August 26, 2009 was a day of unbearable sadness. New England lost two great men, Dominick Dunne and Edward M. Kennedy. To have known Dominick Dunne was a distinct honor, and our time spent with him was precious indeed. I was particularly blessed to have helped him with research for his book, A Season in Purgatory, the account of a horrendous murder of a teenage girl in Greenwich, Connecticut.

To his friends, he was known as "Nick," and that's what he insisted we call him. It was a rare and great honor and privilege. We knew Nick Dunne the man, not the celebrity. His celebrity, except what's discussed in the story below, is but window dressing to a character who knew unfathomable loss, yet carried on, defeated his demons and to all who really knew him, it was a cherished relationship. He neither expected us to treat him like a celebrity and never once did he ever put on airs. He was a man who told stories in such a compelling, enthralling and fascinating way that he could craft a living out of doing so. He met the most famous and influential people in the world, and dedicated himself to obtaining justice for those who could not speak beyond the grave. For that he should be long remembered.

We are comforted by our memories of you, Nick, and by knowing you're in a far better place now, with your wife Lenny and the beloved children who preceded you. With you go our friendship, our love and our prayers. For you we're comforted in knowing that you are now with God, at peace, out of pain, and without suffering. Our only wish is that we could have seen you one last time before this horrendously sad day. We are comforted too by the knowledge that, for those who caused you such pain in this life, "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord."

Good bye, old Friend. You'll live on and be in our hearts forever.

I was in mid-sentence, trying to commit to words the facets of a particularly intriguing idea. Writers know how fragile and fleeting such inspirational pearls can be. The slightest distraction can hurl them into the ages, lost forever. Just when I thought I had it in my grasp, the phone rang.

My wife Terry answered and stuck her head around the corner from the kitchen. "It's Dominick Dunne," she whispered. Suddenly, the pearl became utterly forgettable. I picked up the phone and introduced myself to an extraordinary man.

That was in 1992.

During that first conversation with Nick—and many others spent discussing the sordid details of the murder, the power to excess of a notable New England family, and how disgusted we both were that justice had been mooned for almost 20 years—he was very laid back and remarkably easy to talk to. There were no airs whatsoever. It was if we'd known each other for some time.

Like Dunne, I have long been fascinated by the intricacies, details and nuances of complicated criminal cases. I had studied some law and I'd studied and written extensively about the JFK assassination, Kennedy politics and power, and the family.

The Moxley murder suspects from the start had been the Skakel brothers. Since Ethel Kennedy (nee Skakel), widow of Senator Robert Kennedy, was their aunt, the tie-in to the Moxley murder was a natural extension of what I already knew and certainly worth a little extra scrutiny.

I had closely followed the Moxley case, been involved in volunteering to help find the missing shaft of the golf club (the end with the fingerprints on it), and was working at Greenwich Hospital when Martha was brought to the morgue there.

What perplexed me in particular was that she was brought to, and autopsied at, the Greenwich Hospital morgue by the state medical examiner. Autopsies in murder cases were done at the Medical Examiner's forensic lab in Farmington, Connecticut, not a local hospital. That's when I began to suspect foul play on top of foul play. It was but the tip of the ice burg.

I gave Nick the bizarre and grotesque details of the case, explained why I had serious questions about the investigation and offered to do all I could to help, wishing to play any role possible to bring Martha's family some form of closure.

Nick's book about the case, A Season in Purgatory, tugged at the single loose thread that started the unraveling of a rich-and-powerful cocoon protecting Michael Skakel, who has since been convicted and is serving twenty-to-life for Martha's murder.

No one has a greater right to claim responsibility for serving up justice in this case than has Dominick Dunne. But this wasn't the first case that motivated him to shine a light on those who grasp for immunity through money and power. His genuine and relentless pursuit of justice has driven him for the entire second half of his life.

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Backdrop

He's a straight-talking Nutmegger who suffers no charlatans and lays bare the wicked. The latter he does with abandon. He scratches incessantly at an itchy impatience for justice, spawned by cruel and wrenching personal tragedy. His accounts of celebrity trials in novel form have been read by millions, and his many columns about the well-known and well-to-do have been de rigueur for untold numbers of readers of Vanity Fair's cologned pages. He also has his own TV show, Power, Privilege and Justice, on Court TV (Wednesdays at 10:00 PM Eastern), on which he reviews cases that fall within his purview.

Nick's roots and family are classically New England. His well-heeled parents—his father a famous heart surgeon, and his mother a prized debutante—were both Connecticutters. They were aristocratic, but without the necessary pedigree. As wealthy Irish Catholics, they found themselves ever on the cusp of a Hartford high society whose true wink-and-nod acceptance they could not gain.

Anxious to leave Hartford after a childhood gnarly and troublesome, Nick was drawn to New York's TV lights, and then to Hollywood's garish lights. There he carved out a niche among movie stars and heartily indulged his obsession: celebrity.

Though he'd left New England, New England had not left him, and when his idyllic Hollywood lifestyle viscously collapsed around him, it was to Connecticut and New York that he returned.

Connecticut was—and still is today—Dominick Dunne's home. He has a New York apartment, the necessary perch from which to spy the glitter, but it's in Connecticut that he prefers to write his novels, and it's easy to see why. There's distinct serenity at his cozy and inviting house; a Corinthian oasis filled with books of all manner and description. The Da Vinci Code sits atop a pile of books on the coffee table. Neatly beside it, another pile is topped by a pictorial biography of Marilyn Monroe.

There's no doubt. He feels safer here from the indignities that have so hacked at his soul. He's come full circle, and "what a long, strange trip it's been."

Hardscrabble Road, Bitter Deliverance

In his youth, Nick Dunne found athleticism a burdensome gambit for which he had no aptitude, much to his patrician father's consternation. That made him an attractive dinner-table target—his father aiming for the bulls eye in Nick's sensitivity. Nonetheless, he dug in his heels and performed far better in the entertainment field than did his siblings on the football field.

His fabled Hollywood life began as a fluke and mushroomed in stature to others' envy. An invitation to one of Nick and wife, Lenny's, Hollywood parties was highly prized. But, as glorious as it was, it all ebbed badly, and the low tide that quickly followed stank.

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Hollywood was and is a social bonfire. Dominick Dunne played with it and suffered third-degree burns to 100% of his psyche. It would become a large back-monkey, it's addictiveness both potent and consuming. And addiction to that led to dependence on alcohol and cocaine. That volatile mix in turn put loud, scandalous words in Nick's mouth at well-attended cocktail parties—words derogatory, yet honest, about some well-known people. The Hollywood elite was not amused and it characteristically rejected him.

In addition, the obsession with tinsel brought with it a ravenous financial appetite. Party expenses drained the Dunne's resources to exsanguination. Soon gone were his wife, his reputation, his status, his confidence, his fortune, his convertible Mercedes and very nearly his life.

Bitter, rejected and black-balled, Nick realized that he somehow had to exorcise his demons. He slumped into an old Ford and headed due north to the Cascade Mountains for wound licking, respite and introspection. But a flat tire intervened, and for the ensuing six months he lived in an Oregon cabin with no phone and no TV. More importantly, there was no booze, no cocaine and no Hollywood.

During that half year, Nick reclaimed his life and essence, and re-defined and honed his raison d'etre. He also killed the back-monkeys on his own—no swanky clinics, no doctors; nothing to numb withdrawal's nagging sting. He returned briefly to LA, shook the dust from his sandals and headed to New York, where destiny was pouring the foundation of his future.

Thespian Bloodlines

In addition to his writing, he has been a movie actor and producer, a tradition handed down to his son, Griffin, who co-starred in An American Werewolf in London and who writes, produces and directs movies himself, including Addicted to Love, which he directed, and in which Nick appeared. Nick's daughter, Dominique, is perhaps best known for her role as Dana Freeling in the movie Poltergeist. She had landed a major part in V, the NBC miniseries, and had begun filming when she was savagely murdered by ex-boyfriend, John Sweeney. In a jealous rage, he strangled her on October 30, 1982, the same night, seven years later, when Martha Moxley had been killed.

Nick's coverage of the ensuing trial marked the first milestone of his second life and an enduring memorial to his daughter. His account in Vanity Fair helped set the style for that magazine under Tina Brown's editorship. (Brown was the foundation of what Vanity Fair is today—a great, highbrow, bling-bling icon about tony influentials.) The trial coverage also produced the first of many novels that poked up through the filthy soil covering bad-acting types who hire mega-lawyers to deflect justice.

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There's not a lot of gray when people paint their impressions of Dominick Dunne. People either love him or hate him, the former enamored of a charming, funny man who can tell stories enthrallingly, the latter appalled by an honesty at times brutal. But no matter how one feels, Dunne is worthy of the utmost respect. He's squeezed ashes into diamonds throughout his life; a life admirable for its doggedness, if for nothing else. Having endured what Nick has, a tailpipe hosing would seem the only painkiller to others more brittle. But not for him, not that he didn't mull it. His brother's suicide, however, sobered that notion. Instead, he broke through unimaginable gloom and despair to become one of America's most popular authors.

This is the story of his life as told by Dominick Dunne to NewEnglandTimes.Com exclusively.

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Edmund Wilson quote, The Great American Bathroom Reader, Copyright © 1997 by James Charlton Associates.