Stars Whose Loved Ones Were Tragically Murdered

Celebrity media readership knows that tragic headlines garner more views than positive ones, and nothing is more heartbreaking than stories dealing with death. Though tragic, it's not necessarily difficult to wrap one's mind around a death related to illness — or even accidental death by way of car accident, overdose, or some other unexpected event. It's much harder to grasp purposeful, brutal acts of violence — something to which celebrities are certainly not immune — even though murder is an unfortunately common occurrence.

While some celebrities (for example, Phil Hartman) have been murdered by their loved ones, and others have themselves killed someone close to them — such as "Riverdale" actor Ryan Grantham, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2022 after fatally shooting his mom — far more common is a celebrity losing someone they love to third party. These situations are so common that it would be impossible to name them all here. There's no shortage of stars — from Dave Navarro to Michael Jordan to Diddy — who have lost a parent to homicide, let alone a sibling, child, spouse, cousin, or other relative. Some, like Omarosa, have even dealt with multiple slain family members. Read on to learn about some of the other stars who have experienced a loved one's tragic murder.

The only thing more traumatic than a loved one's murder is experiencing the murder first-hand. When this happens, it's because the witness is with the victim at the time of their death. In Kim Richards's case, it's because she was on the phone with her fiancé at the time he was shot. This means that, while she could not see what was happening, Richards was privy to the sound of the bullet and the resulting chaos, yet entirely powerless to do anything or witness necessary information from the scene. It also means that she was kept safe despite the paid hit on her lover, John Collett.

Collett and Richards met when they crossed paths as he was leaving an AA meeting, and she was heading to one. Collett expressed being a longtime fan, and before long, the pair were engaged. Richards was the one who had to identify the body after Collett's 1991 murder outside of a deli, for which the motive is still unknown. "It just tore her apart emotionally, and she was not in good shape for a long time," Collett's mother told People. "She really loved John. They were a good match." In 1993, a hitman named Marva DeCarlo Johnson was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to 30 years to life. Seven years later, Richards reignited her fame as one of the original cast members of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills."

No rule says that a family only experiences tragedy once, and Kelsey Grammer's horrific story is proof that victimization is not equally distributed. Grammer lived through two brutal family murders — his father and sister — at separate times and by two different people. He also lost two half-brothers in a suspected shark attack, only five years after that second murder. Gruesome death has been a staple in Grammer's life, and it all began with the murder of his father in 1968. Grammer was 13 when his father was shot by a man trespassing on his St. Thomas property. Grammer was born in the U.S. Virgin Islands, but was living stateside when his dad was killed. He had already lost his grandfather — whom he, his sister, and his mother lived with — two years prior.

Seven years after his father's murder, Grammer's younger sister Karen was brutally victimized. Karen was only 18 when a group of men kidnapped her from a Colorado Springs Red Lobster, where she was waiting for her boyfriend to finish work. They repeatedly raped her before one of them stabbed her to death, which is something her brother has, understandably, never been able to get over. He has also fought against her killer's release. "I miss her in my bones," Grammer wrote to a parole board in 2009. "I was her big brother. I was supposed to protect her — I could not ... It very nearly destroyed me."

In "Modern Family," Sofia Vergara's character Gloria was constantly referencing the criminality and dangerous conditions in her home country of Colombia. And while that is an unfair overgeneralization of an entire nation, Vergara's life story certainly makes it clear why she would identify with her character. Vergara actually left Colombia in the late 1990s due to crime — and very soon after, her brother Rafael was murdered. "We come from a successful family, and he knew he was a target for kidnapping," Vergara explained. "He always had bodyguards. Then one day he went out alone and was shot dead [in a kidnapping attempt]. I was devastated."

Kidnapping has for a long time been a way for drug cartels to make money, blackmailing wealthier families for the safe return of their loved ones. According to Vergara — who plays a drug lord in Netflix's hit miniseries "Griselda" — Rafael emerged in the country's drug trade before he was kidnapped on the streets of Bogota. "Everything was touched by it. My brother was a nice guy — a good guy. But he took a wrong decision and unfortunately, he paid for it. We all paid for it," she told The Daily Mail. "When there's a death of someone super special and a good father and a good brother, it destroys the family. My mother and father were never the same." Vergara said that she drew on her real-life experience to play the notorious Griselda Blanco.

Jennifer Hudson is many things — singer, actor, producer, talk show host, EGOT winner, mother — and on top of everything, a survivor. Hudson lived through something so horrific that it's almost unimaginable, and somehow, she came out of the ordeal in one piece, embodying a fighter's spirit. In 2008, Hudson's estranged brother-in-law William Balfour became enraged when he stopped by the Hudson family home and saw a birthday gift left for his wife, Julia, from her new boyfriend. When Julia left for work, Balfour entered the home and killed her mother and brother. He then kidnapped and later killed Julia's young son, leaving both Julia and her sister Jennifer reeling from the triple loss.

The story immediately became front-page news due to who it involved, as well as the level of brutality. Hudson found the strength to be at the trial every day — even when photos of her relatives' bodies were shown, and even though she said it made her "skin crawl" to see Balfour in court. She also took the stand herself, which helped secure the guilty verdict. Perhaps even more extraordinarily, Hudson had been able to find forgiveness for the man who killed three of her beloved family members, demonstrating a strength of spirit that few possess. "I feel like, for the most part, it's not his fault," she told Oprah Winfrey in 2012. "It's what he was taught, how he was brought up ... he never had a chance."

It does not matter if you're a very young child when your parent is murdered — like Diddy, who was three when his father was gunned down — or a grown adult; it's the kind of catastrophic life event that no one ever gets over. But whereas Diddy likely has little memory from that terrible time, actor Patrick Duffy knows exactly where he was and how he felt upon learning that both of his parents had been slain in a robbery gone wrong. The 1986 double murder occurred when Duffy was on the hit show "Dallas." The show's production company quickly flew him back to his small hometown in Montana.

Police received a tipoff shortly after a group of customers entered the tavern Duffy's parents had owned for more than three decades, where they found both owners dead on the floor. This led to a high-speed chase, which then led to the arrest of two 19-year-old men. They had intended to rob the tavern when they returned shortly after being kicked out, but ended up fatally shooting both of Duffy's parents in the chest when they refused to cooperate. Luckily, the actor was able to lean on his strong Buddhist faith to cope with the fatal shooting. "There was something about the eternity of life that had set deep inside me," Duffy told People in 2020. "As horrific as that was, I didn't feel disconnected from them."