Turner Sentenced to Life Plus 25 Years In Lorenzen Wright Murder and Conspiracy

July 8, 2022 - A Collierville man convicted in the 2010 shooting death of former Memphis NBA star Lorenzen Wright was sentenced Friday to life in prison, plus 25 years for related convictions, said Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich.

Defendant Billy Ray Turner, 51, is a landscape business owner and close friend of Sherra Wright, who pled guilty in 2019 to facilitation to commit first-degree murder and facilitation to commit attempted first-degree murder. She is serving a 30-year prison sentence.

Turner was convicted in March of premeditated first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and attempted first-degree murder. On Friday, Criminal Court Judge Lee Coffee sentenced him to life in prison for the murder, and 25 years each for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.

The 25 year sentences are to be served concurrently with each other, but consecutive to the life sentence. Turner also is serving a 16-year sentence on a 2019 guilty plea to convicted felon in possession of a weapon.

His total sentence is life plus 41 years.

Wright was last seen alive on July 18, 2010, when he left the home of his ex-wife. Early the next morning Germantown Police received a 911 call from Wright’s cell phone, but the call was interrupted by gunfire. Wright’s body was discovered July 28, 2010, in a field near Hacks Cross and Winchester. He had been shot multiple times. He was 34.

In November of 2017, authorities announced that they had located the murder weapon in a lake near Walnut, Miss. A month later, Turner and Sherra Wright were indicted.

The case was handled by Chief Prosecutor Paul Hagerman and Asst. Dist. Atty. Austin Scofield of the District Attorney’s Crime Strategies & Narcotics Prosecution Unit which prosecutes homicide cases and violent crimes associated with gang activity, including aggravated robberies, kidnappings, rapes, attempted murders, and narcotics trafficking.