Lorenzen Wright: Death of the Basketball Star

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 19 July 2022

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

Lorenzen Wright, an NBA star basketball player, goes missing on the night of July 18th, 2010 leading to a 10-day search that ends when investigators find Lorenzen Wright’s remains in a heavily wooded area near Germantown, Tennessee. By the time his body is found, the 6’11” star athlete has decomposed to the point of his remains totaling only 57 pounds, just one of the many struggles that investigators need to overcome in order to solve this case.

It took over 7 years, but investigators finally found the gun that they believe was used to murder Lorenzen Wright, leading to multiple convictions related to 1st Degree Murder.

In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and Jackie Howard provide details on Lorenzen’s life including the death of one of his children, the financial troubles that may have played a role in the motives behind his murder, and why it can be so difficult to find sufficient evidence in a forensic investigation that starts ten days after a death has occurred.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm a product of Mississippi Delta, I was born, grew up in that environment, and the river
0:26.3	itself dictates life all up and down it. It dictates the way you travel. It dictates the way you're
0:35.3	going to eat. It dictates the weather patterns that come in. And the one thing that you can say about
0:42.3	the Mississippi River is it cuts its way across our country is that it leaves marks everywhere it
0:47.4	goes. The life of Lorenzen Wright was marked by the river. It was marked by Memphis in that
0:55.4	place that he grew up in, that place he called home. And in July 2010, Lorenzen was last seen,
1:07.6	live, dealing with family. The people that he loved, the people that he took care of,
1:15.2	it was hot, it was sticky. It was a typical deep south summer and nobody knew that that was
1:22.8	going to be on July 18th. The last time anyone would see Lorenzen Wright alive.
1:30.3	I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags.
1:38.9	Jackie Howard, executive producer of Crime Stories with Nance Grace is joining me.
1:45.2	Jackie, you and I both grew up in the south and we know how temperature influences everything.
1:50.0	We know what those sweet sticky summers are like, hot, sultry. And Lorenzen had grown up in this
1:57.6	environment. His entire life, isn't it amazing how one man can impact so many people's lives,
2:04.8	particularly in the town of Memphis, Tennessee. It is true when as much as southerners like to talk
2:09.4	about the weather, there is nothing we like talking about more than hometown boys making it good,
2:18.0	hometown show that go on to have great success and that is just exactly what Lorenzen Wright did.
2:24.2	He was a local high school basketball star in Memphis. He went on to play college basketball
2:29.5	at the University of Memphis and then went on to play in the NBA with the Memphis Grizzlies.
2:36.6	You can't have anyone else that's considered more of a hometown boy than Lorenzen Wright.
2:43.6	And people described him not only as a basketball star, but as a good person.
2:49.4	He was always giving back. He was always good with children, helping out in the community,
	...

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