Convicted Marietta hedge fund manager Kirk Wright showed no signs that he was planning a Memorial Day weekend suicide in jail, officials said Monday.

South Fulton Municipal Regional Jail Chief John Mansch didn't pick up any hints when he spoke briefly with Wright on Wednesday after the prisoner was convicted in federal court for a fraud scheme that bilked investors out of millions. Among the Harvard-educated hedge fund manager's investors were family friends and former NFL players.

Bita Honarvar / AJC

Kirk Wright showed no signs he was planning a suicide, jail officials said.

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"He's a very intelligent young man, very articulate, very well-spoken," Mansch said. "He didn't give me any indication that he was under any particular duress. He just said, 'I'm all right.'"

Wright, whom jail officials and inmates called by his middle name, Sean, was granted a visit with his mother later Wednesday and met with his lawyer on Friday. Mansch said the attorney didn't give any indication his client was having problems. Wright, 37, hung himself in his cell with a rope fabricated from bedsheets sometime between 9 a.m. and 9:45 a.m. Saturday morning.

"This was a real surprise," said Mansch, who said his jail routinely houses inmates put on suicide alert in special cells until they are cleared by medical or psychiatric doctors to return to the general jail population.

Jail officials had put Wright on "security alert" as they routinely do with recently convicted inmates to check for changes in behavior that would suggest potential for escape. "He was his normal self," said Maj. Keith McGhee, the jail's assistant chief.

Wright already had been under special alerts because of a U.S. Marshal Service request to keep him separated from a particular inmate and because of altercations he allegedly had at other facilities, Mansch said.

An fellow inmate found Wright's cell door cracked open and Wright on the floor, unconscious. The inmate then alerted jail staff just before 10 a.m. Saturday. After efforts to revive him at the jail failed, Wright was rushed to Southern Regional Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

Inmates are routinely free to roam their units between 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. Wright, who had been held there since October 2007, did not have a cell mate.

His death is the second suicide in the past nine years at the jail in Union City, which serves south Fulton municipalities and the U.S. Marshal's Service but isn't affiliated with the Fulton County Sheriff's Department.

The U.S Marshals and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation are conducting a probe as jail officials try to sort out what happened.

"We're tying to establish a time line when this specifically occurred, but we're having difficulty doing that," Mansch said.

Wright's suicide came four days after the federal jury convicted him of swindling millions from his deep-pocketed clients.

On Monday, a lawyer representing some of the former NFL players in a related lawsuit against the league and its players union said Wright's death had no effect on that suit.

The six former players say they lost $20 million by investing with Wright's firm, which they claim the union endorsed.

"The point of the lawsuit is to make sure what happened does not happen again," said attorney Marlon Kimpson, who is representing ex-players Steve Atwater, Ray Crockett, Al Smith, Blaine Bishop, Carlos Emmons and Clyde Simmons.

Attorneys for the NFL and its players union, the NFLPA, did not immediately respond to e-mails Monday, a national holiday. However, the union has countersued the ex-players, arguing it does not endorse any of its registered financial advisers and is not responsible for what happened. The union also claims the players breached union rules by not exhausting internal remedies before filing the lawsuit.

According to authorities, Wright and his company collected more than $150 million from thousands of client accounts starting in 1997 and used false statements and documents to mislead some of them to believe the value of those investments was increasing. Much of that money is missing.

As part of Wright's criminal sentence, he also faced a fine of up to $16 million and could have been ordered to pay restitution to his victims. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Atlanta declined to comment Monday on what affect Wright's death will have on the payment of any restitution.

Wright already had been hit with a $20 million judgment as part of a civil suit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Wright also faced significant prison time on 47 counts of mail fraud, securities fraud and money laundering connected with a scam run through his firm, International Management Associates.

What Wright didn't lose in a tanking financial market was spent on expensive jewelry, homes, and cars, federal prosecutors argued. Wright was arrested in 2006 as he sipped cocktails at a Ritz-Carlton in Miami. The possessions he acquired through the scam later were auctioned.

Wright proclaimed his innocence and blamed the losses on simple mismanagement.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.