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Before Dunne’s crime-writing job, he was a famous Hollywood producer on films like 1970 “The Boys in the Band.” In 1954, he married Ellen Griffin, and they had five children together before their divorce in 1965.
Dunne’s youngest daughter Dominique was one of the two children to follow their father’s profession and become actors.
But in 1982, Dominique Dunne was strangled by her ex-boyfriend John Thomas Sweeney. Sweeney was charged with murder, but his defense lawyers were able to persuade the jury he did not mean to kill Dominique Dunne.
He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and assault and sentenced to six and a half years of jail, though he only served two and a half.
As shown in episode seven of “Monsters,” Dunne was devastated by the conviction. His account of the trial, “JUSTICE: A Father’s Account of the Trial of His Daughter’s Killer,” was published in Vanity Fair in 1984 and launched Dunne’s career as a crime reporter.
Slate reported in 2007 that Dunne also once hired private investigator Anthony Pellicano to track down and kill Sweeney after he was released from prison. Pellicano talked Dunne out of it.
Dominick hosted a talk show and wrote multiple crime books until he died in 2009
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From the 1980s onwards, Dunne published multiple fictional and nonfiction crime books, some of which became bestsellers.
During the 1990s and 2000s, Dunne worked as a crime reporter. He covered several more high-profile cases on top of the Mendedez brothers’ trial in 1993. Dunne was one of two reporters granted full access to O.J. Simpson’s 1995 murder trial and covered Phil Spector’s murder trial in 2007.
However, born out of his personal experiences at the father of a murder victim, Dunne’s son told People in June, “He was a journalist, but not a terribly unbiased one. He always looked at it from the rights of the victim.”
In 2002, Dunne began hosting his own talk show for CourtTV called “Dominick Dunne’s Power, Privilege, and Justice.” This show lasted until 2009. The show was a true-crime series that explored real-life cases – with a focus on celebrity or wealthy criminals.
In 2008, Dunne publicly revealed he had been diagnosed with bladder cancer. The reporter eventually died on August 26, 2009, due to the illness.
But before his death, Dunne came out as bisexual, telling the Times in February 2009 that he called himself a “closeted bisexual celibate.”
“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” is available to stream on Netflix.