Dominique Dunne - Murder

Murder

In 1982, after completing work on Poltergeist, Dunne met and later moved in with a Los Angeles chef, John Thomas Sweeney, who was sous-chef at the restaurant Ma Maison. The relationship was abusive and, after a short while, Dunne ended it. A few weeks later, on October 30, after she refused to reconcile with him, Sweeney and Dunne argued in the driveway of her home, where she was rehearsing for the TV mini-series V with actor David Packer. Sweeney dragged her into the backyard of the house next door and strangled her until she was unconscious. Dunne was diagnosed as brain dead and after being in a deep coma for five days, she died on November 4 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California when her parents removed her from life support.

Her last TV appearance, airing after her death, was in an episode of Hill Street Blues titled "Requiem for a Hairbag". She played a teenage mother who is a victim of parental abuse. Some of her bruise marks were actual bruises inflicted by Sweeney the night before filming. The episode was dedicated to her memory.

Sweeney was originally charged with second-degree murder and assault to do great bodily harm; however, on November 10, 1983, the jury in the case acquitted him of these charges and found him guilty only of the lesser included offenses of voluntary manslaughter and misdemeanor assault. He was sentenced to 6½ years in prison, the maximum sentence he could have received, but he served less than four years before his release, having been given credit for time served before conviction. He then got employment as a head chef at a restaurant in Santa Monica, California but he later lost the job after Dunne's family publicly protested his employment by distributing placards to customers which read "The hands that prepared your meal tonight also strangled Dominique Dunne on October 30, 1982." In interviews, Dunne's father said that for a time he employed the services of private investigator Anthony Pellicano to follow and report upon Sweeney. According to Dunne's father, Pellicano reported that Sweeney had changed his name to John Maura and moved to the Pacific Northwest. Dunne's father said that he later decided that he no longer wished to squander his life following Sweeney and therefore discontinued any attempts to keep tabs on him.

Dunne was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery near family friend Natalie Wood. In 1988, Heather O'Rourke, Dunne's young Poltergeist costar, was also buried close to her.