William Balfour, 31, of Chicago, was found guilty last week of murdering Darnell Donerson, Jason Hudson and Julian King. They were the mother, brother and nephew of singer and actress Jennifer Hudson.
In my opinion, this case was a tragedy, but a preventable tragedy. Julia Hudson, Jennifer’s older sister, brought Balfour into the family when she married him. If she hadn’t married this man, it obviously wouldn’t have happened.
Jennifer Hudson was the first witness in the murder trial. She testified that the entire family was against Julia’s relationship with Balfour. “None of us wanted her to marry him. We did not like how he treated her,” she stated in court.
Julia secretly married William Balfour anyway in December 2006.
Who is William Balfour?
William Balfour is one of those people who was dealt a bad hand in life, and made it worse.
It seems that his family history includes sociopathy. His father was convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years. His maternal grandmother went to prison for manslaughter. His mother was physically abusive to Balfour and his older brother.
Balfour himself had an extensive juvenile record, ran away from shelters and relatives’ homes, dropped out of school in ninth grade and joined a gang. At age 17, he stole a car with the owner clinging to the hood and crashed it into a telephone pole. He was convicted of attempted murder.
Read Hudson murder suspect led grim life before slayings, on RedEyeChicago.com.
Hook up
When William Balfour got out of prison in 2006, he hooked up with Julia Hudson, whom he knew from elementary school.
I can imagine how that seduction went:
“Julia, baby, you are so fine ”¦ if I was with a woman like you, I could turn my life around ”¦ you know I never had a chance ”¦ my dad was locked up as long as I can remember ”¦ my mom used to beat me and my brother ”¦ she actually gave us up, said she didn’t want us around any more ”¦ mothers are supposed to love you, but my mother never showed me any love ”¦ you’re a woman who knows how to love, I can just tell ”¦ yeah, I used to be wild, but I did my time, and now I’m ready for a new life ”¦ with you at my side, I’ll be a new man ”¦ I know I can do it ”¦ c’mon, baby, I really want to make something of myself ”¦ but I can’t do it without you ”¦ you know I love you, and you love me ”¦ there’s no reason for us to wait ”¦ “
I’m sure Balfour laid it on thick. He probably anticipated that if he hooked up with Julia Hudson, he’d be on the gravy train, because Julia’s sister was an actress ”¦ a movie star ”¦ a celebrity ”¦ and rich.
When Julia Hudson no longer wanted Balfour around, my guess is that not only was he outraged to lose control of her, but he was also outraged to lose the gravy train.
Reasons
Yes, William Balfour never had a chance in life. I recognize that he came from the mean streets of Chicago, as did Julia Hudson. She could have felt sorry for him. But she didn’t have to marry him.
Many Lovefraud readers have accepted as romantic partners people with serious life issues—including arrests, convictions, addictions and other problems. Why did they do it? Here are some of the reasons I’ve heard:
- Everyone deserves a second chance.
- I felt sorry for him (her).
- I believed I could change him (her).
- I just knew there was a good person inside him (her).
- I believe in the power of love.
- I’m a Christian, and I believe people can repent.
- He (she) needed me.
- He (she) just needed unconditional love.
Disqualifications for marriage
The purpose of marriage is a life partnership, in which both spouses support each other. Marriage is not social work. Therefore, if you are searching for a spouse, I recommend eliminating anyone with the following characteristics or history:
- Conviction for murder or attempted murder
- History of domestic violence
- Conviction for fraud, theft or property crimes
- Drug dealing or manufacturing
- No apparent income or means of financial support
- Pathological lying
- Failure to support children
- Controlling behavior
- Outbursts of rage
- Suffered abuse as a child, combined with any of the above.
Do not delude yourself into thinking that your relationship will be different, your love is special, you can change the person. Yes, sometimes people can turn themselves around. But do you want to bet your life on this person, and the lives of your family and friends?
UPDATE:
Newlywed, still in wedding dress, found stabbed to death in tub, on ChicagoTribune.com.
Truthspeak, I wasn’t critisizing your 12 steps. I thought they were great. I thought it was a great opportunity to talk about it in depth.
Kim, I don’t believe that you were criticizing. 🙂 I am rather frustrated with myself because I had known each step, verbatim, and I haven’t been truly invovled since my mom’s passing, and apparently I can’t remember them all! LOLOLOL
I guess I sort of view this site as a strong support group. And, there seems to be a general pattern of steps that we each take towards our goals of healing ourselves. I don’t know what made me do it, but I just made them up because I thought it might spur discussion, as well.
LOL! 😀 Time for some more coffee, Kim! (_)? there’s a cup for you, too….
Yes, the coffee’s great. Thanks. 🙂
I learned ALL about the “Power Of Coffee” at Alanon meetings……LOL 😀
Witty, Yes, I know the gut feeling of worry….and you have, as I had, plenty of reason to “worry” but my worry only took away my days, robbed my NOWS from me by making them focused on something I couldn’t control. In the end, I disconnected from patrick and the worry stopped.
Then I got the chance to “worry” that he would send someone else to try to kill me….but I found that made me jump at every time the dog barked or a vehicle drove up the lane….so I just did the best I could and then quit worrying.
I can’t read your mind, but I am going to make a stab at it anyway, and it is that you are afraid that like his father, he may try to hurt himself or do it on accident.
I don’t know, and I doubt if you do, weather or not he is using drugs on those times he is gone. He is obviously not holding down a steady job if he is disappearing, so I am (guessing here again) that granny and grandpa are supporting him, and any extra money he wants or needs he is dealing or stealing to get. As I remember he is on parole or probation (or was) Witty, it might actually be better if he were arrested and maybe you could effect some treatment for his bi-polar, sometimes the prisons will forcefully medicate them.
The bottom line though is that while we can wonder about these things, we can’t change a one of them.
I “solved” my problem by eventually emotionally disconnecting from my son when I realized finally that there was no help for him. I know you are not at that point yet, and I understand that as well. You can though focus your thoughts on other things and when you feel those gut feelings rise up, put them away and focus on something else. The brain can only think of ONE THING at a time (believe it or not#) so practice on that. #(#((#hugs)##))# and my prayers.
Truthy,
Who said that there aren’t fake members?
“What you’re talking about are people that we label as ‘talking the talk, not walking the walk.’ They are the phonies. We recognize them because their actions don’t match their words.”
Oh yes, you can’t miss it if you are involved with a psychopath. It is like the ugliest place in the world to be. I know. It leaves you stunned and shocked and in awe that instantly that person becomes a stranger and your worse nightmare.
We all know we have been wronged because we know who we are and what we believe in and stand for. As I was asked once: “Who made you the morality cops?” I answered: “I guess I made MYSELF the morality cops because I do know the difference between right and wrong and common courtesy and normal emotions toward people.”
It’s tough finding the validation that we, as victims of these horrid people, needs to grab a hold of us and to say: “Hey, you ain’t crazy! It’s the relationship!” There is nobody that can tell us that but ourselves. We know what is acceptable and what is not. We are entitled to choose that for ourselves. That is one of our birth rights. All of us. It’s all about choice. For ourselves.
Disconnecting from the situation, you have to firstly insure your safety. Secondly, you have to realize that nobody is going to take care of you but yourself because nobody can even comprehend what this experience has been like, the past ten years. Nobody. There are such ugly and horrid things that it’s difficult to access them anymore, I have soothed them underneath layers of PTSD which causes me extreme anxiety and depression. Having that adrenalin rush stuck on “ON” for so long, it has worn me down physically, to the point where I had a near fatal heart attack about year and a half ago that has left me with congestive heart failure and not so good prognosis. In fact, it sucks so much, the doctors have even refused to tell me anything ‘too definitive’ about my medical condition. Imagine that.
And, this whole time, I have had a psychopathic stalker who has threatened my life on many instances – oh yes, I have myself safe now. I am not interested in tying up what is left of my life doing anything vindictive at all, in the courts or otherwise. I could sue and sue and sue and file warrant after warrant, but what is the point? The point, to me, seems to be to have my life in peace and quiet and to COMPLETELY IGNORE IT ALL. To concentrate on my life and myself. That is something I haven’t done in ten years. IGNORING THEM PUTS AN END TO IT. But you have to stay strong; stealth yourself inside and believe in yourself and the ‘boogeyman’ eventually goes away.
I can’t adequately express to you what involvement with this ‘being’ has done to my life. There was never any physical abuse, because I would never fall into the trap as easily as he would have liked; as easily as others have. I am too strong for him. I thought we were friends. I never wished him harm yet he can threaten my life? I spurned his attentions after WRONGLY opening the door in the first place. We can’t go back and change anything; all we can do is move forward. In strength, courage and enlightenment. I spurned him and his attentions because he is ugly and not someone I can trust. He would suck my very soul and my life, if he could get away with it.
The stalking never stops or completely goes away. I am always on edge but have an amazing protective police department. He has been escorted out of town once before and it will happen again.
I started taking Lexapro, only a small dosage, nightly. They are telling me I sustained mild brain damage in a near fatal crash I had many years ago. The Lexapro is the first time I have taken a drug for depression/anxiety that has actually worked for me. It is helping me. I can ‘focus’ and feel ‘human’ again, better than I have in the past ten years because of this ‘roadshow’. I felt so guilty walking away from someone I felt such responsibility for….a very sick and mentally disabled person who by all rights, should be ‘being taken care of’, in every sense of the word and I believed in that ‘nice’ persona I was spoon fed. It didn’t take long for the mask to melt off and I got to see what that really was underneath there….
It was never deserved; any of it.
They just like decimating people and using them as appliances, to suit their own fulfillment and wants and needs. Without care nor conscious.
Lock the demon away from you lest it take your life.
And that is what I continue to do.
Be safe above all else and don’t ignore the signs when it’s time to move and get away. You can notice them. Once you are betrayed, you are marked for destruction. Not happening here.
Dupey
This is such a great thread. I’ve been stopping in everyday to see what’s new. I almost rewrote Truthy’s 12 steps, because for myself, I wanted more focus on what I was doing. The fact that I’m giving up things I can’t afford to lose to maintain a bad relationship. But I left it alone, because it was probably clearer as written.
When I was deep in recovery from this relationship, I read James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces.” And though I know it attracted a lot of criticism from 12-steppers, even before the discussions about whether it was memoir or fiction, I came out of it with a real gift. I realized for the first time that I was an addict. And that helped me a lot in my further progress in getting over the relationship.
I’d always seen myself as a classic codependent people-pleaser, and figured that my main problem in that relationship was my habit of imagining that if I was generous and tolerant and available enough, that he would appreciate me and love me and become the man I wanted him to be.
After reading that book, I realized that the lack of respect in our relationship went both ways. He was always criticizing and belittling me, which is verbal and emotional abuse. But though I was outwardly tolerant and encouraging toward him, my real agenda was to get him to change. I wanted him to be what I wanted him to be, and I didn’t care how he felt about it anymore than he cared about how I felt when he criticized me.
It made me think about how close the codependent “deal” was to classic addict thinking. Blaming everyone but myself for what wasn’t working out in my life. And drinking my own Kool-Aid about what a wonderful person I am. (Not that I can’t be a wonderful person at the center, but this manipulative behavior and intent to change him in ways he didn’t volunteer for didn’t fit into the “wonderful” criteria. In fact, I found it uncomfortably close to the grooming behavior I saw in him, when he wanted something from me.)
I like 12-step-style recovery thinking. I’ve only been to a couple of meetings with AA friends, but I’ve gained a great deal from listening to them talk about the 12-steps and the ways AA people keep bringing the focus back to their own thinking and behaviors. Even though I believe — in terms of overall recovery — that the “angry phase” is a necessary part of healing, and that blaming has it’s role in separating us from the “other,” and giving us incentive to improve our boundaries and build defensive skills, the big risk in anger is that the illusory feeling of power it provides becomes a “safe haven” and we don’t progress out of it. And then embedded resentment (old anger) becomes the foundation for all sorts of other dysfunctions, including addictions.
The other thing I realized after reading that book was that my inner world during the five years of that relationship was a kind of battleground between my adult, rational self and a really loud, demanding voice from deeper in my psyche that wanted him and saw him as a kind of shining romantic dream. The voice didn’t care what he cost me. Blamed the adult me for not being what he needed me to be. And was so powerful that it overrode every attempt I made to get my life back under my own control.
Yes, that was the voice of the addiction, but it was also part of me. And identifying that ongoing war inside myself helped me stop beating myself up about being too stupid to live (causing massive depression) and start focusing on what was going on with that voice. Where did it come from? Why was it in so much pain and need? Was it out of my childhood or sometime later? Why was it stuck in imagining and wanting things that seemed so immature? I’d already been through years of therapy, and thought I was finished with making other people extensions of my needs. But here was this out-of-control sub-personality rising to demand that this really horrible relationship perform as something closer to a first teen-aged love affair than anything else I could imagine.
All of this was really helpful in giving me some focus as I dug down into my feelings and behavior to try to figure out what was going on with me. It was nice to know that I wasn’t totally crazy, just partly crazy. And that the worst boyfriend in my life had done me the favor of surfacing a part of me, whose desperate needs could very well have been responsible for a lot more relationship dysfunction than him.
I’ve written about what I found in my excavations in other posts, and this letter is getting really long. But I just want to add one more idea. I always knew, throughout that relationship, that there were “crossroads” when if I’d taken care of myself instead of putting him first, the entire ugly course of the relationship would have been different. I could have said no, or negotiated for relationship terms that were more favorable to me. I could have set ultimatums and enforced them. But I didn’t, because I had this dream of how we could be.
When I started looking at the voice inside me that kept me in that relationship, I realized that I didn’t because I couldn’t. That part of me was looking to be healed, and saw him as the medicine. It was based on massive unresolved trauma that got frozen in time, carried the old pain and all the associated emotions and beliefs, and it wasn’t going to let any other part of me get in its way in its pursuit of relief. It was going to pay whatever it had to pay, destroy whatever it had to destroy in my life, make the attachment to him the dominant feature of my life, and ignore any feedback from people who cared about me and people I hurt.
Sound like an addict? I thought so.
One of the things I like about 12-step programs is that one of their core values and objectives is taking ourselves seriously. As hystrionic as that description of my loss of control may sound, it is emotionally true. An accurate description of the mechanism that kept me in the game with him. When I saw it, I had no choice but to take it seriously. Whatever he was and did, there were probably a million other people out there who were either like him or who could be seduced into an equally abusive relationship with that part of me. And I couldn’t afford another round of this in my life. If I didn’t turn my eyes inward and figure out how to take care of this part of myself, and hopefully heal her, I might as well throw myself in front of a train. Not just because it was ruining my life, but the ripple effect was hurting people I loved and who knows who else.
So I stopped apologizing about be so self-involved, and got serious about what was going on with me.
As always, apologies for the very long post. I hope it makes sense. And love to you all —
Kathy
Kathy: You said:
“I always knew, throughout that relationship, that there were “crossroads” when if I’d taken care of myself instead of putting him first, the entire ugly course of the relationship would have been different. I could have said no, or negotiated for relationship terms that were more favorable to me. I could have set ultimatums and enforced them. But I didn’t, because I had this dream of how we could be.”
—————————————————————-
There is no negotiating when they are finished with you. There was no negotiating right from the very start. Saying no is the only option. Ultimatums don’t matter. So there is nothing you could have done to make things any different.
We can only make ourselves doormats for so long before it becomes pointless. We have to pick and choose our priorities and having a cold blooded psychopath in my world is not a priority of mine.
It took me a while to figure it all out but the new perspective I have now on this whole thing has really been an eye opener. Trust me.
You are right: ‘focus inward’. Stay on the path to yourself.
It’s the only option we have and the ‘justification’ as well.
Dupey
I am so thank now that we never got married. We were engaged for years, but he told this story that he had promised his mum on her deathbed (I later found out she was alive and well) that he would marry a catholic. Me being a catholic divorcee (non practising) meant technically I can’t remarry in a Catholic church and therefore I couldn’t marry him as he refused to break his ‘promise’ to his mother! I now know he was just keeping me ‘hanging on’ as it were. What a waste of 10 years eh? lol
He was an alcoholic, but at first I didn’t really realise, as I’d never encountered one before. Whenever we went to a pub or had wine at home, he would behave as though he had to drink the pub dry or would open a new bottle before we had even got half way through the first one.
He did give up for a while, about 6 months and did ‘try’ and attend an AA meeting, but when he went there was a ‘problem’ and he didn’t go again!! There was always a ‘problem’ of some sort. I got so desperate I rang Al Anon and spoke to a really nice lady, who basically told me that he would never stop. I found her info very helpful and I think it was one of the main things that made me tell him it was over.
In my mind an alcoholic drinks to hide from things in their life that they don’t want to or can’t face and ‘solve’. Until they decide they want to sort that out, they will never stop being an alcoholic. Period! There is nothing you can do to help them and its better to let them get on with it and make sure you stay sane and protect yourself.