Nobody’s life is drama-free, especially the lives of celebrities. Unfortunately, there are thousands of people who die every year because they are being murdered. It’s never easy to get over the loss of a family member, especially when you are being put in front of the spotlight almost every day.
On top of the fact that they have to deal with the absence of their family members, they also have to accept the fact that their loved ones have been murderer and it wasn’t a natural death.
Today we are going to talk about celebrities that are suffering from the death of their parents.
1. Sean Lennon
Sean Lennon’s father, John Lennon, the guitarist from The Beatles, was killed on December 8, 1980. His killer is named Mark David Chapman, who was a Beatles fan from Hawaii. He planned the crime for a few months and waited for Lennon at The Dakota Building – his residence in New York City.
Before committing the crime, Chapman went to an event where Lennon signed his copy of the “Double Fantasy” album. When the guitarist and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned to their residence, Chapman fired five hollow-point bullets towards the artist. Four of them hit him in the back. He was taken to Roosevelt Hospital in a police car, but he was declared dead before he could be treated.
Mark David Chapman said that the reason he wanted to end the former’s Beatles life was because of Lennon’s lifestyle and statements he made publicly, especially his remark about Beatles being “more popular than Jesus”. In addition to that, the killer said that he was also inspired by the fictional character Holden Caulfield. He is a character from J.D. Salinger’s novel “The Catcher In The Rye”.
When John Lennon died, his son, Sean Lennon, was 5 years old. In an interview for Rolling Stone Magazine, he said that his mother told him straight forward that his dad was dead, without sugar-coating it.
2. Michael JordanÂ
On July 23, 1993 Michael Jordan’s father, James Jordan, was shot and killed by two men, Daniel Green and Larry Demery (who were actually childhood friends of Michael). They found basketball player’s dad sleeping in his car. He pulled over at the side of the Highway 74 south of Lumberton to get some sleep, when the two men found him.
They shot him dead and dumped his corpse, in order to steal his car, a red Lexus. James Jordan’s body was found several weeks later and the killers were convicted of first-degree murder. They were sentenced to life in jail.
3. Jennifer Hudson
William Balfour, Jennifer Hudson’s brother-in-law, killed Jennifer’s mother, brother and nephew. On October 24, 2008, he walked into Darnell Donerson’s house – Hudson’s mother – and shot her dead in her living room.
Jason Hudson, the singer’s brother was killed in his bedroom. After that, Balfour took the child, Julian King, who was 7 years old, with him. A couple of days later, the police found the kid’s body in the back seat of Jason’s car. He was shot multiple times and the shot that killed him was one into the head.
William Balfour had been arrested before for gang activity, selling drugs and carjacking. In July 2012, he was sentenced to three life sentences without the possibility of parole.
4. Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron witnessed the scene where her mother killed the actress’s father in self-defense in 1991. One night, her father and his brother came home very drunk and threatened to murder the whole family.
He fired the gun into Charlize’s room and her mother grabbed her own gun and shot both her husband and her brother-in-law. She killed her child’s father, but only wounded his brother.
Theron said that she was in shock when that happened, but she acknowledges the fact that her dad was an alcoholic and threatened to kill the family many times before. That’s why the actress said that she agrees with her mother’s decision.
The attorney general ruled that Charlize Theron’s mother acted in self-defense, so she didn’t have to face prosecution.
According to a popular quote, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, so, let’s hope that this was also the case of these celebrities. They had to face all these traumas and pain, while they still managed to do their day to day work and live their lives.
