Hollywood is full of weird, dark stories, but few are as messy or tragic as what went down between Morgan Freeman and E'Dena Hines. If you’ve spent any time on the internet, you’ve probably seen the headlines. They’ve been circulating for years. Rumors of affairs. Secret marriages. Inappropriate behavior. Honestly, it's one of those cases where the tabloid garbage almost managed to bury a truly horrific reality.
The truth is much darker than a supermarket gossip column.
Who was E’Dena Hines?
To understand the connection, you have to look at the family tree. E’Dena Hines wasn't Morgan Freeman’s biological daughter. She wasn't even technically his stepdaughter, though that’s the term people usually grab for. She was the granddaughter of Freeman’s first wife, Jeanette Adair Bradshaw.
Freeman and Bradshaw were married from 1967 to 1979. During that time, he helped raise E'Dena’s mother. Later, when E'Dena came along, he and his second wife, Myrna Colley-Lee, basically adopted her in spirit. They raised her. He was the only father figure she really knew.
She was 33 years old, an aspiring actress, and living in New York when everything fell apart.
The Rumors that Wouldn't Die
Around 2009, things got weird. The National Enquirer—never exactly a bastion of journalistic integrity—dropped a "bombshell" claiming Freeman had been in a decade-long sexual relationship with E'Dena. They claimed he was planning to marry her.
It was gross. People believed it.
Freeman usually stays quiet, but he couldn't let this one go. He released a statement calling the reports "defamatory fabrications." E'Dena did the same. She said the stories were "hurtful to me and my family." Despite the denials, the internet has a long memory. The "Morgan Freeman and step daughter" search query became a permanent fixture in Google's autocomplete.
Then came 2015.
A Night in Washington Heights
On August 16, 2015, the gossip stopped. It was replaced by a police report.
Around 3:00 a.m., police responded to a 911 call in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. They found E'Dena Hines on the sidewalk. She had been stabbed 25 times.
Her boyfriend, Lamar Davenport, was standing over her. Witnesses said he was screaming. It wasn't just a fight; witnesses testified that it looked like a "crazed" ritual. Davenport was reportedly yelling things like, "Devil, be gone!" and "In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast you out!"
He was in the middle of a drug-induced psychosis, specifically fueled by PCP.
The Trial and the Final Accusation
During the trial in 2018, the old rumors were dragged back into the light. Lamar Davenport’s defense team made a last-ditch effort to explain his state of mind. They claimed that E'Dena had told Davenport she was involved in a "sexually inappropriate relationship" with her grandfather.
The defense used this to argue that the relationship—true or not—had weighed on Davenport’s mind and contributed to his mental break.
The prosecution wasn't buying it. Neither was the judge. There was zero evidence to back up the claim other than the word of a man who had just stabbed his girlfriend to death while high on angel dust.
In the end, Davenport was convicted of first-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The judge basically said that while Davenport was clearly high, he still knew he was hurting a human being.
Why This Story Still Sticks Around
It’s the celebrity factor, mostly. We see Morgan Freeman as this wise, God-voiced narrator of our lives. Seeing his name linked to something as sordid as an incestuous affair and a ritualistic murder is jarring.
But there's also the legal mess that followed.
After E'Dena died, she didn't have a will. She owned a condo in New York that Freeman had bought for her. Because she died "intestate," her biological parents were set to inherit her estate. This caused a massive legal battle because her biological father had been absent for nearly her entire life. Freeman went to court to block him from getting a dime, arguing that he had been the one providing for her and acting as her father.
It was a final, bitter footnote to a life that ended way too soon.
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What to Take Away
When you look at the "Morgan Freeman and step daughter" story, it’s easy to get lost in the clickbait. But the actual facts are a lot more sobering.
- The "Affair" was never proven: Both parties denied it for years, and it only resurfaced as a legal tactic during a murder trial.
- Domestic violence is the real story: E'Dena wasn't a victim of a celebrity scandal; she was a victim of a violent partner and drug-induced psychosis.
- Media narratives matter: The tabloid focus on the "incest" angle overshadowed the actual tragedy of a 33-year-old woman’s life being cut short.
If you're following this case or similar celebrity legal battles, it’s worth looking at court transcripts rather than TikTok summaries. The truth is usually less "juicy" and a lot more heartbreaking. If you or someone you know is in a volatile relationship, resources like the National Domestic Violence Hotline are significantly more important than whatever the latest headline says about a Hollywood star.
Always check the source. Tabloids sell papers; courtrooms settle facts. Usually, those two things don't look anything alike.
Practical Next Steps
- Verify via Court Documents: If you're researching this for a project or article, look into the 2018 New York Supreme Court records for Lamar Davenport. It clarifies the drug-induced nature of the crime.
- Separate the Rumor from the Crime: Remember that the murder and the rumors of the affair are two different events. One is a documented tragedy; the other is an unproven allegation.
- Support Local Arts: E’Dena Hines was passionate about the New York theater scene. One of the best ways to honor her memory is to support independent film and theater projects, which she was working on at the time of her death.