A brutal robbery, a deadly stalker… The rich and famous aren't immune to tragedy. Some celebrities
have suffered the murder of a parent, the sort of traumatic loss that alters one's life forever.
Dylan McDermott is known for his role as Ben Harmon in the American Horror Story franchise,
but in real life, the actor suffered true horror. In 1967, his mother's
boyfriend had kicked 5-year-old Dylan out of his Waterbury, Connecticut home. As he stood outside,
Dylan heard a gunshot. The next time he saw his mom, her body was being carried out on a
gurney. Diane McDermott's boyfriend, John Sponza, claimed that she died by suicide.
"The police failed to look at any other evidence other than what John Sponza provided them."
In 2011, Dylan contacted the Waterbury police with some
questions. Police Superintendent Michael Gugliotti told The Republican-American,
The case was reopened, and this time,
a medical examiner determined a gun had been held to Diane's head.
"They were going to change the cause of death from 'accidental or self-inflicted' to 'murder.'"
There was enough new evidence against Sponza to charge him, but he had been killed in 1972.
With six NBA titles, Michael Jordan is arguably the greatest basketball player
of all time — but he temporarily retired from the game in 1993, the year his father,
James Jordan, was shot and killed. According to the Los Angeles Times,
57-year-old James had been missing for three weeks when his body was discovered
in a creek in South Carolina. His red Lexus 400 was recovered by police two days later. The car
had been destroyed; parts were missing, and it no longer had a license plate.
Daniel André Green and Larry Martin Demery, the two teenagers charged with the crime,
reportedly shot James as he slept in his car. They didn't realize whom they'd
killed until they rummaged through his belongings. According to Robeson County
District Attorney Johnson Britt, Green opened James' wallet, then turned to Demery and said,
A few months after his father's murder, Jordan talked about it with Oprah Winfrey.
When she asked him if he'd ever want to ask the killers why they did it, Jordan replied,
"No, because I don't want to know." "You don't."
"No. Because it probably would hurt me even more. Just to know their reasons."
On October 24, 2008, Jennifer Hudson's sister, Julia, returned to the family's Chicago home to
find her mother, 57-year-old Darnell Donerson, and brother, 29-year-old Jason Hudson, had been
shot and killed. Her son, 7-year-old Julian King, was missing. Three days later, Julian was found
in the back of an abandoned SUV. He'd been shot in the head. In 2012, Julia's estranged husband,
William Balfour, was convicted of all three murders and sentenced to life in prison.
In a 2015 interview with Glamour, the American Idol star opened up about her pain. She said,
"You're confused. Your mind is confused. Your
feelings are confused. You don't know where to start."
She admitted that giving birth to her son, David,
a year after the murders helped her cope. Hudson explained,
When guitarist Dave Navarro — who played in iconic '90s bands such as Jane's Addiction and
the Red Hot Chili Peppers — was 15 years old, his mother, 41-year-old Constance 'Connie' Navarro,
and her friend, Sue Jory, were shot and killed by Constance's ex-boyfriend,
John Riccardi, after he broke into her Los Angeles apartment on March 3, 1983.
Fortunately, Dave was visiting his father at the time of the murders.
"It was actually a miracle that I wasn't home 'cause I think
that obviously if I was home that night he would've gotten me too."
He told the Daily Mail —
"So I really do believe that that's some sort of divine intervention that I can't explain."
Riccardi was finally located after he appeared on America's Most Wanted in 1991.
Dave opened up about the ordeal in a 2015 documentary called Mourning Sun, directed
by his close pal, Todd Newman. In an interview with Huffington Post about the film, Navarro said,
Shaped by those brutal murders,
Dave now uses his platform to raise awareness about domestic violence.
Musician and producer Sean Lennon, son of Beatles legend John Lennon, was born on October 9, 1975 —
his father's 35th birthday. Sadly, father and son didn't have much time together. A man by the name
of Mark David Chapman shot the former Beatle four times on December 8, 1980, outside the family's
apartment building in Manhattan. According to CNN, Chapman idolized John, but claimed he became angry
when his hero told the Evening Standard that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus" during a
1966 interview. In a CNN interview from prison, three years after the murder, Chapman recalled,
Chapman was denied parole for the 10th time in 2018.
In a 1998 interview with Rolling Stone, Sean reflected on life without his father, saying,
Malcolm X was a religious leader and fierce advocate for civil rights.
Delve into his childhood, and it's easy to understand why. His father, Earl Little,
was a preacher and civil rights activist who was the frequent target of white supremacists.
Malcolm is quoted in Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X, saying,
Little moved the family from Omaha to Wisconsin to Michigan in hopes of keeping them safe,
but tragedy still followed. In 1931, Little's body was found on streetcar tracks. His
loved ones believed he was murdered by white supremacists, but the police ruled the death
an accident. This invalidated Little's life insurance policy, causing financial struggle
for the grieving family. Malcolm's mother was committed to a mental institute after
her husband's death. As a result, Malcolm and his siblings were separated and placed in foster care.
Malcolm X's life was also cut short.
"Malcolm knew he was gonna die by someone's hands."
He was assassinated in front of his pregnant wife and children on February 21,
1965, during a speaking engagement in New York. According to The Washington Post,
In 1986, Dallas star Patrick Duffy was at the height of his fame when his parents,
Terrence and Marie Duffy, were brutally gunned down during a robbery in the Montana bar they
owned. The perpetrators, Sean Wentz and Kenneth Miller, were sentenced to 75 years in prison,
but Miller was granted parole in 2007 after Wentz confessed to being the gunman.
Although Patrick supported his sister's petition to keep their parents' killers behind bars,
he credited his Buddhist faith with his ability to cope with Miller's freedom. He told OK! magazine,
Actor Kelsey Grammer, who first rose to fame on the classic sitcom Cheers, has endured a number
of heartbreaking tragedies throughout his life. Grammer's father, Frank Allen Grammer,
was fatally shot in 1968, when the future star was just 13. In 1975, the Grammer family
faced another tragedy when Kelsey's sister, Karen, was sexually assaulted and murdered.
Decades later, the actor fought for justice for his sister when her killer,
Freddie Glenn, was up for parole. In a letter to the parole board, Grammer wrote,
"You know, the last decade has been spent going back to Colorado Springs to
ask the Parole Board to keep them in jail."
The actor went on to explain his feelings of guilt to Vanity Fair, saying,
When asked what he's learned from these tragedies, Grammer responded,
Former Glee star Jake Zyrus, who's been open about his journey coming
out as a transgender man, lost his father, Ricky Pempengco, in 2011.
Pempengco was stabbed to death by Angel Capili Jr. after an altercation outside a store in the
Philippines. Capili later turned himself in and claimed that he killed Ricky in self-defense.
In an interview with ABS-CBN television, Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo said,
Zyrus took to Twitter to address the tragedy, writing,
Pempengco and Zryus had a complicated relationship. In an earlier interview on
The Oprah Winfrey Show, Zyrus had revealed that he and his mother once fled from Pempengco. He said,
In 1949, when future Allman Brothers Band musicians Duane and Gregg Allman were just
toddlers, their father, Army Lieutenant Willis Turner Allman, was murdered. He was
fatally shot by a hitchhiker he and another officer had picked up in Norfolk, Virginia.
Sadly, the Allman Brothers Band later experienced another tragedy: the 1971 death of lead guitarist
Duane at 24 in a motorcycle accident. In 2017, younger brother Gregg died of liver cancer at
age 69. Allman had been diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1999 and received a liver transplant in 2010.
Gregg's manager and friend, Michael Lehman, shared a heartfelt statement
on Allman's website following the legendary musician's death. He wrote —