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A COLORFUL CHRONICLER OF CRIME

Dominick Dunne, who chronicled the rich and famous and their crimes in best-selling novels, magazines and TV shows, died yesterday in Manhattan. He was 83.

His death was announced on the Web site of Vanity Fair, where for 25 years he wrote regularly about high society and high-profile murders, including the slaying of his daughter and the O.J. Simpson trial.

“Nick was equal parts Walter Winchell, Louella Parsons and Yosemite Sam. He had equal standings in the worlds of society, crime, and journalism, and he fit in well in all three,” Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter said.

Dunne was struggling to transition from a career as a Hollywood movie executive to a writer and novelist when his daughter, Dominique, was killed in 1982 by her ex-boyfriend.

The case got him intensely interested in the justice system.

“He strangled my daughter for five minutes, and he got two and a half years,” Dunne once told the Los Angeles Daily News. “I felt such rage, such absolute rage like I’ve never felt.”

Among Dunne’s Vanity Fair subjects were the 1992 trial at which William Kennedy Smith, a nephew of Sen. Ted Kennedy, was acquitted of rape, and the trials of Lyle and Erik Menendez, two Beverly Hills brothers convicted in the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents.

During his coverage of the nine-month O.J. Simpson trial in 1995, Dunne discussed the case as a TV talking head.

“O.J. made me a star,” he said.

Carter said: “Anyone who remembers the sight of O.J. Simpson trying on the famous glove probably remembers a bespectacled Dunne, resplendent in his trademark Turnbull & Asser monogrammed shirt, on the court bench behind him.”

His novels had factual plotlines, but were peopled by fictional characters.

“People Like Us” was the tale of 1980s Wall Street excesses that included a character who shot dead a man who murdered his daughter.

“Another City, Not My Own,” was an account of the O.J. case by a fictional narrator, and “A Season in Purgatory” was about the William Kennedy Smith trial and the murder of Martha Moxley by Kennedy relative Michael Skakel.

His monthly Vanity Fair column included profiles of many famous personalities, including Imelda Marcos, Robert Mapplethorpe, Elizabeth Taylor, Claus von Bulow, Adnan Khashoggi, Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.

A decorated World War II vet, Dunne had battled bladder cancer for years.

Dunne and Ellen Griffin Dunne were married in 1954 and divorced in 1972, but Dunne said they remained close. She died in 1997. He is survived by two sons, Alexander, a teacher and writer, and Griffin, an actor.

bill.sanderson@nypost.com