John Thomas Sweeney
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John Thomas Sweeney is a former chef who dated actress Dominique Dunne in the early 1980s and strangled her following a domestic dispute in early November 1982. He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter after her death and given a prison sentence of six years for his crime but was released after serving two and a half years.
Upon his release, he returned to his vocation as a chef, being hired by a restaurant in Santa Monica, California. However, Dunne's family publicly protested his employment there, and he was fired.
Dunne's father, journalist and author Dominick Dunne, has said that in his frustration over Sweeney's relatively short prison term, Dunne hired private investigator Anthony Pellicano to follow and report upon Sweeney. According to Dunne, the last information he had was that Sweeney had changed his name to John Maura — taking his mother's first name for his new last name — moved to the Pacific Northwest and found employment as a chef in a Seattle restaurant. [1] [2] [3] [4] Dunne has said that he eventually decided he didn't want to spend his life consumed by such a pursuit, and he no longer has information regarding the current activities or whereabouts of Maura (né Sweeney).
