Jennifer Hudson Family Murder Trial: Singer Recounts Painful Memories As Police Officer Gives Testimony

Academy Award winner , Jennifer Hudson bowed her head in court on Tuesday as she listened to a police officer’s harrowing account of the day he found her family members shot to death in their South Side Chicago home.


Hudson clamped her eyes shut at one point, blocking out the painful courtroom scene as she sat between fiancé David Otunga and her older sister on the second day of testimony in the trial of her former brother-in-law, William Balfour.


Sgt. Richard Dowling testified he was first on the scene the day of the 2008 slayings and discovered Hudson’s beloved mother, 57-year-old Darnell Donerson, in a pool of blood in the living room.
He later found Hudson’s 29-year-old brother, Jason Hudson, dead in his bed with a gunshot wound to the head, he said.


The dead brother's sheets were pulled up as if he’d been sleeping, Dowling told jurors.


Police scoured the three-story, nine-bedroom house for almost half an hour looking for Jennifer Hudson’s missing 7-year-old nephew Julian, Dowling said, according to the Chicago Tribune.


Hudson’s sister, Julia Hudson, was the one who summoned Sgt. Dowling to the grisly murder scene after calling 911 and screaming “My mama! My mama!” to a dispatcher, evidence has shown. She was married to Balfour at the time but had asked for a divorce, and the missing boy was her son from a previous relationship.


It took three days of frantic searching before police found the child's body in an abandoned SUV several miles away. He had been shot in the head as he lay behind some seats, authorities said.

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