Society crime writer Dominick Dunne, dies at 83

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

RIP

now he can see his little girl again. O8)

He gave good dish.

and enjoyed it all. He was a great, entertaining reporter and writer. RIP.

Like when he decided our POS congresscritter Gary Condom was the killer of intern Chandra Levy and opined so in a column. It led to the general outcry against Condom and ultimately to his defeat in the Dem primary the next year. Apparently it wasn't true but hey WTF.

Now I had very little use generally for Mr Dunne but if he in any way helped us get rid of that piece a shit Condom, then I mourn his passing.

Especially Joe Kennedy.

and figured that, due to his age and illness, he was probably in the process of dying.

I'll miss his writing and keen observations.

from a constant fan

:cry:

when he claimed that Chandra Levy was abducted by white slave traders from Saudi Arabia on motorcycle at Gary Condit's behest.

Some seemed good, some not so good. It may have depended on your predispositions about particular cases he covered.

His voice is the reason I bothered to turn on the television at all sometimes.

I remember what happened to his daughter, it devastated Dunne.

May he now be reunited with her and rest in peace.

:-(

If I remember correctly one of his children was murdered.

called Another City Not My Own. And yes, his daughter was murdered by an ex-boyfriend.

Any wonder he wrote from such an angle?

strngled by her ex-boyfriend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Dunne

Is everyone daft?! Dominick Dunn was BFFs with Lucianne Goldberg, racist cop Mark Furman and even joined Lucianne in egging on Linda Tripp in her recordings of Monica Lewinsky! He was a hateful ultra-conservative monster who I find it very ironic that died on the same day as Teddy. He hated the Kennedys with a green venom and sent his bully boy, Mark Furman to nab Michael Skakel, a Kennedy relation, who was sent to jail on evidence that was circumstantial he said/she said, and without any forensic evidence to back it up. Hey, give the Devil his due. I enjoyed a couple of his books, too, but the guy was an arch enemy to Democrats and all things liberal.

I don't have to agree with someone's politics to enjoy their novels.

and do you have any proof of your claims?

Skakel admitted, to more than one person in much different and non-intersecting venues, that he did indeed murder Martha Moxley. The Kennedy clan is huge, and besides it's no reflection on any other relative... after all you can't pick them, can you?

Liberals are for fairness, not blindness;
they're not even for nepotism, the Kennedy brothers irregardless (IMHO they all deserved to be in politics).

In any event:

de mortuis nil nisi bonum










Edit: typo

...a guy who befriended Mark Fuhrman!

i just want to say that overall, i am amazed not at the people on du who profess some kind of religion, but at how many think loved ones will be reunited in death....having lost someone near and dear to me, i have to admit to never having that fantasy, though i think of him every day. when someone kindly says you'll see him in heaven it does absolutely nothing for me. so, if you say that to someone who is like me, don't expect that they will like you for it. i would do anything to get him back, and i live each day knowing that will not happen. i wouldn't say to you as a grieving parent/spouse 'what at tragedy you will never see him/her again' but that is what i truly believe. don't try to ameliorate pain with your own religious beliefs, and i won't with my 'beliefs.'

when i saw this dunne obit come up, i remembered hearing him once talk about his daughters death and his true crime books or novels (i haven't read any) and thinking about how death in the family changes families. this, right after one of the most tragic death related families i have heard of loses a second member tragic in the losing but not the circumstances at least.

and while I might disagree with those people who might extend their condolences with a comment about heaven or indeed hell, I don't think that what they are doing is harmful.

Let's face it: most religions are continued, now and into the future, because of those who have passed away. People who are here take death a little bit less troublesome when they believe in an afterlife.

No matter if there is, or even if there is not one, the loved ones left behind seek answers for their grief, and it works at some level.

I don't so much believe in an afterlife, but as a cat lover and owner, I actually can see, in my mind's eye, the Rainbow Bridge. It is a comfort to me to think that every pet I have ever had is somewhere waiting for me to join them forever. That part of me takes some joy in the fantasy, while the more sensible part of me holds their ashes and knows that the ashes are the only remainder of the kits I have loved and lost.

If you are a person with strong convictions, don't try to change these people--in their own world, the comments are natural, even if they are not to you. But remember that they are trying to comfort you in the only way they know.

I have read several of your book that kept me at the edge of my seat.

I do remember your shocked reaction when the jury found O.J. not guilty.

What a day to die, to be lost at the shadow of a giant and, I think, and acquaintance.

Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis both died on November 22, 1963. All these years, and I don't think I ever heard that before.

Also, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day, July 4, 1826.

their deaths would have over shadowed all other news. Per Olbermann Huxley's and Lewis' deaths were barely noticed because of the coverage of President Kennedy's assassination.

He was no Truman Capote ( a true genius of story-telling), but he could spin a tale and make it fun to read.

Source: L.A. Times

He was notorious for his skewering accounts of the trials of celebrities including Claus von Bulow, the Menendez brothers and O.J. Simpson. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer last year.



By 1970, he was producing films. His credits include "The Boys in the Band" (1970), "The Panic in Needle Park" (1971), "Play It as It Lays" (1972) -- based on the Didion novel of the same name -- and "Ash Wednesday" (1973).

He and his wife hosted lavish parties at their Beverly Hills home, most notably a black-and-white ball for their 10th wedding anniversary in 1964 with a guest list that included Nancy and Ronald Reagan, Natalie Wood, David Niven, Billy Wilder, Gina Lollobrigida and Capote, whose fame was about to peak as the author of "In Cold Blood." The party inspired Capote to give his own black-and-white ball two years later at New York's Plaza Hotel, a legendary affair that included 500 of the biggest names in literature, Hollywood and society. "He didn't invite us," Dunne noted whenever he told the story.

Another favorite Dunne story took place at the Daisy, a Rodeo Drive club popular with the Hollywood set. He was dining there one night in the 1960s when Frank Sinatra, with whom he'd had a testy relationship, paid a waiter to punch him in the face.

Although Dunne led a famous person's life, he felt like an impostor whose success did not match that of his peers. "Within me, I knew I would never be a first-rate producer. I wasn't tough enough," he wrote in Vanity Fair's 25th anniversary issue last October. His social ambitions ruined his marriage, and he began drinking excessively and abusing drugs. In 1969, he was arrested for possession of marijuana.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-dominick-dunne27-2009aug27,0,3214712.story

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Dunne covered a lot of the high impact murder trials through the years, and while I guess he never thought his work in this area was worth doing, he managed to discuss time and again the realities of a horrifying trend in the country, where famous people seemed to be implicated in homicides.