‘Dummy’: Lorenzen Wright’s mother says what she would say to her son’s convicted killer
by: April Thompson
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Billy Ray Turner, the man convicted of killing basketball star Lorenzen Wright, has plenty to say from his prison cell. He has been talking exclusively with the WREG investigators about his push for a new trial.
But Deborah Marion, Lorenzen’s mother, says she isn’t buying the story Turner is selling.
These are the words of a mother still grieving. “Somebody needs to pay the price cause dead is dead,” Marion said. “They over-killed him. Two guns. Two people were shooting one– a lover and an ex-wife.”
Thirteen years can’t erase the pain that invaded Marion’s life the day her firstborn child was shot to death. But when she hears that Turner, the only man convicted of murdering Lorenzen, denies being the killer… she doesn’t want to hear it.
“Billy can go on. He got greedy and got caught,” said Marion. “He thought he had a perfect murder, but not with Lorenzen being my child. As long as the blood runs warm in my body, I wasn’t gonna rest. Somebody gonna have to do some time for mine. That is just simple.”
When Turner was convicted, Deborah Marion says a weight was lifted. Now, his life sentence is being appealed.
“I have been traumatized from the situation because of me being locked up, wrongfully convicted of this situation,” Turner said. He says things were not brought out in his last trial, and he wants them to be heard and for new eyes to look at the evidence.
There will also be a new attorney on his case since he says his former attorney didn’t represent him as he wanted. “There [were] a lot of things that he did not call, a lot of witnesses that was not presented. A lot of people that weren’t even mentioned in this case that would have set me free– but none of that happened.”
But Marion believes Billy Turner was in on the killing with Lorenzen’s ex, Sherra Wright.
And she says it’s because Billy wanted what Lorenzen had.
“Why Billy gone try to save him when he is trying to get in his spot,” Marion asked. “He wasn’t trying to save a rat’s [explicit] girl! He was trying to be what Lorenzen was in that big old house. He knew he could never afford it but said, ‘I don’t care. I can get with somebody who can.’”
Marion believes money was the key motive, but she also believes there was another lure between Sherra and Turner– sex.
WREG’s April Thompson asked Marion why she believed Turner got wrapped up in this situation. “Female… male. Bed sheets, hello! That’s the only thing that could coerce him to come on. He is weak. He is as weak as tall as he is, short.”
She continued, “Billy thought he was gonna be the next wing in the mansion. Yes, he did. Dumb Dumb. I don’t want to hear that she manipulated nothing. She ain’t manipulate [explicit]. He a grown [explicit] man.”
Marion has no empathy for Billy Turner, saying he got his day in court. When asked if she thought the trial was fair, she replied, “Well, yes, it was for what it was worth. Dummy, you could have pled out. Dummy. But you try to say what? Nothing. Look what you got- life. Dummy.”
The two have never spoken, but she couldn’t contain, and few could forget, her outburst in court after he was arrested.
“How could you have murdered my son? That’s what I need to know. Just how,” she yelled at Turner’s first court appearance. Turner never answered.
So we asked him what he would say to Marion now.
“I say to her, ‘I’m not the one that took his life. I’m not the one that that took all that from her. The one that took all that from her is Jimmy,’” Turner said.
As for Deborah, she would tell Turner, “Damn fool. I don’t want to hear she coerced you into nothing. You thought you were gonna get something? That’s why you did what you did.”
Billy Turner’s appeal is still making its way through court. Friday night, we dive into what’s next for the man convicted of killing Lorenzen Wright.
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