Original subtitles

It's a sombre day for those that love

@ Memphis basketball star Lorenzen Wright.

@ Lorenzen was seen back home as a superhero.

@ [Michael] He was young, he was handsome,

he was an athlete.

[gunshots]

[gunshots]

@ [news] They have no idea what happened.

I birthed him, I raised him,

@ and I want to know howúhe got out of here. Everything.

@ I knew in my heart of hearts

we were going to solve this case.

[chilling music]

[narrator] Memphis basketball legend

Lorenzen Wright has vanished

after travelling from his home in Atlanta

to spend time with his family in Memphis.

@ When Lorenzen's mother, Deborah, called me

@ about Lorenzen being missingúand she hadn't heard from him,

@I played it off in the beginning

'cause we were used toúLorenzen having these episodes

@ where he would disappear for a couple days.

@ He was supposed to haveú come home for the weekend

@ because one of his sistersú was having a baby shower.

When I took him to the airport, you know, he said another friend

of ours was going to drive him back from Memphis on Monday.

[narrator] But he doesn't come back.

Deborah, she's something else,

but she knew in her heart that something was wrong.

I tried to tell the police now,

because that's not normal for him.

I said, first y'all told me it's gotta be 24 hours.

I said, all right, it's been 48.

Now what's up?

@ [news] His mother filedú a missing persons complaint

three days later.

[Michael] Obviously, we're all reaching out to him.

In the first couple of days,

you would get a rings and then no pickup.

But after that, it would go straight to voicemail.

@ [Deborah] I had some missing person posters put--

@We went downtown and put themúin every windshield downtown.

I waited three days and I called my granddaughter.

I said, "Baby, you talk to your dad?"

She said, "No, Grandma, I called him three days in a row

and I ain't got no response yet."

And everybody in Memphis is like,

"Hey, what is going on?

Where is Ren?"

[narrator] 34-year-old Lorenzen,

or Ren to family and friends,

is one of the most famous names in Memphis.

@[news] The basketball player hadú a tremendous NBA career

and was beloved inú his hometown of Memphis.

@[Kristin] Lorenzen Wright was a hometown hero.

He wasn't just a basketball player, an NBA star.

He was generous, he was kind,

he cared about people.

@Lorenzen changed people's lives.

If you played basketball at Memphis State,

the University of Memphis, you were instantly a celebrity.

And that's exactly what happened when Lorenzen was at Memphis.

We're country boys from Mississippi,

so that's very rare, you don't see that.

We've only got a handful of people

that actually made it out of our hometown

and became something.

So the people of Memphis, obviously,

and the people of Mississippi put Lorenzen

on a whole 'nother level, put him on a pedestal.

[narrator] It is July 22, 2010,

when Lorenzen Wright officially becomes the subject

of a missing person investigation.

[Darren] The Collierville Police Department,

they take the report.

During the process of the investigation,

they interviewed his ex-wife, Sherra, numerous times.

[narrator] Sherra and Lorenzen have six children

and have been divorced less than six months.

[Kristin] They were married for 13 years.

In early 2010, the divorce is finalized.

He was playing for a team in Atlanta at the time.

Once Lorenzen and Sherra had divorced,

he still has his Atlanta house,

which that house ended up getting foreclosed on,

so he ended up getting a condo not too far away.

Lorenzen, he invited me.

He was like, "Hey, you wanna come live with me?"

And so that's what I did.

He moves into an apartment in Atlanta

and Sherra stays back in Memphis with the children.

[Joni] She's got six children to take care of.

They were in constant communication with each other

over the kids.

@He was at her house and she wasú the last person to see him.

[Kristin] They go to Sherra and she tells them that,

you know, Lorenzen was involved

in a lot of shady business deals.

He was interacting with a lot of shady characters.

She mentioned that a few weeks prior

to Lorenzen's disappearance,

there were a couple

of what she describes as Hispanic males

that came to the house,

and they were dressed in long trench coats with guns.

And she assumed it was about drugs.

@ [narrator] The past year of Lorenzen's life

has seen huge change.

@ In 2009, Lorenzen decidesú to retire from the NBA.

He's 33 years old.

The same year, 2009, Sherra files for divorce.

When Lorenzen retires from the NBA,

I think he probably felt like many

retiring professional athletes feel like,

and that is lost.

Over the course of his career,

Lorenzen made roughly about $55 million.

$55 million is a lot of money, but he spent a lot of money.

And eventually,

once his basketball career is over with,

those weekly, bi-weekly cheques that you get from the NBA,

they stop.

The couple had already been having financial difficulties

because they were overspending.

He bought two Lamborghinis at one time, one day, two.

I'm like, "Who buys two Lamborghinis, boy?"

My thing was, "Don't spend all your money,

'cause one day it might be gone."

Now their properties, their homes

are being foreclosed on,

they're losing their cars.

[Joni] You've lost most of your money.

That would be an additional stress

in terms of, you know, not only who am I now,

but what am I going to do?

And how am I going to pay my bills?

[Michael] Divorce financially hurt him a lot.

That affected him a whole lot.

Because he had- I think he had to pay

like 20-something plus thousand a month in child support,

which was outrageously ridiculous,

because he's not making that type of money anymore.

He was so depressed with what's going on.

Obviously, not being in the NBA

and not making that same type of money was a factor.

But I think the biggest factor was just not being

around his kids as much as he wanted to.

I heard it out of his own word, he'd pretty much given up.

When he disappeared, people were concerned,

but people were coming up with reasons to say,

you know, maybe nothing bad has happened.

He's going through some things.

He's got a lot of difficulties.

And so he just-maybe he just needs some time away.

[Michael] Maybe he did want to escape.

It happened out to at least two or three times,

but the only difference was every time it happened,

somebody would know.

As part of the missing persons investigation,

investigators pulled Lorenzen's phone records.

Once they received those phone records,

they realized that

shortly after midnight on the 19th of July,

Lorenzen placed a 911 call.

And the call was answered by

the Germantown Police Department dispatcher office.

When they visited Germantown

and they received a copy of the audio of that call,

everything changed.

[gunshots]

You are literally hearing the assassination

of Lorenzen Wright.

[narrator] Lorenzen's 911 call is made just after midnight

on July 19, 2010.

@ Where the call was madeú was in that triangular area

@where the city of Germantown, the city of Memphis,

and unincorporated Shelby County

all kind of border.

The cell tower that would handle those mobile phone calls

sat right in the middle of that triangulation.

And it's crazy, but depending upon which side of that tower

the cell signal is trafficked,

that determines who gets a 911 call.

It is believed that once the dispatcher

saw where the call originated from,

she just assumed that it was either Memphis

or Shelby County.

@ The 911 dispatcher felt

that this was out of the jurisdiction.

[narrator] With an unclear location

and no identifiable caller,

the 911 call is not followed up until eight days later.

Its location data points to a secluded area

of Callis Cutoff in Southeast Memphis.

[Kristin] This location was cross-jurisdictional.

Investigators decided, look, we gotta call everybody in.

They get air support, ground, everything that they can get.

On July 28th at 2:20 in the afternoon,

investigators discover remains there

in that remote wooded area.

@ [news] Lorenzen Wright was missing for nine days

before his severely decomposed body

@ was found on July 28th, 2010

in a field near theú TPC Southwind Golf Course.

@ One of his best friends came and found me,

@ I was at the laundromat,

Lorenzen had gave me this comforter set.

I had to wash it in the big wash

and I was at the laundromat when he came.

I was so distraught I left it there.

[news] The ending of his life was captured

@ in a 911 call he placed

in the moments before he was shot 11 times.

It was like a dark cloud

had just completely covered the city of Memphis

when news broke that those remains

were in fact Lorenzen Wright.

An autopsy later shows that Lorenzen

had bullet wounds throughout his body.

[Darren] His body had sat out there

in the Memphis heat and humidity for days.

The body's decomposition speeds up in those type of elements.

And so you're talking about a guy who's 6' 10", 6' 11",

255 at the time he played basketball,

to what they see now before them,

skeletal remains, and I believe about 57 pounds, was left.

Memphis police take over the investigation.

It is now a homicide investigation.

[narrator] As Lorenzen's family grieve,

detectives need to know everything they can about him

and his life.

When he was born,

he weighed 8 pounds, 10 ounces, 27 inches long.

I couldn't lay him in my lap like this.

I had to hold his head.

His dad was 6'6 and a half,

so he could lay him in his lap like that, but I couldn't.

@ Lorenzen at a young age was a very, very tall

and clumsy person.

@ Great attitude, though.

He was always been that type of person

@that people loved to be around.

[Deborah] When he was in the eighth grade,

he was taller than some of his teachers.

Surely was in the eighth grade.

He was huge.

Lorenzen's father was Herb Wright,

and he was a basketball star in his own right.

He was a player, a former coach.

he actually was left paralyzed.

So he is no longer really able to coach

to the level that he could, but he could coach his son.

[Darren] Memphis is a basketball city.

I've heard stories about this kid

playing at Booker T. Washington High School,

6'10", 6'11", can rebound the ball,

could score the basket, could shoot the three,

could drive the basket, handle the ball with both hands.

@ And when you see this kidú running down the court,

it's like watching aú gazelle with a basketball.

@ To watch this kid play,ú I was like, oh my goodness,

this kid is amazing.

And he never disappointed.

[narrator] In 1994,

Lorenzen enrols at the University of Memphis.

[Deborah]ú When he was in college,

they wasn't passing him the ball. He said,

@"Mama, you know, I don't knowúwhy they not pass me the ball,

maybe 'cause I'm the youngest." He said, "Why am I not

gonna worry "about them passing me the ball?"

I said, "Why?" "I'm fixin' to be the rebound king.

"I'm gonna get the ball myself."

And he did that until he died.

[narrator] By July 29th, 2010,

news of Lorenzen's death is out,

sparking one of the most high-profile

homicide investigations

the city has seen.

@ [news] The basketball playerú had a tremendous NBA career

and was beloved in his hometown of Memphis.

@ The day before he was killed,

he was visiting the six children

he sharedú with his newly ex-wife.

This is a huge local news story, not just local,

I mean really national.

This is a former popular, beloved NBA player

who now is a homicide victim.

@ [news] Wright's body wasn't found until 10 days

after he was killed.

Crime scene investigators made the scene,

they began to process the scene

and they determined that there were at least

two different calibres of weapons that were used.

One was a .380 and one was a nine millimetre.

So of course, they're going to collect that evidence,

that ballistic evidence, and then

send it out to be processed.

[narrator] Whilst they don't recover either of the weapons,

they do discover something else.

Investigators notice on the remains

that there's an expensive watch

still on these remains, which leads them to think,

you know, this isn't a robbery.

If this was a robbery, that watch would have been long gone.

Lorenzen was targeted.

[Darren] One of the gunshots was in the arm.

To an investigator, that would have been a defensive wound,

as if he's trying to put his arm up to block the gunshot.

The gunshots are being fired, and eventually, he just fell.

Two shots in the head, two shots in the chest.

That's personal.

Somebody killed him.

Who was it?

Only a monster would do something like that.

The rumour mill was hot and heavy and very active.

Everything from, of course, the obvious, the wife did it.

There was some type of jealous girlfriend

because Lorenzen was-- He was a ladies' man.

There was also a drug angle that he had somehow

was involved in some illicit drug sales

or the drugs scene in Memphis.

I heard a different-100 different stories,

so I didn't know who to believe.

I just really just entrusted Memphis Police Department

because, you know, they were the ones

who should have been handling it.

I mean, he's like the hometown hero,

one of the biggest names out of Memphis.

They should have been all over it.

[Darren] Every lead that came in, they worked those leads.

They tracked those leads until they reached a dead end.

And unfortunately, at some point,

the case became a cold case.

Now, I know there are some that would say,

this was never a cold case.

But you have exhausted all the leads that you have thus far.

It's really not anything you can do.

Deborah, she's-- her unwillingness

to give up, to fight, to find some answers for her son,

it's on a whole other level.

@ Even seven days a week, evenú after church on Sundays,

I was there every day.

And I see one of them big time police at Walmart

at a store somewhere. I'm going off out in public.

@ I wasn't going to shut up.

I kept telling them, my son is murdered.

It gets quiet.

Leads start to dry up.

You know, police went to people that they thought

should know what happened to him.

Everybody's saying they have no idea what happened.

They wasn't doing nothing at first, just sitting there,

waiting on somebody to come say something.

My son dead.

He's not coming back.

[Kristin] The police department even offers a reward

for people to come forward.

That doesn't work either.

Eventually, as most things do, the news moves on.

The community never did, and neither did Lorenzen's mother.

[Deborah] His birthday was in November, so I'm pumping it up.

Hello. Y'all not going to let his birthday

just go around and y'all not have nothing.

And I let them know, I'mma be down here.

I told 'em every day.

Lorenzen's mother, Miss Marion,

she was a thorn in people's side.

She kept Lorenzen.

She kept the investigation in the spotlight.

She would call.

She would email.

She would show up at headquarters

@at visits, unscheduled visits,ú different times of day,

sometimes at night.

"What is going on with this case?"

I don't know what these women doing

when my son's I was getting murdered in Memphis,

but they killed the wrong MF.

He's not from Memphis, he's from Mississippi.

And watch this Mississippi mama work.

Sure did.

[narrator] With no arrests and few answers,

Lorenzen Wright's mother, Deborah,

begins to focus her suspicions on one person.

I ain't know what had happened,

@ but I know who had done it.

[Michael] Deborah would always say, "Well, Sherra did it."

@I didn't want to believe that

'cause that's still not the person,

@ the Sherra that I know.

@ The Sherra I know was deeply in love with Lorenzen.

Through thick or thin.

Sherra's father was also one of Lorenzen's coaches.

She was five years older than Lorenzen.

Lorenzen was smitten with Sherra.

Lorenzen introduced me to Sherra,

I want to say his sophomore or junior year of high school

to where she was a junior in college.

So she's got some years on us.

But by the time he got his first year

at the University of Memphis, that's when the relationship

started to get serious, serious.

[Kristin] They had their first child, Lorenzen Jr.,

before Lorenzen was 20 years old.

@ They were married in 1998úwhile Lorenzen was in the NBA.

[Michael] And their love was real.

All I saw was a great, happy family.

[narrator] In 2003, the family suffers a devastating loss.

Sherra and Lorenzen had seven children together.

Unfortunately, in 2003, their 11-month-old daughter,

Sierra, died of sudden infant death syndrome.

[Joni] You know, losing a child is the number one stressor

in the world.

If you aren't able to share that grief,

it can really create aú divide in that relationship.

[narrator] Within a year,

the trial for Lorenzen's killer stalls.

The local press really stopped covering this story.

I mean, at some point there are no leads,

police aren't talking about it anymore

because they don't have anything.

[Darren] One of the limitations was time.

Unfortunately, Memphis at the time,

and to this day still,

@ is considered one of theúmost violent cities in America.

@ The initial investigatorsúsimply didn't have the luxury

of focusing solely onú Lorenzen Wright's murder.

@ They wasn't doing nothing.

[narrator] At least Lorenzen's children would be cared for.

After his divorce from Sherra,

he was required to maintain a life insurance policy

to provide for them should he die.

There was a million-dollar insurance policy,

and then there was his pension

that he would have received from the NBA.

After Lorenzen's murder, Sherra accessed

his one-million dollar life insurance policy.

[Michael] She loved to spend, spend, spend, spend.

I've seen her.

I took her out one day to furnish a house

and, you know, spend over $250,000 in two hours.

So I've seen this with my own eyes.

[narrator] Lorenzen's mother knows, too.

[Deborah] I used to tell her, "I don't know what's gonna happen."

Every year on the wedding anniversary,

you add a diamond to her ring.

I don't know if anybody ever seen it.

It's probably one of the most diamond rings

anybody ever seen.

That's all she wanted was that money.

Court records show

that she went through $970,000 of that money

within about 10 or 11 months of his murder.

And the fact that she goes through this money

in almost 10 months

really shows us what her priorities were.

And that was herself.

[Michael] Sherra definitely changed along the way.

After seeing all these, how other NBA wives are living,

and moms, and things like that, she wanted that same lifestyle.

You know, she wanted it, so she made sure she got it.

Five years after Lorenzen's murder,

Sherra published a book called

"Mr. Tell Me Anything."

It's about a cheating NBA player and his wronged wife.

It also brings up things about domestic violence.

She told people that it was based upon her life.

For supporters of Lorenzen and the people who loved him

and the people whose lives he changed,

this was incredibly upsetting.

[Deborah] Mr. Tell Me Anything.

Girl, you mean to tell me nobody never seen no scar on you,

so what, he whoop you with a pillow?

Make it make sense.

That's all I asked them to make it make sense.

Seeing her writing a book and really tarnish his name,

it made me feel like, why is she doing this?

I mean, what's the purpose?

This sucks. It's terrible.

[Kristin] They just knew that was not Lorenzen.

She was constantly out there saying, look at me, poor me.

But then she writes this book,

which is drawing so much attention to herself.

[narrator] Six years pass without an arrest.

Then in the summer of 2016,

Memphis Police's multi-agency gang unit

launches a renewed investigation.

[Darren] Six years had elapsed.

I was the operations commander for the multi-agency gang unit.

And sitting in my office one day,

and I had a Shelby County Sheriff deputy

who knocked on my door.

He said, you know, "Can I talk to you about something?"

He said, "I've had this source for several years,

and this source is telling me that he knows

who killed Lorenzen Wright."

A few days, a week later,

I had a couple of Memphis police officers

who were assigned to the gang unit.

Same thing, you know, "Can, you got a minute?

can we talk, we have a source that is giving us information

on who killed Lorenzen Wright.

And that the gun may be in a lake,

in an apartment complex in Mississippi.

@[Kristin] The tip about the gunú came from Jimmy Martin.

@Jimmy Martin is Sherra's cousin.

At this time, he is in prison.

He was convicted of murdering his girlfriend.

[Darren] The case was still assigned to the Homicide Bureau.

So I went to then Director Tony Armstrong,

and I said, boss, this is what I've got.

I really think we can solve this.

And he said, what do you need?

I said, I need to completely wall this off from everybody

in the police department.

we said, "Look, let's work this case like it happened yesterday.

Wherever the evidence leads us,

that's where we are going to go."

[narrator] Operation Rebound has begun.

Deborah called me and said,

"Hey, they're opening up the case again."

I'm like, "What? That's good. That's amazing."

So she said, "If they're going to open up the case,

that means that they already have some pretty solid lead.

We sent a couple of investigators out

to where Jimmy was housed

with Tennessee Department of Corrections.

And they interviewed him and they came back convinced

that we've got to drain this lake and find this gun.

Seven years go by.

So we're now in 2017, and out of nowhere,

local reporters start hearing about dive teams

@descending upon this location.

They got all this equipment out there

and probably 45 minutes into the dive, maybe even less,

we hear one of the divers communicate

to the communication team, "We got it."

I'm like, got what?

Don't-don't play with my emotions like this, please.

I can't handle this.

And in a few minutes, you know, they--

they came up, and they had this Tupperware container.

It was clear, had a white top on it,

had all this murky water in it.

They place it on the ground, and we all gather around.

They take the lid off, and he raised that gun

out of that water.

We called the DA.

We called the US attorney and informed them

that we had found what we thought

was one of the murder weapons in the Lorenzen Wright case.

We need this processed ASAP.

[Kristin] Police now know Jimmy Martin is telling the truth.

They should talk to him.

They should see what else he knows.

[Darren] So then we went back and interviewed him again.

Everything led back to Sherra Wright.

[narrator] Jimmy reveals that in 2010,

Sherra Wright has a deadly plan.

Sherra is now having a sexual relationship

with a man named Billy Ray Turner.

@He used to be the landscaper.

Lorenzen told me, Sherra's sleeping with

everybody in Memphis.

She's even sleeping with the lawn man.

He was also, I think, a deacon at our church.

He would also come over and do yard work for her

and Lorenzen at the time.

Sherra tells Billy Ray Turner and her cousin, Jimmy Martin,

that Lorenzen has put out a hit on her

and that it's either going to be him or me,

so we got to kill him.

Jimmy was present on several different occasions

where he, Billy, Sherra, they're all together

at Sherra's house.

And the promise to him was from Sherra,

once Lorenzen is dead,

Sherra would collect the insurance money

and then she would share some of that money

with Jimmy and Billy Turner.

So keep in mind, this is all the time

Jimmy is out on bond for that second-degree murder,

And so she also promised to hire a good attorney,

plus give him some money.

[narrator] Jimmy drops a bombshell.

This wasn't the first attempt on Lorenzen's life.

One of the interviews we had with Jimmy Martin,

he told us that Sherra had travelled to Atlanta,

and she gave them information on where

Lorenzen was living.

She was given the gate code, and she left a window open.

[Michael] And I remember getting off work one day,

and Sherra was there.

She said, I just want to drop off the kid

and check out y'all condo.

I'm going to head back to Memphis.

That's when I knew that she had

left the window open downstairs.

Lorenzen was like, hey, dude, did you leave

the window open downstairs the other day? I'm like, why?

Why would I do that?

He was like, well, you got to be careful,

because you don't know what's going to go--

what would go on or what could happen.

I think that she was threatening him.

Jimmy, Billy travelled to Atlanta,

@climbed in through the window.

It was dark in the apartment.

And they noticed a bald-headed guy lying on the couch.

There was no one else in the condo.

They knew that was not Lorenzen.

So they left.

[Michael] I can remember Lorenzen's last few days.

You know, he mentioned how he wanted to get back with Sherra.

Lorenzen was showing me the text message,

what was going on between them.

It was just all sexually related messages.

What can she can do to seduce him?

Worked like a charm.

So Lorenzen had a very, very soft spot for Sherra.

She knew that.

[Deborah] He was coming anyway for the baby shower.

But Sherra told him, you need to hurry up.

[Kristin] So Lorenzen does.

He's dropped off at her house by a friend,

which is the last time he's seen.

Shortly after midnight on the 19th of July,

Sherra lured him to that Callis Cutoff spot.

That's a spot that Lorenzen was very familiar with.

He and Sherra, that became kind of their lover's lane.

So they get to this remote location

and that is where Billy Ray Turner

is waiting for them to come.

He gets there. Uh, there's a confrontation.

And then the guns come out.

[gunshots]

He knew exactly what was happening.

He knew exactly who the trigger pullers were.

@ When the murder happened,ú Jimmy was not with them.

@ Jimmy was in Mississippi.

@ Sherra called him the nextú day and said, it was done.

It went through.

During that phone call, Sherra told Jimmy Martin

to go to the crime scene and clean it up.

[Darren] Nate told Jimmy exactly what happened.

He was running for safety.

He was trying to get to a place of safety.

[Kristin] And Jimmy Martin says that he was running like a deer

through the woods.

And you think about the fact

that they were hunting this poor man.

I mean, it's quite a disturbing reference.

[gunshots]

Sherra dropped the .380

in the field, at Callous Cutoff.

So they enlisted the help of Jimmy to go back the next day

to try and locate that weapon and to pick up shell casings.

And so they went back out and they cleaned up the scene.

They found the .380 and they cleaned up the scene.

Jimmy and Billy threw their murder weapons in that lake.

Sherra gets some of the insurance money.

She never gives Jimmy any money.

[Kristin] Now police have all of this information.

[narrator] Investigators know just how to draw the killers

out into the open.

We had already began the process

of writing the affidavit

so the courts would allow us

to listen to conversations on Billy's phone

as well as Sherra's phone.

We called Ms. Marion, and we told her,

"We found the murder weapon."

And if you want to talk to somebody,

talk to whoever you want to talk to.

And she did.

@ She talked to the news, and the news reported

that they had found a murder weapon.

Memphis Police Department confirmed that.

And almost immediately, you start seeing phone activity

with Sherra calling Billy and so forth and so forth.

And so we knew then that we were heading in the right direction.

Once the information was released

that the murder weapon was located,

Sherra began to search the internet.

How long does DNA last in water?

Can you get fingerprints off of a gun

if it's submerged in water?

[narrator] December 5, 2017,

seven and a half years after Lorenzen Wright's murder,

police are ready to make an arrest.

@ [witness] I saw the cops come in on him,

and I was wondering, "Is it for him?"

And I think he wasú wondering the same thing.

He kind of tried to step out the way,

@ and they said, "No, put yourú hands behind your back."

We indicted Billy, and we arrested him

and gave him an opportunity to talk, he would not talk.

So he was officially charged and the court proceedings began.

[narrator] 10 days later, they prepare to arrest Sherra.

We had provided information to marshals

about where she was.

She was at a basketball game with her kids

and they planned that they were,

once she leave the basketball game,

they would conduct a traffic stop

and take her into custody

and that they would notify us immediately at that point.

The marshal called and said, hey, we got her in custody

and sent us a picture.

So we said, the next thing we need to do,

we need to contact Miss Marion.

I was at my house laying on the couch,

and I was on my feet in two seconds,

@ saying, thank you, Jesus.

[Darren] We got her, brought her into the MGU office

in the conference room,

and there wasn't a dry eye in that room.

That was the best moment of that entire case.

We brought her in, once she was extradited back to Memphis.

It was her plan,ú she put it all together.

Billy doesn't do this without Sherra.

@ It's probably never evenú crossed his mind, you know?

So she put it in his head.

She planted the seed.

She followed through.

So Lorenzen is not here, 100% because of her.

[narrator] For more than 18 months,

Sherra sits on remand.

[Darren]ú Both of them were arrested.

Both of them remained in jail until trial.

And Sherra fired her first set of attorneys

and then hired another group.

And that group, after looking at the evidence,

realized that, you know, we better strike a deal.

[narrator] After initially denying any involvement,

Sherra changes course as herfirst-degree murder trial looms.

@Do you solemnly swear or affirm

the testimony you give in this court

@is the truth, the whole truth

@ and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Yes.

Sherra decided not to go through a full trial.

In July of 2019, really surprising everybody,

she pled guilty.

She received a 30-year prison sentence.

[narrator]ú On the 25th of July, 2019,

@ she accepts a plea deal

for facilitation of first-degree murder

@ and facilitation of attempted first-degree murder.

@ She tell the children, yes,ú I set it up for your daddy.

You know, I planned it.

So how your kids gonnaú forgive you when you say

@you planned murdering their dad?

I think Sherra got to the point

where Lorenzen had disappointed her,

and he wasn't making type of money that he was,

she wasn't living the lifestyle,

That that love turned into hatred.

[Deborah] She knew once he died, she'd get that million dollars.

That's what it was about money.

She wasn't thinking about nobody but the person

she could see in the mirror herself.

She wasn't thinking about those children.

Billy was offered an agree, a plea agreement as well.

He refused.

And of course he went to, went to court.

[narrator]ú On the 14th of March, 2022,

Billy Ray Turner goes on trial,

charged with first-degree murder,

conspiracy to commit first-degree murder,

and attempted first-degree murder.

@[Michael] When I saw those guysú in court, I felt disgusted.

They were both there. I saw them both.

And I just -I felt like, you know, along with Sherra's help,

you are the guys that helped her arrange all this.

You''re the reason why my friends not here anymore.

We assigned one of our investigators

@ to control Miss Marion.

Because if you've ever talked to her, especially in person,

you know, she is dynamite.

I mean, she's a wonderful person.

She's loving.

But she can be a handful.

He's a big guy.

And just his physical presence, we thought,

would kind of help kind of control Miss Marion.

And it didn't.

I asked him why did he murder my son,

and the judge told me to sit down and say,

I can't have no more bursts out like that.

He was going to ban me from the court if I did.

So I didn't get up no more after I asked him

why he murdered my son.

You fool.

You should have pled out first, dummy.

You just heard there a very emotional

and understandably emotional, Deborah Marion,

who's the mother of Lorenzen Wright.

[narrator] The jury hears testimony

that Sherra discussed wanting Lorenzen killed, with Billy.

She insisted, "He has a hit on me."

@ And what did she say sheú was going to do about it?

Well, Billy was standing there and was just like,

"Okay, Sherra, like, what?"

And she said, "It's him or me,

like, what do you mean, he has a hit on me,

he has to be gone."

@[narrator] The jury hears howú phone records place Billy

by the murder scene.

[news] Investigators say Turner's calls moved to a spot

near the crime scene as the basketball star called 911

amid gunfire shortly after midnight, July 19th 2010.

In March of 2022,

a jury found him guilty

of premeditated first degree murder.

And the main headline again,

the man accused of killing Lorenzen Wright,

found guilty by a jury on all three counts,

first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder,

and conspiracy.

The first-degree murder conviction

automatically means life in prison for Billy Turner.

[narrator] In 2021,

Sherra sought toú overturn her guilty plea,

claiming ineffective legal counsel,

but later withdrew her challenge.

In 2022, she is denied parole.

Her next hearing is scheduled for May 2027.

I can't wait till next year if I be still living here.

I'm going to ask them when they say about, you know,

her getting released, she's still young enough

to sit down and plan a murder?

She's still young enough to pull a trigger on a gun?

No.

I miss Lorenzen every single day,

@ I think about him every day.

@ As much as he loved his family and friends,

a lot of them were still vultures.

@A lot of them are still aroundú him because of his money.

And they always took.

@ I was with him before theú money, during the money,

@ and even after the money, I could care less.

You still my brother.

[narrator] Years after his murder,

Lorenzen's mother is keeping his name alive.

[Deborah] Some people walk up to me and say, Deb,

I know you don't want to talk.

Oh, yes, I do want to talk.

If I don't talk about him, he didn't exist.

So yes, I do want to talk about him.

I talk about him all day long.

I done forgave him.

I did that last year only because who I am.

But forget never, never.