Dylan McDermott’s mom murdered in 1967

A reopened police investigation has concluded that actor Dylan McDermott’s mother was killed in 1967 by her now-dead gangster boyfriend. Waterbury police reopened the investigation last year into Diane McDermott’s death after “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” star Dylan McDermott contacted them with questions. The actor, now 50, was 5 years old when his mother was shot in February 1967. Her death was originally ruled an accident. McDermott’s then-boyfriend John Sponza told authorities that his girlfriend had accidently shot herself. The state’s medical examiner, H. Wayne Carver, reviewed McDermott’s autopsy and determined that the gun found near the body was too small a caliber to have been the weapon used to kill her. According to the report, the wound also showed that the murder weapon had been pressed to the back of her head. Sponza, who police say had ties to organized crime, was shot to death in 1972.

Dylan McDermott, who won a Golden Globe in 1999 for his role on the TV drama “The Practice,” declined to comment on the recent findings. But his sister, Robin Herrera, said “I’m happy to know my mother wasn’t mentally ill or depressed … Somebody took her from us; she didn’t leave us.”