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Tonight, on Dateline... He was larger than life. He was a hometown hero. Very humble beginnings to the NBA, and then he's murdered.
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I mean, this is Lorenzen Wright. It was as if an explosion went off. Hello? Hi. Someone is running for their life, and there's multiple gunshots.
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It made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. You and Lorenzen were so close.
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Life wasn't worth living after they killed my firstborn. Who would do this to him?
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You look at everybody, every friend, every family member. The divorced spouse, she was the last person known to have seen him.
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We had to dig into them. There are these mysterious gunmen showing up looking for Lorenzen.
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Who are these people that came by the house? Gosh, do you think they'll ever figure this out?
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Fame, fortune, and a fatal plot. Who killed the basketball star? Now, a chilling new ending.
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How is this possible? It just blew me away. He was under everybody's noses the whole time.
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Yeah, how's that for a kicker? Just ultimate evil. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
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Here's Andrea Canning with The Murder of Lorenzen Wright. It was just after midnight in Memphis, as Sunday turned into Monday.
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On Beale Street, the blues clubs were blaring, barbecue joints still sizzling. Even the lights of nearby Graceland were aglow.
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But just outside of town, in this tree-lined field, it was quiet, peaceful, not a soul in sight.
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Then suddenly, an unmistakable sound echoed through the trees. That's the actual sound of a murder in progress caught on audio tape.
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The crime, conceived weeks earlier, was now complete. It all began in July 2010 when one of the city's favorite sons returned to town.
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Lorenzen Wright, or simply Wren, played high school and college basketball here in Memphis,
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then later starred for the hometown NBA Grizzlies. Just 34 years old, Wren was larger than life, according to close friend Bill Adkins.
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How popular was he here in Memphis? Extremely, extremely. Everybody loved Lorenz, and he was just popular.
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I mean, you couldn't, you had to notice him being 6'11", 6'10". You know, he walks in the door, everybody knows it's him.
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Charismatic, yet humble, Wren was as generous as he was outgoing. He was kind to everyone. I never saw a time when he would shun people away
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or say crude or rude things to people. The guy would give you the shirt off his back.
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Movie star looks? Oh, yeah, charming. Quite charming. Handsome guy. Lorenzen was at the end of a solid NBA career, now divorced and living in Atlanta.
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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.
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The perfect Sunday afternoon of just, you know, the guys hanging and bonding. A few hours later, Phil took Wren to pick up his oldest son at a local gym.
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And then dropped them off at the home of Shara Wright, Lorenzen's ex-wife, where Wren sometimes visited when he was in town.
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He said, I'll call you later. And so that being about 10 p.m., I left. I got home and I never heard from him.
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Sunday night passed, but no call from Wren. And so I shot him a text and he didn't reply.
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So I'm sure you tried to reach him the next day. The next day, and nothing. Was that odd?
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Or still thinking he's just busy with the family? Well, I just thought he was still busy with the family.
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It wasn't a big deal. Wren was known to go off the grid occasionally. Plus, he had a scheduled trip to Las Vegas later that week.
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Maybe he just left early. When you're in Vegas in the casino, you don't get a signal.
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I thought it was kind of weird that he didn't text me back. But I didn't think anything about it.
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But Wren's mother, Deborah Marion, was already worrying. She'd been trying to reach him all week.
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He never not answered my call. He never not called me back. Did you just think maybe he's in Vegas having a really good time?
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Not in my time. It ain't called me. Lorenzen's mother filed a missing persons report with police while Phil sounded his own personal alarm.
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I'm sending him our SOS code that we had for each other when we really needed one another.
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And I didn't hear anything from him. Was this where things turned for you when he didn't respond to that?
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Yes, I started getting worried. I was like, man, where is he? He just basically has like vanished.
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Falling off, vanished from the face of the earth. Yes. Yes. It was starting to get scary.
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Somebody called me in the middle of the night and said, hey, did you know Lorenzen Wright was missing?
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Former Memphis Police Chief Tony Armstrong worked on the case. And I'm going, what do you mean missing?
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You know, how can a guy that's 6'11", how can a guy that's been on TV every week
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for most of his adult life go missing. That's impossible. At 6'11 and 255 pounds, Lorenzen Wright is hard to miss,
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but he has been missing for a week. Police are searching for former Memphis basketball player By now the local media was all over the story He hasn surfaced anywhere The disappearance of Lorenzen Wright Investigators say there is nothing to suggest that Wright is not alive
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However, as time passes, the situation grows more worrisome. It was shocking. It was just, what do you mean Lorenzen Wright is missing?
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Conji Anthony covered the story for NBC affiliate WMC-TV in Memphis. The whole town was abuzz.
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Lorenzen's former wife Shira told reporters he was fine the last night she saw him.
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But Wren's mother was already expecting the worst. I told the police when I first reported him missing,
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y'all, my son, it's not going to be good when y'all find him. Your intuition was telling you?
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Y'all weren't feeling him nowhere. He wasn't nowhere. You must normally feel kind of a spiritual connection to your son?
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I told the police, I don't know how to explain it to y'all, but he's dead. Memphis police needed more than a mother's intuition.
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Then they found that terrifying recording. He was literally running for his life at that point.
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Tonight, police are searching for former Memphis basketball player Lorenzen Wright.
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Seven long days and still no sign of Lorenzen Wright. One of the last to see him alive was his ex-wife, Shara.
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There are no new leads or anything. It's mind-boggling. We're hopeful. Today is one of the worst days for me because it's an entire week.
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With each passing day, Wren's mother became more fearful. You must be frantic. Yes. I done called everybody everywhere that he would be associated with.
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Nobody knows nothing. But police did find a clue, a big one, buried in Wren's phone records.
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The last call Lorenzen Wright ever made was to 911. Georgetown 911, where is your emergency?
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Detectives traced that call to Germantown, a Memphis suburb. Police there were not able to geolocate the call and never followed up on it.
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That's the voice of Lorenzen Wright as he faced his killer. It would take eight days from the time he went missing for Memphis police to find that recording.
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It made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. That was probably his last spoken words.
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And listening to that tape, it just kind of brought it all home that you knew that.
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He was beyond distress. That's no joke when someone is running for their life and there's multiple gunshots being fired.
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I had never heard a 911 call like that one before. Live pictures here from Chopper 5. Police are not saying anything official at this point.
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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.
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The information led a Shelby County Sheriff's search crew to a wooded area near Hacks Cross and Winchester Road.
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And it didn't take long. The search team suddenly noticed something very disturbing.
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Breaking news. Memphis police are in southeast Memphis where a body has been found.
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And the word went around town like wildfire. Anyone who knew Lorenzen literally hopped into their car and drove to that scene.
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News of the discovery spread quickly, and crowds of Wright's friends on and off the court steadily grew.
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It was still a full-on crime scene when Lorenzen's mother arrived. Then crossed the police line to where the body was being recovered.
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I wanted to walk in this last walk so I could get that feeling like what happened.
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Just let me walk the last path he walked. Why did you want to do that? Because I wanted to feel what he left for me, because I knew.
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Of course she knew. It was her firstborn son, Lorenzen. Police have notified immediate family that Lorenzen Riot was found dead here.
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We have not. By now, a large crowd was holding an impromptu memorial at the Grimm site.
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Among them was Wren's friend and NBA star Penny Hardaway. It's just a great loss for the city of Memphis for his family.
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Such an early age. I mean, it's just senseless. Then, Lorenzen's body, which had been left in the searing Memphis sun for 10 long days,
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was taken in for an autopsy. I've seen decomposed bodies before, but I wasn't ready for that.
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I wasn't ready for Lorenzen's remains. I would not have known that that was him.
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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.
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I literally remember freezing. I dropped the phone and my mind went blank. I'm like, what do you mean he's dead?
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And then he told me he's been in the field for some days, and it was bad. It was bad.
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And I hung the phone up, and I cried. I felt like someone had pulled my heart out of my chest and just stomped on it.
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This was your best friend. Yeah. Yeah. Word also spread south to Atlanta, where Wren's old friend and roommate, Mike Gibson,
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was anxiously awaiting any news When I found out about it I would just go out to my knees I couldn walk I was like paralyzed I like this can be true
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At first, nobody knew what exactly had happened to Wren. Was there any thought that perhaps Lorenzen had been robbed?
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He's a really rich guy. He is a rich guy. But at the time of his death, there was jury recovered.
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Other personal belongings recovered. Then there was what the autopsy revealed. He had been shot multiple times with wounds to the chest and even his face.
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It was an assassination. He was murdered. The number of times that he was shot and then to know that those shots were to his face.
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That's personal. That's personal. That's a deep-rooted hate. So hateful and so personal, which suggested the killer might have actually known Lorenzen.
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I just could not imagine anybody wanting to harm him. Did you think he was targeted?
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No, I thought maybe somebody wanted to rob him. But who would do this to him? And why?
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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,
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Maybe there was more than one person involved in his murder. Memphis was in mourning.
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It was a sad day in the summer of 2010 when the city paid its last respects to Lorenzen Wright.
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The funeral was such a big deal, it was televised by several local stations. His funeral, oh boy.
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Well, it was pretty much the who's who of Memphis. Lorenzen's mother could barely keep it together,
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never imagining she'd have to bury her oldest child. I just didn't want to live.
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You and Lorenzen were so close. I promise you, life wasn't worth living after I killed my firstborn.
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It just... You two had been through so much together. Yes, indeed. And see, I was young when I had them, so we kind of like grew up together.
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Wren's ex-wife, Shara, and their children all came to say farewell, too. Six young children now suddenly left without a father.
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The loss of such a great person in the fabric of Memphis society was just so tragic and painful.
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To help the city heal, the Memphis mayor made a promise. Justice will be done. That's our pledge.
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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.
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But at the crime scene, clues were already emerging. Police found different types of shell casings at the scene.
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Different casings, which meant more than one gun was used to murder Wren. Which indicated there could have possibly been two suspects responsible for this shooting.
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Tony Armstrong was already feeling the heat to crack one of the biggest cases of his career.
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This case was personal to you? It was. The mayor of the city at that time had vowed to the public that we were going to solve it.
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I wanted to be able to tell his mom that we got the person that's responsible for this.
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But who would do such a thing, and why? Wren came from humble beginnings in Mississippi, where he was born and first started playing basketball.
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But it was here in Memphis where he became a star during his high school days. That's when he met his future wife, Shara
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Whose father was his coach at the time Memphis investigative reporter, Mark Paraschia
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A lot of people didn't know about him Until he played AAU ball for Shara Wright's dad
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And Shara's dad brought him up to Memphis And he played his last season of high school ball here in Memphis
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And was a high school All-American The coaches were like, I don't know what this boy's doing
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But he can make some money one day sheriff also liked what she saw and the two began dating even though she was almost five years older
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as ren's friend bill adkins immediately noticed she was different uh you could tell she was quite
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mature quite savvy sexy can i use that word sexy absolutely she was the kind of girl that guys
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looked at lorenzen the country kid was smitten with the more sophisticated city gal what was it
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about Shara that he fell so fast for her? Well, let me see how can I put this nicely. Sex. Uh-huh.
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He was 17. She was 22. So she lured him in. He had a little girlfriend, but they wasn't doing
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all that stuff Shara was doing. She was a lady and he was a kid. The romance with Wren flourished
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and so did his basketball career. In college at the University of Memphis, his star continued to rise.
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Two years of college, and then he had a meeting with me and his dad, talking about he's going to get ready to go to the NBA.
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I said, no, you're not. You got two more years. He said, Mama, think about when I graduate and get a degree.
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Who's going to pay me a million dollars for my first job? I thought about that for about 15 minutes, and I said, when you say you're leaving?
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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 At the tender age of 20 Wren was an instant millionaire By now Shara had given birth to their first baby Lorenzen Jr
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The three settled in L.A. and immediately began living the Southern California high life.
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After his second season, Wren and Shara got married. I was one of the groomsmen, and it was an awesome affair.
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The wedding was beautiful. It looked like a fairytale. Phil even lived with Lorenzen and Shara for over a year when Wren played with the Clippers.
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And Shara didn't mind you being the house guest? No, no, she didn't. They were always known for having huge hearts.
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Wren played three seasons with the Clippers, then moved on to Atlanta and signed another multi-million dollar contract
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before being traded to his hometown team, the Memphis Grizzlies, in 2001. Back home, Wren re-immersed himself in the community.
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He opened a restaurant while committing to local charities and children. He would do a summer camp here.
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It was always huge. Thousands of kids would attend. Giving back to his community was one of the things that really made him happy.
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Over his career, Lorenzen earned some $55 million, which he lavished on his friends and growing family.
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Oh my God, trips. buying anything he wants, houses, cars, took care of his friends, took care of his family.
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Anybody who put a hand out, he virtually gave to them. He never could say no to people.
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They actually built a home beyond the suburbs. It was a huge 13,000-square-foot home.
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It cost several million dollars. And inside their giant garage... He had a couple of Ferraris, and he loved cars.
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He had bought two billows in one month. And Shara? She loved jewelry. Are we talking diamonds and...
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Watches, rings, earrings, bracelets. She loved to decorate her home. Custom drapes and custom upholstery on couches.
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And then, you know, a couple months go by and then she changed everything up again.
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It was an embarrassment of riches. But behind the gates of their Memphis mansion, there was trouble in paradise.
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He was a rock star. and with being a rock star comes certain temptations that come at you.
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She was having affairs as well. We were hearing things like that, yes. On December 25, 2007, everybody's about to come downstairs.
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I hear them make a noise. Three years before Lorenzen Wright's death, his family can be seen in this rare home video
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celebrating what would be one of their last Christmases altogether. The house was decorated and there were plenty of presents under the tree.
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Ren was playing Santa for the kids. And in the garage, Shara had a surprise waiting for him.
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Do you love it, Daddy? I love it. It was right out of a Christmas movie. But behind the scenes, reporter Mark Pereskia says Ren and Cher's life wasn't always so picture perfect.
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Merry Christmas. People who knew them well, beyond the public arena, knew they had troubles.
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A volatile mix of infidelity and jealousy, says Pereskia. It was this darker, darker side.
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For Lorenzen, life in the NBA was intoxicating. Under the bright lights, in the biggest cities with plenty of cash, clubbing, and women.
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He was a rock star. And with being a rock star comes certain temptations that come at you.
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And those temptations, unfortunately, did win over at times. Yes, yes. And, you know, the temptations are real.
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So by Shara's account, from the time that he got in the NBA, it was like a constant parade of women.
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He was young. He was a good looking guy. I mean, and, you know, he had all this opportunity.
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I think he took advantage of it. Shara, according to Lorenzen's mother, was cheating, too, and not very discreetly.
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Shara was being seen, not heard, seen doing things she shouldn't be doing. Infidelity?
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Mm-hmm. If you're going to do that, go to the next town. Over. She was flaunting other men in her hometown.
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Yes. She wanted to do what her single friends did. So she wanted to act like a single woman even though she was married.
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She didn't want to. She did. Wren was upset about Shara's alleged affairs, according to close friend Bill Adkins.
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He was very concerned about what he perceived as her infidelity and things. I can't leave home, trust her.
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I'm hearing stories and rumors about all these guys. At the same time, he knew he wasn't totally a saint as well in that area.
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He was looking for solutions to solving some of the marital issues that he was having at the time.
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He wanted to make it work. He absolutely wanted to make it work, yeah. In 2003, amidst all the turbulence, an unexpected tragedy rocked their world.
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It involved the couple's 11-month-old daughter, Sierra. Wright's wife found the baby not breathing in her crib Saturday.
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She rushed her to a nearby medical center where she was pronounced dead. Doctors' report said that she died from SIDS,
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sudden infant death syndrome. That was the hardest thing I know that he ever went through in his life.
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She's in heaven with God, and I know that. So now I'm just going to work hard on trying to get her.
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I'm going to get myself there. Did it cause a strain in his marriage? I think it did.
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He was on the road when it happened and not being able to get there and protect his daughter.
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And I think he always regretted that. Wren's friend said that two years later, the couple's problems escalated to a whole new and now dangerous level.
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There was a situation that happened, and Lorenzo went to the house where supposedly she was there with another guy.
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He knew the gentleman. He went ballistic. I think he had a gun. The story made the local newspapers,
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which reported that Wren threatened the man and also attacked Shara. She had some marks on her face.
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He hit her, and the police were going to arrest him, but she would not testify against him.
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Lorenzen had a public image to uphold. She didn't want to expose that part of him.
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No charges were filed. In a newspaper account, Wren denied harming his wife or having a gun.
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But we spoke to a woman who was there, who told us she feared for Shara's life. With the help of counseling, their tumultuous marriage somehow stayed intact.
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And in 2007, they even renewed their vows. Everybody thought that, okay, now they're good again.
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And, you know, sure enough, a few months passed by and, you know, the same thing's happening again.
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Back to the fighting. Back to the fighting. And often it was about money, says close friend Phil Dotson, especially when it came to Shara's spending.
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There were times when she would spend money and not tell him that she would spend money.
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Maybe get back at him for indiscretions. There would be large sums of money that he would think is in the checking account and it's not there.
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and it would be because of her spending. This was causing stress in the marriage?
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Absolutely. By 2009, Lorenzen's NBA career was winding down. And so were those multi-million dollar paychecks,
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which didn't help his rocky relationship with Shara. You could see very quickly that the marriage was headed to a demise.
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Lorenzen and Shara split up that year and went their separate ways, says Wren's close friend, Mike Gibson.
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He said, she's doing her thing, I'm doing my thing. Hell, she's sleeping with the lawn man.
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The lawn man. You may want to remember him. Shira filed for divorce, and their marriage was officially over in 2010.
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Wren's mom says he was relieved. He just couldn't take it no more. She had started making him sick just to her face.
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But was it somewhat also liberating for Lorenzen to finally be out of the marriage?
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Free. That's all he wanted to be free and have his kids. 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.
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It would be administered by Shara, since she was awarded custody. Wren was also ordered to pay alimony and child support, totaling $26,000 a month.
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Lorenzen, even though he made $55 million playing basketball, he was broke. He had two very expensive homes that were foreclosed on.
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They were bouncing checks left and right. I mean, they burned through all this money.
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He seemed to be in need of money. Big money, but from where? Detectives had a new lead about how Wren was trying to raise some quick cash.
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And it would take his murder investigation in a whole new direction. You had to take the drug theory seriously.
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It was something that everybody was talking about. Absolutely. When police catch a homicide case, the victim is usually a stranger.
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But many at the Memphis Police Department knew Lorenzen Wright, including Tony Armstrong.
00:28:04
This is a guy that I used to talk to. You know, I used to eat in his restaurant.
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Occasionally he'd come sit down with me. We'd have conversations when he was in town.
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It was chilling. Chilling to think how this hometown hero was so brutally murdered, seemingly for no reason.
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So Armstrong and his team of detectives started their investigation by looking at the victim himself.
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Let's retrace Lorenzo's steps. Who was the last person to see him alive? Who knows him better than anybody else?
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Let's talk to his wife. There are no new leads or anything. It's mind-boggling. That would be Shara Wright, Wren's ex-wife.
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She was interviewed by investigators when he first went missing. Shara told police something strange happened in the weeks before Wren's murder.
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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.
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She gives a statement that basically says Lorenzen left in the middle of the night.
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He had been at her house? He had been at her house. He had gotten there from Atlanta.
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And sometime during the night, he leaves. Shara's timeline of Lorenzen's last night had him arriving at her home around 8 p.m.
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She said Wren later left the house around 10.30, but soon returned. Then, sometime before 3 a.m., said Shera, he left again with an unknown person.
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But that wasn't all. She told police that the night he was killed, he left with a box of drugs.
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He said he was going to flip something. She hears him talking on the phone about flipping or turning over a large sum of money but she doesn say who he talking to So detectives dug deeper into Lorenzen life
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They confirmed he was nearly broke, and they found something else, a connection of sorts, to a shady character named Craig Pettys.
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He's probably one of the largest drug dealers that we've ever seen. In 2009, Lorenzen's name surfaced in a federal drug investigation involving a lieutenant of Pettis named Bobby Cole.
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Cole turned over two luxury cars to police. When they ran the VIN numbers, it turned out the vehicles were registered in Wren's name.
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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.
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Deborah insists it wasn't her son who sold the cars, but a guy who worked for him.
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In fact, Wren was never charged with anything. But now that he was dead, the city buzzed with rumors that Wren may have been the victim of a drug hit,
00:31:01
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.
00:31:09
Absolutely. In my experience as a law enforcement officer, do famous people get killed in the drug world? Absolutely.
00:31:15
Do athletes get killed in the drug world? Absolutely. So we had to make sure that we looked at all of that.
00:31:22
With his NBA career done, the big paychecks had dried up. Plus, those huge alimony and child support payments were due.
00:31:29
Police wondered if Wren was desperate for money. Could he have been dealing drugs to make some quick cash?
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So detectives started interviewing a whole new cast of characters to answer that very question.
00:31:43
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.
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Wren's family and friends were outraged at Shara for even suggesting he might be dealing.
00:31:57
When she came out and said that he left with a box of drugs and some people came to the house,
00:32:05
Well, you take all his credibility away. None of it made sense. Was Lorenzen knowingly involved in any criminal activity?
00:32:13
Not that I know of at all. I never saw anything that would be out of the ordinary.
00:32:20
So the drug theory, which seemed to sidetrack the investigation, was now dead. Wren's mother had never believed it anyway.
00:32:27
She was certain the key to solving her son's murder was much closer to home. I told the police, y'all need to go talk to his ex-wife.
00:32:37
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 Ren.
00:32:45
What did the police think about you? That I was a crazy lady. But I told them, I'm going to keep on doing this while the blood running warm in my body.
00:32:53
You would have needed a sign from God to back off Shara right. Exactly. Detectives did notice one thing.
00:33:00
While Deborah was relentless, Shara was reclusive. Police didn't hear a peep from her.
00:33:07
The level of grief from both of those women, they were polar opposites of each other.
00:33:12
Now, in fairness, one's the mom, one's divorce. You still have six kids by this man, he's been murdered.
00:33:17
Shara isn't acting upset enough? Because that doesn't make somebody a killer. It doesn't make you a killer.
00:33:22
It makes you a high-level person of interest, though. Shara hardly seemed like a killer.
00:33:29
She was dating a sheriff's deputy, was deeply religious, and spent a lot of time at church,
00:33:34
where she was on track to become an ordained minister. She was also extremely devoted to her six kids.
00:33:41
How was Shara as a mother? She loved her kids. I saw love. I saw nurturing. There's no way she could have anything to do with taking their father away.
00:33:49
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.
00:34:01
It has been 365 days. On the first anniversary of Wren's death, his mother held a vigil.
00:34:07
Family, friends and fans of Lorenzen Wright gathered in front of the FedEx Forum.
00:34:11
I'm not giving up. I'm not tired yet. Somebody's going to tell on a friend. That's how this is going to end.
00:34:19
But the end didn't come. The case gathered dust. More months passed, then years.
00:34:26
Shara laid low and moved on with her life. Until somebody decided to follow the money.
00:34:47
This one is my daughter in here. My dogs, I breed rock wilds. To his fans, Lorenzen Wright seemed like a gentle giant, the last person anyone would want to kill.
00:35:01
But someone most certainly did. Problem was, police couldn't figure out who. 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 Conji Anthony.
00:35:19
Nothing. Crickets. Crickets. It was just crickets for years. And every now and then, somebody would just say,
00:35:28
gosh, do you think they'll ever figure out who killed Lorenzen Wright? Memphis detectives had cleared almost every possible suspect.
00:35:37
But one in particular remained in the forefront. Lorenzen Wright's ex-wife, Shara.
00:35:43
She's always been a person of interest. And no matter who we talked to, no matter what door we knocked on,
00:35:49
But no matter what crime stopper tip we got, it always led right back to Sheryl.
00:35:53
Was anyone coming to her defense and saying she loved Lorenzen she would never do this I investigated people that have committed multiple murders and had people to come to their defense I never gotten a call
00:36:06
from anybody that has defended Shara, ever. Maybe that's why Shara had lawyered up and
00:36:13
stopped talking to the police. Out of the public eye, she sometimes surfaced at the Mount Olive
00:36:19
Baptist Church, where she was now an ordained minister and ran a non-profit called Born to
00:36:24
Prosper Ministries, which helped local kids. As for supporting her own children, Shara's primary
00:36:32
source of income still came from Wren. She is getting his insurance money and the pension from
00:36:40
the Grizzlies and all the other NBA teams. So the money is going to Shara because she is the
00:36:48
custodian of her own children with Lorenzen. There was that life insurance policy Lorenzen
00:36:55
put in place for his six children when he and Shara divorced. When his father Herb Wright found
00:37:00
out Shara wasn't using the money in the children's best interest, he sued. She collected the $1 million
00:37:06
and had spent somewhere like $930,000 of it. Herb Wright versus Shara Wright. She received more than
00:37:13
a million dollars between August 1st, 2011. So we end up going to court. The entire insurance
00:37:19
fund is almost all gone. And his father wanted to put a stop to that. Herb Wright is asking the
00:37:25
court for Shara Wright to be removed as trustee of a million dollar life insurance proceeds trust.
00:37:31
The Lorenzen Wright case was back in the spotlight as Shara was now in court and on camera.
00:37:36
My whole life has been in a hole pretty much going through quite a bit. It's difficult for the kids.
00:37:43
and it's been difficult for me, but I believe that we deserve to be happy. The court proceedings were contentious and exposed all the specifics of Shara's spending.
00:37:55
More than $55,000 for furniture, more than $180,000 spent on expenses at four different properties.
00:38:03
And the judge decided to get a receiver to take over the funds and to investigate what was going on with the money.
00:38:12
Which meant what was left of Lorenzen's insurance money was now out of Shara's control.
00:38:17
But losing in court didn't stop Shara from launching a new career as an author. She wrote and self-published a book called Mr. Tell Me Anything.
00:38:27
You can probably guess who the title character was supposed to be. I think a lot of it may have been true, but I think a lot of it's still made up.
00:38:34
I think a lot of it was still her perspective, and she wanted to make him seem like a really bad guy.
00:38:39
The book seemed to be a fictionalized account of Shara's tumultuous life with Lorenzen.
00:38:45
It was hardly a bestseller, but Congee Anthony found it quite the read. The similarities between Shara and Lorenzen and the two main characters in the book are uncanny.
00:38:58
And as you're going through the book, you're hearing claims of infidelity to domestic violence.
00:39:05
So I asked her, I said, did this really happen? And she goes, oh, yeah, absolutely this happened.
00:39:10
99.9% of that book is our real life. I just changed the names around. The book ends with the Shara and Lorenzen characters settling in for a night of romance.
00:39:21
But in real life, Wren's close friends were beginning to share the same suspicion his mom and police already had.
00:39:29
That on the last night of his life, Shara wasn't Wren's lover. She just might have been involved in his murder.
00:39:37
I felt very confident that she played some kind of role in it. But to what degree, I did not know.
00:39:46
So maybe even indirectly. Indirectly, directly, yeah. Before the fact, after the fact, she had something to do with it.
00:39:54
Maybe, but no one was able to prove it. As the fifth anniversary of Wren's murder came and went,
00:40:03
Shara would embark on a whole new chapter of her life with a new man in a new city.
00:40:09
But could she shake her past and finally clear her name? You can run, but you can't have it.
00:40:15
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
00:40:40
eager to chat. It was just my regular coffee shop exclusive, you know, just on the beat doing my
00:40:45
thing. And that usually lasts about 30 minutes. We actually sat there and talked for another six
00:40:51
hours. Kelvin Cowens wanted to get inside the mind of Shara Wright. It had been almost five years
00:40:57
since Lorenzen's murder, and she was still under suspicion. She couldn't believe how people were so
00:41:03
upset with her. And I asked her, you have anything to do with it? She said, no, absolutely not. I'm
00:41:09
waiting on the day that they find the person or the people that killed him. At the end of that marathon interview, Calvin had his story and something else.
00:41:20
We knew that there was chemistry there from the beginning. That's how it started.
00:41:24
We almost fell in love immediately. Shara had been keeping a low profile ever since her legal battle over Lorenzen's estate.
00:41:31
But soon, she and Calvin were out and about as their romance took off. Then, a few months after they met, Calvin wanted to move to Houston where he had some work.
00:41:45
So Shira and her kids decided to go with him. She told me that she was moving to Houston, she had enough of Memphis,
00:41:51
and she was going to go down there and join the staff of this very famous pastor down there God created you to rise higher Joel Osteen the world minister whose services are on TV and YouTube
00:42:05
She just had, you know, all these big plans, you know. It wasn't just that she was going to go pastor a church.
00:42:10
She was going to be a pastor of a mega church, you know. She thinks in terms of big.
00:42:15
Everything's big and grandiose. They settled in the suburb of Sugar Land. And life was sweet, at least in the beginning.
00:42:25
Calvin got a nice house on a lake in a nice neighborhood with good schools for the kids in a church nearby.
00:42:31
Shara never did preach with Joel Osteen, but she did pray a lot. Shara would sometimes go and get in our master closet
00:42:40
with a pillow and cover and pray for hours. You can hear she's calling out her family and friends.
00:42:48
And sometimes I had to get up 2 o'clock, 2.30 in the morning, and I'd go in the closet and I had to get her up and say,
00:42:54
hey, come on, get back in the bed. Even so, Calvin was convinced he'd met the woman of his dreams.
00:43:00
Her family felt like his. They shared everything, even their deepest secrets. Nothing was off limits, including Lorenzen's murder.
00:43:08
We talk about the night he disappeared. What could have happened? The answer was, I have no idea.
00:43:14
I felt like Shara still had feelings for Lorenzen. She was like, you know, had he not passed, I'd be still with him.
00:43:20
And I was thinking to myself, there's no way she killed him. There's no way she had anything to do with it.
00:43:29
You know, who writes a book about someone they helped kill? In fact, Shara appeared on a segment for Sports Illustrated and Fox Sports 1 in 2015.
00:43:39
They asked her point blank if she had anything to do with Lorenzen's murder. I'm at first my wife, then I'm a mother, and then thirdly I'm an author.
00:43:50
the law enforcement should do what's best to find out who's the killer. Back in Memphis, Lorenzen's best friend, Phil Dotson, saw the show.
00:44:03
And I could just think, oh, come on, Cheryl, what type of answer is that? You know, did you do it?
00:44:10
Did you find that odd, what you said? I did, I did. I found several things odd. But you still didn't think it was her?
00:44:16
I couldn't. Early on in the marriage, there was love. To go from that to you murdered him, I couldn't buy it. I didn't buy it.
00:44:27
Neither Shara's TV interview nor her salacious book provided police with any evidence connecting her to the crime.
00:44:33
It's almost as if she's poking fun or she's taunting law enforcement with this book.
00:44:39
For somebody that's supposed to be grieving, to write a book like that was just really bizarre.
00:44:43
But no real clues in it. I don't think anything in there was a value as it relates to being a clue.
00:44:49
Shara even considered writing a sequel, but instead focused more on her family and continued her free spending ways, said Kelvin.
00:44:57
She had very expensive taste. I told her this, Shara, your appetite for nice things is not healthy.
00:45:05
And she's like, that's the way God made me. And so I'm like, we're not going to make it with the way you think.
00:45:10
Your financial literacy is just off. According to Kelvin, Shara was also spending a lot of time on the phone
00:45:20
Apparently having secret conversations with someone he didn't know I felt like that Shara may have been cheating on me
00:45:27
I speculated a hidden lover Shara denied she was seeing someone But gradually their once-hot romance cooled
00:45:34
They grew apart And after two years together, Kelvin says he decided it was over
00:45:40
The day after her birthday, that was when we called it quits. She was very upset.
00:45:45
She didn't want me to go. Kelvin returned to Tennessee to restart his life. Shara headed to California, where she and the kids moved in with her brother.
00:45:57
Back in Memphis, detectives were quietly making progress. A man with information had come forward.
00:46:03
And he had quite a story to tell. As you ask me about my case, like, could you kill somebody again?
00:46:25
It's called the Inland Empire. Riverside County, a sprawling stretch of Southern California suburbia east of L.A.
00:46:34
It was here in the little town of Murrieta where Shara Wright and her kids settled in the spring of 2017.
00:46:42
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.
00:46:51
Almost 1,600 miles and seven years removed from Wren's murder in Memphis, to some, Shara also seemed to have moved on in terms of what was happening back home.
00:47:00
Even on the anniversary of his death. Seven years ago to the day, these family members reported Lorenzen Wright missing.
00:47:10
Once again, Lorenzen's family and friends gathered to pay their respects. Another year, another vigil to keep hope alive that his murder might somehow be solved.
00:47:20
We're going to keep this thing going year after year because I know that's what he would want us to do.
00:47:26
We love you, Lorenzen! It's getting colder by the day, and we're no close to finding out who did it.
00:47:34
There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about him and what happened to him.
00:47:40
I always kept the detectives' phone numbers just in case. They always said, let us know if you come up with anything.
00:47:47
By now, many in Memphis were losing patience with those detectives. Seven long years. Still no arrest. No justice.
00:47:57
Okay. Robinson's mom had been hounding police the whole time, calling, showing up at the station.
00:48:06
Her sole mission in life was solving her son's murder. Did you feel like there's never going to be an arrest in this case?
00:48:14
Nope, because I got to stay alive, because before I die, they were going to find somebody.
00:48:18
They're going to get her. Specifically, Shara. Her. Right. And I told them it over and over and over again.
00:48:25
Tony Armstrong took some of her calls. She was just relentless. She just would not let it go.
00:48:31
Don't mess with mama. Well, don't mess with mama's babies. He tried to assure Lorenzen's mother that the case was still active,
00:48:39
that Shera really was on their radar. It's one thing to have a gut feeling that I know this person is responsible for this,
00:48:45
but you have to be able to convince a jury. You just didn't have enough evidence.
00:48:49
You just don't have enough evidence to do it. But the police did have something.
00:48:54
A potential witness. A man with a shady past and an explosive allegation, which police had kept secret for five years.
00:49:04
An informant who actually knew Shara and had a strong motivation to talk. What happened was Jimmy Martin, who was Shara's cousin, killed a love interest that he had.
00:49:16
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.
00:49:25
Jimmy said he knew what happened to Wren, and he offered to tell his story to detectives.
00:49:31
So in 2012, two years after Wren was killed, a meeting was held at this Tennessee prison,
00:49:37
where Jimmy claimed to reveal who was behind the murder. And that was his very own cousin and Wren's ex-wife, Shara.
00:49:48
She told me that she'd been having threats from the Wrens. Jimmy said a meeting took place at Shara's house some two months before Ren's murder,
00:50:02
and two other men were there. Shara's gardener, Billy Turner. Remember how Lorenzen suspected Shara might be sleeping with her lawn man?
00:50:21
Was this the same guy? Maybe. If so, this wasn't the only connection between Shara and Billy.
00:50:28
So who did Shara ask to kill Lorenzen? She asked Billy. Billy had a rap sheet, but in recent years seemed to have gone straight.
00:50:41
When he wasn't busy running his landscaping business, he was fulfilling his duties at the very same church where Shara preached.
00:50:48
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.
00:50:54
I mean, it appears that they were intimate. Billy and Shara, according to Jimmy, met with him again inside her house,
00:51:01
and this time got down to specifics. She had me cut out. We'd be the shooter. At that time, I was like, no, I can't do nothing like that.
00:51:10
At what point in here were you offered anything to do it? She said she had helped me with my court case.
00:51:16
If this happened, I got the Shara money, I got the NBA money coming, and I would take care of y'all.
00:51:21
She said whoever does a shoot gets $50,000. Money can be a great motivator. Jimmy said that it wasn't long before Shara and Billy came to his house in Batesville, Mississippi,
00:51:32
a sleepy little town south of Memphis. And this time she revealed how and where she wanted them to do the job.
00:51:42
She said, well, I want you and Billy go out there. With directions from Sheriff, he said they headed to Atlanta and straight for Wren's condo complex,
00:52:01
where they crawled through an open window. But Wren wasn't there. Police later figured out the bald-headed man asleep on the couch was Wren's roommate, Mike Gibson.
00:52:15
If I had been there, I'd have been gone too right now, you know? According to Jimmy, he and Billy spotted security guards,
00:52:22
crept out of the condo, and hightailed it back home. Jimmy said after their failed attempt, they met with Shara again.
00:52:30
Now she had a whole new plan for Wren's murder, this time on her home turf. She was like, I'm going to get them coming here.
00:52:38
It'll be easier that way. And sure enough, at Shara's request, Wren did come back to Memphis for the last time.
00:52:48
And then what happened? He ran. They drove all over town that July day in 2010, surveying the city and the suburbs,
00:53:14
looking for the perfect place to kill Lorenzen Wright. This, according to Jimmy Martin, who claimed he was in a car with Shara Wright and her fellow minister, Billy Turner.
00:53:40
Soon after that scouting trip, Shara sent Wren the first in a flurry of text messages.
00:53:45
X-rated messages about hooking up in Memphis. And these are the mild messages, which only grew more erotic and explicit.
00:53:55
Police had found the texts on Shara cell phone when Wren went missing Back then they weren sure if those messages might be connected to his case But now seven years after the murder the texts seem to tell a story
00:54:08
Shara lured him back to Memphis with sexually explicit text messages. Sure enough, Wren took the bait and later texted Shara from the Atlanta airport
00:54:20
three little but life-changing words. And with that, Wren was on his way to Memphis
00:54:27
But according to close friend Mike Gibson He may have been seeking more than just a one-night stand
00:54:32
Recently, Wren had confided he was ready to settle down After running in the fast lane after his divorce
00:54:39
He's like, you know what? All the stuff I'm doing with these girls, I'm just tired of it
00:54:43
I might as well just get back with my wife, Shera And be through with it Me and her live a happy life
00:54:47
That's what he wanted But Shera didn't want to remarry Lorenzen She wanted him murdered, according to her cousin, Jimmy Martin.
00:54:57
Jimmy said that two days after he, Shara and Billy conducted that murder site survey,
00:55:03
she came to his house in Batesville, Mississippi. While there, Jimmy said Shara asked his mom for an odd favor.
00:55:11
She asked my mom for a metal detector. Does your mama have a metal detector? So with the metal detector in tow, the two returned to Memphis,
00:55:20
picked up Billy and drove to her house. Where, said Jimmy, Shara made a stunning announcement.
00:55:33
And who actually fired the fatal shots? Jimmy said it was Billy Turner, Shara's one-time gardener and possible lover,
00:55:46
now alleged gunman, who at the meeting appeared to have a bad case of shooter's remorse.
00:55:56
But what happened during the last moments of Lorenzen's life, before he was executed in that
00:56:04
dark field? That night, according to Jimmy, Shara told Wren she needed to meet a man to pick up some
00:56:10
money. Wren agreed to join her. They drove to a wooded area at the edge of town.
00:56:20
Shara got out and walked over to Billy, who was secretly waiting nearby. Chased him down by following the glow of Wren's cell phone, said Jimmy, and continued firing.
00:56:41
That's when Wren called 911 and screamed the last words of his life. And all those shots were fired by Billy from two different guns, said Jimmy.
00:56:55
And he shot at him, shot at him, shot at him. Did Shara ever tell you that she also chased Lorenzen with Billy?
00:57:07
She said she ran up the road. The first shot fire. And Jimmy? He insisted he was miles away at home in Mississippi that night.
00:57:18
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?
00:57:28
But Jimmy did admit to helping Shara and Billy clean up the crime scene two days later
00:57:34
before anyone realized Lorenzen Wright had gone missing. Using his mom's metal detector, Jimmy said the three of them looked for leftover evidence,
00:57:43
including one of the two murder weapons which went missing during the shooting. But they never found it, said Jimmy.
00:57:50
So he and Billy took the handgun they still had to this little lake in Mississippi.
00:57:54
And that, insisted Jimmy Martin, was the God's truth of how Memphis icon Lorenzen Wright was murdered and the crime covered up.
00:58:15
All orchestrated by Shara. It was quite a story, but was there any evidence to back it up?
00:58:24
Well, maybe the answer was sitting on the bottom of that lake. Walnut, Mississippi, some 75 miles southeast of Memphis.
00:58:50
Population 800. Outside of town is a little lake. A big pond, really. The very same pond that Jimmy Martin claimed held the key evidence in Lorenzen Wright's murder.
00:59:07
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.
00:59:19
Now, two years later, was it still there? It's a murky lake. They couldn't find it.
00:59:26
And so the whole thing kind of goes into limbo again. As damning and detailed as Jimmy Martin's story seemed,
00:59:32
detectives didn't have enough evidence to make an arrest. But still, the investigation plotted on for years.
00:59:40
Was it still being investigated actively or just kind of when new leads would come in?
00:59:44
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,
00:59:51
we'd give it to another investigator. to get another perspective or to put a fresh sight of our eyes on it By 2016 some of those detectives who been digging through the case file and Jimmy Martin police interview
01:00:06
urged the command at the Memphis PD to take a second look at the case. They dubbed it Operation Rebound, very hush-hush.
01:00:16
And one of the things they did was go back to that murky lake in Mississippi. They got some more information that made them more certain about this.
01:00:26
And they sent a dive team down. I think it was an FBI dive team. And guess what? Five years after Jimmy Martin came forward...
01:00:33
They find the gun. A 9mm handgun sitting in the muddy sediment. But was it really the weapon that killed Lorenzen Wright?
01:00:44
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.
01:00:53
Then, a few weeks later... The ballistics link it to the murder, one of two guns that was used at the scene.
01:01:00
Operation Rebound was rolling, but investigators kept a tight lid on all their new evidence for months.
01:01:08
So Deborah Marion was still in the dark when she commemorated Lorenzen's 42nd birthday.
01:01:14
November 4th, a day that should be spent celebrating is a painful reminder for Debbie Mary.
01:01:20
Once again, she held a somber vigil to keep her son's name in the news and the heat on the police.
01:01:25
It's heavy on my heart all the time, especially birthdays, Christmas, and then July,
01:01:30
that day, always on my mind. Lorenzen's mother, of course, knew nothing about the gun
01:01:37
or Jimmy Martin or Billy Turner. I really need your help, people. Come on, tell us something.
01:01:44
Then, a few days later, police did tell Deborah something, something amazing. The FBI helped search a remote lake in Walnut, Mississippi,
01:01:53
and found an alleged murder weapon. Some seven long years after the murder, Deborah Marion suddenly felt a step closer to getting justice for her son.
01:02:03
Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, they found something, because we hadn't heard anything.
01:02:09
And Wren's close friends were now hopeful for the first time in years. Oh my God, we're on to something.
01:02:15
Are you thinking that this is just the beginning? It's just the beginning. It's going to fall like dominoes?
01:02:19
We got it. We got them. FBI dive team found it, and so I said, okay, well, if they're involved, then I know that they're on to somebody.
01:02:29
There were so many questions. How'd they find this gun all of a sudden? Why now? Who told them?
01:02:35
Whose gun is it? What does it have to do with Shara Wright? When Shara's ex-boyfriend Calvin Cowan saw the news, he called Shara in California.
01:02:44
And she was sounding very somber about it. And she was like, yeah, I saw it. Yeah.
01:02:51
I don't believe they found a gun. She said, I think they're just making it up. What does it matter?
01:02:55
You know, he's not coming back anyway. Shara seemed low-key on the phone with Kelvin,
01:03:01
but detectives were betting she wouldn't stay that way for long. In fact, just days after the news broke about the gun being found,
01:03:10
Shara suddenly flew to Memphis and met with Billy. Detectives were on their tail and snapped these surveillance shots.
01:03:18
That's Shara in the black sweatsuit. Police watched and waited and let Shara and Billy stew.
01:03:25
The police were playing everybody. It was brilliant strategy that they wanted to get that information out
01:03:30
to get more incriminating evidence from Shara and Billy Ray Turner. They threw them into a panic and got them talking about it.
01:03:43
Talking, which police started taping by tapping Shara and Billy's phones. At first, the conversation didn't seem to make sense.
01:04:04
Police eventually came to believe that all the small talk was actually related to the case.
01:04:13
Oh, OK. I hope you got that ring then. By late 2017, Memphis police had heard enough and made their move.
01:04:22
December 5th, Billy Turner was arrested inside a convenience store in Collierville.
01:04:27
And then Friday night. And then we find out that he was her lawn man when Lorenzen was living with Cheryl.
01:04:35
So this is a person who knew both of them. And then we find out that he's a deacon at a church in Collierville, the very same church where Shira had been a minister when she lived in Memphis.
01:04:49
He was under everybody's noses the whole time. Yeah. How's that for a kicker? That is a kicker. That's an evil kicker.
01:04:56
It is. 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.
01:05:05
Yeah. Yeah. Just ultimate evil. After years of nothing, it hits us all at one time.
01:05:16
And we started thinking, did she? Did she actually? Calvin Cowens also had plenty of questions about his former lover.
01:05:25
So he and Shara spoke again. This time, police were listening too. How do we know Billy?
01:05:33
They ain't got nothing to do with nobody or nothing. She was like, that's my church mate. He's a church deacon. That's my friend.
01:05:42
He didn't have anything to do with this. But it wasn God who stepped in It was the district attorney The Shelby County grand jury indicted Billy R Turner for the premeditated first murder of Lorenzen Wright But out in California Shara remained free No arrest warrant
01:06:08
no indictment, just anger for the investigators. And they heard it. This is a lie from the pits of hell. They've been trying to pull me into it so that they can pull me
01:06:19
into it. A dramatic moment years in the making was about to play out on a dark highway.
01:06:40
December 2017, more than seven years after Lorenzen's murder, Billy Turner was in court asking for bail.
01:06:48
Good morning, sir. Lorenzen's mother, Deborah, was right there to give Billy Turner a piece of her mind.
01:06:55
How could you have murdered my son? That's what I need to know. Just help. The judge sent bail at $15 million.
01:07:04
Back in California, Shara seemed worried. This is a lie from the pits of hell. They've been trying to pull Billy into it so that they can pull me into it.
01:07:14
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.
01:07:24
And she kept denying any role in Wren's murder. Over and over, Shara insisted she was innocent.
01:07:38
The investigation was a sham. Then, just 10 days before Christmas, Shara was on the freeway and got a call from her oldest son.
01:07:56
Suddenly, Shara noticed something flashing in her rearview mirror. This was no routine traffic stop.
01:08:13
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.
01:08:26
Shara Wright Robinson was taken into custody last night in Riverside, California,
01:08:31
by the members of the U.S. Marshals Service. Was her arrest a big moment in this?
01:08:37
Oh, honey, I didn't even sleep when they got billy, but honey, when they got sure, I slept,
01:08:42
I probably slept at like 12 o'clock and I never sleep that late. Never. But that's the first time I got some real sleep when they got hurt.
01:08:50
No, everybody was talking about it. It was all over the place. It was huge news in Memphis.
01:08:55
So huge that the next day, Deborah organized a celebration in the cemetery. Lorenzo loved fireworks, so I had to have fireworks at the cemetery.
01:09:07
Never heard of anything like that before. Lorenzo had to hear that pow, pow, pow.
01:09:10
We had to celebrate, a big celebration. We had them all. Shera did. After years of trying to get Shera arrested,
01:09:19
Deborah had just one question for her. And what I would like to say to Shera, why?
01:09:27
Why, why, why, why, why? Lorenzen's friends, who knew that Shera had long been under suspicion,
01:09:33
still had trouble accepting the news of her arrest. I'm like, what do you mean? She got arrested for killing Lorenzen.
01:09:40
and I got really angry. I can just imagine all the emotions you're feeling. Betrayal.
01:09:47
Betrayal. And also second-guessing yourself. Second-guessing myself, yes. And you knew her better than most.
01:09:52
Yeah, but sometimes what people do in the dark will come to light. Shara waived extradition
01:09:58
and days later appeared in a Memphis court. The bond in this case shall be set to cover this indictment
01:10:04
at $20 million for the reasons... So you see Shara in court and she says something to you?
01:10:10
Yes. She tells me around to look me dead in my face just like I'm looking at you and say, I didn't do it.
01:10:16
I said, you witch. You called her a witch in court? Without the W. You can't kill my son and keep teasing me. I didn't do it. No.
01:10:26
Attorneys for both co-defendants charged with first-degree murder and the death of Lorenzen Wright filed motions Thursday.
01:10:31
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.
01:10:41
We strongly believed that Billy was going to testify against Shara. If the defense was that it had nothing to do with it, it's particularly problematic when there's a co-defendant who's going to testify.
01:10:58
So, a strategy. Her attorney said yes, she did conspire to have her ex-husband murdered, but that in no way made her guilty.
01:11:07
Shara did it. Shara recruited Billy, but she did it to get away from this abusive relationship.
01:11:14
That was the defense's version. Shara was an abused woman, desperately looking for a way out.
01:11:19
Absolutely. Two sides to learns and right. There's the public persona, very positive, community-oriented, privately.
01:11:27
He had a very tumultuous marriage, many affairs, and get angry and beat Shara right.
01:11:36
In fact, Shara mentioned abuse during a call to her son, which police secretly recorded.
01:11:46
And there was that incident when Wren allegedly got violent with Shara after finding her with another man, a story he denied.
01:11:53
Wren was never charged then or at any time for abusing Shara It's fairly common That victims of domestic violence don't report their abusers to the police.
01:12:06
By the time of the murder, Ren and Shara had been divorced for five months and living nearly 400 miles apart.
01:12:12
Her attorney said despite all that, she was still scared. 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.
01:12:26
And Shara did not want to go back to that life. According to her attorneys, Shara believed her only escape was to lure Wren back to Memphis to have him killed.
01:12:37
Lorenzen's mother, Deborah, insists the stories of abuse are all lies. She murdered him and assassinated his character.
01:12:45
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.
01:12:52
A battered wife or a killer? It looked like a Memphis jury would have to decide.
01:12:58
Or would they? I got here thinking it was going to have a trial, but then they say, wait a minute.
01:13:05
It just blew me away. Lorenzen's mother, who worked so hard to push the case forward,
01:13:26
couldn't wait to see her former daughter-in-law go on trial. How do you feel? Are you confident?
01:13:32
Yes, I am. I feel elated. And it's going to turn out just like it's supposed to.
01:13:36
All the aces are going to be in their places. That means everybody's going to be where they need to be.
01:13:41
July 25, 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.
01:13:52
I got here thinking that we were going to have a trial, but then they called us in their room up back there and said,
01:13:58
Wait a minute. We made a deal. It just blew me away. Shira pleaded guilty, not to first-degree murder, but to two lesser charges.
01:14:12
Facilitation to commit murder and attempted murder for the first try at Lorenzen's condo in Atlanta.
01:14:18
Lorenzen's mom was angry. How is this possible? I'm thinking I'm going to come and hear everything that happens step by step, but no.
01:14:27
For that Wren mother would have to wait until Shara alleged co had his trial Between COVID and court delays it took nearly three years Finally in March of 2022 Billy Turner trial began
01:14:43
What does it take to kill a man? Though Shara wasn't the defendant, Shelby County Prosecutor Paul Hagerman put her front and center.
01:14:52
Shara writes, not a professional killer. this is not something she does. She doesn't have a phone directory of hitmen.
01:15:07
No. She had to reach out to people that she trusted. Do you solemnly swear or affirm a testimony?
01:15:17
Lorenzen's mother was the first witness. She told the jury that when Lorenzen went missing,
01:15:22
Shara didn't seem concerned at all. Did you talk to Shara? Oh, yeah. Did she tell you that he was missing?
01:15:30
No. Was your understanding that Shara might never know? No. She never did. No. You had to.
01:15:39
I had to. But the star witness for the prosecution was Shara's cousin, Jimmy Martin,
01:15:46
who told the jury what he had said to the police years earlier, that Shara wanted Lorenzen dead,
01:15:52
and she had turned to him and Billy Turner for help. When Shara's talking about this business that she shouldn't be in, killing Lorenzo, is Billy Turner there?
01:16:05
Yes, sir. Obviously, you're there. And you describe it as what, brainstorming? Like brainstorming, they were coming up with ways of how to perform the act.
01:16:18
Okay, and what act are we talking about? The murder of the business. All right. And you say they were coming up with ways.
01:16:24
You were too, weren't you? Yeah. Though he took part in the planning, even helped find the location.
01:16:32
Jimmy said he wasn't there when the murder occurred. He said Shara told him about it afterwards.
01:16:38
Okay, so she met, her and Lorenzen met up with Billy on this road. That's when I guess they ambushed.
01:16:45
You say he gasped. Why do you say he gasped? Because I wasn't there. Then Jimmy told the jury about Lorenzen's final, awful moments.
01:16:53
Details, he said again, came from Shara. The prison hit his back to him. They started chasing him.
01:17:01
They started firing at him chasing him He jumped through the fence He was jumping like a deer They caught him when he fell Defense attorney John Perry told the jury the state star witness
01:17:13
a convicted killer who was given immunity in this case, shouldn't be trusted. It takes that type of a pump to sit up and come up with a story.
01:17:23
And as you're talking to the detectives, to say, they told me this. As far as the defense was concerned, it was more likely that Jimmy Martin shot Lorenzen right.
01:17:47
The defense attorney pointed out that Jimmy Martin didn't have an alibi, but his client, Billy Turner, did.
01:17:56
He went to a party and went home. That was it. The evidence is going to show, clear as can be, Billy had a well-established life.
01:18:07
Billy was a man. He dated women. He took care of his responsibilities. He had fun. But he went to church.
01:18:16
I really, in my heart of hearts, don't believe that he knew what all they might have been contemplating doing.
01:18:23
But prosecutors say Billy Turner's cell phone put him at the scene of the crime.
01:18:27
Jartown 911, where is your emergency? There was that terrifying 911 call Lorenzen made as he was being shot.
01:18:34
A Memphis police phone expert testified both Billy Turner's and Lorenzen's phones
01:18:39
pinged on cell towers near the scene around the same time. His tower location is overlaid with the exact tower that Mr. Lorenzen had.
01:18:47
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.
01:18:58
Deputy Smith, can you bring in the jury, please, sir? Yes, sir. Less than three hours later, they had a verdict.
01:19:05
We need the jury, find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder as charged in count one of the indictment.
01:19:12
Billy Turner got life plus 41 years. As for Shara... This court sets your punishment at 30 years confinement
01:19:20
in the Tennessee Department of Corrections. 30 years on paper? In the end, we wanted the earliest possible release
01:19:31
for Shara. Her defense said because Shara had no criminal record she most likely would serve only half that time maybe even less Sherrick will only be at worst in her early 60s
01:19:44
And so she can still be a grandmother to her grandchildren and still live an active life.
01:19:55
That's not fair. That is not fair. What do I understand? You know, I want her to do a plea deal when Lorenzen come back.
01:20:03
Then she can get out. She's eligible for parole pretty quickly. Pretty quickly. Did Shara get what she deserved?
01:20:09
I don't think that she did. If she's the ringleaders responsible for this, at some point, Shara's going to get out of prison.
01:20:16
And she's going to get a chance to go on with her life. Larissa's never going to have that opportunity.
01:20:20
In fact, with all the trial delays, Shara was up for a parole hearing just two months after Billy Turner was convicted.
01:20:27
I'm sorry for what happened to him. I'm sorry because he's not here. and I didn't want to ever, ever in my life be without him
01:20:36
because he was the love of my life. I'm asking today for your mercy. Watching closely was Lorenzen's mother with no mercy to spare.
01:20:47
This is where I'm really mad at her because she's still acting like she didn't have nothing to do with it.
01:20:52
Shara didn't get paroled that day. She'll try again in 2027. Deborah plans to be there.
01:21:02
February 4th, 2023. Lorenzen's old team at the University of Memphis retired his number in his honor.
01:21:13
Y'all, let me tell you what made me so happy. I still think about all that bad stuff Cheryl said about him.
01:21:19
But when they retired his jersey, you saw Memphis came out. This is a man who had helped his city.
01:21:27
This is a man that took care of more families than you'd ever imagine. He kept them in homes, houses.
01:21:33
He paid bills. He kept their lights on. This boy was just loving. He just loved by sight.
01:21:40
He just saw personality. If you was good to him, he was great to you. That's for sure.
01:21:52
That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Sunday at 7, 6 central.
01:21:57
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt.
01:22:03
For all of us at NBC News, good night.