The strange tale of Dominique Dunne

Along with The Omen and The Exorcist, Poltergeist is often associated with having a curse on it owing to the deaths of four of the actors within 6 years of each other. The rumored curse was often said to have manifested as a consequence of the prop department using real skeletons (apparently they were cheaper than plastic ones!). The most shocking death was arguably Dominique Dunne (who played the eldest daughter, Dana) who was killed by her boyfriend, John Thomas Sweeney just months after the film’s release. Sweeney had strangled her after she had broken up with him a few weeks earlier, causing her to fall into a coma and dying five days later - her co-star, 12 year old Heather O’Rourke (Carol Anne), would be buried in the same cemetery as Dunne (Westwood Village Memorial Park) six years later after a cardiac arrest caused by septic shock. Incredibly Sweeney was only charged with voluntary manslaughter (killing in the “heat of passion”) and only served three years and seven months of his six and a half year sentence. When he was released he worked as a sous chef in a restaurant in Santa Monica where Dominique’s mother and her brother Griffin (An American Werewolf in London star, Griffin Dunne) began handing out flyers stating that the food they were eating was cooked by the man who killed Dominique Dunne. In the 1990’s Dominique’s father, Dominick, was contacted by a doctor in Florida who was worried that his daughter might have just got engaged to John Sweeney, which it turned out was indeed the case. Griffin Dunne called the daughter to persuade her to call the engagement off but Sweeney accused the Dunnes of harassing him and abruptly changed his name and disappeared. Unperturbed, the Dunnes hired a private investigator to track him down and were informed he had moved to the Pacific Northwest and changed his named to John Maura. Eventually Dominick Dunne decided that he no longer wanted to waste his life away pursuing Sweeney and the investigations were called off.