Dominique Dunne - Domestic Violence Or Tragic Curse?

Movie star Dominique Dunne was killed by her ex boyfriend John Sweeney in 1982 in a classic case of domestic violence

Google “Dominique Dunne” and you’ll see references to the movie Poltergeist and her tragic death. Some results include her murder as evidence of a curse associated with the Poltergeist film series. But beneath this clickbait is an all too familiar story about domestic violence escalating to murder. And, as is also far too common in these cases, it doesn’t seem like the victim and her family received the justice they deserved.

Dominique’s last rehearsal

On Saturday, October 30, 1982, 22-year-old Dominique Dunne was in the middle of filming the television miniseries V, a science fiction, action, and adventure program involving extraterrestrials. Dunne played the character “Robin Maxwell” and had invited fellow V actor David Packer over to read lines together that night.

That evening, Dunne discovered a package on her doorstep. It was the night before Halloween, and her ex-boyfriend, 26-year-old John Sweeney, had sent her a chocolate mask that he carved in her likeness along with some pumpkins. Dunne responded to the gift by calling Ma Maison, a posh restaurant frequented by Hollywood’s upper crust, where Sweeney was executive chef.

Coworker Michael Feig picked up the call, handed it off to Sweeney, and observed him become quietly upset after hanging up. “It’s over,” Sweeney told him. Sweeney called Dunne repeatedly with no answer. Eventually, Sweeney called his therapist instead, telling him, “I’m losing it. I can’t control myself anymore.”

Dunne called a friend to share what had happened, explaining that she had agreed to meet Sweeney for lunch the next day. At one point during the call, an operator cut in asking Dunne if she would accept an emergency call from Sweeney, which she did. Sweeney asked to come over right away, but Dunne refused. Then, Sweeney overheard David Packer arriving at Dunne’s house for rehearsal and hung up the phone. Coworker Michael Feig recalled Sweeney telling him “I’ll be back” and chugging two martinis before leaving Ma Maison.

Sweeney walked the 15 or 20 minutes to Dunne’s West Hollywood residence, showing up at about 9:00 p.m. The two had shared the home until about a month prior, when Dunne kicked Sweeney out over his abusive tendencies. David Packer remained inside when Dunne got up to answer the door. Sweeney said, loudly, “We’ve got to settle this right now.” Packer called out, asking, “Should I leave?” Sweeney said yes, but Dunne asked him to wait inside. Dunne stepped out onto the porch with Sweeney, and the argument that followed was bad enough that Packer phoned a friend and told their answering machine “If I die tonight, it was by John Sweeney.” Then, he put on an album and returned to reading his script in the living room.

But the fight outside escalated. Packer heard thumping noises, followed by two screams, and then silence. Packer called local police at this point (pre-911), but they were dismissive, telling him to “be a man” and “help her yourself.” Sweeney strangled Dunne for more than four minutes, dragging her by her throat about 55 yards across her driveway and onto her neighbor’s property. When Packer finally investigated, he saw Sweeney standing over Dunne’s lifeless body. Terrified, he attempted to escape over a back fence. Sweeney caught up to him, however, and told him to call police. Packer made the call and then fled the scene, but he called police from a pay phone later to confirm they had dispatched.

When police arrived, Sweeney greeted them by saying, “Man, I blew it. I killed her. I didn’t think I choked her that hard, but I don’t know, I just kept on choking her. I just lost my temper and blew it again.” Dunne wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse. Police managed to revive her heart with CPR and rush her to the hospital while arresting Sweeney for assault and attempted murder. Dunne remained on life-support, in a coma with severe brain damage, for almost five days. Her brain scans showed no signs of life. Only immediate family members were allowed to visit her bedside, and her father described her condition in heartbreaking detail:

“At first, I did not realize that the person on the bed was Dominique. There were tubes in her everywhere, and the life-support system caused her to breathe in and out with a grotesque jerking movement that seemed a parody of life. Her eyes were open, massively enlarged, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. Her beautiful hair had been shaved off. A large bolt had been screwed into her skull to relieve the pressure on her brain. Her neck was purpled and swollen; vividly visible on it were the marks of the massive hands of the man who had strangled her. It was nearly impossible to look at her, but also impossible to look away.”

Dominique Dunne passed away on Thursday, November 4, 1982, at 22 years old. That same day, Sweeney was charged with murder, to which he plead innocent. An autopsy determined her cause of death to be “anoxic encephalopathy” – brain death from lack of blood flow to her brain – caused by “strangulation with contusions over larynx and contusions within carotid sheath.” The autopsy report also noted “contusions in capsule of submandibular glands” and “massive aspiration pneumonia.” This indicates deadly injury not only to her neck, but also her lower jaw, and a struggle for air in her final moments that caused her to inhale a large amount of fluid into her lungs.

Life after death

Since Dunne was murdered while filming V, her scenes were re-shot with another actress in her place. When V debuted on television in two parts on May 1 and 2, 1983, they were dedicated “in loving memory” to Dunne.

The day after her death, just a few hours after her autopsy, Dunne appeared as an unnamed “Italian girl” in an episode of the short-lived television adventure series The Quest. Surprisingly, this wasn’t Dunne’s only posthumous work.

Dunne’s episode of Hill Street Blues, a critically acclaimed police procedural, aired on November 18, 1982, just two weeks after her death, with a dedication to her memory at the episode’s opening. She guest starred as a teenage mother named “Cindy,” who police track down after discovering her abandoned infant in a police cruiser.

We first see Dunne as she is being beaten and name called by her mother, and it’s rumored that she didn’t require makeup for those on-screen injuries because her boyfriend inflicted them in real life the night before filming. We can clearly see a cut on Dunne’s lower lip, as well as bruising and swelling around her right eye and cheekbone. The episode is quite difficult to watch, not just because of those injuries, but because of the portrayal of Dunne’s abuse and her terrified reactions to it.

Chillingly, Dunne’s portrayal as an abuse victim, with her real-life injuries, would be her final acting role.

Acting origins

Dunne’s potential as an actor started with a high school drama award, but close family friends remember how seriously she took her annual Christmas performances when was a little girl. Dunne was born November 23, 1959 in Santa Monica, California to parents Dominick Dunne, an author and investigative journalist, and Ellen Griffin, an heiress and activist. She was the only living daughter of the couple who had lost two daughters already in infancy. “Dominique was all three daughters in one to us, triply loved,” her father said. She had two older brothers: Griffin, an actor, director, and producer, and Alexander.

Family and friends remember Dunne’s big heart for stray animals and her way of accomplishing whatever she set out to do. A future acting friend would say of her, “I think I’m a better person for having known her, having been touched by her life. Maybe some more optimism and love stays with me. Her smile certainly does.”

Dunne lived primarily with her mother after her parents divorced in her childhood. After high school, Dunne studied abroad in Italy, returning to her mother’s California home after the matriarch was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Dunne’s first television appearance happened on May 17, 1978 when she was a guest on The Mike Douglas Show, a long-running daytime variety and talk show, at just 18 years old. That fall, Dunne started studying drama at Colorado State University. A fellow student remembers that “she was just really at home on stage…she was quite natural.”

In 1979, her brother Griffin’s friend, producer Charles Wessler, connected Dunne with an agent that would lead to numerous television roles in the coming year. Dunne would also start participating in acting workshops in Los Angeles, where she was praised especially for her physicality and fearlessness.

Dunne first major role was in a made-for-TV melodrama called Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker. She was 19 years old when it aired on September 21, 1979. It’s a cautionary tale about a serial rapist who uses highways as his hunting ground. Dunne plays “Cathy Robinson,” the best friend of star Charlene Tilton, of Dallas fame. The pair are part of a group of girlfriends who continue to hitchhike despite the risks. Dunne’s character becomes one of the rapist’s victims and suffers a miscarriage to boot. This would be the first of many instances where Dunne was cast as a teen falling on hard circumstances.

Two months later, on November 16, 1979, Dunne appeared in the Ed Asner drama Lou Grant about a Los Angeles-area newspaper editor. She played the role of “second girl” in the third season episode titled Kidnap. Dunne’s next role was on the television drama Family in a fifth season episode about unplanned pregnancy that aired on January 21, 1980, titled “When the Bough Breaks.” Dunne played “Erica,” a friend of the main character who wants to lose her virginity.

That same year, Dunne, now 20 years old, would film another made for TV movie and return for a second episode of Lou Grant. In Valentine Magic on Love Island, released February 15, 1980, Dunne played “Cheryl,” the niece of a resort operator who helps the main characters fall in love. In Lou Grant’s fourth season episode “Goop,” which aired November 24, 1980, Dunne played “Teri Wilk,” an upgrade from her billing as “second girl” on the series a year before.

At 21 years old, Dunne appeared in her first recurring television role in the comedy-drama series Breaking Away, based on a movie of the same name about midwestern working-class young people. Unfortunately, it only lasted for a single season. Dunne featured as “Paulina Bornstein,” one of the main character’s love interests, in three of the show’s eight episodes between December 1980 and January 1981 (The American Dream, Heart Like a Wheel, Rainy Night in Georgia).

Dunne appeared on several more programs in the fall of 1981, including CBS Children’s Mystery Theatre’s second season premiere. In “The Haunting of Harrington House,” which aired September 8, 1981, Dunne was “Polly Ames,” the daughter of a hotel owner investigating the ghostly activity that’s frightening tenants away.

Dunne then appeared in two very different made for TV for movies, the first being Unit 4, which aired on September 29, 1981. She played “Tracey Phillips” in this adventure film about a military commando who rescues a government official and his family from terrorists. Next, Dunne starred in The Day the Loving Stopped, which was released October 16, 1981. She played “Judy Danner,” a bride-to-be coming to terms with her parents’ divorce on the eve of her own wedding.

A date with destiny

The fall of 1981 is also when Dunne attended a Beverly Hills house party where she met 25-year-old John Sweeney. Friend and fellow acting classmate Gloria Gifford recalled that Sweeney “zeroed in” on Dunne during the party. Family friend Charles Wessler felt that Sweeney “didn’t really seem like her kind of guy,” but the two fell in love all the same. He described Sweeney as the type of person who, upon first impression “just seemed phony…just seemed fake.”

Dunne and Sweeney moved in together after only a few weeks. The following year, in 1982, the number of Dunne’s acting roles doubled. Not only that, but the prestige of these roles increased, and she was cast in her first major motion picture. Dunne’s friends noticed negative changes around this time too, like Dunne and Sweeney dressing in the same color when they went out. “I didn’t like that,” Gloria Gifford remembered. “It seemed like a claiming thing.” She also remembered Sweeney’s fits of jealousy, like accusing Dunne’s acting teacher of taking sexual interest in her. Gifford said he was “very possessive in that he didn’t really want her to have friends. He wanted to do everything with her…he started to pull her away from her friends.”

Dunne’s work in 1982 began with a February 25 episode of Fame during the popular show’s debut season. She played “Tracy” in the episode titled “Street Kid,” a teen runaway turned sex worker who cleans up and returns to her family. Dunne followed this with a March 30 appearance on the mystery series Hart to Hart’s third season. In the episode titled “Hart, Line, and Sinker,” Dunne played “Christy Ferrin,” who is framed for murder by a local backwoods sheriff.

Dunne’s breakout role came next, when the horror film Poltergeist was released on June 4, 1982. Dunne played Dana Freeling, the teenage daughter of a family terrorized by their haunted suburban home. It was shortly after Poltergeist’s release when Dunne brought Sweeney out to New York to meet her father and brothers. During this trip, a fan recognized Dunne from Poltergeist, quoted her famous “What’s happening?!” line, and then began talking to her. Enraged and insinuating flirtation, Sweeney picked up and shook the man in front of scared witnesses, including Dunne’s brothers.

The next day, Dunne’s father met the couple for lunch. A tense Dunne and Sweeney arrived late, and it was clear that Dunne had been crying just beforehand. Dunne’s father remembered feeling like something was off, that Sweeney was more in love with his daughter than his daughter was with Sweeney.

He shared these sentiments with Dunne’s mother after the visit, who agreed. Dunne had already confided to her mother that Sweeney had “a terrible temper,” occasionally destroying furniture and housewares, but she naively assured her mother than Sweeney would never hurt her.

Dunne’s mother would witness even more of their abusive relationship after an incident on August 27, 1982. After suffering a beating from Sweeney, a terrified Dunne retreated to her mother’s home to recuperate. Sweeney had pulled her around by her hair, beating her head off the floor and pulling out clumps of her hair in the process. Dunne stayed at her mother’s for two days until Sweeney showed up to apologize with a bouquet of flowers. She accepted.

Dunne’s father would later recount how, as he and his family watched Sweeney being arraigned on the evening news for his daughter’s murder, “we all began to feel guilty for not having spoken out our true feelings about Sweeney when there was still time to save Dominique from him.”

Dominique’s fearful final weeks

Dunne would appear in two more television roles before her death, the first being another made for TV movie called The Shadow Riders, which was released on September 28, 1982. Dunne played “Sissy Travern” in this Civil War-era romance starring Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott. Sweeney was in such a fit of jealousy over Dunne filming alongside these two actors that he encouraged her not to take the part. She did anyway. This would be her final film, and it was just two days prior to the film’s airing when Dunne suffered a life-threatening attack from Sweeney that led to their breakup.

During Sweeney’s murder trial, Dunne’s friend Bryan Cook testified to witnessing the attack with his girlfriend on September 26, 1982. After returning home from a double date and retiring to bed, the visiting couple awoke to Dunne and Sweeney arguing loudly. Cook yelled for them to go to bed and settle their differences in the morning. Next, Cook and his girlfriend heard a thud and then the sound of Dunne gasping for air. Then, Dunne shouted, “Bryan, please help me!” as she ran to her friends in tears. “He just tried to kill me. Can’t you see the marks on my neck?”

When Sweeney entered the room, Cook described him as “very scary…he was denying completely that he’d even touched her…we were all a little fearful.” Dunne asked to use the bathroom, but she didn’t return. Instead, she climbed out of a window and into her blue convertible Volkswagen. Sweeney rushed from the house when he heard the car engine start, jumping up on the hood. He held on by the car’s windshield wipers as Dunne drove away, finally hopping off about a block down the road. Dunne escaped to a friend’s home, who took photographs of the strangulation marks that would later be shown in court. Sweeney would claim that he had only tried to restrain Dunne from leaving the house that night, nothing more.

As soon as the dust settled, Dunne demanded that Sweeney move out and get therapy, which he did. Dunne explained to her father, “he’s not in love with me, he’s obsessed with me. It’s driving me crazy.” Dunne’s friends helped her hide from Sweeney for a few weeks, letting her stay with them and covering for her when he called. Sweeney began stalking Dunne by showing up outside her acting classes. During his trial, Sweeney said it was around this time when he broke into Dunne’s vacant home and attempted suicide by swallowing pills.

Actor Miguel Ferrer, a friend of Dunne’s in acting classes with her, recalled when Sweeney accused him of hiding Dunne and having an affair with her. “I know she’s there,” Sweeney insisted. “He called my house…ranting and raving…just insane stuff…the veneer was gone.” Dunne seemed embarrassed when Ferrer told her about the incident later, but she tried to laugh it off as much as she could.

Dunne’s last television appearance while she was still alive was on the popular crime drama CHiPs. On October 10, 1982, she played “Amy Kent,” a 16-year-old runaway with a newborn baby, in the sixth season premiere, titled “Meet the New Guy.” Two days later, on October 12, Dunne called a locksmith out to her house. The locksmith recalled that “she was very nervous” during the appointment, stating that she had to change the locks due to problems she was having with someone. That same someone (presumably Sweeney) drove by while the locksmith was there.

Shooting for V began on October 13, the next day. Director Kenneth Johnson remembered that Dunne seemed distracted on set, like her mind was elsewhere. On October 25, 1982, almost a month after Sweeney attacked and nearly killed her, Dunne finally moved back into the home where it happened. She would live there less than a week before Sweeney would return to finish the job.

While cleaning Dunne’s home after her funeral, friends discovered an undated letter she wrote to Sweeney. Part of it read:

“I am not permitted to do enough things on my own. Why must you be a part of everything I do? Why do you want to come to my riding lessons and my acting classes? Why are you jealous of every scene partner I have? Why must I recount word for word everything I spoke to Dr. Black about? Why must I talk about every audition when you know it is bad luck for me? Why do we have discussions at 3 a.m. all the time, instead of during the day? Why must you know the name of every person I come into contact with? You go crazy over my rehearsals. You insist on going to work with me when I have told you it makes me nervous. Your paranoia is overboard.… You do not love me. You are obsessed with me. …The whole thing has made me realize how scared I am of you, and I don’t mean just physically. I’m afraid of the next time you are going to have another mood swing… When we are good, we are great. But when we are bad, we are horrendous. The bad outweighs the good.”

Origins of abuse

Perhaps something in John Sweeney’s past can help explain how he became a domestic abuser who escalated to murder. Sweeney was born in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, a rural, working-class area of the northeast United States, in 1956. Sweeney’s father, John Sr., worked at a local beryllium plant. Sweeney’s mother, Maura, was a waitress.

The oldest of six children, Sweeney would intervene when his father’s alcoholism led to physical violence toward his mother, but this only turned his father’s abuse toward him. Neighbors, coworkers, and police were all aware of problems in the Sweeney household, and they described the eldest son as “physical” and “pretty aggressive.” Sweeney’s high school jobs training counselor described him as “an intelligent young man who appeared to have a lot of ambition and drive pent up inside him. He seemed like a nice kid, very intelligent, gifted.”

After taking culinary courses at Luzerne County Community College, Sweeney landed a chef’s job at a local fine restaurant called Carmen’s. The owner said Sweeney was “very ambitious” and “destined for bigger and better things.” Friends from this time remember Sweeney taking karate, self-defense, and painting classes. They claim he once did a painting entirely in human blood, but they were too nervous to ask if it was his or someone else’s.

In 1976, Sweeney relocated to California, severed ties with his family, and began dating Lillian Pierce. Pierce suffered extreme violence at Sweeney’s hands during their two-year relationship, resulting in a collapsed lung, broken nose, punctured eardrum, and two hospital stays. Sweeney threw things at her when she tried to leave, smashed household items, and even foamed at the mouth whenever he lost control.

This is also when Sweeney started working at California’s illustrious Ma Maison restaurant under head chef Wolfgang Puck. He replaced Puck in 1981, shortly before meeting Dominique Dunne. After Sweeney’s arrest, Ma Maison’s owner, Patrick Terrail, told reporters that Sweeney was “a very dependable young man…very responsible, a very good cook.”

Chef Michael Feig, who was working with Sweeney the night he murdered Dunne, recalled Ma Maison’s kitchen environment as “the most pressure-packed restaurant I’d ever worked in, without a doubt.” Feig said Sweeney was “high energy” and “very creative” when it came to dealing with the intense atmosphere, if not “a bit temperamental, but you find that a lot in the restaurant business.”

Through Patrick Terrail would later deny directly funding Sweeney’s legal defense, Ma Maison’s support of the murderer in the media would contribute to its downfall. After Dunne’s murder, the lawyers, businessmen, and celebrity clientele that once frequented the eatery slowly stopped making reservations. The restaurant closed in 1985, two years after Sweeney’s conviction.

Injustice for Dominique

That controversial conviction came from what prosecutor and California district attorney Steve Barshop called “the worst trial I’ve had in 25 years.” There was no question whether Sweeney had murdered Dunne, only whether he had done so in “the heat of passion” or “with malice.” The prosecution argued that Sweeney’s history of violence proved his attack on Dunne was part of a pattern. He planned to kill Dunne because she refused to reconcile, and choking her for more than four minutes was proof of his malicious intent.

However, presiding judge Burton Katz ruled that testimony about Sweeney’s abusive history from battered ex-girlfriend Lillian Pierce and Dunne’s own mother, who spoke from a wheelchair, was “more prejudicial than probative,” so the jury never heard it. Katz also ruled that statements from Dunne’s friends and colleagues were inadmissible hearsay, but they would have shown the jury that, in her final weeks, Dunne feared Sweeney was going to murder her.

Throughout the seven-week trial, Sweeney presented as remorseful and despondent, always holding a Bible, and occasionally crying. His preliminary hearing had already been delayed due a publicized suicide attempt. On the stand, Sweeney emphasized the romantic side of his relationship with Dunne. He read from a letter she wrote asking him for space, which he interpreted as a promise of reconciliation. Without corroboration, Sweeney claimed he met with Dunne in person just days before her murder, saying they hugged, kissed, and spoke about their future together.

Thus, Sweeney was overwhelmed by a “swirl of confusion and rage” when, on October 30, Dunne called and told him it was over. At her house, Sweeney says Dunne admitted she had lied to him, and the resulting anger caused him to black out as he lunged at her.

The jury believed that Dunne was torturing Sweeney with mixed messages, and they could see how that would cause him to “flip out.” The jury foreman explained how “the talk was, well, anybody would be distraught, would be hurt, would be shattered.” Defense attorney Mike Adelson presented Sweeney as “a blue-collar kid who got mixed up in Beverly Hills society and couldn’t handle it.” Prosecutor Steve Barshop saw it as a “poor, lovesick puppy” act from someone with a pattern of being violent and getting away with it. He added, “No, Sweeney, this isn’t heat of passion, this is what you do, you beat women.”

The jury found Sweeney guilty of the lesser of the two charges before them: voluntary manslaughter. Jurors reported frustration with their 120-page instructions from Judge Katz and his unhelpfulness in answering their questions. When asked on four occasions to provide clarifications, the judge declined, saying “it won’t help” or “it’s in the instructions.” A few said they would have decided differently if they understood their instructions or had heard about Sweeney’s prior abuse. The jury foreman explained to the press, “a few jurors were just hot and tired and wanted to give up.”

After severe backlash to the verdict, Judge Katz admonished the jury and the district attorney at sentencing, promising the harshest penalty for Sweeney. The maximum sentence at the time was only six years and six months, of which Sweeney only served three years. It’s important to remember that, for all his heavy-handedness at sentencing, it was Judge Katz who dismissed critical evidence against Sweeney and kept a first-degree murder charge off the table in the first place.

The trial spurred some legislative changes, including maximum sentence increases for manslaughter in 1983. And it inspired Dunne’s mother, Ellen Griffin, to help other families in similar positions of grief. In 1984, she helped establish Justice for Homicide Victims, a victim rights’ advocacy group that aims to improve domestic violence awareness and legislation.

It wasn’t long after his early release before Sweeney took a high-paying chef’s job at Santa Monica’s The Chronicle restaurant, now The Victorian. Disgusted, Justice for Homicide Victims members handed out flyers to restaurant patrons that said something along the lines of, “the hands that prepared your food strangled Dominique Dunne to death.” A subsequent boycott of the restaurant led to Sweeney’s firing, but he was working at the Bel Age Hotel in West Hollywood, now The London West Hollywood at Beverly Hills, a short time later.

Unfinished business

Although activists quit harassing him, there are reports that Dunne’s father, Dominick, pursued Sweeney from his release in 1986 until Dominick’s passing in 2009. Dominick Dunne hired private detective Anthony Pellicano to keep tabs on Sweeney, even after Sweeney changed his name in 1996 to John Patrick Maura (Maura, being his mother’s name, and Patrick, after Ma Maison’s owner, Patrick Terrail). Dunne admitted that he also wanted to hire someone to kill Sweeney. “I know, it seems absurd now, but I worshipped my daughter. I just became obsessed with this guy getting out of prison. I wanted harm to come to him.” Fortunately, Dominick “was willing to be talked out of it.”

There’s always the fear that domestic abusers turned killers will reoffend after release. Those close to this case agree that potential exists for Sweeney…or rather John Patrick Maura, who now works for a retirement community in California. Trial prosecutor Steve Barshop said, “Do I think he’s a time bomb? Of course, I do.” Family friend Charles Wessler agrees: “John Sweeney is a killer…he is capable, very capable, of killing again.” In an interview shortly after the trial, Sweeney’s defense attorney said, “I think he will be safe if he gets the therapy he needs. His rage needs to be worked upon.” The trial judge replied to the same question, “I wouldn’t be comfortable with him in society.” The jury foreman stated, “if it were up to me, Sweeney would have spent the rest of his life in jail.”

Former coworker and chef Michael Feig attended a Dodgers’ baseball game with Sweeney after he was released from prison. Feig said that Sweeney “wasn’t the same person,” and had become “very religious.” In an interview around that same time, Sweeney reflected on his relationship with Dunne, saying “If I was the person I am today, I think it could have worked. I’m more in touch with myself, the violence that’s always been a part of my life.”

Instead, this October 30 will mark 40 years since he murdered Dominique Dunne. She would be 62 years old today, and who knows what we might remember her for if things had turned out differently.