Picture gallery: Hudson murders

For two years she lived a dream life that made her famous and wealthy but Jennifer Hudson, the Oscar-winning actress and singer, was in mourning yesterday after her family was shattered by a double murder.

Chicago police were questioning Hudson’s brother-in-law, William Balfour, in connection with the killings of her mother and elder brother in the home she had bought for them after she rose to stardom from an inauspicious start as a losing contestant on the American Idol television show.

Police were also searching for the actress’s seven-year-old nephew, Julian King, who was missing from the home when the bodies were discovered by Julia Hudson, Jennifer’s elder sister, on Friday afternoon.

The killings stunned the film and music industries, which had embraced Hudson as a mould-breaking superstar who flipped hamburgers as a teenager and looked nothing like the wafer-thin model wannabes who tend to succeed in Hollywood.

Dumped from American Idol after failing to impress Simon Cowell, the show’s caustic British judge, she was offered a role in the film version of Dreamgirls, a Broadway musical, and promptly stole the show with a spellbinding performance as Effie White, a plucky loser.

Hudson, 27, broke off a promotional tour for her new film and album on Friday and flew back to Chicago, where as a child she first sang publicly in a church choir.

After Dreamgirls earned her a best supporting actress Oscar in 2007, she often told interviewers she regarded the family home in Chicago as a “haven” from the pressures of sudden success.

Chicago newspapers reported yesterday that Balfour, 27, had been paroled from prison in 2006 after serving nearly seven years on charges of attempted murder, car hijacking and receiving stolen property. Police initially believed he may have abducted Julian, his stepson, but the child was not with him when he was arrested.

Balfour was married for at least two years to Julia Hudson, but his mother, Michelle, told reporters the couple had been having problems.

At one point they were living with Hudson’s mother, Darnell Donerson, but Michelle Balfour said Donerson, 57, had ordered her son to leave the house after a row last winter. She insisted her son was not a murderer, adding: “He was not a child abductor. They have the wrong person.”

Police said there was no sign of a break-in or robbery at the large white home on Chicago’s South Side, a sprawling African-American neighbourhood. Neighbours claimed to have heard gunshots at about 9am on Friday, but police were not summoned until Julia Hudson entered the house at 3pm and found her mother’s body on the living room floor. She had died from a shot to the head.

Police then searched the house and found Jason Hudson, Jennifer’s 29-year-old brother, dead in a bedroom. He had been shot in the chest and appeared to have put up a fight.

The tragedy occurred as Hudson was celebrating a double triumph in her meteoric career. Her latest film, The Secret Life of Bees, was released to warm reviews earlier this month; a new song, Spotlight, shot to No 1 on the US charts and is in the British top 20.

Hudson’s father, a bus driver, died when she was a teenager. She often credited her mother for putting her on the road to success by pressuring her to audition for American Idol. A former cook at a Burger King fast-food restaurant, Hudson went on to work as a singer for Disney cruise lines.

Initially reluctant to subject herself to Cowell’s barbs, she finished seventh in the singing contest in 2004. Many viewers noted at the time that she deserved to win because of her five-octave diva voice, but skinny blondes have often proved more popular with the programme’s voters than heavier black women.

She has since turned into a national symbol of the virtues of modesty and persistence. “It’s like I came in the back door,” she said recently. “I’m just this normal person. It’s like, I won an Academy award? Even I don’t understand it.”

Her humility has endeared her to fans, who yesterday flocked to Chicago newspaper websites to record their shock. “Jennifer, I pray you may find comfort in this sorrowful time,” wrote one contributor.

Hudson said in another interview that she was happy she could rely on her family to tell the truth about how she looked and dressed. “Don’t nobody talk about me worse than my sister and brother,” she told Sister 2 Sister magazine.

“Every time I step into my mama’s house or see my sister and brother, it’s, ‘What you got on? What’s that mess? You need to take that off’.”

By failing to be thin, she has also become hugely popular with countless Americans struggling with their weight. She recently confessed that she tried to eat salads and chicken and vegetables, “but what I cannot fight is chocolate chip cookies. They always win”.

She gaily admitted that the photograph on the cover of her new album had been digitally altered to make her look thinner.

Hudson recently announced her engagement to David Otunga, who was briefly a contestant on a different television show. Yesterday she was in seclusion in Chicago and her Hollywood publicist appealed for privacy.

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