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When I first heard the news that Jennifer Hudson's mother, Darnell Donerson, 57, and her brother, Jason Hudson, had been found shot to death in Donerson's south side Chicago home, I thought it was heartbreaking news and possibly a case of a criminal casing the home, breaking in, and losing control. That's because I didn't hear that her 7-year-old nephew was missing. When I heard that news, I sat down and started read about the crime, paying attention to details such as "sister's estranged husband," "possible divorce" and "potentially domestic violence." Today, Julian King, Hudson's young nephew, turned up dead. (Update, 10/28: Autopsy reveals that Julian King died from multiple gunshot wounds, reports CNN, and police consider that murderer did not act alone.)
"Responding officers observed a white, Chevy suburban with license plate number X584859 and confirmed that this was the vehicle that was the subject of the Amber Alert and the wanted vehicle. Further investigation revealed that a body was inside. But can't identify the body pending the medical examiner's examination. The vehicle has been towed for further processing, and the investigation is ongoing," said Gulliford.
That Amber Alert was canceled after Monday's development. King's disappearance is now considered a missing persons case. (Channel 7, Chicago)
I hoped that it wasn't Julian's body, but I knew in my spirit that it was and thought, well, what if it's not? Is an unidentified black boy's body somehow preferable to the body of celebrity's nephew?
There would be no difference if it were an anonymous person's nephew and son. Either discovery would be horrific. Still, it hurts more because some of us feel like we know Jennifer Hudson, especially if those who recall her from the early days of her first appearance on American Idol before she was voted off, before she won her Oscar for Dream Girls. I've heard that we think we're more familiar with celebrities than we are because the human brain is rigged to identify faces we see repeatedly as known.
And so the movie star becomes "familiar," from the Latin familiāris, "of a household; See family." (Dictionary.com) In this definition lies our deeper horror. Hudson is familiar, close to home, and so is this crime, it seems, very close to home, domestic violence probably.
The police have been careful to say, as you can see in this CNN video, that William Balfour, the young man they're holding in custody on parole violations, estranged husband of Julia Balfour, Hudson's sister, and stepfather to the murdered child Julian King, is not a suspect, but he is "a person of interest."
I won't be reckless and say Balfour committed the murders because it's possible, as Balfour's mother, Michelle Davis Balfour, said that we "don't know the truth." So, I'll stick with the police and call her son a "person of interest" because his violent history and the probability that his wife told him that she wanted a divorce make him that.
Balfour, who has not lived at the Yale house since May, was paroled in 2006 after convictions for attempted murder, vehicular hijacking and receiving stolen property, state records show. He spent nearly seven years in prison. (Chicago Sun Times)
While I watched the news on CNN's Headline News in my mother's hospital room, I heard anti-domestic violence activist Pat Brown talk about the Hudson tragedy and say something I already know and paraphrase here: Men with Balfour's violent history should not be brought into the home with young children, but "women do it all the time."
And we do. Love is blind and sometimes deadly, and often we don't know the difference between a man loving us and a man being obsessed with us. Romantic obsession is poison. It's the darkest side of not letting go, and the control freak's cancer.
As I listened to the crime story unfold and considered what I know of domestic violence, I forgot that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Suzanne Reisman, however, informed us about that earlier at Blogher, and I was reminded again when I visited the Diary of an Anxious Black Woman. Through her post on Jennifer Hudson's loss, I found the Document the Silence website, which addresses the need to speak up and stop violence against women of color.
The site has an Audre Lorde quote that resonates with me:
"When we
