Murder of Lorenzen Wright

Lorenzen Wright was a Memphis-area basketball player who spent thirteen seasons in the NBA after being selected seventh overall by the Los Angeles Clippers in the 1996 draft. He also played for the Atlanta Hawks, Memphis Grizzlies, Sacramento Kings, and Cleveland Cavaliers, and was a well-known local figure in Memphis, where he had played high school and college basketball.

On July 18, 2010, Wright left the Collierville, Tennessee, home of his estranged wife, Sherra Wright-Robinson, from whom he had separated in February 2010 amid divorce proceedings. It was the last time he was seen alive. In the early hours of July 19, 2010, a 911 call was placed from Wright's cell phone; eleven gunshots were audible while the caller was on the line with a Germantown, Tennessee, dispatcher. The dispatcher did not report the call to a supervisor until July 28, ten days later, a delay that hindered the investigation and later resulted in a payout to Wright's family.

Wright's family filed a missing-persons report on July 22, 2010. On July 28, 2010, his body was found in a wooded area on Callis-Cutoff Road, near Hacks Cross Road, and the case was investigated as a homicide. He was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Memphis. By 2011, a reward for information in the case had grown to $21,000, funded by the state of Tennessee, the city of Memphis, the Memphis Grizzlies, and Crime Stoppers.

The investigation remained unresolved for years. On November 9, 2017, a gun believed to have been used in the killing was recovered from a lake in Walnut, Mississippi. On December 5, 2017, Billy Ray Turner, a landscaper and church deacon in Collierville, was indicted on first-degree murder charges and held on $1 million bond. On December 15, 2017, Wright-Robinson, a former member of Turner's church, was arrested in Riverside, California. Records showed police had searched Wright-Robinson's home as early as August 1, 2010, and found burned pieces of metal and a letter addressed to Wright and her, though authorities did not disclose what significance the items held at the time. Wright's mother told a Memphis newspaper that she believed Wright-Robinson's motive involved a $1 million life-insurance policy on her son.

On July 25, 2019, Wright-Robinson pleaded guilty to facilitation of first-degree murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. In March 2022, a jury convicted Turner of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and attempted first-degree murder; he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The seven-year investigation had been one of the Memphis Police Department's more high-profile unsolved cases before the arrests.