Money, Murder, and Dominick Dunne: A Life in Several Acts

by Robert Hofler

  Garr, Levitt, Dunne. They were soon joined by a near stampede of detectives when Rushton Skakel hired a team of them to look into the 1975 murder. He wanted Sutton Associates to find the real killer and thereby clear his sons of suspicion. The report he commissioned cost $750,000, and it was everything Rushton Skakel did not want to read about Tommy and Michael.

  It labeled the two Skakel sons as suspects, and in the age of DNA, Michael had been forced in his interviews with Sutton detectives to change his story slightly. He continued to place himself at the Terrien house at the time of the murder, but now revealed for the first time that he had masturbated in a tree outside Martha Moxley’s bedroom window, in effect placing his DNA at the scene of the crime. The Sutton report also gave Michael a motive for the murder: jealousy over his older brother Tommy’s budding relationship with Martha. Worst of all, the report cleared the tutor Ken Littleton of any wrongdoing. (DNA evidence would not be introduced at the Michael Skakel trial in 2002.)

  Like any good reporter, Len Levitt got to the Sutton report but could not make a copy. Instead, he took notes and wrote an article for New York Newsday, which was picked up by the Stamford Advocate. Levitt wrote about the “masturbation,” but all references to that sex act were removed from both family newspapers.

  Dominick continued to receive tips, but as A Season in Purgatory began to fall off the best-seller lists, the stories told to him also diminished. Whenever he heard anything significant, he would phone Dorthy Moxley to share the news. “I know something about the Moxley case,” he said. But those kinds of calls gradually became less frequent. More likely, he would phone Dorothy just to see how she was doing.

  Dominick’s interest in the case never waned, but as a reporter he became enthralled in an even grislier murder. Erik and Lyle Menendez were finally being brought to justice for killing their parents, and the murder trial would be Dominick’s first for Vanity Fair since Tina Brown left the magazine to become editor in chief at the New Yorker. She had talked to Dominick about following her to the prestigious weekly, but he reluctantly chose not to. He knew the importance of having Wayne Lawson edit his copy; also, he believed his articles “needed” photographs to illustrate them. He never failed to express gratitude to Helmut Newton for his sinister portraits of Claus von Bülow and Andrea Reynolds, and how much those provocative photographs enhanced his cover story “Fatal Charm.”

  Brown’s replacement at Vanity Fair surprised many people in the publishing world. Graydon Carter had cofounded Spy magazine, the scathing gossip sheet that on a monthly basis skewered Manhattan’s sacred cows, in particular Dominick’s good friend Liz Smith. And it was not just Carter who would be coming to Vanity Fair. The new editor planned to bring three Spy cohorts with him: Aimee Bell, David Kamp, and Matt Tyrnauer. Their influence would be felt.

  “There was a great deal of wariness because of Spy,” said Bell. “Matt and I were not greeted with open arms [at Vanity Fair]. I might as well have had leprosy.” Little did it help that she, Carter, and Tyrnauer had spent the previous year at the New York Observer as part of what Bell described as a “cleansing process.” The exceptions to their brusque treatment came not from staffers but two contributing writers: Bob Colacello, who had left Interview after roundly trashing Dominick in his column there; “and Dominick, who rolled out the red carpet,” Bell recalled. His ebullient greeting even included an invitation for her, Kamp, and Tyrnauer to visit his house in Connecticut for a weekend brunch.

  Vanity Fair contributor Kevin Sessums, another Interview alum, also remembered Dominick being a grand one-man welcoming committee when he arrived at the magazine. Better yet, according to Sessums, Dominick never indulged in the internecine warfare typical of most journalists. “Writers are competitive. Writers don’t hype each other. Dominick was a real kind soul, very generous toward me” said Sessums, who likened Vanity Fair to an old Hollywood studio. “Everyone vying for Sam Goldwyn’s attention. Who would be the golden girl or golden boy or flavor of the month? It could be a weird atmosphere in that sense. But Nick was always ‘there’s room for you, as well as me.’”

  Despite Dominick’s being a top writer at the magazine, he, too, had a new boss to impress when Graydon Carter came aboard. The upcoming Menendez trial offered him precisely the kind of sensational case he needed to reestablish himself at Vanity Fair. Dominick did not relish returning to Los Angeles. Dominique’s murder and his professional defeat in the entertainment business there continued to loom. Neither he nor his editors knew at the time that his coverage of the Menendez trial would yield not one great article, as it had with the Claus von Bülow trial, but no fewer than four. His coverage came to represent his most comprehensive and detailed investigation for the magazine.

  11

  Menendez and Lies

  Dominick’s research for the Menendez trial began in 1993 by phoning his most trusted real estate contact in Beverly Hills. Bruce Nelson was the place to start and the realtor took Dominick to the house at 722 North Elm Drive to inspect the crime scene. “I have heard of very few murders that were more savage,” said Marvin Iannone, the city’s police chief. In fact, the murders of Kitty and Jose Menendez were so savage that investigators did not believe the two sons’ initial theory about it being a mob hit. Professional killers would never have been so sloppy or liberal in the number of bullets used.

  The Elm Drive house, built in 1927 and completely renovated in 1974, had been rented over the years by several rock-star luminaries, ranging from Prince to Elton John. Bruce Nelson used a ruse to gain access to the house for his friend from Vanity Fair.

  “Dominick didn’t want the listing broker to know who he was. He gave some name, I forget. I took him to the house,” said Nelson. “I was amazed at Dominick’s powers of observation. We spent an hour there. In the Vanity Fair article that he wrote, he even had the names of the books in the library. I was impressed.”

  Dominick also memorized the layout of the house, the carpeting, the sheet music on the grand piano—“American Pie,” by Don McLean—but the details that made him a favorite with Vanity Fair readers were those observations appealing to their snobbery. “With the exception of some reproduction Chippendale chairs in the dining room, the house is appallingly furnished with second-rate pieces,” Dominick wrote.

  On Nelson’s one-hour tour of the Elm Drive house, Dominick retraced what he thought was Erik and Lyle’s path of attack, from the lanai in the backyard to the TV room. (At the trial, a neighbor would testify that she saw two men carrying shotguns into the house through the front door.)

  “We went to the patio and back to the garage area, and then we came back,” Nelson recalled. “Dominick was incensed with it. He was upset—just the mere fact that the two sons were lying through their teeth. That’s what got him. He hated when people were lying and he knew they were lying. It got his goat.”

  And that was true even before the two Menendez sons testified in court about being sexually molested by their father. Dominick “convicted” Claus von Bülow of murder when he looked into his eyes. He “convicted” Lyle Menendez of murder when he attended Jose and Kitty Menendez’s memorial service, held at the Directors Guild on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. “There was something about the way Lyle walked, a cockiness,” said Dominick. “I knew he was guilty.” Six months after the memorial service, Erik and Lyle were arrested.

  The two Menendez sons were not immediate suspects in the double murder, despite Dominick’s suspicions. After shooting their parents on August 20, 1989, Erik and Lyle made a hysterical phone call to 911 to feign their disbelief at the carnage. They blamed the mob for the murders but did little to pursue an investigation of those imaginary hit men. Instead, Lyle bought a $60,000 Porsche and Erik hired a $50,000-a-year tennis coach. They thought they could afford it. Jose Menendez, a top executive at Live Entertainment, left an estate estimated to be worth $14 million. Neither son was charged for the murders until the following March, when they were put in jail without bail. The arrest h
ad been delayed until a crucial piece of evidence could be secured: Judalon Smyth, a former girlfriend of the boys’ therapist, tipped off the police that Dr. L. Jerome Oziel had recorded his sessions with Erik and Lyle. Those tapes contained their confessions to the murders but required much legal maneuvering to be admitted into evidence.

  Despite the evidence, Erik and Lyle pleaded not guilty, saying they acted in self-defense after being sexually abused by their parents. Jill Lansing, Lyle’s lawyer, told the jurors, “We are not disputing where it happened, how it happened, who did it. What we will prove to you is that it was done out of fear.”

  As soon as the trial started in July 1993, Dominick made friends with the chief prosecutor, Pamela Bozanich. She told the jurors in her opening statement, “This is not a prosecution trial. This is a defense trial. The defense has conceded all the prosecution charges. They have to prove that the boys were in immense danger from their parents. And they have to prove sexual molestation.” It was a very unusual trial. Although Erik and Lyle Menendez shared the same courtroom and judge, they were tried before different juries and each defendant had his own defense team.

  On most days, Dominick took lunch with Bozanich in the cafeteria at the Van Nuys Superior Courthouse. They ate “really crummy food,” said the attorney.

  Their friendship was a two-way street. “The media have sources that the prosecution can’t get to,” said Bozanich. “For instance, Kitty Menendez’s family wouldn’t speak to me about anything. A lot of people would talk to Dominick who wouldn’t talk to me.” One of those family members told Dominick that the sexual-abuse allegations were baloney.

  In turn, Bozanich knew why Dominick wanted to lunch with her. “He used people, like most gossips, to tell their stories. I knew that was going on with me,” said the attorney. “But he was genuinely motivated by a good cause. His daughter had been murdered, and the judge [on that trial] screwed over the prosecution. And it changed Dominick forever, but he decided to do something about it: to tell the side of the victims instead of the side of the defendants.”

  In one important respect, the Menendez case was different from any other Bozanich had prosecuted. “There was a strain of homosexuality running throughout the trial,” she recalled. “We knew Erik was gay and having oral sex with the inmates.” And the prosecution knew of homoerotic photographs taken of Erik. In addition, Dominick liked to gossip about a major player in the courtroom who, he claimed, was a closeted homosexual. He also speculated, as did many observers, on the exact nature of Erik’s close friendship with one of the prosecution’s star witnesses. It was Craig Cignarelli who, when approached by the police, told them that his good friend Erik had admitted to killing his parents. (Cignarelli said that he and Erik “double dated many girls” and his friend was not gay.)

  The strain of homosexuality did not end with Dominick’s suspicions about some of the trial’s major participants. Early one morning, Bozanich awoke to a frantic phone call. It was Dominick. He feared he was going to be outed if he did not stop writing about the Menendez trial. Bozanich had to wonder, “Why is he telling me this at six o’clock in the morning?”

  She nonetheless felt his concern. “I’d heard, and he insinuated, that when he went up north [to Oregon in 1979] he had an epiphany and became gay,” said Bozanich. “I’ve since heard he was gay but he didn’t practice. It was against his religion.”

  Dominick and Bozanich found it strange that Judge Stanley M. Weisberg often disallowed the word “homosexual” in the courtroom. “Leslie Abramson was panicked that people would find out or think Erik was homosexual,” said Bozanich. “We had this strain all through the trial, and Dominick would whisper things people told him.”

  “It was really a very, very gossipy case,” said Dan Abrams, the chief legal affairs anchor for ABC News. At the time of the Menendez trial, Abrams was a twenty-seven-year-old reporter for Court TV. “There’s no question when it came to the trial gossip Dominick was the leader among the reporters there. He was hearing everything. Some of it wasn’t true.”

  Dominick fixated on the possibility that, in addition to Erik, Jose Menendez might be gay. He had heard about photographs of Jose at an all-male orgy; Jose’s name was rumored to be in the files of a Miami pedophile service; and there was the story, completely debunked by the crime-scene photographs, that Kitty had been shot in the vagina.

  Those lurid details aside, Dominick and Dan Abrams did not disagree about much on the case. Erik and Lyle had murdered Jose and Kitty, and their sexual-abuse defense was a total sham. “And the father was not a particularly likable guy,” said Abrams. The two reporters also responded viscerally to the trial’s window on what Abrams called “an aspect of high society” or, at least, high society by Hollywood standards: Jose Menendez, a Cuban émigré and CEO, turned the troubled Live Entertainment into a very profitable company. In addition to the Hollywood glitter, the trial put a spotlight on the spoiled children of the Beverly Hills rich. It hit home: Dominick also raised children there.

  On the von Bülow trial, Dominick made a point to get along with the attorneys on both sides. That was not the case on his third trial for Vanity Fair. More than any other trial he would cover, Dominick openly hated the defense, especially Erik Menendez’s lawyer. And Leslie Abramson hated Dominick right back with equal fervor. Dominick’s antipathy toward her, however, began sometime before the Menendez trial.

  In Dominick’s mind, it was bad enough that Abramson and her husband, Los Angeles Times reporter Tim Rutten, were friends of John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, and his brother had taken it upon himself to solicit the attorney’s advice on a potential plea bargain for John Sweeney. As a result, he would forever link all defense attorneys to Sweeney’s, but Abramson quickly came to occupy a special place in the ninth circle of complicity, according to Dominick Dunne. Abramson flaunted her maternal approach to Erik and Lyle. She called them “adorable. They’re the two foundlings. You want to take them home with you.” It sickened Dominick whenever she gave Erik soothing pats on the back and shoulders, and he objected to her dressing the two defendants to look like prep-school students. To Dominick, those candy-colored sweaters and button-down collars were like the Bible that Sweeney carried into the courtroom every day of his trial: nothing but courtroom theatrics.

  Dominick’s “therapy” approach to covering a trial, in turn, dismayed Abramson. “You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to figure out what’s going on here,” she wrote. “His tragic life experience would disqualify him from sitting on the jury in any murder case, but in his editors’ eyes it seems to supply, if not a kind of special authority, at least a titillating twist.”

  In TV interviews, Abramson said of Dominick, “He comes up with false facts like Joe McCarthy.” And for added effect, she would hold up documents and shake them, imitating Dominick’s gestures and voice: “‘I have papers here that prove . . .’”

  What rumors did Dominick manufacture, in Abramson’s opinion? She pointed to the story that Kitty and Jose Menendez were eating ice cream and berries at the time of the murders, and Kitty had also been working on Erik’s college application. Abramson believed that these details created undue sympathy for the victims. She wrote about the berries-and-cream myth being “contradicted at trial.” She also contended that Erik had been accepted at UCLA months before the murders took place. In the end, it is doubtful that what Kitty and Jose ate or did before having a few rounds of bullets pumped into them much affected either of their sons’ juries.

  Central to the trial was whether Jose Menendez had actually molested his two sons.

  “I never ever believed for a second that he sexually abused them,” said Dominick. Other reporters like Robert Rand of Playboy and Linda Deutsch of the Associated Press were not so sure. They tended to believe Abramson, who, in her opening statement, said that Jose Menendez “pulled Erik’s hair when forcing this eleven-year-old to orally copulate him, who slapped him repeatedly when the child cried after his father ejaculated in his mouth
for the first time, who forcibly sodomized him.” Defense attorney Gerald Chaleff argued for Lyle Menendez, saying the older son had also been sexually abused by his father.

  “Dominick and I never agreed on a trial exactly,” said Linda Deutsch, a reporter whom he came to christen “the doyenne of crime reporters.” Writing for the AP, Deutsch tended to see the defendants as being innocent. “Or I had no opinion,” she said. It was the difference between writing for the Associated Press, which wanted just the facts, ma’am, and Vanity Fair, which wanted something more. The glossy magazine wanted to stoke controversy.

  Deutsch and Dominick first met in 1985 when she profiled him for his novel The Two Mrs. Grenvilles—“because the book featured a trial,” Deutsch said of the AP assignment—and they met again at the William Kennedy Smith trial in West Palm Beach. Deutsch said they became good friends on the Menendez trial despite their being in almost constant disagreement.

  “We talked a lot of specifics, and if I thought Dominick was off base I told him,” Deutsch recalled. “He had much stronger opinions on guilt and innocence than I ever did. I was always neutral. My impartiality became legend. He couldn’t stand that.”

  Deutsch said it did not affect their friendship. However, shortly after the start of the Menendez trial, Dominick chose not to sit next to the AP reporter in court. It was a pattern they established for most trials to come. “He had a gaggle of people who huddled around him and listened to his every word,” said Deutsch.

  Shoreen Maghame, a cub reporter, sat next to Dominick most days in the Van Nuys courtroom. “I was twenty-three years old and working at the City News Service, and Dominick embraced me as if I was the biggest deal ever. Who does that?” asked Maghame.