John Thomas Sweeney & the Murder of Dominique Dunne
Killer Psyche
Audible | Treefort Media
4.6 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2026
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Retired FBI agent and criminal profiler Candice DeLong examines the tragic and highly publicized case of John Thomas Sweeney, whose obsessive control and escalating violence led to the murder of actress Dominique Dunne in 1982. After a volatile and abusive relationship, Sweeney strangled Dunne outside her Los Angeles home, a crime that exposed devastating gaps in how the justice system addressed domestic violence and intimate partner abuse at the time. Candice unpacks the psychological warning signs, coercive dynamics, and entitlement-driven rage that defined Sweeney’s behavior, and why Dominique Dunne’s death became a turning point in the national conversation about accountability, stalking, and victim protection.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A listener note, this episode contains adult content and is not suitable for everyone. |
| 0:08.0 | Please be advised. |
| 0:13.5 | In the 1982 film Poltergeist, a young family is terrorized by a presence that refuses to let go, |
| 0:27.1 | a force that wants to claim what it believes is already its own. |
| 0:33.0 | The warning started subtly, a flicker, a whisper, a chill. And then, without mercy, the house |
| 0:42.5 | itself turned violent, pushing the family away with a fury driven by a twisted sense of possession. |
| 0:52.1 | The film became famous for what many call a curse marked by the untimely deaths of several |
| 1:00.0 | cast and crew members. |
| 1:02.3 | Among them was Dominique Dunn, who played the eldest daughter. |
| 1:07.4 | Her performance was so striking that poltergeist catapulted her into overnight stardom. |
| 1:14.9 | Dominique was young, gifted, and standing at the edge of a Hollywood career most actors only dream about. |
| 1:24.0 | But while audiences watched her family battle a supernatural force on screen, Dominique was fighting |
| 1:31.0 | something far more insidious off-screen, a relationship with a man named John Thomas |
| 1:37.6 | Sweeney that was tightening around her like a vice, defined by control, jealousy, and escalating violence, a force that, like the |
| 1:49.7 | entity in the film, refused to let her go. And on the night of October 30, |
| 1:56.5 | 182, that terror would explode into tragedy. |
| 2:08.4 | From Wondery and Treefort Media, I'm Candace D. Long, and this is the fifth season of Killer Psyche. |
| 2:16.2 | Music This is the fifth season of Killer Psychie. For five decades, I studied people's minds through my work as an FBI profiler and psychiatric nurse. |
| 2:43.2 | I've interviewed countless murderers, including many serial killers. |
| 2:48.8 | Why did they do it? |
| 2:53.1 | To get a satisfying answer, |
| 2:55.4 | we have to dive deep into their minds so that I can give you my best analysis |
... |
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