Thaindian News

By Ken Roy

Aug 27 (IBNS) Former Hollywood producer Dominick Dunne, best-selling author known for his Vanity Fair essays, died in New York city after a long battle with cancer.

CNN reported that Dominick, called “Nick” by his friends, 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.

He flew to Germany earlier this month for another round of stem cell treatments at the same Bavarian clinic where the late Farrah Fawcett was treated. He was hospitalized upon his return to New York, then sent home.

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.

He discovered his magazine writing career in his 50s, through personal tragedy — his daughter’s murder.

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.

Dunne’s article was published by Vanity Fair and he accepted then-editor Tina Brown’s offer to write full-time for the magazine. Calling himself a “diarist,” Dunne dropped bold-faced names as he spilled behind-the-scenes nuggets gleaned from courtrooms and dinner parties alike.