Hollywood titan's haunting deathbed secret that he feared would blow up his Poltergeist actress daughter's murder trial - and left him on the brink of suicide

The brutal murder of promising actress Dominique Dunne, star of 1982 blockbuster Poltergeist, left her prominent Hollywood family traumatized. Alex, Dominique, and Griffin with their father, Dominick Dunne, in 1967 at the Chateau Marmont Dominique Dunne, far right, starring in the 1982 blockbuster Poltergeist shortly before she was brutally murdered on the driveway of her West Hollywood home Griffin Dunne has written a memoir about his upbringing among Hollywood royalty and the murder of his sister Dominique. The Dunne children - Alex, Dominique, and Griffin - at the beach in 1970 Griffin Dunne starred opposite Linda Fiorentino in Martin Scorsese's 1985 movie After Hours Dominique with Valerie Harper and Dennis Weaver in the TV movie The Day the Loving Died Dominique's breakthrough acting role came in the ABC network movie Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker John Thomas Sweeney was acquitted of second-degree murder in favor of voluntary manslaughter, much to the family's outrage ‘Dad was in bed, looking grayish and desperately thin when I went to hug him. I believe his hatred has led him to hire a detective to dig into my background and that my relationship with Norman has been discovered… This loathsome and cruel man will expose our relationship to discredit his testimony and my character.’ Griffin with his father Dominick in 1988, five years after his sister's murder trial Dominick Dunne shares a laugh with Joan Collins at a party in New York Dominick went on to became a star reporter for Vanity Fair, covering other high-profile criminal cases, including that of OJ Simpson He went on to imagine the line of aggressive questioning: ‘You have carried on a secret affair with the father of your close friend all these years? What is the age difference between you and Mr Dunne, who I believe qualifies as a senior citizen?’ In the journal, he went on to swear that, if his relationship with Carby was used to steer the verdict in Sweeney’s favor, ‘I will kill myself… this time I will really do it.’ The sense of the torture his father had gone through - not just facing his daughter’s murderer in court, but dreading the possibility that he might in some way be responsible for him being acquitted - was unimaginable for Griffin.