If O.J. Simpson’s murder trial took place today, a perpetual stream of social-media updates from the courtroom would alert us to everything from the defense attorneys’ outfits to the most shocking moments on the stand.

In 1995, when the trial actually happened, we had none of that. Instead, we had Dominick Dunne.

In no fewer than nine dispatches for Vanity Fair, the magazine’s special correspondent skipped lightly over the mundane facts of the case, which every sentient American had already absorbed from newspapers, cable news, and Court TV’s live feed of the trial proceedings. Instead, he zeroed in on the stories behind the story—the gossip, the rumors, the theories and one-liners. A single column could, and did, range from analysis of the verdict to a first-hand re-enactment of Simpson’s alleged driving route on the night of the murders, to a brief update on a female witness whose ex-flame had re-united with an old girlfriend. “Her name is Samantha, and she acts in porn,” Dominick wrote. “She has just filmed her first anal-sex scene, her fiancé informed me.”

Readers, desperate to be let in on secrets no camera could show, lapped it all up. “People waited for those columns like they waited for the next Dickens installment in New York Harbor,” says Wayne Lawson, Dominick’s editor at the time (and, full disclosure, my former boss and mentor). “That’s how popular those things were in the course of those trials. And he knew it, and he knew that he could approach anybody and they would give him a quote.”

Little wonder, then, that Dominick shows up in the new FX series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, in a picture-perfect portrayal by Robert Morse—who, like everybody who was anybody, knew Dominick socially. “If I would go to a party or an event, he would be there and he was always so very friendly and kind,” Morse says.

Dominick specialized in covering high-profile scandals, and the O.J. Simpson case, which he described as a “a great trash novel come to life,” was his masterpiece.

“Lance Ito might have been the judge, but Dominick was the mayor of the courtroom,” says Jeffrey Toobin, the New Yorker writer whose coverage of the trial forms the basis for the new series. “He was the only person in that courtroom who had access to everyone: the lawyers, the Goldman family, O.J.’s sister. Dominick had this irresistible charisma that attracted everyone even though his partisanship in the case could not have been clearer. He loudly proclaimed his belief in O.J.’s guilt from just about day one.”

That belief was grounded in Dominick’s analysis of the facts, sure, but it also had plenty to do with his own personal history. His daughter, Dominique, an actress best remembered for her role in Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist, was strangled by her ex-boyfriend in 1982. Dominick passionately believed that the resulting trial was rigged in favor of the killer, who was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for just three years. His first article for Vanity Fair was a heartbreaking account of the ordeal.

To him, history appeared to be repeating itself now that O.J. Simpson was being tried for murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. “It looked like someone who was clearly guilty was going to get off because of his legal defense,” says Griffin Dunne, Dominick’s son. “That is what struck a very painful chord in all of us. This was another case of seeing the system failing.”