True Crime Defense

The Murder of Dominique Dunne/Strangulation Defenses

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Join us as we talk about the tragic domestic violence murder of Dominique Dunne.  As promised, please check out the threat assessment mosaicmethod.com mentioned in the episode. Check out the strangulation defenses on our youtube channel True Crime Defense.

https://youtube.com/shorts/QDPUljREzu8?si=ZQnCzolq5ZXVd3f9

Hey everybody, Chelle here. Welcome to True Crime Defense. The podcast that nerds out on true crime cases gives you tips on how to stay safe and never blames the target of any crime. I'm going to give some options in this episode for self defense, so the caveat that these are only offered as tools and not as judgment for anyone not knowing them or not using them. This is one of our first episodes and the sound quality is less excellent than I would like, but I hope you stick with us. The info is really important. Also, because of the audio, my explanation of chokes wasn't perfect, so warning, I'm going to talk about chokes now. So, if your carotid arteries are both blocked for about 6 10 seconds, you could pass out, or if you know some chokes, you can cause an attacker to pass out. If you hold on past that point for another 10 seconds, you'll have about that same 10 seconds before the attacker wakes up and can fight again. Hold for 30 seconds, it can cause permanent brain damage. 60 seconds and up can kill a person. So, use judiciously. Also, check out my strangulation defenses. There's some knife defenses on our YouTube channel. It is True Crime Defense. Our handle is at TC underscore D. Hope you enjoy the episode. welcome. did you listen at all or did you read anything about Dominique Dunne?

Rad:

Sister and I just actually listened to the podcast on Spotify, and then we were reading a little bit more about her because I remember hearing that there was one haunted movie where there were, there was a ruckus that so many people had died

Shell:

from it. And I thought it was a

Rad:

haunted movie

Shell:

yeah, this is the one we're using this just to discuss strangulation. I teach how to escape chokes, which is strangulation. And I also teach how to properly apply chokes, which is a form of strangulation by means of escaping a predator. I'm going to put some videos up on the website to show some of that cool stuff. We're going to talk about the murder of Dominique Dunn. She was, one of the stars of Poltergeist. So according to Wikipedia, Dominique Dunn starred as Dana Freeling in Poltergeist

in She had

Shell:

already met John Thomas Sweeney at a party in 1981. They moved in together a few weeks later, which is often a sign of a scary partner when they move things faster than you're comfortable with. Sweeney is reported to have been possessive and jealous. On August 27th, 1982, he yanked out handfuls of Dominique's hair during an argument. She left to stay at her mother's house, where Sweeney followed her and pounded on the door trying to gain access. After a few days, Dominique returned to the home that they About a month 1982, Sweeney grabbed Dominique by the throat and began strangling her on the floor. A friend staying with them intervened. Sweeney told her to come back to bed, which she did, but then she went to the bathroom, snuck out the window, and got into her car. Sweeney jumped on the hood of her car, but jumped off when she stopped. She returned to her mom's house and then couch surfed for a few days before breaking up with Sweeney over the phone. She changed the locks after he moved out and moved back into their home. I guess it would be her home at that point. Then another month later, October 30th, 1982, Dominique was rehearsing for her coming role in the series V with actor David Packer sweeney showed up and lured Dominique outside. And so, Radhika, this is the scene in the movie where you know he's a monster, but he's actually being really sweet. And if you would just talk to him, he would change, he would leave you alone, etc. And as a self defense instructor, I recommend you do not open the door. You're safe until he gains access to you. So don't, don't fall for it. If you can avoid it, don't do it. Packer heard smacking sounds and a thud. He tried calling police. Do you have anything you can throw out the window right now? Because the police said that it was outside of their jurisdiction. This must've been before 9 1 and they couldn't come. Then he called a friend to tell them that if he was found dead, John Sweeney was his killer. Packer went out the back door, came around the driveway, and found Sweeney kneeling over Dominique and told him to call the police. So now the police do arrive, for some reason, I don't know how that happened, if he just said, Hey, someone's dead, now can you come? I'm not sure how that worked out. Sweeney was said to have strangled Dominique for at least three minutes, and other reports it was between four and six minutes. So he had plenty of time to think about what he was up to, in my humble opinion. Sweeney said to the cops. Quote, I killed my girlfriend and I tried to kill myself. Unquote. So lots of lies in that statement. He claims to have taken two bottles of pills after struggling with her, but there's no evidence to support this. And also she's not your girlfriend and you aren't suicidal. You're homicidal. so I wanted to ask you about this. So he has a classic blackout reaction to murdering someone and says he can't remember anything about the actual murder. I don't believe anyone who says that. What do you think? I completely

Rad:

agree with you. I don't believe, I think you're just so scared that you're pushing it to the back of your mind and you don't Every limit, but I, I don't think you have a blackout reaction when you're actively murdering someone. I think that's absolute BS

Shell:

especially using it on trial, yeah. I think it's a really easy way to cop out of the situation. Okay, just curious what you thought. Dominique was on life support for five days, and then her parents consented to have her removed from life support. Her kidneys and heart were donated for transplant. So when he was arrested on the night of her strangling and charged with attempted murder, then the charges went up to first degree murder when he pleaded not guilty to his lawyer said that he acted in the heat of passion and that Dominique had provoked him with her deception of pretending to want. To get back together. So I just had to take a deep breath and take that all in. We're remembering we're in 1982. It's probably still happening where we're blaming the victim. If this isn't blame the target nonsense, I don't know what is, she's trying to survive and not be attacked by this man. So of course she's going to lie to keep him calm. She knows what happens when she tries to break up with him. This is so gross. and so I did want to talk a little bit about there's, fight or flight. And then recently they've added, freeze and fawn. And so I'm thinking that this falls under the fawning part of it, like F A W N, where you're just like trying to calm the person down, just agree with them, allow them to appease them. Exactly. Think they're in control of the situation. And it's a survival tactic,, it's a way of getting through the situation. So, him saying that this is her deception and so she deserved to die felt like I needed to vomit, but we'll just try to move forward and then I'm going to say the next things are alleged because I don't think Sweeney was convicted of them. a former girlfriend of Sweeney testified at the trial that he assaulted her on 10 separate occasions and she was hospitalized after two of them. During one, he perforated her eardrum and collapsed her lung. In the second, he broke her nose. At this point in court, Sweeney jumps up in a rage and runs for the door and is subdued by the bailiffs. So clearly has some issues. the judge determined that there was not enough evidence to charge Sweeney with first degree murder and told the jury to consider the charges of manslaughter or second degree murder.

Rad:

Ahhhh. The judge really irritated

Shell:

me so much. Oh my god. The jury did not hear any testimony from the former girlfriend or any from any family or friends who had witnessed Sweeney's alleged abuse. After eight days, the jury found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter and a misdemeanor for the September 26th, what they call altercation. Between 6 foot 1, 170 pound Sweeney and 5 foot 1, 112 pound Dominique, which was in actuality, and another attempted strangulation. Sweeney, in my opinion, that's all alleged, Sweeney was sentenced to a maximum of six years for killing Dominique. He served three years, seven months, and 27 days of the sentence. He was hired as a sous chef upon being released. And the Dunn family would hand out flyers to the restaurant's patrons that said, quote, The food you will eat tonight was cooked by the hands that killed Dominique Dunn, unquote. He later moved to the Pacific Northwest and changed his name to John Mora, and presumably continues to assault women he's involved with, but at this time we don't know if he's killed any of them. It's all alleged, but maybe he's turned his life around, Radhika. And maybe he's an upstanding, maybe he's a taxpaying citizen. I don't know. I just doubt it unless he got some serious counseling. there's an interesting and very long article by Dominique's father about the trial. ironically, Gavin Debecker, who I'll talk about in a little bit, provided security for the judge in this case because the jury's verdict caused so much dismay among the public and Dominique's family. so I wanted to talk a little bit about strangulation, but first I just wanted to get your, what do you think? Do you have thoughts? I think my only thought is

Rad:

I was pretty proud of Dominique Dunne for reaching out and like involving as many people as she could back in that time. where I don't think it was very well. People weren't very well educated on domestic violence and the resources you had, but she involved her friends, her mom, she, the first time the story was recounted, it said that When Sweeney did knock on her door on that final day, she opened it but still had that little latch on so he couldn't fully get in. I feel like she did everything she could, really everything she could to avoid this situation. Like you said, she, she appeased him. She's 5'1 unless she actually is properly, physically trained or has the knowledge on how to defend herself, I think that was the only thing that could have

Shell:

saved her in this situation. This is so sad. It escalated quickly, right? It was really three months and I don't know what happened in the situation before that. There's these three events, the third of which was fatal. Just want to talk a little bit about strangulation, if people don't know, just for education purposes. Something I skipped to in the beginning, and I always like to, say, we never want to blame the target for the choices they make in the moment. We just want to use the cases to educate. And so hopefully red flags become apparent, before there's too many red flags and it's too late and a tragedy can be averted. Yeah. She did everything that she could based on, what was available to her, and her family too. that everybody was her mother and father, there's such a long article and they talk about, they had so much. Fear, and it just didn't seem like there was any way for her to get away from him. And then it did seem a little bit, I think I would have felt really comfortable with another man being with me, and he didn't seem to really do anything to protect her. Unfortunately, I think he was so terrified also of John Sweeney. but that was just so unfortunate that he wasn't able to get the police to come in time. Right, I did feel

Rad:

that way when he is actively Seeing her leave and can hear these thuds where he's aware that she's being hurt But he's so terrified himself, which you can't blame some people for being so scared turn out to be helpful, because if anything, that just triggered Sweeney

Shell:

even more. Right. Okay, well, we're just going to start with a definition of manual strangulation. This is from ScienceDirect. com. Manual strangulation, also known as throttling, is a type of... the perpetrator uses his hands to encircle and compress the front and sides of the neck. It's a common method of homicide most often encountered when the physical size and strength of the assailant exceeds that of the victim. What I tell my students is it takes about 10 seconds to go unconscious. of both carotid arteries. And so we know this, but if you feel alongside your trachea, the bony part in front of your neck, and you feel the, arterial flow through that, I know you know where it is, but if you press on both of those, those are your carotid arteries, you can feel your pulse in both sides. And so when both of those are blocked off, the blood flow to the neck is blocked. And so, if you hold onto those for 10 seconds, it takes about that much time for a person to regain consciousness and be able to. You know, move on with our life, do whatever they need to do. If you hold on for about 30 seconds, you can cause permanent brain damage. And if you hold on from anywhere between one and five minutes, with continuous compression of the carotids, you can actually cause someone to die. so it's really useful if you're trying to choke someone who's trying to assault you. One of the things I hadn't really thought about was the long term effects of manual strangulation. If the person doesn't die, some of the let's talk a little bit about some of the signs. and this is from Naples shelter dot org. They said there are red spots in the eyes. blood red eyes, swollen lips, scratches or bruising on the neck. And then the perpetrator also may have scratches on his or her hands and face as a target tries to get the hands away from their neck and defend themselves. So that's really scary, like the evidence may not be there to show that this person actually did commit a strangulation the target may experience pain, vision changes, ringing in the ears, swollen tongue, cuts in the mouth. DA Penny Clute says only half of strangulation victims had marks on their necks, and only 15% of those had marks that were clear enough to photograph. And that's really important, for moving forward with, legal action. and also, the target may experience pain, vision changes, ringing in the ears, swollen tongue, cuts in the mouth, swelling of the neck, difficulty swallowing, trouble breathing or voice changes. some may have neurologic changes like memory loss, dizziness, headaches, vomiting, or body weakness. Diana Faugno is a forensic nurse. She recommends using a CT to detect neck trauma. and carotid artery dissections, which can lead to a stroke. And that really scared me because they were saying that, the period between actual strangulation and a stroke caused by that dissection can be hours to years. So really someone could strangle and then years later, it could actually cause a death. we have a friend, she coughed so hard that it caused an arterial dissection, and she actually almost died of a stroke, one of our nurses. and so you imagine if you've been strangled, there's a weakness there, and then you simply, have a cough or some other reason to, to cause, an arterial problem. You know, that event that happened so long ago could actually kill you later. I just, I hadn't... Yeah, I didn't know that very frightening. There's this factoid going around the internet and I think it's based on a study I found and it just I didn't really trust it. There's either a population of 42 or 4000 cases it was very popular when the Gabby Petito. case was popular. I'm putting it out here because I did see a professor at Harvard said it was true. also I think past behavior in absence of counseling or anger management is probably a good predictor for true behavior. So it seems reasonable, but this one said that, if you, are, manually strangled by, a person who's known to you, you are about seven fold more likely to be killed at that person's hands, either by strangulation or any other way. I did also ask a cop and she happens to be an expert in domestic violence and she said she wasn't sure about the numbers, but she definitely said that she believes that any study that says that, violent behavior, predicts violent behavior. So I felt pretty comfortable putting it out there. Assaults that seek to deprive someone of oxygen are more common than most people realize. Experts say a woman who has been assaulted in such a way by a partner has, this is the study, has a seven fold risk of being murdered by that partner. According to Dr. Eve Valera, she's an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. and then one thing I thought was also really interesting was that when you tell family members or law enforcement that, if you say I was choked, it has a very different impact. If you say you were strangled, I think maybe legally there's a difference too. And so I think I would recommend to women based on just the information I was looking at, say both or just say, he, he tried to strangle me instead of maybe choking. Choking kind of makes you think of choking on a sandwich, choking up, something. And it's a very different

Rad:

thing. Sounds less. Intense than a strangled.

Shell:

Yeah. and then I wanted to bring up Gavin de Becker, who provided security for the judge because he actually I highly recommend people if they have any interest in looking at domestic violence. He created the mosaic method. And if you go to mosaic. Method dot com. I'll put it on the website. it's a predictor of violence. It's free online. he wrote a great book called the gift of fear, which I've read and I recommend to people with a trigger warning. It's very intense. I actually, for a former partner, I put, his information into it, and it was pretty scary. he was a 7 out of 10 as far as, potential for doing, really serious harm, as much as we can get it out there I think people who find themselves in situations with a domestic partner who's, you know, abusive. They don't really understand that the risks and, I think that maybe law enforcement in some cases don't really understand the seriousness of the situation. And so the mosaic method is really useful. Seeing that seven out of 10 for me was very, informational. It really helped me solidify, it's not just my sister or my friend saying, girl, you got to lose that guy. He's bad news. it's a scientific method for, predicting, all kinds of, violent behavior. and then I just wanted to throw in, this is the lethality checklist. And I can't remember where I found this one from. If anybody asks, I'll try to go back. But, this is, any partner who shows any of the following, when the target is attempting to end the relationship, that's, a really dangerous time. If the predator has a history of violence, if they have access to weapons, or also have martial arts skills, if they have threatened to kill the victim, children, or commit suicide, When the batterer takes their own life, they often at least attempt to take the life of a family member. If the predator, is using substances, if they're obsessed with the victim, I like to say target instead of victim, if they have mental health issues, if they are surveying, surveilling, so if they're monitoring the target, reading their mail or email, listening to phone calls, reading texts this article said that batterers who have sexually assaulted their victims in the past are twice as likely to commit a lethal or dangerous act of violence. that's something to think about, I do feel like if you're willing to, assault someone in that way what's to keep you from assaulting them in many, many other ways right, or just even doing it again

Rad:

because like physically get removed from that situation aka jail for long periods of time. There's no, there's no real concept that's stopping you from doing

Shell:

it again. Right. I this is such a scary situation, just for anybody because I just feel like until they get their hooks into somebody else, you're just on you're on the hook with them. And so I would love to recommend everybody that they just move out of town they find another place to be where they don't. The person doesn't have access to them, fully understanding that not everyone has the resources to do that. And so just reaching out as much as you can, documenting as much as you can, and hoping that law enforcement is progressive enough to, figure out a way to keep you safe because you really have to be on your toes when you have someone who's after you like this, who, who knows where you are, knows who you are, knows everything about you. And especially with social media, I feel like there's. There's no way to hide, so just be careful. So Shelly, as a self defense instructor,

Rad:

what are the chances of a smaller person being able to defend themselves from a super huge person? By applying pressure for like you said the 10 seconds just enough to get them woozy enough to like for you to run away if they're so huge isn't it quite easy for them to pry their hands, pry your hands off of

Shell:

them. Excellent question Radhika. I'm going to put some videos, it is definitely possible you're not going to use your hands probably you might use your legs or your arms, so that they can't. pry off, You're probably in a better situation with, understanding how to choke and understanding how to stay safe from chokes than if you just were thrown in the, in the ring with someone who is much bigger. Okay, that's fair. I

Rad:

actually didn't, I didn't know those stats, but I think that's super comforting to know that it's a possibility and all you need is like 10 solid seconds to try

Shell:

and save your own life. Yeah. One of the things I tell my students is that just understanding that a choke is possible, I think can really help you to understand that you need to have some distance from the person. And oftentimes we're talking about someone who's known to us and we're actually allowing them to into our literal physical bubble. And just understanding that, maybe, you know, this person well enough that they can put their hands on, on your neck. And so you're not going to stand up against a wall. You're not going to be alone in a room with this person, if you can avoid it. and just so comprehending that that can be a danger, I feel like at least. People understand what, what might happen. so you're, you're just one step ahead of the game. Like that. What else do you want to tell the people?

Rad:

Definitely getting more people's opinions as soon as you, you think something is going on. Is so important because getting more people on your side to recognize the crazy in your life Different place to stay safe really liked how in this store she could so that it wasn't just her in her own head feeling like she was crazy. Whenever you're going through a situation like this involving as many people as you can and asking their opinions and like sharing just the most important part. of that story is important to be able to get more people on your side so that when you need a safe place to escape, these people understand your situation, and then you don't feel crazy, and you have a place to go feel safe, which I truly think Dominique Dunne did her best to do. And she, that's why she was able to escape out the window, go to a different place, call people over. And it never seemed like it was an unbelievable story to the people around her. And that's why I think, you should never feel alone, when you're in a relationship. Personally, never think it should just be the two of you when in a

Shell:

relationship. You should be able to talk to other people about it yeah, having a community, and that is one of the signs of an abusive relationship, is being isolated.

Rad:

it was just one other thing that I really liked, really being cautious of people that are overly nice and overly charming. There were a couple people that fell for it when was introducing. Sweeney as her boyfriend to people. And there were some people who were like, this guy's way too nice, way too charming. He's laying it on thick now, but that just means that he's probably hiding something later. Or when he turns and then she, starts complaining about him, his Sweeney's view is, they're not going to believe you. Cause I've been like really kind and nice and cool this whole time. So I think that too, it's like really learning to read people so that you don't fall for these charms and antics. There's a difference between. Kind, and then like phony kind. I

Shell:

like that. Yeah, that's, love bombing is one of the first ways that cults and abusive, partners can lure you in. One thing too, I did want to say, raising a child, a son who is 11 I'm constantly telling him, it is actually your responsibility. Women shouldn't be the ones who are constantly trying to find safe places. So, I don't know if we raise our boys to understand that this is unacceptable behavior and our boys are the ones saying to other people, Hey, you actually don't treat women like that. That's not cool calling people out, offering appropriate behavior instead of the things that we're seeing that are abuse and recognizing abuse. Yeah, the world would be a better place.

Rad:

Shelly. So I'm so lucky to have you. That's awesome mom stuff right

Shell:

there. Well, hopefully if any males are listening to this, they can, they can jump in because we can scream our hearts out right to the world of women to watch out. But maybe if we can get rid of the guys by not getting rid of them, but by training them to have healthy relationships, and we wouldn't have to worry about domestic violence. Awesome. What else do you want to say? I think that's about it. Cool. Well, make good choices, everybody. Okay. Okay. Sounds good.

Rad:

Bye.