Nearly a decade after filmmaker Kevin Epps shot and killed his former brother-in-law, Marcus Polk, an eyewitness testified on Friday that Epps had drawn a gun on Polk the night before the shooting.
Starr Gul, Polk’s former wife, was the only other person in the room when Epps shot Polk on Oct. 24, 2016. Epps, an award-winning filmmaker and the executive editor of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, is on trial for Polk’s murder. Epps says he shot in self-defense.
In a lengthy, often tearful testimony that lasted from Thursday afternoon through Friday and into Monday morning, Gul described the shooting she witnessed from the hallway in Epps’ Glen Park home. She said she saw no reason for Polk to be killed.
Friday’s testimony was the first time that Gul publicly mentioned a gun being drawn the day before the shooting.
The Sunday night before the shooting, Polk came to the house “banging” at the gate, she said, asking to be allowed in. Gul said that Epps became upset with Polk.
“He went to the door, and then he got very angry and very worked up and aroused,” Gul said, describing Epps. “I’ve never seen him in that demeanor. It was very cold, evil, angry. It was very scary.”
Gul was once a close member of Epps’ family: At the time of the shooting, Her sister Maryam Jhan was engaged to Epps, and the two sisters often spent time together at the Glen Park house where Jhan and Epps lived with their two children. They sometimes slept in the same bed and picked up each other’s young children from school, according to Gul.
Polk, who was homeless and had separated from Gul in the 1990s, was a frequent visitor who was at times not welcomed inside.
Gul said Epps pointed the gun towards the closed door, but that no one opened the door or let Polk inside the house that night.
Starr Gul, Marcus Polk’s former wife, leaves a courtroom on Nov. 20, 2025. Photo by Eleni Balakrishnan.
But Epps’ attorney Darlene Comstedt noted during the cross-examination that Gul gave a different account to police investigators. It was one of several inconsistencies between Gul’s testimony on the witness stand this month and her various interviews with investigators over the past nine years.
“At no point during that interview did you mention that Mr. Epps had a gun at the door, correct?” Comstedt asked.
Gul replied that she was “traumatized” and “fearing for my life” at the time of the interview. Gul used this reasoning several times as Epps’ attorney questioned the changes in her narrative over the years.
Quiet as a church mouse
The next day — the day of the shooting — Polk arrived again. After a dispute outside with maintenance workers, tensions were high. Epps and Gul both came outside and told Polk to leave, according to Gul’s testimony, but he entered the house anyway.
Gul again gave a different narrative. In earlier interviews Gul said she had followed Polk into the house, telling him to leave. On the witness stand, however, she likened herself to a “church mouse” once inside.
Comstedt: That’s you telling the police that inside the house, you were telling Mr. Polk, still, to leave, right?
Gul: I never made a sound inside the house. I didn’t tell Marcus anything.
Comstedt: That was you telling the police that when you were inside the house, you told Mr. Polk to leave?
Gul: No, ma’am. That is taken out of context. I was quiet as a church — I was very quiet. You could even hear a church mouse. I never made a sound inside that house. I didn’t. I didn’t, ma’am, I didn’t.
Moments later, Gul said she saw Polk standing in front of the television when his body suddenly jerked from a gunshot from behind. Polk spun around in surprise, she said. Gul then noticed Epps across the living room, shooting at Polk a second time.
Asked to describe the look on Polk’s face after the first shot, Gul’s eyes widened and she lifted her chest, as if to demonstrate. “It was like surprise, just something that he did not expect.”
Though she, too, told Polk to leave the house on the day he was shot and killed, Gul explained on the witness stand that it was out of fear.
“I was very afraid for him,” she said. “So it was more of like a desperate plea for him to leave.”
Prosecutors did not charge Epps with murder until 2019, nearly three years after the incident. The case was, in part, charged after a 3-D recreation of the shooting purportedly showed Epps shot Polk in the side, not his front — bringing the self-defense claim into question. The judge will not allow that recreation to be shown to the jury, after Epps’ attorneys fought to exclude it.
Gul’s testimony on Friday strongly suggested that, after the first shot, Epps and Polk were facing each other head-on. On a large photo of the room presented to the jury, Gul even drew directly opposing arrows to indicate the two men’s stances.
After lengthy questioning by prosecutor Jonathan Schmidt, however, her testimony changed: Polk was angled slightly away from Epps.
Epps faces charges for murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. It is unclear whether he will testify on his own behalf. Epps, who wore a sheep sweater popularized by Princess Diana, listened intently as a group of his supporters looked on from the audience.
Polk had a lengthy criminal history, with arrests for methamphetamine use and a conviction for lewd acts with a child. Court filings from prosecutors and defense attorneys in this case also outline Polk’s history of drug abuse and violent and threatening behavior — including multiple protective orders against him for domestic violence incidents with Gul.