The Murder of Lorenzen Wright

It was as if an explosion went off. Hello.

You and Lorenzen were so close it wasn't worth living after I kept my firstborn. Who would do this to him? You look at everybody, every friend, every family member, the divorced spouse. She was the last person known to have seen him.

We had to dig into them. There are these mysterious gunmen showing up looking for Lorenzen. Who were these people that came by the house? Gosh, do you think they'll ever figure this out? Fame, fortune and a fatal plot.

Who killed the basketball Star? Now? A chilling new ending? How is this possible? It just blew me away. He was under everybody's noses the whole time.

Yeah, how's that for a kicker? Just the ultimate evil. I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline.

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

It was just after midnight in Memphis.

As Sunday turned into Monday, on Beale Street, the Blues clubs were blaring.

Barbecue joints still sizzling.

Even the lights of nearby Graceland were aglow.

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

Then suddenly, an unmistakable sound echoed through the trees.

That's the actual sound of a murder in progress caught on audio tape. 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. Lorenzen Wright, or simply Wren, played high school and college basketball here in Memphis, then later starred for the hometown N.B.A. Grizzlies.

Just 34 years old, Wren was larger than life, according to close friend Bill Adkins. How popular was he here in Memphis? Oh, extremely, extremely. 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. Charismatic yet humble, Wren was as generous as he was outgoing. He was kind to everyone. There was 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. Movie star looks, Oh yeah, charming. quite charming, handsome guy.

Lorenzen was at the end of a solid N.B.A. career, now divorced and living in Atlanta, 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 Dodson and some other old friends.

The guys hanging and bonding.

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, 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 her.

Sunday night passed but no call from Wren, and so I shot him a text and he didn't reply. So I'm sure you tried to reach him the next day, the next day, and.

And nothing was that odd. Or still thinking he's just busy with the family? Well, I just thought he was still busy with the family. 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. Maybe he just left early because, you know, you don't get a signal. I thought it was kind of weird that he didn't text me back, but I didn't think anything about it.

But Wren's mother, Deborah Marion, was already worrying she'd been trying to reach him all week. He'd never not answer my call, he'd never not call me back. Did you just think?

Maybe he's in Vegas having a really good time, not in my town. He didn't call me. Uh-uh, uh-uh.

Lorenzen's mother filed a missing persons report with police, while Phil sounded his own personal alarm. I'm sending him our SOS code that we had for each other when we really needed one of them, and I didn't hear anything from him. Was this where things turned for you?

When he didn't respond to that, yes, I started getting worried. I was like, Man, where is he? He just basically has, like, vanished, fallen off.

Vanished from the face of the earth. Yes, yes, it was starting to get scary. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and say, Hey, did you know?

Lorenzen Wright is missing. Former Memphis Police Chief Tony Armstrong worked on the case. And I'm going, What do you mean missing, you know? How can a guy that's 6'11? How can a guy that's been on TV every week for most of his adult life go missing? That's impossible.

At 6'11 and 255 pounds, Lorenzen Wright is hard to miss, but he has been missing for a week. Police are searching for a former Memphis basketball player. But 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. However, as time passes, the situation grows more worrisome. It was shocking, it was just what do you mean? Lorenzen Wright is missing?

Kanji Anthony covered the story for NBC affiliate WMC-TV. In Memphis. The whole town was abuzz. Lorenzen's former wife, Shara, told reporters He was fine the last night she saw him. I'm not going to believe anything other than that, He's fine.

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

But Wren's mother was already expecting the worst. 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. Your intuition was telling you y'all weren't feeling him nowhere, he wasn't nowhere.

So kind of a spiritual connection to your son. 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. Then they found that terrifying recording.

He was literally running for his life at that point.

Tonight, police are searching for a former Memphis basketball player, Lorenzen Wright. Seven long days and still no sign of Lorenzen Wright. One of the last to see him alive was his ex-wife, Shara. 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. With each passing day, Wren's mother became more and more concerned, she became more fearful. You must be frantic.

Yes, I done called everybody everywhere that he would be associated with nobody. No, nothing. But police did find a clue a big one buried in Wren's phone records.

The last call Lorenzen Wright ever made was to 911.

Georgetown 911 Where is your emergency? Detectives traced that call to Germantown, a Memphis suburb. Police there were not able to geolocate the call and never followed up on it.

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. It made the hair on the back of 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. That's no joke.

When someone is running for their life and there's multiple gunshots being fired. 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. 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.

The information led a Shelby County sheriff's search crew to a wooded area near Hacks Cross and Winchester Road. And it didn't take long. A search team suddenly noticed something very disturbing. BREAKING NEwS Memphis Police are in southeast Memphis, where a body has been found.

And the word went around town like wildfire. Anyone who knew Lorenzen literally hopped into their car and drove to that scene. News of the discovery spread quickly, and crowds of Wright's friends on and off the court steadily grew.

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. I wanted to walk in his last walk so I could get that feeling like what happened? 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.

Of course, she knew it was her first born son, Lorenzen.

Police have notified immediate family that Lorenzen Wright was found dead here. By now. A large crowd was holding an impromptu memorial at the grim sight. 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.

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, was taken in for an autopsy. I've seen decomposed bodies before, but I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't ready for Lorenzen's remains. I would not have known that that was him. Lorenzen. Wright was just 34, the father of six young children.

Now police confirm the horrible news with the rest of his family and close friends. I literally remember freezing. I dropped the phone and my mind went blank. I'm like, What do you mean? He's dead?

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 and I cried.

I pulled my heart out of my chest and just stomped on it, so it was your best friend. Yeah, yeah. Word also spread south to Atlanta, where Wren's old friend and roommate Mike Gibson was anxiously awaiting any news.

When I found out about it, I just dropped to my knees, I couldn't walk. I was like paralyzed. I'm like, this can't be true. 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, he is a rich guy. But at the time of his death, there was jewelry recovered, 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.

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, 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. I just could not imagine anybody wanting to harm him. Did you think he was targeted?

But who would do this to him, and why? 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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All episodes available now wherever you get your podcasts. The air hung heavy in the courtroom, the people pressed shoulder to shoulder. They'd heard the gossip and the whispers about a family teeming with passion and hate about a mysterious disappearance.

And a pile of bones found burning in a lime pit.

They wanted to know what really happened, but even they were not prepared for the story that came. Spilling out the secrets, the lies, the confessions and the ending so unimaginable. And now you will hear it, too.

The Dead Alive on Morrison Mysteries, a true story that became a classic novel. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Memphis was in mourning. 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.

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

Lorenzen's mother could barely keep it together, never imagining she'd have to bury her oldest child. I just didn't want to live.

You and Lorenzen were so close. I promise you life wasn't worth living after I killed my firstborn. You two had been through so much together.

Yes, indeed. See, I was young when I had him, so we kind of grew up together. Ren's ex-wife, Shara, and their children all came to say farewell, too. 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.

To help the city heal, the Memphis mayor made a promise Justice will be done. That's our pledge.

Justice, of course, depended on a thorough police investigation. Detectives were now playing catch-up given how long it had taken to find Ren's body after he was murdered. But at the crime scene, clues were already emerging. Police found different types of shell casings at the scene.

Which meant more than one gun was used to murder Ren.

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

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 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.

But who would do such a thing and why?

Ren 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.

That's when he met his future wife, Shara, whose father was his coach at the time. Memphis Investigative Reporter Mark Paraskia 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.

Shara also liked what she saw, and the two began dating even though she was almost five years older. As Ren's friend, Bill Adkins immediately noticed she was different. You could tell she was quite mature, quite savvy, sexy. Can I use that word?

Sexy, absolutely, she was the kind of girl that guys looked at. Lorenzen, the country kid, was smitten with the more sophisticated City gal. What was it about Shara that he fell so fast for her?

Well, let me see how can I put this nicely sex, uh-huh. He was 17, she was 22, so she lured him in.

He had a little girlfriend, but they wasn't doing all that stuff. Shara was doing, uh-uh, she was a lady and he was a kid. The romance with Ren flourished, and so did his basketball career.

In college at the University of Memphis, his star continued to rise 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 N.BA. I said, No, you're not, you got two more years, 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? I thought about that for about 15 minutes and I said, When you say, you're leaving. Then, in 1996, after his sophomore season, Lorenzen hit the N.B.A. jackpot when he was drafted in the first round by the Los Angeles Clippers. At the tender age of 20, Ren was an instant millionaire.

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

The three settled in L.

A and immediately began living the Southern California High life.

After his second season, Ren and Shara got married. I was one of the groomsmen and it was an awesome affair. The wedding was beautiful. It looked like a fairytale. Phil even lived with Lorenzen and Shara for over a year when Ren played with the Clippers.

And Shara didn't mind you being the houseguest. No, no, she didn't. They were always known for having huge hearts.

Ren 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.

Back home, Ren re-immersed himself in the community, He opened a restaurant while committing to local charities and children. 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. Over his career, Lorenzen earned some $55 million, which he lavished on his friends and growing family. Oh, my God trips. Buying anything he wants houses, cars. He took care of his friends, took care of his family. Anybody who put a hand out, he virtually gave to them.

He never could say no to people. They actually built a home beyond the suburbs. It was a huge, 13,000 square foot home. it cost several million dollars and inside their giant garage,....

We had a couple Ferraris and he loved cars, He had bought two buildings in one month, and Shara, she loved jewelry. Are we talking diamonds and...?

Watches, rings, earrings, bracelets. She loved to decorate her home, custom drapes and custom upholstery on couches. And then a couple months go by, and then she'd change everything up again. It was an embarrassment of riches. But behind the gates of their Memphis mansion, there was trouble.

In Paradise, you're a rock star, and with being a rock star comes certain temptations that come at you. She was having affairs as well. We were hearing things like that, yes.

December 25, 2007.

Everybody's about to come downstairs, I hear them making noise. Three years before Lorenzen Wright's death, his family can be seen in this rare home video, celebrating what would be one of their last Christmases altogether.

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

Ren was playing Santa for the kids.

And in the garage, Shara had a surprise waiting for him. Do you love it, daddy? I love it.

It was right out of a Christmas movie. But behind the scenes reporter Mark Paraschia says Ren and Shara's life wasn't always so picture perfect. Merry Christmas. People who knew them well beyond the public arena knew they had troubles, a volatile mix of infidelity and jealousy, says Paraschia.

It was this darker, darker side. For Lorenzen, life in the N.B.A. was intoxicating under the bright lights in the biggest cities, with plenty of cash clubbing and women. He was a rock star, and with being a rock star comes certain temptations that come at you, and those temptations, unfortunately, did win over at times.

Yes, yes, and the temptations are real.

By Shara's account, from the time that he got in the N.BA, it was like a constant parade of women. He was a good-looking guy and he had all this opportunity, I think he took advantage of it. Shara, according to Lorenzen's mother, was cheating, too, and not very discreetly. Shara was being seen, not heard, seen, doing things she shouldn't be doing.

Infidelity? Mm-hmm. If you're going to do that, go to the next town over. She was flaunting other men in her hometown, Yes.

She wanted to do what her single friend did, so she wanted to act like a single woman, even though she was married. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. She didn't want to see that. Ren was upset about Shara's alleged affairs, according to close friend Bill Adkins.

He was very concerned about what he perceived as her infidelity and things. I can't leave home, trust her. 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, he was looking for solutions to solving some of the marital issues that he was having at the time.

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. 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.

She died from SIDs sudden infant death syndrome. That was the hardest thing I know that he ever went through in his life.

Did it cause a strain in his marriage? 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. Wren's friends said that two years later, the couple's problems escalated to a whole new and now dangerous level.

There was a situation that happened and Lorenzo went to the house where supposedly she was there with another guy. He knew the gentleman, he went ballistic, I think he had a gun. The story made the local newspapers, which reported that Wren threatened the man and also attacked Sierra.

She had some marks on her face, he hit her and the police were going to arrest him, but she would not testify against him. Lorenzo had a public image to uphold, she didn't want to expose that part of him. 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 Sierra's life.

With the help of counseling, their tumultuous marriage somehow stayed intact. In 2007, they even renewed their vows. Everybody thought that, okay, now they're good again. And sure enough, a few months passed by and the same thing's happening again. Back to the fighting, back to the fighting.

And often it was about money, says close friend Phil Dotson, especially when it came to Sierra's spending. There were times when she would spend money and not tell him that she would spend money. Maybe get back at him for indiscretions. Large sums of money that he would think is in the checking account and it's not there. And it'd be because of her spending. This was causing stress in the marriage, absolutely.

By 2009, Lorenzen's N.B.A. career was winding down, and so were those multimillion-dollar paychecks, which didn't help his rocky relationship with Sierra. You could see very quickly that the marriage was headed to a demise.

They broke up that year and went their separate ways, says Wren's close friend Mike Gibson. He said, She's doing her thing, I'm doing my thing. Hell, she's sleeping with the lawn man, the lawn man. You may want to remember him.

Sierra filed for divorce and their marriage was officially over in 2010.

Wren's mom says he was relieved. He just couldn't take it no more. She started making him sick just to see her face. But was it somewhat also liberating for Lorenzen to finally be out of the marriage?

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. It would be administered by Sierra. Since she was awarded custody, Wren was also ordered to pay alimony and child support, totaling $26,000 a month.

Lorenzen Even though he made $55 million playing basketball, he was broke. He had two very expensive homes that were foreclosed on. They were bouncing checks left and right. I mean, they burned through all this money. 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 and it would take his murder investigation in a whole new direction.

So it wasn't just a theory, seriously, it was something that everybody was talking about, absolutely.

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. This is a guy that I used to talk to, I used to eat in his restaurant, occasionally he'd come sit down with me.

We'd have conversations when he was in town, it was chilling.

Chilling to think how this hometown hero was so brutally murdered, seemingly for no reason. So, Armstrong and his team of detectives started their investigation by looking at the victim himself. Let's retrace Lorenzen's steps.

Is he alive? Who knows him better than anybody else? 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. She was interviewed by investigators when he first went missing. I just need somebody to call if they've seen him or anything from him, Shara told police. Something strange happened in the weeks before Wren's murder. There are these mysterious gunmen showing up, you know, with guns tucked in their waistbands, who are knocking on doors, knocking on her door, looking for Lorenzen.

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, she gives a statement that basically says Lorenzen left in the middle of the night. He had been at her house, he had been at her house.

He had gotten there from Atlanta sometime during the night he leaves. 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 then, sometime before 3 a..m, said Shara. He left again with an unknown person. But that wasn't all. She told police that the night he was killed, he left with a box of drugs. 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't say who he's talking to. 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 Pettys. 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 Pettys named Bobby Cole.

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. 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.

Deborah 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, but now that he was dead, the city buzzed with rumors that Wren may have been the victim of a drug hit. 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.

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.

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

With his N.B.A. 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. Could he have been dealing drugs to make some quick cash?

So detectives started interviewing a whole new cast of characters to answer that very question. We talked to informants that we had on the streets, every drug dealer, every informant that we talked to basically said that that just wasn't the case.

Wren's family and friends were outraged at Sherra for even suggesting he might be dealing. 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. Was Lorenzen knowingly involved in any criminal activity? Not that I know of at all.

I never saw anything that would be out of the ordinary. 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.

I told the police y'all need to go talk to his ex-wife. Lorenzen's mother had never been Sherra'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?

That I was a crazy lady. But I told them I'm going to keep on doing this while there's blood running warm in my body. You would have needed a sign from God to back off Sherra Wright.

Detectives did notice one thing while Deborah was relentless, Sherra was reclusive. Police didn't hear a peep from her. The levels of grief from both of those women were polar opposites of each other. Now, in fairness, one's the mom, one's divorced.

You still have six kids about this man, he's been murdered. Sherra isn't acting upset enough. Because that doesn't make somebody a killer, it doesn't make you a killer, it makes you a high-level person of interest.

Though Sherra hardly seemed like a killer, the sheriff's deputy was deeply religious and spent a lot of time at church, where she was on track to become an ordained minister. She was also extremely devoted to her six kids. How was Sherra?

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. In fact, police couldn't find any evidence linking Sherra to the murder.

As months ticked by with no new leads, the case began to go cold. It has been 365 days. On the first anniversary of Wren's death, his mother held a vigil. Family, friends and fans of Lorenzen Wright gathered in front of the Fedex forum. I'm not giving up.

I'm not tired yet, somebody gonna tell on a friend, that's how this gonna end. But the end didn't come.

The case gathered dust more. Months passed, then years.

Until somebody decided to follow the money.

How did a master cyber criminal and a Russian oligarch with ties to the Kremlin hack into America's financial system, scamming millions? CNBC presents the crimes of Putin's traitor. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

This one is my daughter right here.

My dogs, I breed rottweilers. To his fans, Lorenzen Wright seemed like a gentle giant, the last person anyone would want to kill.

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 media assumed the city of Memphis was now ice cold, according to former WMC-TV anchor Conjie Anthony. Nothing, crickets, crickets.

It was just crickets for years, and every now and then somebody would just say, Gosh, do you think they'll ever figure out who killed Lorenzen Wright? Memphis detectives had cleared almost every possible suspect, but one in particular remained in the forefront Lorenzen Wright's ex-wife Shara.

She's always been a person of interest. And no matter who we talked to, no matter what door we knocked on, no matter what crime stopper tip we got, it always led right back to Shara. Was anyone coming to her defense and saying she loved Lorenzen? She would never do this? I've investigated people that have committed multiple murders and had people that come to their defense. I never gotten a call from anybody that has defended Shara, ever. Maybe that's why Shara had lawyered up and stopped talking to the police.

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.

As for supporting her own children, Shara's primary source of income still came from Wren. She is getting his insurance money and the pension from the Grizzlies and all the other N.B.A. teams, so the money is going to Shara. Because she is the custodian of her own children. With Lorenzen, there was that life insurance policy Lorenzen put in place for his 6 children when he and Shara divorced. When his father, Herb Wright, found out Shara wasn't using the money in the children's best interest, she collected the $1 million and had spent somewhere like $930,000 of it.

Herb Wright versus Shara Wright She received more than $1 million between August 1, 2011. So we end up going to court. The entire insurance fund is almost all gone, and his father wanted to put a stop to that. Herb Wright is asking the court for Shara Wright to be removed as trustee of a million-dollar life insurance proceeds.

Trust the Lorenzen-Wright case was back in the spotlight, now in court and on camera. My whole life has been at home, pretty much 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. The court proceedings were contentious and exposed all the specifics of Shara's spending.

More than $55,000 for furniture, more than $180,000 spent on expenses at 4 different properties. And the judge decided to get a receiver to take over the funds and to investigate what was going on with the money. 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.

She wrote and self-published a book called Mr. Tell Me Anything. 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. I think a lot of it was still her perspective, and she wanted to make him seem like a really bad guy.

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. The similarities between Shara and Lorenzen and the 2 main characters in the book are uncanny. And as you're going through the book.

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

But in real life, Wren's close friends were beginning to share the same suspicion. His mom and police already had that. On the last night of his life. Shara wasn't Wren's lover. She would have been involved in his murder. I felt very confident that she played some kind of role in it.

But to what degree, I did not know. So maybe even indirectly, indirectly, directly. Yeah, before the fact, after the fact, she had something to do with it, maybe. But no one was able to prove it.

As the 5th anniversary of Wren's murder came and went.

She began 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? You can run, but you can't hide.

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. 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 and talked for another 6 hours. Kelvin Cowens wanted to get inside the mind of Shara Wright. It had been almost 5 years since Lorenzen's murder and she was still under suspicion. She couldn't believe how people were so upset with her, and I asked her, Do you have anything to do with it? She said, No, absolutely not.

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

At the end of that marathon interview, Kelvin had his story and something else. We knew that there was chemistry there from the beginning. That's how it started. We almost fell in love immediately. Shara had been keeping a low profile ever since her legal battle over Lorenzen's estate.

But soon, she and Kelvin were out and about as their romance took off.

Then, a few months after they met, Shara moved to Houston, where he had some work, so Shara and her kids decided to go with him. 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. God created you to rise higher. Joel Osteen, the world-famous minister, whose services are on TV and YouTube.

She just had, you know, all these big plans. You know? It wasn't just that she was going to go pastor a church, she was going to be a pastor of a mega church. You know, she thinks. In terms of big, everything's big and grandiose.

They settled in the suburb of Sugar Land, and life was sweet, at least in the beginning. Kelvin got a nice house on a lake, in a nice neighborhood, with good schools for the kids and a church nearby. Shara never did preach with Joel Osteen, but she did pray a lot. Shara would sometimes go and get in our master closet with a pillow and cover and pray for hours. You could hear her she's calling out her family and friends.

And sometimes I had to get up 2 o'clock 2.

30 in the morning, and I'd go in the closet and I'd have to get her up and say, Hey, come on, get back in the bed. 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.

Including Lorenzen's murder, 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.

She was like, you know, had he not passed, I'd be still with him. And I was thinking to myself, There's no way she killed him, there's no way she had anything to do with it. 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..

They asked her, point blank, if she had anything to do with Lorenzen's murder. At first I'm a wife, then I'm a mother, and then thirdly, I'm an author.

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. And I could just think, Oh, come on, Shara, what type of answer is that, you know, did you do it? Did you find that odd? What she said, I did, I did.

I found several things odd, but you still didn't think it was her. I couldn't, 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. Neither Shara's TV interview nor her salacious book provided police with any evidence connecting her to the crime. It's almost as if she's poking fun or she's taunting law enforcement with this book for somebody that's supposed to be grieving.

To write a book like that was just really bizarre, but no real clues in it. I don't think anything in there was of value, as she relates to it being a clue. Shara even considered writing a sequel, but instead focused more on her family and continued her free-spending ways. Said Kelvin. She had very expensive taste.

I told her this, I said, Shara, your appetite for nice things is not healthy. And she was 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 your financial literacy is just off.

According to Kelvin, Shara was also spending a lot of time on the phone, apparently having secret conversations with someone he didn't know. I felt like that Shara may have been cheating on me, I speculated. A hidden lover. Shara denied she was seeing someone, but gradually, their once-hot romance cooled.

They grew apart and after two years together, Kelvin says he decided it was over. The day after her birthday. That was when we called it quits. She was very upset, 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. Back in Memphis. Detectives were quietly making progress. A man with information had come forward and he had quite a story to tell. She asked me about my case, like, Could you kill somebody again?

The air hung heavy in the courtroom, the people pressed shoulder to shoulder. They'd heard the gossip and the whispers about a family teeming with passion and hate, about a mysterious disappearance and a pile of bones found burning in a lime pit. And now they wanted to know what really happened, but even they were not prepared for the story that came spilling out.

The secrets, the lies, the confessions, and the ending so unimaginable. And now you will hear it too. The Dead Alive on Morrison Mysteries, a true story that became a classic novel. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

They are the families of the missing in America, and they're desperately searching for answers. Somebody knows something? I'm Josh Bankels. Join me for season 3 of Missing in America.

Listen carefully, because just one small detail might allow you to solve a mystery. We have seen miracles happen. Dateline missing in America. All episodes available now wherever you get your podcasts.

For true crime fans, nothing is more chilling than watching Dateline. Have you ever seen such a thing before? For podcast fans, nothing is more chilling than listening. You just go through your mind when you make a discovery like that, and when you subscribe to Dateline Premium, it gets even better.

Excuse me if I sound a little skeptical. Every episode is ad-free. Oh wow, so this could be your ace in the hole. And not just ad-free, you also get early access to new intriguing mysteries and exclusive bonus content.

So what were you afraid of? Dateline Premium Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Datelinepremium..com. You ready for what's coming?

It's called the Inland Empire.

Riverside County, a sprawling stretch of southern California suburbia east of L..A. It was here, in the little town of Murrieta, where Shara Wright and her kids settled in the spring of 2017. 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, 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.

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. Another year, another vigil to keep hope alive that his murder might somehow be solved. We're going to keep this thing going year after year because I know that's what he would want us to do.

We love you, Lorenzen.

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

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

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. Did you feel like there's never going to be an arrest in this case? Nope, because I got to stay alive.

Because before I die, they're going to find somebody, they're going to get her, specifically Shara, her, right.

And I told them it over and over and over again. Tony Armstrong took some of her calls. She was just relentless, she just would not let it go.

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, that Shara really was on their radar. 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, you just didn't have enough evidence, you just don't have enough evidence to do it. But the police did have something, a potential witness.

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. What happened was Jimmy Martin, who was Shara's cousin, killed a love interest that he had. 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. Jimmy said he knew what happened to Wren, and he offered to tell his story to detectives.

So in 2012, two years after Wren was killed, a meeting was held at this Tennessee prison.

To reveal who was behind the murder, and that was his very own cousin and Wren's ex-wife, Shara.

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

Billy.

Yeah, he was a gardener.

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

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. When he wasn't busy running his landscaping business, he was fulfilling his duties. At the very same church where Shara preached, he was the deacon of this church, and she was a pastor. How deeply they knew each other, there's a lot of speculation. I mean, it appears that they were intimate.

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

At that time, I was like, No, I ain't doing nothing like that. At what point in here were you offered anything to do it? She said She'd help me with my court case. If this happened, I'd get Shara money, I got the NBA money coming, and I would take care of y'all, she said. Whoever does the shooting 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, a sleepy little town south of Memphis.

And this time, she revealed how and where she wanted them to do the job. She said Well, I want you and Billy to go out there and take care of it. where did she want you to take care of it? Man? I get to go to his house in Atlanta.

So we went.

With directions from Shara, he said, they headed to Atlanta and straight for Wren's condo complex.

But Wren wasn't there.

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

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

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

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. This according to Jimmy Martin, who claimed he was in a car with Shara Wright and her fellow minister, Billy Turner. We went and checked out spots around Memphis.

They was picking up spots, I was just telling them whether it was a good spot or not. Getting a consultant, I think, yeah.

Soon after that scouting trip, Shara sent Wren the first in a flurry of text messages. X-rated messages about hooking up in Memphis. And these are the mild messages, which only grew more erotic and explicit. 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, but now, seven years after the murder, the texts seem to tell a story.

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, but life-changing words. 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.

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

Live a happy life, that's what he wanted. But Shara didn't want to remarry Lorenzen. She wanted him murdered, according to her cousin, Jimmy Martin. 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. She asked my mom for a metal detector. Does your mama have a metal detector? mm-hmm. 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.

And who actually fired the fatal shots? 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.

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

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. 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. He shot at him, shot at him, shot at him.

Did Shara ever tell you that she also chased Lorenzen with Billy?

She said she ran up the road, the first shot, fired, and Jimmy, he insisted he was miles away at home in Mississippi that night. 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?

But Jimmy did admit to helping Shara and Billy clean up the crime scene two days later, before anyone realized Lorenzen Wright had gone missing. 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, but they never found it, said Jimmy. So he and Billy took the handgun they still had to this little lake in Mississippi.

We was out there at the Lake Little Pond, he cleaned them out and he threw them in the water. How many? It was just one gun, what kind?

Nine millimeter. 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.

It was quite a story, but was there any evidence to back it up? Well, maybe the answer was sitting on the bottom of that lake.

Walnut, Mississippi, some 75 miles southeast of Memphis, 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.

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. Now, two years later, was it still there? It's a murky lake, they couldn't find it, and so the whole thing kind of goes into limbo again.

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. Was it still being investigated actively, or just kind of when new leads would come in? 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 set of eyes on it.

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

And one of the things they did was go back to that murky lake in Mississippi. They'd gotten 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. And guess what, five years after Jimmy Martin came forward...?

They find the gun.

A nine-millimeter handgun sitting in the muddy sediment. But was it really the weapon that killed Lorenzen Wright? 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. Then, a few weeks later, the ballistics link it to the murder.

One of two guns that was used at the scene.

Operation Rebound was rolling, but investigators kept a tight lid on all their new evidence for months.

So Deborah Marion was still in the dark when she commemorated Lorenzen's 42nd birthday, November 4th. A day that should be spent celebrating is a painful reminder for Debbie Mary. Once again, she held a somber vigil to keep her son's name in the news and the heat on the police. It's heavy on my heart all the time, especially birthdays, Christmas and then July Vet Day.

Always on my mind, Lorenzen's mother, of course, knew nothing about the gun. Or Jimmy Martin or Billy Turner. I really need your help, people.

Come on, tell us something. Then, a few days later, police did tell Deborah something, something amazing. The FBI helped search a remote lake in Walnut, Mississippi.

Some seven long years after the murder, Deborah Marion suddenly felt a step closer to getting justice for her son. Thank you, Jesus, thank you. They found something because we hadn't heard anything, and Wren's close friends were now hopeful for the first time in years.

Oh my God, we're on to something. Are you thinking that this is just the beginning? It's just the beginning? It's going to fall like dominoes. We got it.

We got it, the FBI dive team found it, and so I said, Okay, well, if they're involved, then I know that they're on to somebody.

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 Sherra Wright? When Sherra's ex-boyfriend Kelvin Cowan saw the news, he called Sherra in California? And she was sounding very thumber about it, and she was like, Yeah, I saw it, yeah.

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.

Sherra seemed low-key on the phone with Kelvin, 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, Sherra suddenly flew to Memphis and met with Billy. Detectives were on their tail and snapped these surveillance shots. That's Sherra in the black sweatsuit.

Police watched and waited and let Sherra and Billy Stew. The police were playing everybody. It was a brilliant strategy that they wanted to get that information out to get more incriminating evidence from Sherra and Billy. Ray Turner. They threw them into a panic and got them talking about it.

Talking, which police started taping by tapping Sherra and Billy's phones.

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

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

Oh, OK, I hope you got that ready. Then. By late 2017, Memphis police had heard enough and made their move. December 5th Billy Turner was arrested inside a convenience store in Collierville. And then Friday night.

And then we find out that he was her lawn man when Lorenzen was living with Sherra, 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 Sherra had been a minister when she lived in Memphis. 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 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. Yeah, yeah, just ultimate evil.

After years of nothing, it hits us all at one time, and we started thinking, Did she? did she actually?

Calvin Cowens also had plenty of questions about his former lover, so he and Sherra spoke again. This time police were listening, too. How do you know, Billy?

It had nothing to do with nobody or nothing. She was like, That's my church, mate, he's a church deacon, that's my friend. He didn't have anything to do with this.

Well, I don't know to tell the whole world, because I'm not going to get in it. I'm going to let God step in. 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.

But out in California, Sherra remained free. No arrest warrant, 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 Billy into it so that they can pull me into it. A dramatic moment, years in the making, was about to play out on a dark highway.

December 2017, More than seven years after Lorenzen's murder, Billy Turner was in court asking for bail. Good morning. Sir. Lorenzen's mother, Deborah, was right there to give Billy Turner a piece of her mind. How could you have murdered my son?

And she kept denying any role in Wren's murder. Don't nobody believe that we were still in love or that we cared for each other?

Over and over, Sherra insisted she was innocent. The investigation was a sham.

Then, just ten days before Christmas, Sherra was on the freeway and got a call from her oldest son.

Suddenly, Sherra noticed something flashing in her rearview mirror.

Put the phone on the Don't you ain't you in the truck.

This was no routine traffic stop, it was the U.S Marshals warrant in hand arresting Sherra for murder. She was rushed to the Riverside County jail and the next day, Memphis police told The World.

Sherra Wright Robinson was taken into custody last night in Riverside, California, by the members of the U.

S Marshals Service was her arrest a big moment in this? Oh, honey, I didn't even sleep when they got Billy, but honey, when they got Sherra, I slept, I probably slept until 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 her, no, everybody was talking about it, it was all over the place.

It was huge news in Memphis, so huge that the next day, Deborah organized a celebration in the cemetery.

Lorenza loved fireworks, so I had to have fireworks at the cemetery. Never heard of anything like that before. Lorenza had to hear that. Pow, pow, pow. We had to celebrate a big celebration. We had a ball.

Sherra did After years of trying to get Sherra arrested, Deborah had just one question for her, and what I would like to say to Sherra Why, why, why, why, why, why? Lorenza's friends, who knew that Sherra had long been under suspicion, still had trouble accepting the news of her arrest.

I'm like, What do you mean? She got arrested for killing Lorenza? and I got really angry. I can just imagine all the emotions you're feeling, betrayal, betrayal, shock.

And also second-guessing yourself, second-guessing myself. Yes, and you knew her better than most. Yeah, but sometimes what people do in the dark will come to light. Sherra waived extradition and days later appeared in a Memphis court.

The bond in this case shall be set to cover this indictment at $20 million for the reasons stated. So you see Sherra in court and she says something to you. Yes, she turns around and look me dead in my face, just like I'm looking at you. I said, I didn't do it.

I said, you witch, you called her a witch in court without the W. You can't kill my son but keep teasing me. I didn't do it, no.

Both co-defendants charged with first-degree murder and the death of Lorenzen Wright filed motions Thursday. Both Billy Turner and Sherra pleaded not guilty. The plan was to try them together, but Sherra's attorneys, Lori Hall and Junie Ganguly, had a problem. We strongly believed that Billy was going to testify against Sherra 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.

So, a strategy? Her attorney said Yes, she did conspire to have her ex-husband murdered, but that in no way made her guilty. Sherra did it, Sherra recruited Billy, but she did it to get away from this abusive relationship. That was the defense's version.

Sherra was an abused woman desperately looking for a way out. Absolutely two sides to Lorenzen Wright, very positive, community-oriented. privately, he had a very tumultuous marriage, many affairs, and get angry and beat Sherra Wright.

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

And there was that incident when Wren allegedly got violent with Sherra after finding her with another man.

Wren was never charged then, or at any time, for abusing Sherra. It's fairly common that victims of domestic violence don't report their abusers to the police. By the time of the murder, Wren and Sherra had been divorced for five months and living nearly 400 miles apart. 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.

And Sherra did not want to go back to that life.

According to her attorneys, Sherra believed her only escape was to lure Wren back to Memphis to have him killed. Lorenzen's mother, Devorah, insists the stories of abuse are all lies. She murdered him and assassinated his character. I want her to suffer every day, every day she wake up, I want her to miss her kids like I miss mine.

A battered wife or a killer? It looked like a Memphis jury would have to decide, or would they? I got here thinking it was going to have a trial, but then they say, wait a minute, it just blew me away.

It's right in the morning.

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? 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, that means everybody's going to be where they need to be. July 25th, 2019, almost nine years to the day his mother was in court when the justice system dealt her a hand she hadn't anticipated.

I got here thinking it was going to have a trial. But then they called us in their room up back there and said, 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 facilitation to commit murder and attempted murder. For the first try at Lorenzen's condo in Atlanta, Lorenzen's mom was angry. How is this possible? I'm thinking I'm going to come here and hear everything that happened step by step, but no.

For that, Wren's mother would have to wait until Shira's alleged co-conspirator had his trial. Between Covid and court delays, it took nearly three years. Finally, in March of 2022, Billy Turner's trial began. What does it take to kill a man? Though Shira wasn't the defendant, Shelby County prosecutor Paul Hagerman put her front and center.

Shira writes.

Not a professional killer.

This is not something she does.

She doesn't have a phone directory of hit men.

No, she had to reach out to people that she trusted. Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony? Lorenzen's mother was the first witness. She told the jury that when Lorenzen went missing, Shira didn't seem concerned at all.

Did you talk to Shira? Oh yeah, did she tell you that he was missing?

Was your understanding that Shira had never gone? No, she never did, no.

And you describe it as what brainstorming like, brainstorming. They were coming up with ways of how to, best, you know, perform the act. Okay, and what act are we talking about the murder of Lorenzen?

All right, and you say they were coming up with ways you were, you were, too, weren't you?

Why did you say you guessed? because I wasn't there? Then? Jimmy told the jury about Lorenzen's final awful moments.

Lorenzen had his back to him.

They started chasing him. 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's star witness, a convicted killer who was given immunity in this case, shouldn't be trusted. It takes that type of a punk to sit up and come up with a story. 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 on the night in question.

Nobody can validate your whereabouts, right?

Nobody verifies your whereabouts, correct in all this time, nobody's verified you, nobody has a right. The defense attorney pointed out that Jimmy Martin didn't have an alibi, but his client, Billy Turner, did. 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. Billy was a man, he dated women, he took care of his responsibilities.

He had fun, but he went to church. I really, in my heart of hearts, don't believe that he knew what all they might have been contemplating doing. But prosecutors say Billy Turner's cell phone put him at the scene of the crime. Georgetown, 9-1-1. Where is your emergency?

There was that terrifying 9-1-1 call Lorenzen made as he was being shot. 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. His tower location is overlaying with the exact tower that Mr. Lorenzen had. 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. Deputy Smith, Can you bring in the jury, please, sir? Less than three hours later, they had a verdict we the jury find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder.

Billy Turner got life plus 41 years. As for Shara....

30 years on paper. In the end, we wanted the earliest possible release for Shara, 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. And so she can still be a grandmother to her grandchildren and still live an active life.

That's not fair, that is not fair. I don't understand, you know, I want her to do a plea deal when Lorenzen come back, then she can get out.

She's eligible for parole pretty quickly, pretty quickly.

I think that she did, if she's the ringleader responsible for this. 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. Lorenzen's never going to have that opportunity. In fact, with all the trial delays, Shara was up for a parole hearing just two months after Billy Turner was convicted. I'm sorry for what happened to him.

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

February 4, 2023.

Lorenzen's old team at the University of Memphis retired his number in his honor. Y'all let me tell you what made me so happy. I still think about all that bad stuff, Shara said about him. But when they retired his jersey, you saw Memphis came out.

This is a man who had helped his city, this is a man that took care of more families than you'd ever imagine. He kept them in homes, houses, he paid bills, he kept their lights on. This boy was just loving.

He just loved by sight, he just saw personality. If you was good to him, he was great to you, that's for sure.

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. Goodnight.