Claim: Dominick Dunne was a writer.

Dominick John Dunne -LRB- October 29 , 1925 -- August 26 , 2009 -RRB- was an American producer , writer and investigative journalist .   He began his career as a producer in film and television , noted for involvement with the pioneering gay film The Boys in the Band -LRB- 1970 -RRB- and the award winning drug film Panic in Needle Park -LRB- 1971 -RRB- . He turned to writing in the early 1970s . After the 1982 murder of his daughter Dominique , he came to focus on the ways in which wealth and high society interacts with the judicial system . A frequent contributor to Vanity Fair , Dunne also appeared regularly on television discussing crime from the 1980s to the end of his life .