Killing of Dominique Dunne
murder of American actress, Dominique Dunne
On October 30, 1982, 22-year-old Dominique Ellen Dunne, an American actress, was strangled outside her home by her ex-boyfriend, John Thomas Sweeney (born October 12, 1956). She fell into a coma as a result and was taken off life support five days later, on November 4, resulting in her death. In a court case that gained significant media coverage, Sweeney was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in Dunne's death and sentenced to six and a half years, serving two and a half years of the sentence before being released on parole.
Background
Dominique Dunne was born in Santa Monica, the youngest child of Ellen Beatriz "Lenny" (née Griffin), a ranching heiress, and Dominick Dunne, a writer, producer, and actor. Dunne had Irish and Mexican ancestry. Her father was born and raised in an Irish Catholic family with her maternal grandfather, an Irish-American and her maternal grandmother a Mexican who was from Sonora. She embarked on an acting career which included roles in several TV series and the horror film Poltergeist (1982), the latter being her best-known role.
Dunne met John Thomas Sweeney, a sous-chef at the restaurant Ma Maison, at a party in 1981. After a few weeks of dating, they moved into a one-bedroom house together on Rangely Avenue in West Hollywood. Due to Sweeney's jealousy and possessiveness, however, the relationship quickly deteriorated.
The public source identifies “Killing of Dominique Dunne” as murder of American actress, Dominique Dunne. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Killing, Dominique and Dunne.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q131159543. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1982, 1956 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Killing of Dominique Dunne” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.