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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Editor's note: Sports Illustrated and Fox Sports 1 collaborated on a three-part investigation looking into the 2010 murder of ex-NBA player&lt;/em&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;Lorenzen&lt;/em&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;Wright.&lt;/em&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;Wright stood nearly 7 feet tall and weighed 225&amp;nbsp;pounds, much of it extravagant muscle. His high-wattage smile was framed by a goatee\u2014\u201Cmovie star looks,\u201D said Michael&amp;nbsp;Heisley, the late owner of the&amp;nbsp;Grizzlies, one of Wright\u2019s five teams during his 13-year NBA career.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Still, Wright\u2019s most striking feature might have been his voice, a low rumble that started deep in his gut and slowly worked its way up. With a hickory-smoked Southern drawl, the voice was straight out of a Memphis blues club. It seldom rose in volume or wavered in tempo. When you love life and it embraces you back, why yell, why panic?\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the words alone weren\u2019t bad enough, it was Wright\u2019s tone that made the cell-phone call to 911 so unsettling. Frantic, high-pitched, full of anguish, the voice sounded only faintly like his: &lt;em&gt;Gunshot\u2026gunshot.&lt;/em&gt; \u201CGoddamn!\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wright had recently moved to the Atlanta suburbs, but he was in Memphis on this day, as he often was. His hometown had a gravitational pull. Most of his friends lived there and most of his family, including his six kids\u2014four sons and two daughters\u2014then ages four to 15. This time he\u2019d gone back to attend his sister\u2019s baby shower.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was July 19, 2010 and the summer was in full swing. This was at odds with Wright\u2019s pro basketball career, which was winding down. Wright was 34 and hadn\u2019t played an NBA game in more than a year, his body and skills eroding in tandem. The dance was down to its last few shakes. But Wright was, characteristically, going to try to wring everything he could from his career, and he had expressed vague ambitions of playing overseas, maybe in Israel. But he had recently admitted to friends that, with his basketball career expiring, he\u2019d been feeling \u201Ckind of lost,\u201D that his compass was failing him. And wherever he was calling from shortly after midnight on July 19, it was not where he wanted to be. That, you could tell from his voice.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He had barely spat out the word &lt;em&gt;Goddamn&lt;/em&gt;when the rest of the audio kicked in: the &lt;em&gt;pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop&lt;/em&gt;of gunfire. At least nine shots were fired at Wright, likely coming from at least two weapons, one small-caliber, the other medium-caliber. Shots pierced Wright\u2019s head and chest\u2014an autopsy report would assert that \u201Cadditional gunshot wounds cannot be excluded\"\u2014probably killing him in seconds.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CHello? Hello? Can you hear me?\u201D asked the 911 dispatcher in Germantown,&amp;nbsp;Tenn. The line went dead. When the dispatcher called back, there was no answer. The location of the call could not be pinpointed, because it came from outside of the Germantown jurisdiction. Unaccountably, however, the dispatcher did not report anything to a supervisor until eight days later, an error of omission that would later hamper the police investigation\u2014and cost the district an undisclosed sum paid to Wright\u2019s family in a legal settlement.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, Deborah Marion\u2019s maternal intuition was kicking in. Not only hadn\u2019t she heard from her son, but her calls and texts to him were going unreturned. On July 22 she filed a missing person\u2019s report, ominously telling police, \u201CWhen y\u2019all find him, it\u2019s not&amp;nbsp;gonna&amp;nbsp;be good.\u201D Then she waited, knowing that with each passing day, the odds of a happy outcome were diminishing.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200BOn July 28, 10 days after the 911 call, cadaver dogs searched a remote wooded area of southeast Memphis, behind strip malls and McMansions, not far from Deborah\u2019s home, between Germantown and Hacks Cross. Callis Cutoff, it was called, a shortcut that only locals would know, one that Wright had used when he bought a house nearby.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;There police found&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;Wright\u2019s body. The frame that once took charges from&amp;nbsp;Shaquille&amp;nbsp;O\u2019Neal now weighed 57 pounds and was so badly decomposed\u2014due to rain, heat and scavenging animals\u2014that there could be no open-casket funeral. Strangely, Wright was still wearing a gold necklace and an expensive watch.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When Deborah arrived, the police tape had already been unfurled. She had to be restrained from crossing it by a female officer. She says it\u2019s a good thing she wasn\u2019t wearing her running shoes. \u201CAin\u2019t no way she could\u2019ve caught me,\u201D says Deborah, who was then in her early&amp;nbsp;50s. \u201CShe don\u2019t know me. I\u2019m from Mississippi, baby.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lorenzen Wright was one of 89 murder victims in Memphis in 2010. Though his date of death is listed when his body was found, he was almost surely killed on July 19, when that 911 call was placed. Those are the &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; of Wright\u2019s slaying. But the more important questions\u2014&lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;\u2014are unresolved. Five years after one of the most high-profile murders of a professional athlete, there is no suspect, no motive and no answer.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Memphis is a city of ghosts and spirits. They haunt&amp;nbsp;Graceland, and the Lorraine Hotel, where in 1968 Martin Luther King&amp;nbsp;Jr. was assassinated as he stood outside room 306. They move through long-closed music studios and abandoned streetcars. They walk the cemeteries throughout town, the legacy of the city\u2019s infamous murder rate.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Early on,&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;Wright knew of Memphis\u2019s spectral qualities. He was seven when his father, Herb\u2014a mountain of a man who once had an NBA tryout with the Jazz\u2014was shot. Herb was working for the Memphis Parks Department. On a stinking hot summer day he kicked a few mouthy kids out of the gym. One of them returned with a gun and shot Herb in the back. Herb continues to coach kids to this day, but he would never walk again.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Still, Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;loved Memphis, a city which often felt more like a large town. He was from Memphis; he was &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt;&amp;nbsp;Memphis. He liked the music and the churches and the barbecues joints. \u201CHe was like the king of the city, hometown hero stuff,\u201D says Rewis (Raw Dog) Williams, a longtime friend. \u201CHe was so proud to say, &lt;em&gt;This is where I\u2019m from&lt;/em&gt;.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lorenzen\u2019s parents separated when&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;was very young, though both parents remained active in his life. After shuttling between his mom\u2019s home in Oxford, Miss., and his dad\u2019s 80 miles away in Memphis, he moved to Memphis full-time as a high school senior. He started dating Sherra Robinson, whose dad, Julius, was his AAU coach. She was almost a half-decade older\u2014and had dated the soul singer Isaac Hayes\u2014but she and Lorenzen clicked. Though he was a McDonald\u2019s All-American with a full slate of college scholarship offers, he committed to Memphis State (now University of Memphis). \u201COf course he wanted to stay local,\u201D says Herb. After two seasons he was drafted No. 7 by the&amp;nbsp;Clippers&amp;nbsp;in the 1996 NBA draft, becoming a millionaire overnight.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wright\u2019s personality was apparent in his game. He could take over when necessary but was perfectly comfortable bringing his energy and athleticism to bear as a rebounder, shot-blocker and dirty-work warrior. \u201CHe developed what they call in Memphis &lt;em&gt;the howl&lt;/em&gt;,\u201D says Herb. \u201CYou know, you get a rebound and let out a howl, elbows out. &lt;em&gt;Every rebound is supposed to be mine.\u201D&lt;/em&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When Wright was traded to the Grizzlies in June of 2001, he was like Odysseus coming home to Ithaca. \u201CHe was the face of Memphis,\u201D says Dennis McNeil, a longtime friend and native&amp;nbsp;Memphian&amp;nbsp;who is now a member of the Grizzlies\u2019 security staff. \u201CHe wasn\u2019t as big as Penny [Anfernee&amp;nbsp;Hardaway] was, but that made him kind of bigger here because people had an opportunity to see him and touch him and play with him and do all those things you couldn\u2019t do with Penny because he was in New York or Phoenix and doing commercials.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wright opened a sports bar and spent a small fortune buying Grizzlies tickets for family and friends. He spread his wealth around town like a crop duster, buying homes and cars and paying for friends and relatives to go to college. He bought shoes for high school teams and underwrote a youth league. Remember the&amp;nbsp;crushingly&amp;nbsp;sad news report of a nine-year-old Memphis boy who lived with his mother\u2019s corpse for a month, fearful that he\u2019d be sent to foster care? Wright heard the story and helped set up a trust fund for the boy. \u201CPoll people in Memphis\u2014from his teammates in high school to the NBA\u2014and they\u2019ll tell you the same thing,\u201D says Elliot Perry, a former NBA player from the city.&amp;nbsp;\u201CRen&amp;nbsp;was fantastic, this big guy with this humble spirit.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I saw this firsthand. In 2002, I was reporting a story for SI on NBA players and their entourages. Wright\u2019s name surfaced repeatedly. He was \u201Cthe Michael Jordan of posses,\u201D one NBA executive said, laughing. When I met Wright, he copped to it without embarrassment and eagerly introduced me to his crew, the Wright Stuff, its name emblazoned in matching tattoos.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When it\u2019s white guys in Hollywood it\u2019s an entourage, worthy of eight cable seasons plus a borderline&amp;nbsp;unwatchable&amp;nbsp;movie. Black kids in NBA circles are dismissed as a posse. But really, the two groups weren\u2019t much different. Each member of the Wright Stuff was there for a reason. Raw Dog was Wright\u2019s point guard at Booker T. Washington High School; as the two kids shared Taco Bell and big dreams, they vowed that if one of them blew up, he would look after the other. A decade later, Wright was still honoring his promise. The Wright Stuff\u2019s driver was there mainly to make sure Herb, confined to a wheelchair, made it to Grizzlies home games. The cook was there to offset Wright\u2019s partiality to the local grease-based diet. Dennis McNeil helped with security. The chief duty of one crew member was to wake Wright up at 9:15 each morning.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wright saw it as his duty to elevate as many Memphis friends and family members as possible: \u201CI wanted [them] to share in some of my success.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200BThere was plenty of it. Wright was known as an amiable teammate, a natural leader, a spindle on which his teams were wound. Wright played nearly 800 NBA games and earned more than $55 million in salary.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;By the end, though, he was conforming to&amp;nbsp;clich\u00E9, the numbingly familiar profile of the athlete making a mess of his post-career life, as the money and the cloud of fame dissolve in tandem. Wright spent prodigiously and with little record-keeping. By 2010 his million-dollar home in Atlanta was being repossessed, as was another residence in suburban Memphis.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He also had questionable associations. According to FBI documents, in 2008 Wright sold a 2008 Mercedes-Benz sedan and an \u201907 Cadillac&amp;nbsp;Escalade&amp;nbsp;to Bobby Cole, a brother-in-law of Dennis McNeil. Cole was known throughout Memphis for his connection to Craig&amp;nbsp;Petties, the city\u2019s longtime drug kingpin, who had ties to Mexican cartels. (In 2009&amp;nbsp;Petties&amp;nbsp;would plead guilty to 19 charges, including murder. He is serving nine concurrent life sentences in federal prison without the possibility of parole.)\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When Cole was indicted for drug distribution in 2007, he offered to turn over to the DEA vehicles he had purchased with drug money. They included the Mercedes-Benz and&amp;nbsp;Escalade&amp;nbsp;he had purchased from Wright, which were still registered in Wright\u2019s name. In 2012, Cole would be sentenced to eight years for trafficking millions of dollars worth of cocaine into Memphis and millions of dollars in profit back to Mexico. It\u2019s unclear from the documents whether Wright knew of Cole\u2019s drug trafficking.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also in keeping with many retired athletes, Wright\u2019s marriage disintegrated.&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;and&amp;nbsp;Sherra&amp;nbsp;had wed young and had their rough times, not least in 2003 when their 11-month-old daughter, Sierra, died of SIDS.&amp;nbsp; \u201CI don\u2019t think&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;ever recovered from it,\u201D&amp;nbsp;Sherra&amp;nbsp;says. \u201CI dug into my spiritual grounding, and&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;didn\u2019t have that to dig into.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;They split. They reconciled and renewed their vows. They split again. In February 2010 they divorced. Wright was ordered to pay $26,000 a month in child support and maintenance. He soon fell behind.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200BSherra&amp;nbsp;has since alleged that she was a victim of domestic violence and that during the marriage&amp;nbsp;Lorezen&amp;nbsp;was \u201Cjuggling [his] women.\u201D But she says it wasn\u2019t the violence or the philandering that doomed the marriage. \u201CYou have to understand that as an NBA player, you\u2019re subjected to a certain amount of theft, violence,\u201D she says. \u201CPeople see you as this bigger-than-life person, so you have to be careful who you bring into your surroundings.&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;was kind of carefree in that area, and I was a little different. I possessed a spirit of discernment, so I could discern whether a person was a person who I wanted to be around or not. And when things started getting to the point where I didn\u2019t know or I felt uncomfortable, I finally left.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lorenzen Wright\u2019s memorial service, held at FedEx Forum, was an &lt;em&gt;occasion&lt;/em&gt;. An All-Star team of NBA players attended, former teammates and childhood friends on the order of Penny Hardaway, Bonzi Wells,&amp;nbsp;Zach Randolph and Damon Stoudamire. They were joined by thousands of&amp;nbsp;Memphians, who were both overcome by sadness and irate that their city had done&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;wrong.&amp;nbsp;Heisley, then the team\u2019s owner, spoke. So did Memphis mayor AC Wharton, who vowed that justice would be done.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the funeral was a civic event, so was the investigation. Memphis became a city of amateur detectives out to solve the crime. One reason was Wright\u2019s celebrity; another was personal experience. Many were well aware that the city\u2019s homicide unit was overworked and undermanned; that too often those with information are too scared to come forward; that the circumstances in Wright\u2019s case\u2014the botched 911 response, the decomposed body, the remote setting where the body was found\u2014would overwhelm the investigators. Around the city, \u201CWho killed Ren?\u201D was prime fodder for conversation. Geoff Calkins, a columnist for &lt;em&gt;The Commercial Appeal&lt;/em&gt;, wrote at the time, \u201CA Memphis tragedy has morphed into a Memphis whodunit. In four short days, we\u2019ve gone from grieving for a favorite son to sifting through clues.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;One tidbit: Neighbors noted that on the night of July 19, Wright and a male acquaintance ignited a bonfire in the backyard fire pit of&amp;nbsp;Sherra\u2019s&amp;nbsp;house in the suburb of&amp;nbsp;Collierville. \u201CI thought it was strange,\u201D one neighbor, Patricia Coleman told reporters, \u201Cbecause it was like one of the hottest days of the year.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not surprisingly, scrutiny first centered on&amp;nbsp;Sherra. When word leaked that Wright\u2019s body had been found, hundreds of&amp;nbsp;Memphians, including&amp;nbsp;Hardaway, converged at the crime scene ringed by police tape. Wendy Wilson, a former personal assistant to Wright who was in the crowd, urged police to \u201Clook hard at his ex-wife.\u201D Wilson would later claim to have voice recordings of&amp;nbsp;Sherra&amp;nbsp;threatening&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;if she found him with another woman. (Deborah Marion said she heard the recordings, and the audio files were turned over to the Memphis police.)\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200BSherra was reportedly $3 million in debt, and speculation in some corners was that this gave her a financial motive in Lorenzen\u2019s killing. Her attorney went public shooting down that theory, telling the New York &lt;em&gt;Daily News&lt;/em&gt; that Lorenzen was \u201Cbroke\u201D at the time of his death.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The investigators, too, questioned Sherra&amp;nbsp;initially, a common police practice when a spouse is murdered. She is the last known person to have seen him alive. On July 22,&amp;nbsp;Sherra&amp;nbsp;told&amp;nbsp;Collierville&amp;nbsp;police that&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;had left her home on July 19 with an unknown person in an unknown vehicle.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What\u2019s more, she said, he departed with cash and a box of drugs, and she overheard him say in a phone call that he was going to \u201Cflip something for $110,000.\u201D He was then picked up by a driver she could not identify. She has since asserted that she never characterized the contents of the box as drugs. She now says, \u201CThat\u2019s media.&amp;nbsp;Sherra&amp;nbsp;Wright didn\u2019t say that.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;After the body was found, homicide detectives spent that weekend searching&amp;nbsp;Sherra\u2019s&amp;nbsp;home, concentrating on the backyard fire pit.&amp;nbsp;Sherra&amp;nbsp;was also reportedly called to appear before a grand jury. She was never charged.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another theory: Wright crossed a crime syndicate and was murdered as a result.&amp;nbsp;Sherra&amp;nbsp;told investigators that six weeks before her ex-husband\u2019s disappearance, three men wearing trench coats had visited her home looking for him.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;There were also the cars that&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;had sold to Bobby Cole. And the fact that Wright\u2019s jewelry and watch were intact, which suggested that this was a professional hit, not a robbery. And the fact that the body was found just a few miles from the Memphis airport; had the hired assassins simply left Wright for dead and then jumped on a plane?\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asked about a connection between Wright\u2019s murder and a gang, Mike Ryall, deputy chief of investigative services with the Memphis Police Department, bristles. \u201CI\u2019m not going to comment on that right now,\u201D he says. \u201CWe just need to withhold some information so that we can maintain some integrity about the ongoing investigation.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, Buddy Chapman, the former director of Memphis police force who once investigated Elvis\u2019 death and is now executive director of Crimestoppers of Memphis and Shelby County, is happy to offer this explanation: \u201CMy personal opinion has been all along that he owed a lot of money to the wrong people and that his murder was a message: \u2018If you owe us money you better pay us. It doesn\u2019t matter who you are or how important you are. And you need to pay us the entire amount.\u2019\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CAnd I think quite frankly the reason we haven\u2019t gotten any substantive tips that allowed us to look at anything was because the people that killed&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;Wright probably flew in here from who knows where\u2014Prague, Mexico City, wherever\u2014[and] called to meet him to collect the money. He didn\u2019t have all the money. They killed him and got on the plane and left.\u2008.\u2008.\u2008.There\u2019s somebody out there that knows everything. And if that somebody is from Memphis, then for $21,000 [the reward being offered] we would have gotten a call.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wright\u2019s friends and family rebutted this speculation quickly and adamantly. They say he might have been trying to raise cash, but consorting with known drug dealers was unthinkable to him. \u201CI &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; heard anything about drug stuff, and I was with him every day,\u201D says Rewis Williams.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI never saw&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;with a shady character,\u201D adds Wendy Wilson. \u201CEver.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Months passed, and there was no progress on the case. The heated speculation has cooled. Sure, Nancy Grace devoted a breathless segment to the case (\u201CThe Shooting Death of an NBA Star\u201D) on her television show. In the summer of 2011 there were a few one-year anniversary stories. Deborah Marion held a one-year vigil in downtown Memphis at which her son was recalled fondly, but she was disappointed by the turnout. Even with a new lead detective assigned to the investigation, the case had clearly stalled.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A spasm of interest flared up in 2012. As part of his divorce settlement with&amp;nbsp;Sherra,&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;had taken out a $1 million life insurance policy to benefit the six children. But within months of collecting it, according to public records, the account had dwindled to $5.05 (Sherra contends the money was spent responsibly).&amp;nbsp;Sherra&amp;nbsp;reportedly spent $339,000 on a foreclosed home she placed in the children\u2019s names. But an accounting revealed that she had spent the rest of the death benefits on everything from a $32,000&amp;nbsp;Escalade&amp;nbsp;to a $11,750 trip to New York City to $69,000 in furniture for a new home.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Herb Wright launched a legal battle against&amp;nbsp;Sherra&amp;nbsp;to oversee his grandkids\u2019 inheritance. She&amp;nbsp;counterclaimed&amp;nbsp;that Herb should be removed as executor of&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen\u2019s&amp;nbsp;will. He was represented by Ruby Wharton, wife of the Memphis mayor. It was an ugly affair, covered by the local media. Each side accused the other of financial mismanagement. But when Herb and&amp;nbsp;Sherra&amp;nbsp;reached an undisclosed settlement, they hugged in the courtroom.&amp;nbsp;\u201CSherra&amp;nbsp;is his ex-wife, and the mother of my grandkids,\u201D says Herb.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200B&lt;em&gt;Sports Illustrated&lt;/em&gt; undertook this investigation in partnership with Fox Sports. At one point Matt Schlef, a Fox Sports producer, asked Sherra, \u201CDid you have any part in Lorenzen\u2019s murder?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;After a pause, she responded, \u201CAt first, I\u2019m a wife, then I\u2019m a mother, and then thirdly I\u2019m an author. The law enforcement should do what\u2019s best to find out who\u2019s the killer.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Schlef: \u201CYou understand obviously why I had to ask that?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sherra: \u201CI do. But I\u2019m a wife, a mother, an author, uh, I let people do what, what, what they\u2019re good at doing and I\u2019m just going to do what I\u2019m good at doing. Um, they need to spend time and focus and find out what happened to him. We all need to know.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;******\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The analytics and advanced stats that help sports teams evaluate players, decide whom to draft and determine how to position the defense? Big data is transforming countless other industries and endeavors, too, including city policing. In 2005, the Memphis Police Department began using predictive analytics software to try to anticipate crime and to deploy officers more efficiently. If the empirical evidence suggests that a disproportionate amount of crime is being carried out in a certain neighborhood between certain hours, resources are shifted accordingly.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It\u2019s been a success. Still, Memphis is undeniably a rough town. In April the FBI listed it as the third-most dangerous city in America, with 124 murders last year. Even if Memphis matches the national clearance rate for murders\u2014roughly 65%\u2014that means that 40 or so go unsolved every year. A lot of those cases have stacked up since Wright\u2019s death.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The status of Wright\u2019s investigation is unclear. One member of the Memphis police force, not authorized to speak for attribution, says that the case is \u201Cas cold as cold gets.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Deborah Marion goes further: \u201CIt\u2019s not cold; it\u2019s frozen.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not so, says Ryall: \u201CWe don\u2019t consider it a cold case. It\u2019s not in our cold case unit.\u201D He says there have been leads as recently as earlier this year.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Buddy Chapman of Crimestoppers is less optimistic. \u201CYou never know what\u2019s going to happen; somebody might say the wrong thing to somebody,\u201D he says. Then he pauses. \u201CI think it\u2019s a very good possibility it won\u2019t be solved.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the absence of answers, family members respond in different ways.&amp;nbsp;Sherra&amp;nbsp;Wright, now 44, has remarried and runs a ministry, Born 2 Prosper. Last year she published a roman-a-clef titled &lt;em&gt;Mr. Tell Me Anything&lt;/em&gt;, the tale of a philandering NBA player who moves to Memphis and marries an older woman. From the promotional material: \u201C&lt;em&gt;Despite her nurturing efforts, corruption and deceit took their stable places in his life. A breaking point is reached. She makes a life-altering decision. Does it work out for her good? Did all his lies finally catch up to him? Would he or she pay the ultimate price&lt;/em&gt;?\u201D According to&amp;nbsp;Bookscan, a data provider for the book industry, the novel has sold seven copies.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sherra Wright-Robinson, as she is now called, plans to move to Houston later this year. \u201CYou want the closure,\u201D she says. \u201CI think I want it. I think I want to know.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Herb Wright, too, has attempted to move forward. He says, \u201CYou can\u2019t drop your head and feel sorry for yourself and say, \u2018Why me?\u2019 You just have to carry on. And it was really hard when that happened to Lorenzen. I, you know, I was in denial for a long time.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When he reflects on his son, he uses variations of the word &lt;em&gt;proud&lt;/em&gt;. But Herb prefers to do the work of grieving alone. There\u2019s something almost Shakespearean about the Wrights\u2019 story: a father and son both felled by firearms. The father survived; the son was less fortunate. But Herb would prefer not to venture there. \u201CThis is the first interview that I\u2019ve given,\u201D he says. \u201CIt will probably be the last. But I felt like five years, it\u2019s time to say something. But it\u2019s just not something that I like talking about. I lost a person that I cared more about than myself.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He still lives in Memphis and still coaches youth basketball, traveling around the South. One of the walls of his home is adorned with a life-size poster of&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen, looking simultaneously ferocious and approachable. \u201CI see him every morning when I pass by, you know,\u201D says Herb. \u201CHe will always be that age, you know, looks just like that, in our mind and hearts.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;To say that Deborah takes a different approach would be an understatement. She says that when&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;died she lost more than her first child. \u201CWe were like this, you hear me?\u201D she says, knotting her fingers. \u201CWe kinda grew up together. That was my brother and my son,\u201D she says. \u201CHe went to his death with some of my secrets.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200BHer grief is interlaced with anger and energy: She has spent the last half-decade working as an unpaid homicide investigator. Her house at the end of a middle-class cul-de-sac doubles as an evidence locker. She keeps binders filled with notes and laminated news clippings about Lorenzen\u2019s murder. They were moved to a storage facility once she ran out of room at the house. Her lawyerlike questioning of her son\u2019s friends and acquaintances has bruised relationships. She does not care. \u201CI want to keep my son\u2019s name out there, because his name came down in Memphis trash,\u201D she says. \u201CAs long as I got blood still running warm in my body, I\u2019m gonna be doing something. Ain\u2019t nobody else gonna tell me when I\u2019m tired of doing [something] for my child. Nobody, &lt;em&gt;mmm mmm&lt;/em&gt;. I\u2019m from Mississippi. You can\u2019t piss in my face and tell me it\u2019s right. I\u2019m gonna taste that salt. They killed my child!\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Her theory in the case centers on both Sherra and organized crime. Of Sherra\u2019s literary effort, Deborah says, \u201CThis is the book I&amp;nbsp;wanna read: &lt;em&gt;How I Orchestrated Getting My Ex-Husband Killed.&lt;/em&gt;\u201D She believes Memphis gangs were involved, and she has vowed to avenge the killing herself. She has gone so far as to prepare a notebook thick with instructions about her funeral and burial. \u201CI ain\u2019t afraid of death, and I ain\u2019t playing,\u201D she says. \u201CSome of my family members are scared, but I\u2019m not.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;At one point she shared her revenge fantasy with her psychologist, who tried to dissuade Deborah and added that psychologists are duty-bound to report such fantasies to the police. Deborah stood firm. \u201CYou [didn\u2019t] bury anything you birthed into the world,\u201D Deborah said, \u201Cso you don\u2019t know what I feel.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;She is not totally fearless, though. Her voice catches when she talks about her 15-year-old son, Tomonique Marion. Lorenzen\u2019s half-brother is, undeniably, a&amp;nbsp;baller. He already stands about 6' 4\" and is starting to fill out his frame. Deborah says that when she watches him play, she\u2019s transported back a quarter-century to when she was watching&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen. Except this time she is wracked by ambivalence. She says, \u201CI tell him, \u2018Quit playing so hard; you don\u2019t need to get all those rebounds, you don\u2019t need to get all those shots; quit playing so hard.\u2019\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why?\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI don\u2019t want him to be as good as his brother,\u201D she says. \u201CI don\u2019t need another NBA player. I just need a child that goes to work and takes care of his wife and kids and that\u2019s it. I don\u2019t need another NBA player because all money is not good money.&amp;nbsp;Lorenzen&amp;nbsp;was an NBA player, a millionaire, knew everyone, and look what happened. He ends up dead, and no one knows a thing.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/nba/2015/10/19/lorenzen-wright-murder-mystery-memphis-grizzlies>