Society crime writer Dominick Dunne, dies at 83 [View All]

Source: CNN

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Dominick Dunne, the former Hollywood producer and best-selling author known for his Vanity Fair essays on the courtroom travails of the rich and famous, died Wednesday in New York city after a long battle with cancer.

Dunne, who described himself as "a high-class Zelig," was 83.

Called "Nick" by his friends, Dunne was putting the finishing touches on his final novel, which he said he planned to call "Too Much Money," when his health took a turn for the worse.

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As a correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine, Dunne was a fixture at some of the most famous trials of our times -- Claus von Bulow, William Kennedy Smith, the Menendez brothers, O.J. Simpson, Michael Skakel and Phil Spector.

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He vented his anger at the legal system in "Justice: A Father's Account of the Trial of his Daughter's Killer," following the murder trial of John Sweeney, the estranged boyfriend who strangled 22-year-old Dominique Dunne, in 1982. Sweeney spent fewer than three years in prison.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/25/dominick.dunne.obit/index.html