 Wren's ex-wife Shara and their children all came came to say farewell too.

Speaker 10 Six young children now suddenly left without a father. The loss of such a great person in the fabric of Memphis society was just so tragic and painful.

Speaker 10 To help the city heal, the Memphis mayor made a promise.

Speaker 15 Justice

Speaker 5 will be done.

Speaker 41 That's our pledge.

Speaker 10 Justice, of course, depended on a thorough police investigation. Detectives were now playing catch-up given how long it had taken to find Wren's body after he was murdered.

Speaker 10 But at the crime scene, clues were already emerging.

Speaker 42 Police found different types of shell casings at the scene.

Speaker 10 Different casings, which meant more than one gun was used to murder Wren.

Speaker 11 Which indicated there could have possibly been two suspects responsible for this shooting.

Speaker 10 Tony Armstrong was already feeling the heat to crack one of the biggest cases of his career. This case was personal to you.
It was.

Speaker 11 The mayor of the city at that time had vowed to the public that we were going to solve it. I wanted to be able to tell his mom that we got the person that's responsible for this.

Speaker 10 But who would do such a thing? And why?

Speaker 10 Wren came from humble beginnings in Mississippi, where he was born and first started playing basketball. But it was here in Memphis where he became a star during his high school days.

Speaker 10 That's when he met his future wife Shara whose father was his coach at the time. Memphis investigative reporter Mark Pereschia.

Speaker 14 A lot of people didn't know about him until he played AAU ball for Shara Wright's dad and Shara's dad brought him up to Memphis and he played his last season of high school ball here in Memphis and was a high school All-American.

Speaker 12 And coaches were like, I don't know what this boy doing, but he can make some money one day.

Speaker 10 Shara also liked what she saw and the two began dating.

Speaker 10 Even though she was almost five years older, as Wren's friend Bill Adkins immediately noticed.

Speaker 12 She was different.

Speaker 13 You could tell she was quite mature, quite savvy, sexy. Can I use that word? Sexy.

Speaker 10 Absolutely.

Speaker 13 She was the kind of girl that guys looked at.

Speaker 10 Lorenzen, the country kid, was smitten with the more sophisticated city gal. What was it about Shara that he fell so fast for her?

Speaker 12 Oh, let me see how I can put this nicely.

Speaker 10 Sex. Uh-huh.

Speaker 12 He was 17, she was 22.

Speaker 10 So she lured him in.

Speaker 12 He had a little girlfriend, but they wasn't doing all that stuff Cheryl was doing.

Speaker 12 She was a lady and he was a kid.

Speaker 10 The romance with Wren flourished.

Speaker 10 And so did his basketball career.

Speaker 10 In college at the University of Memphis, his star continued to rise.

Speaker 12 Two years of college, and then he had a meeting with me and his dad. Tell me he finna get ready to go to the NBA.
I said, no, you're you're not. You got two more years.

Speaker 12 He said, Mama, think about when I graduate and get a degree. Who's going to pay me a million dollars for my first job?

Speaker 12 I thought about that for about 15 minutes and I said, when you say you're leaving?

Speaker 10 Then, in 1996, after his sophomore season, Lorenzen hit the NBA jackpot when he was drafted in the first round by the Los Angeles Clippers.

Speaker 10 At the tender age of 20, Wren was an instant millionaire.

Speaker 10 By now, Shara had given birth to their first baby, Lorenzen Jr.

Speaker 10 The three settled in LA and immediately began living the Southern California high life.

Speaker 10 After his second season, Wren and Shara got married.

Speaker 15 I was one of the groomsmen, and it was an awesome affair. The wedding was beautiful.
It looked like a fairy tale.

Speaker 10 Phil even lived with Lorenzen and Shara for over a year when Wren played with the Clippers. And Shara didn't mind you being the house guest?

Speaker 15 No, no, she didn't. They were always known for having, you know, huge hearts.

Speaker 10 Wren played three seasons with the Clippers, then moved on to Atlanta and signed another multi-million dollar contract before being traded to his hometown team, the Memphis Grizzlies, in 2001.

Speaker 10 Back home, Wren reimmers himself in the community. He opened a restaurant while committing to local charities and children.

Speaker 15 He would do a summer camp here. It was always huge.
Thousands of kids would attend. Giving back to his community was one of the things that really made him happy.

Speaker 10 Over his career, Lorenzen earned some $55 million,

Speaker 10 which he lavished on his friends and growing family.

Speaker 31 Oh my God, trips, buying anything he wants, houses, cars.

Speaker 31 He took care of his friends, took care of his family. Anybody who put a hand out, he virtually gave to him, he never could say no to people.

Speaker 14 They actually built a home beyond the suburbs. It was a huge 13,000 square foot home, cost several million dollars.

Speaker 10 And inside their giant garage.

Speaker 15 We had a couple of Ferraris and he loved cars.

Speaker 12 He had bought two buildings in one month.

Speaker 10 And Shara?

Speaker 15 She loved jewelry. Are we talking diamonds and watches, rings, earrings,

Speaker 15 bracelets? She loved to decorate her home. Custom drapes and custom upholstery on couches.
And then, you know, a couple months go by, and then she'd change everything up again.

Speaker 10 It was an embarrassment of riches.

Speaker 10 But behind the gates of their Memphis mansion, there was trouble in paradise.

Speaker 15 He was a rock star, and with being a rock star comes certain temptations that come at you.

Speaker 10 She was having affairs as well.

Speaker 41 We were hearing things like that, yes.

Speaker 12 December the 25th, 2007.

Speaker 16 Everybody's about to come downstairs on him making noise.

Speaker 10 Three years before Lorenz and Wright's death, his family can be seen in this rare home video celebrating what would be one of their last Christmases altogether.

Speaker 10 The house was decorated and there were plenty of presents under the tree.

Speaker 10 Wren was playing Santa for the kids.

Speaker 10 And in the garage, Shara had a surprise waiting for him.

Speaker 12 Do you love it, Daddy?

Speaker 8 I love it.

Speaker 10 It was right out of a Christmas movie. But behind the scenes, reporter Mark Periskia says Ren and Shara's life wasn't always so picture-perfect.

Speaker 8 Merry Christmas.

Speaker 14 People who knew them well, beyond the public arena, knew they had troubles.

Speaker 10 A volatile mix of infidelity and jealousy, says Perischia.

Speaker 14 There was this darker, darker side.

Speaker 10 For Lorenzen, life in the NBA was intoxicating.

Speaker 10 Under the bright lights, in the biggest cities with plenty of cash, clubbing, and women.

Speaker 37 He was a rock star.

Speaker 15 And with being a rock star comes certain temptations that come at you.

Speaker 10 And those temptations, unfortunately, did

Speaker 12 win over at times.

Speaker 15 Yes, yes. And you know, the

Speaker 15 temptations are real.

Speaker 14 By Shura's account, from the time that he got in the NBA, it was like a constant parade of women. He was young.
He was a good-looking guy. I mean, he had all this opportunity.

Speaker 14 I think he took advantage of it.

Speaker 10 Shara, according to Lorenzen's mother, was cheating too, and not very discreetly.

Speaker 12 Shira Shirley's being seen not her seen doing things she shouldn't be doing.

Speaker 10 Infidelity?

Speaker 12 If you're gonna do that go to the next town over.

Speaker 10 She was flaunting other men in her hometown.

Speaker 12 Yes, she wanted to do what her single friends did.

Speaker 10 So she wanted to act like a single woman even though she was married.

Speaker 10 If she didn't want to, she did.

Speaker 10 Wren was upset about Shara's alleged affairs, according to close friend Bill Atkins.

Speaker 13 He was very concerned about

Speaker 13 what he perceived as her infidelity and things.

Speaker 13 I can't leave home, trust her. I'm hearing stories and rumors about all these guys.

Speaker 13 At the same time, he knew he wasn't totally a saint as well in that area. He was looking for solutions to solving some of the marital issues that he was having at the time.

Speaker 10 He wanted to make it work.

Speaker 13 He absolutely wanted to make it work. Yeah.

Speaker 10 In 2003, amidst all the turbulence, an unexpected tragedy rocked their world.

Speaker 10 It involved the couple's 11-month-old daughter, Sierra. Wright's wife found the baby not breathing in her crib Saturday.
She rushed her to a nearby medical center where she was pronounced dead.

Speaker 15 Doctors' reports said that she died from Sid's sudden infant death syndrome. That was the hardest thing I know that he ever went through in his life.

Speaker 11 She's in heaven with God, and I know that.

Speaker 11 So now I'm just gonna work hard on trying to get myself there.

Speaker 10 Did it cause a strain in his marriage?

Speaker 15 I think it did. He was on the road when it happened and not being able to get there and protect his daughter.
And I think he always regretted that.

Speaker 10 Wren's friends said that two years later, the couple's problems escalated to a whole new and now dangerous level.

Speaker 15 There was a situation that happened and Lorenzo went to the house where supposedly she was there with another guy. He knew the gentleman.

Speaker 31 He went ballistic. I think he had had a gun.

Speaker 10 The story made the local newspapers, which reported that Wren threatened the man and also attacked Shara.

Speaker 14 She had some marks on her face. He hit her, and the police were going to arrest him,

Speaker 14 but she would not testify against him. Lorenzen had a public image to uphold.
She didn't want to expose that part of him.

Speaker 10 No charges were filed. In a newspaper account, Wren denied harming his wife or having a gun.
But we spoke to a woman who was there who told us she feared for Shara's life.

Speaker 10 With the help of counseling, their tumultuous marriage somehow stayed intact. And in 2007, they even renewed their vows.

Speaker 15 Everybody thought that, okay, now they're good again. And, you know, sure enough, a few months passed by and

Speaker 15 the same things happening again.

Speaker 10 Back to the fighting.

Speaker 15 Back to the fighting.

Speaker 10 And often it was about money, says close friend Phil Dodson, especially when it came to Shara's spending.

Speaker 15 There were were times when she would spend money and not tell him that she would spend money, maybe get back at him for

Speaker 15 indiscretions.

Speaker 13 There would be large sums of money that

Speaker 13 he would think is in the checking account and it's not there. And it'd be because of her spending.

Speaker 10 This was causing stress in the marriage. Absolutely.

Speaker 10 By 2009, Lorenzen's NBA career was winding down. And so were those multi-million dollar paychecks, which didn't help his rocky relationship with Shara.

Speaker 13 You could see very quickly that the marriage was headed to a demise.

Speaker 10 Lorenzen and Shara split up that year and went their separate ways, says Wren's close friend, Mike Gibson.

Speaker 31 He says, she's doing her thing, I'm doing my thing.

Speaker 15 Hell, she's fleeting with the lawnmower.

Speaker 10 The lawnman, you may want to remember him. Shara filed for divorce and their marriage was officially over in 2010.
Wren's mom says he was relieved.

Speaker 12 He just couldn't take it no more. She stopped making him sick just to her face.

Speaker 10 But was it somewhat also liberating for Lorenzen to finally be

Speaker 10 out of the marriage? Free.

Speaker 12 That's all he wanted to be free and have his kids.

Speaker 10 As part of their divorce settlement, Lorenzen took out a million-dollar life insurance policy that would be paid to the six children upon his death.

Speaker 10 It would be administered by Shara since she was awarded custody.

Speaker 10 Wren was also ordered to pay alimony and child support, totaling $26,000 a month.

Speaker 14 Lorenzen, even though he made $55 million playing basketball, he was broke. He had two very expensive homes that were foreclosed on.

Speaker 14 They were bouncing checks left and right. I mean, they'd burned through all this money.
He seemed to be in need of money.

Speaker 10 Big money, but from where? Detectives had a new lead about how Wren was trying to raise some quick cash. And it would take his murder investigation in a whole new direction.

Speaker 10 You had to take the drug theory seriously. It was something that everybody was talking about.

Speaker 11 Absolutely.

Speaker 10 When police catch a homicide case, the victim is usually a stranger. But many at the Memphis Police Department knew Lorenzen Wright, including Tony Armstrong.

Speaker 11 This is a guy that I used to talk to. You know, I used to eat in his restaurant.
Occasionally, he comes sit down with me. We have conversations when he was in town.
It was chilling.

Speaker 10 Chilling to think how this hometown hero was so brutally murdered, seemingly for no reason.

Speaker 10 So Armstrong and his team of detectives started their investigation by looking at the victim himself.

Speaker 11 Let's retrace Lorenzen's steps. Who was the last person to see him alive? Who knows him better than anybody else? Let's talk to his wife.

Speaker 20 There are no new leads or anything. It's mind-boggling.

Speaker 10 That would be Shara Wright, Wren's ex-wife. She was interviewed by investigators when he first went missing.

Speaker 19 I just need somebody to call if they've seen him or anything from him.

Speaker 10 Shara told police something strange happened in the weeks before Wren's murder.

Speaker 14 There are these mysterious gunmen showing up, you know, with, you know, guns tucked in their waistbands who were knocking on doors, knocking on her door, looking for Lorenzen.

Speaker 10 Shara said she wasn't sure who they were or what they wanted. She also told police about the last time she saw Wren on the night he disappeared.

Speaker 11 She gives a statement that basically said

Speaker 11 the resident left in the middle of the night.

Speaker 10 He had been at her house.

Speaker 11 He had been at her house. He had gotten there from Atlanta, and sometime during the night,

Speaker 11 he leaves.

Speaker 10 Shara's timeline of Lorenzen's last night had him arriving at her home around 8 p.m. She said Wren later left the house around 10.30, but soon returned.

Speaker 10 Then, sometime before 3 a.m., said Shara, he left again with an unknown person. But that wasn't all.

Speaker 14 She told police that the night he was killed, he left with a box of drugs. He said he was going to flip something.

Speaker 11 She hears him talking on the phone about flipping or turning over a large sum of money.

Speaker 11 But she doesn't say who he's talking to.

Speaker 10 So detectives dug deeper into Lorenzen's life. They confirmed he was nearly broke, and they found something else, a connection of sorts, to a shady character named Craig Pettis.

Speaker 11 He's probably one of the largest drug dealers that we've ever seen.

Speaker 10 In 2009, Lorenzen's name surfaced in a federal drug investigation involving a lieutenant of Pettis named Bobby Cole. Cole turned over two luxury cars to police.

Speaker 10 When they ran the VIN numbers, it turned out the vehicles were registered in Wren's name.

Speaker 14 Lorenzen never transferred ownership into Bobby Cole's name, which is a classic drug scheme where drug dealers come into money illicitly and they've got to launder it.

Speaker 10 De Bora insists it wasn't her son who sold the cars, but a guy who worked for him. In fact, Wren was never charged with anything.

Speaker 10 But now that he was dead, the city buzzed with rumors that Wren may have been the victim of a drug hit,

Speaker 10 especially given the way he was found in that field, executed. You had to take the drug theory seriously.
It was something that everybody was talking about.

Speaker 11 Absolutely. In my experience as a law enforcement officer, do famous people get killed in the drug world? Absolutely.
Do athletes get killed in the drug world? Absolutely.

Speaker 11 So we had to make sure that we looked at all of that.

Speaker 10 With his NBA career done, the big paychecks had dried up. Plus, those huge alimony and child support payments were due.
Police wondered if Wren was desperate for money.

Speaker 10 Could he have been dealing drugs to make some quick cash?

Speaker 10 So detectives started interviewing a whole new cast of characters to answer that very question.

Speaker 11 We talked to informants that we had on the streets. Every drug dealer or every informant that we talked to basically said that that just wasn't the case.

Speaker 10 Wren's family and friends were outraged at Shara for even suggesting he might be dealing.

Speaker 15 When she came out and said that he left with a box of drugs and some people came to the house. Well, you take all his credibility away.
None of it made sense.

Speaker 10 Was Lorenzen knowingly involved in any criminal activity?

Speaker 15 Not that I know of at all. I never saw anything that would be out of the ordinary.

Speaker 10 So the drug theory, which seemed to sidetrack the investigation, was now dead. Wren's mother had never believed it anyway.
She was certain the key to solving her son's murder was much closer to home.

Speaker 12 I told the the police y'all need to go talk to his ex-wife.

Speaker 10 Lorenzen's mother had never been Shara's biggest fan. She was convinced her former daughter-in-law knew a lot more about what really happened to Wren.
What did the police think about you?

Speaker 12 That I was a crazy lady. But I told her, I'm going to keep on doing this while the blood running warm in my body.

Speaker 10 You would have needed a sign from God to back off Shara.

Speaker 9 Exactly.

Speaker 10 Detectives did notice one thing. While Deborah was relentless, Shara was reclusive.
Police didn't hear a peep from her.

Speaker 11 The level of grief from both of those women, they were polling opposites of each other.

Speaker 10 Now, in fairness, one's the mom, one's divorced.

Speaker 11 But you still have six kids by this man, and he's been murdered.

Speaker 10 Shara isn't acting upset enough? Because that doesn't make somebody a killer.

Speaker 11 It doesn't make you a killer. It makes you a high-level person of interest, though.

Speaker 10 Shara hardly seemed like a killer. She was dating a sheriff's deputy, was deeply religious, and spent a lot of time at church where she was on track to become an ordained minister.

Speaker 10 She was also extremely devoted to her six kids. How was Shara as a mother?

Speaker 15 She loved her kids. I saw love.
I saw nurturing. There's no way she could have had anything to do with taking their father away.

Speaker 10 In fact, police couldn't find any evidence linking Shara to the murder. As months ticked by, with no new leads, the case began to go cold.

Speaker 10 It has been 365 days On the first anniversary of Wren's death, his mother held a vigil.

Speaker 26 Family, friends, and fans of Lorenzen Wright gathered in front of the FedEx forum.

Speaker 12 I'm not giving up. I'm not tired yet.

Speaker 10 Somebody's gonna tell on a friend.

Speaker 10 That's how this is gonna end.

Speaker 10 But the end didn't come. The case gathered dust.
More months passed, then years.

Speaker 10 Shara laid low and moved on with her life until somebody decided to follow the money.

Speaker 7 Hey, weirdos!

Speaker 46 I'm Elena and I'm Ash, and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 22 Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 49 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 22 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 49 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 47 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Speaker 10 To his fans, Lorenz and Wright seemed like a gentle giant, the last person anyone would want to kill.

Speaker 10 But someone most certainly did. Problem was, police couldn't figure out who.

Speaker 10 By now, four long years had passed since his murder, and the case that once consumed the city of Memphis was now ice-cold, according to former WMC-TV anchor Konji Anthony. Nothing.

Speaker 45 Crickets.

Speaker 10 Crickets.

Speaker 45 It was just crickets for years.

Speaker 10 And every now and then, somebody would just say, gosh, do you think they'll ever figure out who killed Lorenz and Wright? Memphis detectives had cleared almost every possible suspect.

Speaker 10 But one in particular remained in the forefront, Lorenz and Wright's ex-wife, Shara.

Speaker 11 She's always been a person of interest. And no matter who we talked to,

Speaker 11 no matter what door we knocked on, no matter what crime stoppers tip we got, it always led right back to Cheryl.

Speaker 10 Was anyone coming to her defense and saying she loved Lorenzen? She would never do this.

Speaker 11 I've investigated people that have committed multiple murders

Speaker 11 and had people to come to their defense.

Speaker 11 I never gotten a call from anybody that has defended Cheryl. Ever.

Speaker 10 Maybe that's why Shara had lawyered up and stopped talking to the police.

Speaker 10 Out of the public eye, she sometimes surfaced at the Mount Olive Baptist Church where she was now an ordained minister and ran a non-profit called Born to Prosper Ministries, which helped local kids.

Speaker 10 As for supporting her own children, Shara's primary source of income still came from Wren.

Speaker 10 She is getting his insurance money and the pension from the Grizzlies and all the other NBA teams. So the money is going to Shara because she is the custodian of her own children with Lorenzen.

Speaker 10 There was that life insurance policy Lorenzen put in place for his six children when he and Shara divorced.

Speaker 10 When his father, Herb Wright, found out Shara wasn't using the money in the children's best interest, he sued.

Speaker 14 She collected the $1 million and had spent somewhere like $930,000 of a Herb Wright versus Shara Wright.

Speaker 53 She received more than a million dollars between August 1st, 2000.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 we end up going to court. The entire insurance fund is almost all gone.
And his father wanted to put a stop to that.

Speaker 53 Herb Wright is asking the court for Shara Wright to be removed as trustee of a million-dollar life insurance proceeds trust.

Speaker 10 The Lorenz and Wright case was back in the spotlight as Shara was now in court and on camera.

Speaker 20 My whole life has been in the hole, pretty much

Speaker 20 going through. quite a bit.
It's difficult for the kids and it's been difficult for me, but I believe that we deserve to be happy.

Speaker 10 The court proceedings were contentious and exposed all the specifics of Shara's spending.

Speaker 54 More than $55,000 for furniture, more than $180,000 spent on expenses at four different properties, construction.

Speaker 10 And the judge decided to get a receiver to take over the funds and to investigate what was going on with the money.

Speaker 10 Which meant what was left of Lorenzen's insurance money was now out of Shara's control. But losing in court didn't stop Shara from launching a new career as an author.

Speaker 10 She wrote and self-published a book called Mr. Tell Me Anything.
You can probably guess who the title character was supposed to be.

Speaker 31 I think a lot of it may have been true, but I think a lot of it's still made up. I think a lot of it was still her perspective, and she wanted to make him seem like a really bad guy.

Speaker 10 The book seemed to be a fictionalized account of Shara's tumultuous life with Lorenzen. It was hardly a bestseller, but Kanji Anthony found it quite the read.

Speaker 10 The similarities between Shara and Lorenzen

Speaker 10 and the two main characters in the book are uncanny. And as you're going through the book, you're hearing claims of infidelity to domestic violence.

Speaker 14 So I asked her, I said, did this really happen? She goes, oh yeah, absolutely, this happened. 99.9% of that book is our real life.
I just changed some names around.

Speaker 10 The book ends with the Shara and Lorenzen characters settling in for a night of romance.

Speaker 10 But in real life, Wren's close friends were beginning to share the same suspicion his mom and police already had.

Speaker 10 That on the last night of his life, Shara wasn't Wren's lover. She just might have been involved in his murder.

Speaker 13 I felt very confident that she played some kind of role in it.

Speaker 13 But to what degree I did not know.

Speaker 10 So maybe even indirectly.

Speaker 13 Indirectly, directly, yeah. Before the fact, after the fact,

Speaker 13 she had something to do with it.

Speaker 10 Maybe, but no one was able to prove it.

Speaker 10 As the fifth anniversary of Wren's murder came and went, Shara would embark on a whole new chapter of her life with a new man in a new city. But could she shake her past and finally clear her name?

Speaker 11 You can run, but you can't.

Speaker 10 They met for coffee in Memphis just after New Year's 2015. He was a journalist in search of a story.
She was the ex-wife of Lorenzen Wright and seemed eager to chat.

Speaker 41 It was just my regular coffee shop exclusive, you know, just on the beat doing my thing. And that usually lasts about 30 minutes.
We actually sat there there and talked for another six hours.

Speaker 10 Kelvin Cowans wanted to get inside the mind of Shara Wright. It had been almost five years since Lorenzen's murder and she was still under suspicion.

Speaker 41 She couldn't believe how people were so upset with her and I asked her, you have anything to do with it? She said, no, absolutely not.

Speaker 41 I'm waiting on the day that they find the person or the people that killed him.

Speaker 10 At the end of that marathon interview, Calvin had his story and something else.

Speaker 41 We knew that there was chemistry there from the beginning. That's how it started.
We almost fell in love immediately.

Speaker 10 Shara had been keeping a low profile ever since her legal battle over Lorenzen's estate. But soon, she and Calvin were out and about as their romance took off.

Speaker 10 Then, a few months after they met, Calvin wanted to move to Houston where he had some work.

Speaker 10 So Shara and her kids decided to go with him.

Speaker 14 She told me that she was moving to Houston, she had enough of Memphis, and she was going to go down there and join the staff of this very famous pastor down there.

Speaker 18 God created you to rise higher.

Speaker 10 Joel Osteen, the world-famous minister whose services are on TV and YouTube.

Speaker 14 She just had, you know, all these big plans. You know, it wasn't just that she was going to go pastor at church.
She was going to be a pastor of a mega church.

Speaker 14 She thinks in terms of big. Everything's big and grandiose.

Speaker 10 They settled in the suburb of Sugarland and life was sweet, at least in the beginning. Calvin got a nice house on a lake in a nice neighborhood with good schools for the kids and a church nearby.

Speaker 10 Shara never did preach with Joel Osteen, but she did pray a lot.

Speaker 41 Shara would sometimes go and get in our master closet with a pillow and cover and pray.

Speaker 41 For hours, you can hear she's calling out her family and friends. And sometimes I had had to get up two o'clock, 2.30 in the morning.
I'd go in the closet and I have to get her up.

Speaker 41 I say, hey, come on, get back into bed.

Speaker 10 Even so, Kelvin was convinced he'd met the woman of his dreams. Her family felt like his.
They shared everything, even their deepest secrets. Nothing was off limits, including Lorenzen's murder.

Speaker 41 We talk about the night he disappeared. What could have happened? The answer was always, I have no idea.
I felt like Shara still had feelings for Lorenzen.

Speaker 41 She was like, you know, had he not passed, I'd be still with him. And I was thinking to myself,

Speaker 41 there's no way she killed him.

Speaker 41 There's no way she had anything to do with it. You know, who writes a book about someone they helped

Speaker 9 kill?

Speaker 10 In fact, Shara appeared on a segment for Sports Illustrated and Fox Sports One in 2015. They asked her point blank if she had anything to do with Lorenzen's murder.

Speaker 20 Matt, first, I'm a wife.

Speaker 20 Then I'm a mother.

Speaker 20 And then thirdly, thirdly, I'm an author.

Speaker 20 The law enforcement should do what's best to find out who's the killer.

Speaker 10 Back in Memphis, Lorenzen's best friend, Phil Dotson, saw the show.

Speaker 15 And I could just think, oh, come on, Sheryl, what type of answer is that? You know,

Speaker 10 did you do it? Did you find that odd?

Speaker 15 I did. I did.
I found several things odd.

Speaker 10 But you still didn't.

Speaker 9 I couldn't. I couldn't.

Speaker 15 I couldn't. Early on in the marriage, like, there was was love.
To go from that to you murdered him,

Speaker 15 I couldn't buy it. I didn't buy it.

Speaker 10 Neither Shara's TV interview nor her salacious book provided police with any evidence connecting her to the crime.

Speaker 11 It's almost as if she's poking fun or she's taunting law enforcement with this book for somebody that's supposedly to be grieving to write a book like that, which is really bizarre.

Speaker 10 But no real clues in it.

Speaker 11 I don't think anything in there was a value as she relates to it being a clue.

Speaker 10 Shara even considered writing a sequel, but instead focused more on her family and continued her free spending ways, said Kelvin.

Speaker 41 She had very expensive taste. I told her this, Shara, your appetite for nice things is not healthy.
And she was like, that's the way God made me.

Speaker 41 And so I'm like, we're not going to make it with the way you think. Your financial literacy is just off.

Speaker 10 According to Kelvin, Shara was also spending a lot of time on the phone, apparently having secret conversations with someone he didn't know.

Speaker 41 I felt like that Shara may have been cheating on me.

Speaker 40 I speculated a hidden lover.

Speaker 10 Shara denied she was seeing someone, but gradually their once-hot romance cooled. They grew apart, and after two years together, Calvin says he decided it was over.

Speaker 41 The day after her birthday, that was when we called it quits. She was very upset.

Speaker 41 She didn't want me to go.

Speaker 10 Kelvin returned to Tennessee to restart his life. Shara headed to California, where she and the kids moved in with her brother.
Back in Memphis, detectives were quietly making progress.

Speaker 10 A man with information had come forward, and he had quite a story to tell.

Speaker 43 She asked me about my case. Like, could you kill somebody again?

Speaker 7 Hey, weirdos.

Speaker 46 I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 22 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 49 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 22 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 49 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 47 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 10 Yay! Woo! Aye!

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Speaker 10 It's called the Inland Empire.

Speaker 10 Riverside County. A sprawling stretch of southern California suburbia east of L.A.

Speaker 10 It was here in the little town of Murieta, where Shara Wright and her kids settled in the spring of 2017.

Speaker 10 You got the feeling that she was starting a new life outside of the shadow of Lorenzen Wright's murder in Memphis, all the way across the country.

Speaker 10 Almost 1,600 miles and seven years removed from Run's murder in Memphis. To some, Shara also seemed to have moved on in terms of what was happening back home.

Speaker 10 Even on the anniversary of his death. Seven years ago to the day, these family members reported Lorenzen Wright missing.
Once again, Lorenzen's family and friends gathered to pay their respects.

Speaker 10 Another year, another vigil to keep hope alive that his murder might somehow be solved.

Speaker 45 We're going to keep this thing going year after year because I know that's what he would want us to do.

Speaker 29 We love you, Lorenzen!

Speaker 15 It's getting colder by the day, and we're no close to finding out who did it. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about

Speaker 15 him and what happened to him. I always kept the detectives' phone numbers just in case they always said, let us know if you come up with anything.

Speaker 10 By now, many in Memphis were losing patience with those detectives. Seven long years, still no arrest, no justice.

Speaker 10 Lorenzen's mom had been hounding police the whole time, calling, showing up at the station. Her sole mission in life was solving her son's murder.

Speaker 10 Did you feel like there's never going to be an arrest in this case?

Speaker 12 Nope, because I got to stay alive. Because before I die, they were going to find somebody.
They're going to get her.

Speaker 10 Specifically, Shara. Her.

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 12 And I told him that over and over and over again.

Speaker 10 Tony Armstrong took some of her calls.

Speaker 11 She was just relentless. She just would not let it go.
Don't mess with mama. Well, don't mess with mama's babies.

Speaker 10 He tried to assure Lorenzen's mother that the case was still active, that Shara really was on their radar.

Speaker 11 It's one thing to have a gut feeling that I know this person is responsible for this, but you have to be able to convince a jury.

Speaker 10 You just didn't have enough evidence.

Speaker 11 You just don't have enough evidence to do it.

Speaker 10 But the police did have something.

Speaker 10 A potential witness.

Speaker 10 A man with a shady past and an explosive allegation, which police had kept secret for five years. An informant who actually knew Shara and had a strong motivation to talk.

Speaker 14 What happened was Jimmy Martin, who was Shara's cousin, killed a love interest that he had.

Speaker 14 He was convicted, and it's that time, 2012, when he's going to prison that he tells wanting to flip to do a deal.

Speaker 10 Jimmy said he knew what happened to Wren and he offered to tell his story to detectives.

Speaker 10 So in 2012, two years after Wren was killed, a meeting was held at this Tennessee prison where Jimmy claimed to reveal who was behind the murder.

Speaker 10 And that was his very own cousin and Renzak's wife, Shara.

Speaker 43 She told me that

Speaker 8 she'd been having threats from Lorenz.

Speaker 43 He had hired somebody to kill her. She wanted him to before he killed her.

Speaker 10 Jimmy said a meeting took place at Shara's house some two months before Wren's murder, and two other men were there.

Speaker 30 Billy was over there

Speaker 6 in a nuptial, but I don't know his name.

Speaker 30 Billy.

Speaker 9 Yeah, he was a gardener.

Speaker 10 Shara's gardener, Billy Turner. Remember how Lorenzen suspected Shara might be sleeping with her lawnman? Was this the same guy? Maybe.
If so, this wasn't the only connection between Shara and Billy.

Speaker 55 So, who did Shara ask to kill Lorenzen?

Speaker 43 She asked, uh, Billy.

Speaker 10 Billy had a rap sheet, but in recent years, he seemed to have gone straight.

Speaker 10 When he wasn't busy running his landscaping business, he was fulfilling his duties at the very same church where Shara preached.

Speaker 14 He was the deacon of this church, and she was a pastor. How deeply they knew each other, and there's a lot of speculation.
I mean, it appears that they were intimate.

Speaker 10 Billy and Shara, according to Jimmy, met with him again inside her house, and this time got down to specifics.

Speaker 43 She had me cut out

Speaker 8 the be a shooter.

Speaker 43 At that time I was like, no, I can't do nothing like this.

Speaker 34 At what point in here were you offered anything to do it?

Speaker 13 She said she could help me with my court case.

Speaker 43 If this happened, I get shared money, I got the NBA money coming, and I would take care of y'all.

Speaker 11 She said, whoever does the shooting gets $50,000.

Speaker 10 Money can be a great motivator. Jimmy said that it wasn't long before Shara and Billy came to his house in Batesville, Mississippi, a sleepy little town south of Memphis.

Speaker 10 And this time she revealed how and where she wanted them to do the job.

Speaker 43 She said, well,

Speaker 43 I want you and Billy go out there and take care of it.

Speaker 43 Where did she want you to take care of the man?

Speaker 43 I guess go to his house in Atlanta.

Speaker 30 So we went.

Speaker 10 With directions from Sheriff, he said they headed to Atlanta and straight for Wren's condo complex, where they crawled through an open window. But Wren wasn't there.

Speaker 30 He did somebody on the couch with a bald head.

Speaker 10 Police later figured out the bald-headed man asleep on the couch was Wren's roommate, Mike Gibson.

Speaker 31 Had Lorenzo had been there, I'd have been gone too right now, you know?

Speaker 10 According to Jimmy, he and Billy spotted security guards, crept out of the condo, and hightailed it back home. Jimmy said after their failed attempt, they met with Shara again.

Speaker 10 Now, she had a whole new plan for Wren's murder, this time on her home turf.

Speaker 30 She was like, I want to give him comments.

Speaker 30 It'll be easier that way.

Speaker 10 And sure enough, at Shara's request, Wren did come back to Memphis for the last time.

Speaker 43 And then what happened?

Speaker 6 He ran.

Speaker 10 They drove all over town that July day in 2010, surveying the city and the suburbs, looking for the perfect place to kill Lorenzen Wright.

Speaker 10 This, according to Jimmy Martin, who claimed he was in a car with Shara Wright and her fellow minister Billy Turner.

Speaker 43 We went and checked out spots around here.

Speaker 8 Meeting.

Speaker 1 They were picking up the spots.

Speaker 2 I was just telling them whether it was a good spot or not getting a consultant thing.

Speaker 8 Yeah,

Speaker 43 it's not a good spot.

Speaker 8 Do it somewhere.

Speaker 10 Soon after that scouting trip, Shara sent Wren the first in a flurry of text messages. X-rated messages about hooking up in Memphis.

Speaker 10 And these are the mild messages, which only grew more erotic and explicit.

Speaker 10 Police had found the texts on Shara's cell phone when Wren went missing. Back then, they weren't sure if those messages might be connected to his case.

Speaker 10 But now, seven years after the murder, the texts seemed to tell a story.

Speaker 14 Shara lured him back to Memphis with, you know, sexually explicit texts messages.

Speaker 10 Sure enough, Wren took the bait and later texted Shara from the Atlanta airport. Three little but life-changing words.

Speaker 10 And with that, Wren was on his way to Memphis. But according to close friend Mike Gibson, he may have been seeking more than just a one-night stand.

Speaker 10 Recently, Wren had confided he was ready to settle down after running in the fast lane after his divorce.

Speaker 31 He's like, you know what? All this stuff I'm doing with these girls, I'm just tired of it. I might as well just get back with my wife, Shara, and be through with it.

Speaker 11 Me and her live a happy life.

Speaker 31 That's what he wanted.

Speaker 10 But Shara didn't want to remarry Lorenzen. She wanted him murdered, according to her cousin, Jimmy Martin.

Speaker 10 Jimmy said that two days after he, Shara, and Billy conducted that murder site survey, she came to his house in Batesville, Mississippi. While there, Jimmy said Shara asked his mom for an odd favor.

Speaker 6 She asked my mom for a metal detector. Does your mama have a metal detector?

Speaker 10 So, with the metal detector in tow, the two returned to Memphis, picked up Billy, and drove to her house, where, said Jimmy, Shara made a stunning announcement.

Speaker 8 We did it.

Speaker 43 It had it done.

Speaker 43 She's like,

Speaker 8 oh, to win the day.

Speaker 10 And who actually fired the fatal shots?

Speaker 10 Jimmy said it was Billy Turner, Shara's one-time gardener and possible lover, now alleged gunman, who at the meeting appeared to have a bad case of shooter's remorse.

Speaker 43 He was like, man, I'm still shaking. My stomach hurt and I can't sleep.

Speaker 6 I can't do anything.

Speaker 10 But what happened during the last moments of Lorenzen's life before he was executed in that dark field? That night, according to Jimmy, Shara told Wren she needed to meet a man to pick up some money.

Speaker 10 Wren agreed to join her. They drove to a wooded area at the edge of town.

Speaker 10 Shara got out and walked over to Billy, who was secretly waiting nearby.

Speaker 9 She said Lorenzo walked up, and Billy started shooting.

Speaker 43 And then what happened?

Speaker 6 He ran.

Speaker 43 They said they chased him down the woods.

Speaker 10 Chased him down by following the glow of Wren's cell phone, said Jimmy, and continued firing.

Speaker 10 That's when Wren called 911 and screamed the last words of his life.

Speaker 10 And all those shots were fired by Billy from two different guns, said Jimmy.

Speaker 43 They shot at him, shot at him, shot at him.

Speaker 55 Did Shara ever tell you that she also

Speaker 11 chased Lorenzen with Billy?

Speaker 43 She says he ran up the road with the first shot fire.

Speaker 10 And Jimmy, he insisted he was miles away at home in Mississippi that night.

Speaker 14 Jimmy Martin never puts himself at the crime scene, which seems kind of odd. So is he lying, you know, to kind of distance himself to make himself look better?

Speaker 10 But Jimmy did admit to helping Shara and Billy clean up the crime scene two days later before anyone realized Lorenz and Wright had gone missing.

Speaker 10 Using his mom's metal detector, Jimmy said the three of them looked for leftover evidence, including one of the two murder weapons which went missing during the shooting.

Speaker 10 But they never found it, said Jimmy. So he and Billy took the handgun they still had to this little lake in Mississippi.

Speaker 30 Out there at the lake, the little palm, he cleaned them up.

Speaker 30 He threw them in the wall. How many?

Speaker 6 It was just one gun.

Speaker 12 What kind?

Speaker 43 Nine millimeter.

Speaker 10 And that, insisted Jimmy Martin, was the God's truth of how Memphis icon Lorenzen Wright was murdered and the crime covered up. All orchestrated by Shara.

Speaker 10 It was quite a story, but was there any evidence to back it up?

Speaker 10 Well, maybe the answer was sitting on the bottom of that lake.

Speaker 46 Hey, weirdos, I'm Alina and I'm Ash and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 22 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 49 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 22 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 49 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 47 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 10 Yay! Woo! Aye!

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Speaker 10 Walnut, Mississippi, some 75 miles southeast of Memphis. Population 800.
Outside of town is a little lake. A big pond, really.

Speaker 10 The very same pond that Jimmy Martin claimed held the key evidence in Lorenzen Wright's murder.

Speaker 9 And how big is that pond?

Speaker 43 About the size of a high school football for you.

Speaker 10 So in May of 2012, detectives headed there on a fishing expedition for a gun. Jimmy Martin insisted that Billy Turner had dumped it there two days after shooting Wren.

Speaker 10 Now, two years later, was it still there?

Speaker 14 It's a murky lake. They couldn't find it.
And so the whole thing kind of goes into limbo again.

Speaker 10 As damning and detailed as Jimmy Martin's story seemed, detectives didn't have enough evidence to make an arrest. But still, the investigation plotted on for years.

Speaker 10 Was it still being investigated actively or just kind of when new leads would come in?

Speaker 11 There were periods of time on this case that if we felt that one investigator had taken the case as far as he could take it, we'd give it to another investigator to get another perspective or to put a fresh sight of eyes on it.

Speaker 10 By 2016, some of those detectives who'd been digging through the case file and Jimmy Martin's police interview urged the command at the Memphis PD to take a second look at the case.

Speaker 10 They dubbed it Operation Rebound. Very hush-hush.

Speaker 10 And one of the things they did was go back to that murky lake in Mississippi.

Speaker 14 They got some more information that made them more certain about this. And they sent a dive team down.
I think it was an FBI dive team.

Speaker 10 And guess what? Five years after Jimmy Martin came forward, they find the gun.

Speaker 10 A nine millimeter handgun sitting in the muddy sediment. But was it really the weapon that killed Lorenzen Wright?

Speaker 10 The gun was sent to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for ballistics tests to see if it matched the casings collected at the crime scene.

Speaker 14 Then, a few weeks later, the ballistics link it to the murder, one of two guns that was used at the scene.

Speaker 10 Operation Rebound was rolling, but investigators kept a tight lid on all their new evidence for months. Lorenzen Ride forward.

Speaker 10 So, Deborah Marion was still in the dark when she commemorated Lorenzen's 42nd birthday.

Speaker 42 November 4th, a day that should be spent celebrating, is a painful reminder for Debbie Marion.

Speaker 10 Once again, she held a somber vigil to keep her son's name in the news and the heat on the police.

Speaker 12 It's heavy on my heart all the time, especially birthdays, Christmas, and July. That day.

Speaker 9 Always on my mind.

Speaker 10 Lorenzen's mother, of course, knew nothing about the gun or Jimmy Martin or Billy Turner.

Speaker 12 I really need your help, people.

Speaker 9 Come on, tell us something.

Speaker 10 Then, a few days later, police did tell Deborah something.

Speaker 10 Something amazing.

Speaker 42 The FBI helped search remote lake in Walnut, Mississippi and found an alleged murder weapon.

Speaker 10 Some seven long years after the murder, Deborah Marion suddenly felt a step closer to getting justice for her son.

Speaker 12 Thank you, Jesus. Thank you to them found something because we hadn't heard anything.

Speaker 10 And Wren's close friends were now hopeful for the first time in years.

Speaker 15 Oh my God,

Speaker 15 we're on to something.

Speaker 10 Are you thinking that this is just the beginning? It's just going to fall like dominoes. We got it.
We got them.

Speaker 15 FBI dive team found it. And so I said, okay, well, if they're involved, then I know that they're on to somebody.

Speaker 10 There were so many questions. How'd they find this gun all of a sudden? Why now? Who told them? Whose gun is it? What does it have to do with Sheryl Wright?

Speaker 10 When Shara's ex-boyfriend Kelvin Cowen saw the news, he called Shara in California.

Speaker 41 And she was sounding very somber about it. And she was like, yeah, I saw it.
Yeah.

Speaker 41 I don't believe they found a gun. She said, I think they're just making it up.
What does it matter? You know, he's not coming back anyway.

Speaker 10 Shara seemed low-key on the phone with Kelvin, but detectives were betting she wouldn't stay that way for long.

Speaker 10 In fact, just days after the news broke about the gun being found, Shara suddenly flew to Memphis and met with Billy. Detectives were on their tail and snapped these surveillance shots.

Speaker 10 That's Shara in the black sweatsuit.

Speaker 10 Police watched and waited and let Shara and Billy stew.

Speaker 14 The police were playing everybody. It was brilliant strategy that they wanted to get that information out to get more incriminating evidence from Shara and Billy Ray Turner.

Speaker 14 They threw them into a panic and got them talking about it.

Speaker 10 Talking, which police started taping by tapping Shara and Billy's phones.

Speaker 12 Hello?

Speaker 58 Hey, what's up, sign?

Speaker 19 No, what did you do?

Speaker 10 At first, the conversation didn't seem to make sense.

Speaker 7 When y'all get married?

Speaker 58 I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 58 When you get that rain and getting that rain.

Speaker 10 Police eventually came to believe that all the small talk was actually related to the case.

Speaker 10 I wanted to show you something.

Speaker 58 Oh, okay. I hope you got that rain in.

Speaker 10 By late 2017, Memphis police had heard enough and made their move.

Speaker 42 December 5th, Billy Turner was arrested inside a convenience store in Collierville. And then Friday night, Shara.

Speaker 10 And then we find out that he was her lawnman when Lorenzen was living with Shara.

Speaker 10 So this is a person who knew both of them.

Speaker 12 And then

Speaker 10 we find out that he's a deacon at a church in Collierville, the very same church where Shara had been a minister when she lived in Memphis.

Speaker 10 He was under everybody's noses the whole time.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 15 how's that for a kicker?

Speaker 10 That is a kicker. That's an evil kicker.

Speaker 9 It is.

Speaker 15 If this plans out being that she was the one who put everything in motion and then to be the one to actually take his life.

Speaker 30 Yeah.

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Just ultimate evil.

Speaker 13 After years of nothing, it hits us all at one time.

Speaker 13 And we started thinking, did she?

Speaker 13 Did she actually?

Speaker 10 Calvin Cowans also had plenty of questions about his former lover. So he and Shara spoke again.
This time, police were listening too.

Speaker 5 How the world do you know Billy?

Speaker 58 Billy got nothing to do with nobody or nothing.

Speaker 41 She was like, that's my churchmate. He's a church deacon.
That's my friend. He didn't have anything to do with this.

Speaker 41 Well, I don't know,

Speaker 41 the whole world, because I'm not going to get in it.

Speaker 58 I'm going to let God step in.

Speaker 10 But it wasn't God who stepped in. It was the district attorney.
The Shelby County grand jury indicted Billy R. Turner for the premeditated first-degree murder of Lorenzen Wright.

Speaker 10 But out in California, Shara remained free. No arrest warrant, no indictment, just anger for the investigators.

Speaker 7 And they heard it.

Speaker 20 This is a lie from the pits of hell.

Speaker 58 They've been trying to pull Billy into it as soon as they can pull me into it.

Speaker 10 A dramatic moment, moment, years in the making, was about to play out on a dark highway.

Speaker 10 December 2017, more than seven years after Lorenzen's murder, Billy Turner was in court asking for bail.

Speaker 10 Lorenzen's mother, Deborah, was right there to give Billy Turner a piece of her mind.

Speaker 12 How could you have murdered my son?

Speaker 56 That's what I need to know. Just out.

Speaker 10 The judge set bail at $15 million.

Speaker 10 Back in California, Shara seemed worried.

Speaker 20 This is a lie from the piss of hell.

Speaker 58 They've been trying to pull Billy into it so that they can pull me into it.

Speaker 10 They, of course, were the police who were secretly listening in as Shara called friends and family to seek guidance or just vent, especially about Billy's arrest.

Speaker 10 And she kept denying any role in Wren's murder.

Speaker 8 Don't nobody believe that we were still in love or that we cared for each other.

Speaker 58 Don't nobody believe that.

Speaker 10 Over and over, Shara insisted she was innocent. The investigation was a sham.

Speaker 8 It's just unbelievable. It's like a bad dream.

Speaker 10 Then, just 10 days before Christmas, Shara was on the freeway and got a call from her oldest son.

Speaker 8 Hey, baby, mommy, hi, what are you doing?

Speaker 10 Suddenly, Shara noticed something flashing in her rearview mirror.

Speaker 58 Put the phone on the, don't you face you in the truck?

Speaker 58 Oh, I gotta call you back.

Speaker 8 I gotta call you back.

Speaker 10 This was no routine traffic stop. It was the U.S.
Marshals warrant in hand arresting Shara for murder. She was rushed to the Riverside County Jail.
And the next day, Memphis police told the world.

Speaker 52 Sheriff Wright Robinson was taken into custody last night in Riverside, California by the members of the U.S.

Speaker 6 Marshal Service.

Speaker 10 Was her arrest a big moment in this?

Speaker 12 Oh, honey, I didn't even sleep when they got Billy, but honey, when they got sheriff, I slept. I probably slept at like 12 o'clock, and I never sleeped that like, never.

Speaker 12 But that's the first time I got some real sleep when they got her.

Speaker 14 No, everybody was talking about it. It was all over the place.
It was huge news in Memphis.

Speaker 10 So huge that the next day, Deborah organized a celebration in the cemetery.

Speaker 12 Lorenzo loved fireworks, so I had to have fireworks at the cemetery.

Speaker 10 Never heard of anything like that before.

Speaker 12 Lorenzo had to hear that pow, pow, pow. We had to celebrate.
A big celebration. We had a ball.

Speaker 12 Sure. Did.

Speaker 10 After years of trying to get Shara arrested, Deborah had just one question for her.

Speaker 12 And what I would like to say to Cheryl, why?

Speaker 9 Why, why, why, why, why?

Speaker 10 Lorenzen's friends who knew that Shara had long been under suspicion still had trouble accepting the news of her arrest.

Speaker 15 I'm like, what do you mean?

Speaker 15 She got arrested for killing Lorenzen.

Speaker 15 And I got really angry.

Speaker 10 I could just imagine all the emotions you're feeling, betrayal and

Speaker 10 also second-guessing yourself.

Speaker 15 Second-guessing myself, yes.

Speaker 10 And you knew her better than most.

Speaker 15 Yeah, but sometimes what people do in the dark will come to light.

Speaker 10 Shara waived extradition and days later appeared in a Memphis court.

Speaker 4 Barn in this case shall be set to cover this indictment at $20 million for the reasons it's fair.

Speaker 10 So you see Shara in court and she says something to you. Yes.

Speaker 12 She tells around, look me dead in my face, just like I'm looking at you.

Speaker 8 I say, I did do it.

Speaker 43 I say, you witch.

Speaker 10 You called her a witch in court?

Speaker 12 Without the W.

Speaker 12 You can't kill my son and keep teasing me. I didn't do it.
No.

Speaker 42 Attorneys for both co-defendants charged with first-degree murder and the death of Lorenzen Wright filed motions Thursday.

Speaker 10 Both Billy Turner and Shara pleaded not guilty. The plan was to try them together, but Shara's attorneys, Lori Hall and Juni Ganguly, had a problem.

Speaker 16 We strongly believed that Billy was going to testify against Shara. If the defense was

Speaker 16 that had nothing to do with it, it's particularly particularly problematic when there's a co-defendant who's going to testify.

Speaker 10 So, a strategy. Her attorney said, yes, she did conspire to have her ex-husband murdered, but that in no way made her guilty.

Speaker 16 Shara did it. Shira recruited Billy, but she did it to get away from this abusive relationship.

Speaker 10 That was the defense's version. Shara was an abused woman, desperately looking for a way out.
Absolutely. Two sides to Lorenz and Wright.
There's the public persona, very positive, community-oriented.

Speaker 10 Privately, he had a very tumultuous marriage, many affairs, and get angry and beat Shara Wright.

Speaker 10 In fact, Shara mentioned abuse during a call to her son, which police secretly recorded.

Speaker 58 You've been there a lot of times when your dad didn't beat the living hell out of me.

Speaker 10 And there was that incident when Wren allegedly got violent with Shara after finding her with another man, a story he denied. Wren was never charged then or at any time for abusing Shara.

Speaker 16 It's fairly common that victims of domestic violence don't report

Speaker 16 their abusers to the police.

Speaker 10 By the time of the murder, Wren and Shara had been divorced for five months and living nearly 400 miles apart. Her attorney said despite all that, she was still scared.

Speaker 16 He was telling the children in the summer of 2010 words to the effect of your mother and I are going to get back together. And Shara did not want to go back to that life.

Speaker 10 According to her attorneys, Shara believed her only escape was to lure Wren back to Memphis to have him killed. Lorenzen's mother, Deborah, insists the stories of abuse are all lies.

Speaker 12 She murdered him and assassinated his character. She killed him twice.
I want her to suffer every day. Every day she wake up, I want her to miss her kids like I miss mine.

Speaker 6 Welcome

Speaker 7 A battered wife or a killer?

Speaker 10 It looked like a Memphis jury would have to decide.

Speaker 7 Or would they?

Speaker 12 I got here thinking it was finna have a trial, but then they'd say, wait a minute, it just blew me away.

Speaker 12 That's right, good morning. Good morning.

Speaker 10 Quite right to the share. Lorenzen's mother, who worked so hard to push the case forward, couldn't wait to see her former daughter-in-law go on trial.
How do you feel?

Speaker 12 Are you confident? Yes, I am. I feel elated, and it's going to turn out just like it's supposed to.
All the ACEs are going to be in their places.

Speaker 12 That means everybody is going to be where they need to be.

Speaker 10 July 25th, 2019, almost nine years to the day of Wren's murder, his mother was in court when the justice system dealt her a hand she hadn't anticipated.

Speaker 12 I got here thinking it was finna have a trial, but then they called us in their room up back there and say, wait a minute,

Speaker 12 we made a deal. It just blew me away.

Speaker 10 Upon your plea of guilty to indictment 1-7, Shira pleaded guilty, not to first-degree murder, but to two lesser charges.

Speaker 10 Facilitation to commit murder and attempted murder for the first try at Lorenzen's condo in Atlanta. Lorenzen's mom was angry.

Speaker 12 How is this possible? I'm thinking I'm finna come and hear everything that happened step by step, but no.

Speaker 10 For that, Wren's mother would have to wait until Shara's alleged co-conspirator had his trial. Between COVID and court delays, it took nearly three years.

Speaker 10 Finally, in March of 2022, Billy Turner's trial began.

Speaker 5 What does it take to kill a man?

Speaker 10 Though Shara wasn't the defendant, Shelby County Prosecutor Paul Hagerman put her front and center.

Speaker 60 Shara writes,

Speaker 6 not a professional killer.

Speaker 60 This is not something she does.

Speaker 60 She doesn't have a phone directory of hitman.

Speaker 60 No.

Speaker 60 She had to reach out to people

Speaker 60 that she trusted.

Speaker 4 Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony?

Speaker 10 Lorenzen's mother was the first witness. She told the jury that when Lorenzen went missing, Shara didn't seem concerned at all.

Speaker 60 Did you talk to Shara? Oh, yeah. Did she tell you that he was missing?

Speaker 8 Nope.

Speaker 60 And it was your understanding that

Speaker 60 Shara Ryan never called.

Speaker 60 Nope. She never did.

Speaker 6 Nope. You had to.

Speaker 6 I had to.

Speaker 6 Martin had to see like your police are.

Speaker 10 But the star witness for the prosecution was Shara's cousin, Jimmy Martin. who told the jury what he had said to the police years earlier, that Shara wanted Lorenzen dead.

Speaker 10 And she had turned to him and Billy Turner for help.

Speaker 55 When Shara's talking about this business that she shouldn't be in killing Lorenzen,

Speaker 55 is Billy Turner there?

Speaker 11 Yes, sir. Obviously you're there.

Speaker 55 And you describe it as what, brainstorming?

Speaker 11 Like brainstorming, they were coming up with ways of how to business, you know.

Speaker 59 perform the act.

Speaker 52 Okay, and what act are we talking about?

Speaker 30 The murder of the risky. All right.

Speaker 52 And you say they were coming up with ways.

Speaker 6 We were. You were too, weren't you?

Speaker 10 Though he took part in the planning, even helped find the location. Jimmy said he wasn't there when the murder occurred.
He said Shara told him about it afterwards.

Speaker 59 Okay, so she met her and Lorenzen met up with Billy on this road. That's when,

Speaker 60 I guess they ambushed him.

Speaker 60 You say you guess. Why do you say you guessed?

Speaker 6 Because I wasn't there.

Speaker 10 Then, Jimmy told the jury about Lorenzen's final awful moments. Details, he said, again came from Shara.

Speaker 59 Lorenzen headed back to him.

Speaker 60 They started chasing him, they started firing at him, chasing him. He jumped through the fence.
He was jumping like a deer.

Speaker 59 They caught him when he fell.

Speaker 10 Defense attorney John Perry told the jury the state's star witness, a convicted killer who was given immunity in this case, shouldn't be trusted.

Speaker 10 It takes that type of a pump to sit up and come up with a story and as you're talking to the detectives to say

Speaker 10 they told me this.

Speaker 10 As far as the defense was concerned, it was more likely that Jimmy Martin shot Lorenzen Wright.

Speaker 52 On the night and plus,

Speaker 52 nobody can validate your whereabouts, right?

Speaker 59 Nobody verifies your whereabouts, correct?

Speaker 52 And all this time, nobody's verified.

Speaker 15 Nobody has.

Speaker 6 Right.

Speaker 10 The defense attorney pointed out that Jimmy Martin didn't have an alibi, but his client, Billy Turner, did.

Speaker 7 He went to a party and went home.

Speaker 9 That was it.

Speaker 52 The evidence is going to show, clear as can be,

Speaker 52 Billy had a well-established life.

Speaker 52 Billy was a man.

Speaker 59 He dated women.

Speaker 55 He took care of his responsibilities.

Speaker 10 He had fun.

Speaker 9 But he went to church.

Speaker 16 I really, in my heart of hearts, don't believe that he knew what all they might have been contemplating doing.

Speaker 10 But prosecutors say Billy Turner's cell phone put him at the scene of the crime.

Speaker 22 Jardown 911, where's your emergency?

Speaker 10 There was that terrifying 911 call Lorenzen made as he was being shot.

Speaker 10 A Memphis police phone expert testified both Billy Turner's and Lorenzen's phones pinged on cell towers near the scene around the same time.

Speaker 55 His tower location is overlaying with that exact tower that Mr.

Speaker 6 Lorenzen had.

Speaker 10 The woman in the middle of it all, Shara Wright, was never called to testify. Five and a half days after the trial began, the jury got the case.

Speaker 52 Deputy Smith, sir. Can you bring in the jury, please, sir? Yes, sir.

Speaker 10 Less than three hours later, they had a verdict.

Speaker 52 We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of first-degree murders charged in count one of the indictment.

Speaker 10 Billy Turner got life plus 41 years.

Speaker 21 As for Shara, this court says your punishment at 30 years of confinement in the Tennessee Department of of Correction.

Speaker 10 30 years on paper.

Speaker 16 In the end, we wanted the earliest possible release for Shara.

Speaker 10 Her defense said because Shara had no criminal record, she most likely would serve only half that time, maybe even less. Shara will only be at worst in her early 60s.

Speaker 10 And so she can still be a grandmother to her grandchildren and still live an active life.

Speaker 12 That's not fair.

Speaker 10 That is not fair. What are they doing?

Speaker 5 I don't understand.

Speaker 12 You know, I want her to do a plea deal when Lorenzen come back.

Speaker 10 Then she can get out. She's eligible for parole pretty quickly.

Speaker 7 Pretty quickly.

Speaker 11 Did Shara get what she deserved? I don't think that she did. If she's the ringleader's responsible for this,

Speaker 11 at some point, Shara's going to get out of prison. And she's going to get a chance to go on with her life.
Loriza is never going to have that opportunity.

Speaker 10 In fact, with all the trial delays, Shara was up for a parole hearing just two months after Billy Turner was convicted.

Speaker 6 I'm sorry for what happened to him.

Speaker 8 I'm sorry because he's not here. And I didn't want to ever, ever in my life be without him because he was the love of my life.

Speaker 60 I'm asking today for your mercy.

Speaker 10 Watching closely was Lorenzen's mother with no mercy to spare.

Speaker 12 This is why I'm really mad at her because she's still acting like she didn't have nothing to do with with it.

Speaker 10 Shara didn't get paroled that day. She'll try again in 2027.
Deborah plans to be there.

Speaker 10 February 4th, 2023. Lorenzen's old team at the University of Memphis retired his number in his honor.

Speaker 12 Y'all, let me tell you what made me so happy. I still think about all that bad stuff Sheryl said about him.
But when they retired his jersey, you saw Memphis Memphis came out.

Speaker 10 This is a man who had helped his city.

Speaker 13 This is a man that took care of more families than you'd ever imagine.

Speaker 14 He kept them in homes, houses.

Speaker 13 He paid bills. He kept their lights on.

Speaker 12 This boy was just loving.

Speaker 12 He just loved by sight. He just saw personality.

Speaker 12 If you was good to him, he was great to you. That's for sure.

Speaker 2 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Sunday at 7 6 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 29 Good night.

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