'A big break': Lorenzen Wright's family celebrates birthday after years of court cases

Lorenzen Wright's mother spent her son's last 12 birthdays at his grave. With each visit, she got the feeling that "he couldn't rest." And she said he would not rest until "this" was over.

The "this" for his mother, Deborah Marion, finally came to a close after the two people convicted in Wright's killing were sentenced after over a decade of investigation. As Marion stood in front of his grave Sunday afternoon, with hardly a cloud in the sky, she said she could feel him resting — just as her shirt said.

"It feels good because in the past when I would come to talk to [Wright], his head was up, like, 'Mom, mom here'," Marion said. "But today, it's like he hasn't said a word. He's just resting. He hadn't been resting for 12 years."

Marion and her family drove out to Calvary Cemetery to celebrate Wright's birthday. It was scheduled to be on what would've been his 47th birthday, November 4, but the custom shirts the group wore Sunday were not ready at the time. Tomonique Marion, Wright's brother, arrived with the custom shirt on along with many others.

Along the top portion of the shirt are photos of Wright wearing jerseys from the various NBA teams he played for along with a closeup of his soon to be retired University of Memphis jersey.

"We have my brother, of course, basketball was one of his many passions," Tomonique Marion said. "You've got the Clippers right here, it was his first team he got drafted to. You've got the Cavs, he had a stint with them, with LeBron James. Memphis, for sure, he was a Memphis kid and put on for the town he loved."

Below the montage, the words "Now I can rest" meant the most to Tomonique.

"Now he can rest in peace," he said. "We finally got the justice that he deserves."

Wright was gunned down in a field in southeast Shelby County in July 2010. His death, and the subsequent years where little was definitively known about the case, garnered enduring national attention.

The case went cold for seven years before Memphis police announced they had found a gun they believed was used in Wright's killing in a lake in Walnut, Mississippi. That same year, in 2017, Billy Ray Turner and Sherra Wright — Lorenzen's ex-wife — were arrested and charged with his killing.

Sherra Wright entered a guilty plea in 2019 for orchestrating Lorenzen Wright's killing. She was sentenced to 30 years in prison. She was not granted parole in a May 2022 hearing. Her next parole hearing will be in 2027.

Turner's case went to a jury trial where he was found guilty on all three counts — first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and attempted first-degree murder — after less than three hours of jury deliberation. He was sentenced to serve 60 years in prison.

Although Deborah and Tomonique Marion bore the occasional smile at Lorenzen Wright's grave Sunday, some — including Deborah's sister Patricia Vassar — let out tears as the family added flowers around the headstone. By the end, the group began to smile and hug as white balloons were passed out.

"[Lorenzen] is going to get a big break after this," Marion said before the flurry of balloons were released.

Amid a flurry of laughter and overlapping words to Wright, the balloons floated away to dot the blue, nearly cloudless sky.

Lucas Finton is a news reporter for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by email at Lucas.Finton@CommercialAppeal.com and followed on Twitter @LucasFinton.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Lorenzen Wright's first birthday after 'justice he deserves'