Money, Murder, and Dominick Dunne by Robert Hofler

Author:Robert Hofler
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780299311582
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press

10

Kennedys and Cover-Ups

Was America in the middle of a golden age of crime? Or was Dominick only making it look like one? The major problem with great murders is that, once they are committed, the accused take an eternity in gumshoe time to come to trial.

Dominick occupied himself with happier but less newsworthy events in 1990. The publication of An Inconvenient Woman, as well as the royalties from his two other best sellers, gave him the money to buy a seven-room country house in Hadlyme, Connecticut. Even more gratifying, on April 12, 1990, he celebrated the birth of his only grandchild, Hannah, born to Griffin Dunne and his wife, actress Carey Lowell. In the years to come, Dominick would never miss an opportunity to tell close friends, as well as virtual strangers, how much he loved Hannah. “Nick repeated everything she said to me, told me about everything she wore,” said one of those friends, Tita Cahn. “He got such a kick and such a joy out of her. It was the traditional joy of being a grandparent.” He even took pleasure in watching how Hannah would leave home properly dressed for school. “But then she would put on a little lip gloss or add something to her outfit, once her parents were out of sight,” said Cahn.

When Hannah was still a child, Dominick initiated a lovely annual ritual. Every Valentine’s Day he sent his only grandchild a bouquet of flowers with the message “from a secret admirer.” He never told Hannah he was that admirer.

The early 1990s were significant in other ways. Those years quickly stripped Dominick’s love-hate affair with the Kennedy family of any respect or affection. “Dominick felt that the Kennedys thought they were above the law, and that burned him up,” said his assistant Jack Cummings III. “He put Jackie and her children apart. He considered them separate.”

Not separate was everyone else in that rich Irish clan.

His admiration of the Kennedys first took a hit shortly after he and Lenny moved to the West Coast in 1957, and Dominick watched as Joseph P. Kennedy and others in the family berated and mistreated Peter Lawford. It was Lawford who had to procure the Hollywood stars for John F. Kennedy’s sexual pleasure. It was Lawford who had to tell Frank Sinatra that the president-elect would not be visiting him in Palm Springs, as promised, but would be staying at Bing Crosby’s place instead. In his memoir, Dominick wrote, “Peter was ill-used by his famous and glamorous brothers-in-law. Get the girls, Peter. Get the blow, Peter. Tell Sinatra we can’t come, Peter.” What he did not write and what compounded the Kennedys’ cruelty in Dominick’s eyes was his strong physical attraction to Lawford, who died so broke in 1984 that his remains later had to be removed from the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery for nonpayment of fees. It was the same cemetery where Dominick had buried Dominique.

In 1969 Dominick was not working as a journalist when Edward Kennedy drove his car over a Chappaquiddick bridge, causing the death of an intern, Mary Jo Kopechne.

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