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Was it Suicide – or Murder?
By Randy Wyles | July 29, 2010
While family, friends and fans grieve the loss of former Atlanta Hawks star Lorenzen Wright, police are trying to determine exactly how Wright died – a puzzle that could have a long term effect on the future of his children as well as the rest of his family. It’s the type of case in which P.I.s are often asked to investigate – usually on behalf of the family.
It had been a bad year and most people knew that Lorenzen Wright had financial problems; his Atlanta home, estimated to be worth just over $1-million, was seized in January and his Eads, Tennessee home, worth at least $1.3-million, was repossessed in May.
During his 13 years and 778 games in the NBA, the 6-foot-11-inch power forward out of the University of Memphis had played for five different teams – averaging 8-points per game – his best performance was while he was with the Hawks. But despite talk of finding another team, Wright didn’t play at all last season.
He was last seen on July 19 leaving his ex-wife’s home around 2 a.m. According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, police say that a recorded call from Wright’s cellphone to 911 operators caught the sound of what could have been several gunshots from more than one weapon before the call ended.
The dichotomy of Wright’s financial problems versus the sound of multiple gunshots on a call from Wright’s cellphone are the main factors causing the uncertainty in the determination of the cause of death. The importance of the determination comes down to money and a question of whether a crime was committed.
If Wright’s cause of death was suicide, whether over money or any other personal problems, any insurance payments to surviving family members – including his six children – could be lost. Many insurance companies have very narrow parameters when paying a claim if the insured committed suicide. In some cases, no money is ever paid.
On the other hand, if the insured is murdered, there is usually a “double indemnity” clause which pays the benefactor twice the face value of the insurance policy. So, determining exactly how Wright died will make a difference in the insurance money that will go to his children.
Prior to becoming a private investigator I was a reporter in Texas. I once covered a story in which the county medical examiner had determined that the shotgun shooting death of a successful business owner in a Dallas suburb was a suicide. The family didn’t believe that their beloved husband and father – who had died from a shotgun blast to the abdomen – had committed suicide.
So, the family asked for a separate investigation.
And yes, despite what would seem to be a cumbersome, if not awkward way for someone to commit suicide – it can be done and is, in fact, done more frequently than one might think.
But in this case the shotgun blast had resulted in a large hole just beneath the man’s sternum – a strange place for a self inflicted shotgun wound. The man’s wife was not convinced it was suicide. She thought, given the late hour and the location – right behind their store in a strip mall – that it was a robbery gone horribly wrong.
Following the funeral, after the family and friends had all left the graveside service, the wife allowed the funeral director to raise the casket bearing her husband’ body back up from the grave and have it taken for another autopsy. Indeed, the medical examiner brought in from another state determined that the shotgun could not have been fired by the husband due to the proximity of the weapon and the angle of the shot in relation to the gunshot wound.
The county medical examiner amended the “cause of death” and the family was awarded double the face amounts listed on the victim’s insurance policies.
It was later discovered that a longtime employee – slightly intoxicated, angry and trying to take his own life with the shotgun in back of the store – accidentally fire the weapon, killing his friend and longtime employer. The employee told the police that he had returned to the store late that night to found his employer, lying fatally wounded, in the alley in the back.
It isn’t that police investigators and medical examiners aren’t good at their jobs; it’s that they are often overworked and go with the most logical evidence right in front of them at the time – because they have nine other cases waiting in the wings.
By contrast, private investigators take the time – that the police don’t often have – to sift through the evidence and, on occasion, even discover new evidence which can turn a case around, free an innocent person or find the real perpetrator of the crime.
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