UPDATE: Sherra Wright set to appear in California courtroom today. The court is expected to extradict her back to Memphis to face charges in the murder of her ex-husband Lorenzen Wright. More details as this story unfolds.
Operation Rebound – the ongoing investigative probe that led to Billy R. Turner being charged with murdering NBA stalwart Lorenzen Wright – now has snared Wright’s ex-wife, Sherra Wright-Robinson.
U.S. Marshals arrested Wright-Robinson in Riverside, Calif. Friday night. She has been indicted and faces a string of charges: conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, criminal attempt first-degree murder and first-degree murder.
No timetable was given for Wright-Robinson’s transfer to Memphis during a press conference at Memphis Police Department headquarters Saturday morning.
“This really begins the process of justice,” Shelby County District Atty. Amy Weirich said. “There are bits and pieces to this case that have been solved. … They (Turner and Wright-Robinson) are presumed innocent until proven guilty. … They will be given every protection they are provided under the state constitution and the federal constitution.”
Major Darren Goods, Operations Commander for the Multi-Agency Gang Unit, detailed the course that led to the arrests and indictments of Wright-Robinson and Turner. Operation Rebound, he said, was the perfect title for the investigation of Wrights death in July of 2010.
“In basketball, when you get a rebound, it gives you a second chance. It gives you another chance to score the basket. It gives you another opportunity to win the case…That’s what we were thinking…This would give us a second chance to bring some closure to this case and give this grieving family some relief.”
Goods said unit investigators knew that a lake in Walnut, Miss. previously had been searched – based on information – for a murder weapon and that none had been found
“As much as we tried to steer away from that (the lake), all the evidence, all the information that these guys (investigators) were receiving was leading us back to that lake. We knew we had to have the best of the best if we were going to stand any chance of finding any evidence. So we reached out to our federal partners.”
The FBI’s evidence recovery dive team entered the case.
“They came in and at the end of the day they found the murder weapon. That weapon was taken to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and it was verified that it was, in fact, one of the murder weapons.”
As the investigation continued, the governing mindset was to “keep it simple,” Goods said.
“We followed the evidence. That evidence led us to Billy R. Turner and Sherra Wright being involved in the homicide of Lorenzen Wright. The evidence solved this case. We just had a group of guys, a group of women who listened to the evidence. They were able to interpret the evidence and they just followed it where it led us.
Goods said in late May, early June of 2016 several members of the gang unit task force approached him, saying that they had some information on the Lorenzen Wright case that they wanted to take a look at.
“We went to the command and said, “We’ve got this information. Can we take a look at this case? Can we take a second look at this case? “
They got the go-ahead.
“We had no preconceived notions, no preconceived ideas, no preconceived suspects. We looked at this case as if it was something that just happened. We wanted to investigate it as if it had just happened. …We actually went to the crime scene and walked in Lorenzen’s final steps.”
An hours-long session with “partners” in the Collierville Police Department yielded dividends.
“They gave us critical background on this case that we were not aware of,” Goods said. “Based on that information and based on the additional information that investigators were receiving, we knew we had a pretty good chance of doing something with this case.”
MPD Director Michael Rallings said investigators would continue to follow the evidence tail.
“If it leads to more arrests, if it leads to more indictments, then so be it,” Rallings said. “If you are involved in this case, I would encourage you to come forward now before we come get you.”
Wright-Robinson and Turner knew each other, Rallings said in response to a question, choosing not to go further.
Asked if the criminal attempt first-degree murder charge meant that there had been an attempt to kill Wright before his actual homicide, Rallings said yes, choosing not to say when.
Recapping the homicide
Wright’s body was discovered July 28, 2010, in a field near Hacks Cross and Winchester. The 34-year-old Wright was shot multiple times sometime between July 17 and July 20 of that year, the indictment alleges.
Wright, who had six children, was last seen on July 18, 2010. He was leaving the home of his ex-wife, who, according to an affidavit, later told police that she saw him leave her home carrying money and a box of drugs.
At the time, she also told investigators that before Wright left she overheard him on the telephone telling someone that he was going to “flip something for $110,000,” according to the affidavit.
Wright left her home in a car with a person she could not identify, she said. The affidavit said Sherra Wright gave the statements to Collierville, where she lived, on July 27.
A police dispatcher in Germantown reported receiving a call from Wright’s cellphone in the early morning of July 19. Dispatchers said they heard noises like gunshots before the line went dead.
Dispatchers said they didn’t alert patrol officers or commanders because they couldn’t confirm it came from their jurisdiction. They didn’t send a patrol officer or relay the information to Memphis police until days later.
Wrights mother filed a missing-person report with the Collierville police on July 22, 2010.
Bullet fragments were lodged in Wright’s skull, chest and right forearm, an autopsy report revealed. Badly decomposed, the corpse weighed 57 pounds
NOTE: To reach CrimeStoppers of Memphis and Shelby County, Inc., call 528-CASH (528-2274).
