Hudson Family Murder Trial Begins: Jennifer Hudson Breaks Down on the Stand

Hudson Family Murder Trial Begins: Jennifer Hudson Breaks Down on the Stand

In a surprise move, Academy Award-winner Jennifer Hudson was called as the prosecution’s first witness in the Hudson family murder trial in Chicago. The award-winning singer and actress broke down and cried on the witness stand Monday as she recalled the brutal 2008 murders of her mother, brother and young nephew, allegedly at the hands of her jealous brother-in-law, William Balfour. “It was always me and my Tugga Bear,” she told jurors of her beloved 7-year-old nephew Julian King.

Balfour is accused of killing Jennifer Hudson’s mother, brother and 7-year-old nephew in the Southside Chicago home where the Hollywood star grew up. Balfour allegedly killed Hudson’s mother, Darnell Donerson, in the living room, then shot her 29-year-old brother, Jason Hudson, twice in the head as he lay in bed. He then drove off with her sister’s son, Julian King, and later shot the boy, nicknamed “Juice Box,” in the head as he lay behind a front seat, authorities say.

It is anticipated that Jennifer Hudson will attend the entire trial. She was accompanied to court today by her fiancé, the professional wrestler David Otunga. Following her 30-minute testimony, she joined him in the fourth row of the courtroom.

Read more about the trial in The Chicago Tribune here.

Hudson Family Murder Trial Begins

Interview: Jury Expert Discusses Hudson Murder Trial

Jennifer Hudson: And I Am Telling You, I’m Not Going

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The Cull: Pain and Beauty All Wrapped Into One

The Cull: Pain and Beauty All Wrapped Into One

The Cull is an acclaimed, powerful short film, directed by English videographer Jonathan Harris at Concept Pictures, which was nominated for Best British Short Film at the 2010 Edinburgh International Film Festival. Soundtracked with the wind, the echoes of manual labor and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, it’s an odd, discomfiting mix in a bleak landscape of pain and beauty, bloodied wool dancing in the wind across a barbed wire fence.

By turns beautiful, austere, and heartbreaking, Harris’ film looks at the tense relationship between a poor farmer in the isolated moors of 1920s northern England, and his sickly, music-loving son. Desperate to continue the family’s farming tradition, the father pushes his son to take on increasingly difficult feats of labor, with devastating consequences.

The Cull: Pain and Beauty All Wrapped Into One

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