Names and faces

LITTLE ROCK — A reopened police investigation has concluded that actor Dylan McDermott’s mother was killed in1967 by her now-dead gangster boyfriend. Waterbury, Conn., police reopened the investigation last year into Diane McDermott’s death after Dylan McDermott contacted them with questions, the Republican-American newspaper reported Sunday and Monday as part of a two-part series. He was 5 years old when his mother was shot in February 1967. Her death was originally ruled an accident. Police told the newspaper that the evidence they found would have been enough to file murder charges against John Sponza, who lived with Diane McDermott at the time. He had told authorities that McDermott accidentally shot herself after picking up a gun he had been cleaning. Sponza, who police say had ties to organized crime, was shot to death in 1972. H.Wayne Carver, the state’s medical examiner, 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. The wound also showed that the murder weapon had been pressed to the back of her head, according to his report. Police Superintendent Michael Gugliotti had also been troubled by some of the initial findings. “Sponza is telling the police that night that he very rarely, if ever, had arguments, yet everyone we spoke to, including Dylan, who was only 5 at the time, remembered very violent, vicious arguments,” he added. Dylan McDermott, who won a Golden Globe in 1999 for his role on the TV drama The Practice, declined to comment to the newspaper about the investigation. His sister, Robin Herrera, said she is relieved that the truth has been discovered.

Country singer Billy Ray Cyrus is making his Broadway debut in Chicago. The singer of “Achy Breaky Heart” and father of Miley Cyrus is taking on the role of criminal lawyer Billy Flynn for a seven-week engagement beginning Nov. 5. Cyrus starred with his daughter in the hit TV series Hannah Montana and has acted in TV movies on Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel. Cyrus has also hosted country music’s Nashville Star and was a competitor on Dancing With The Stars. Other celebrities to join the Chicago cast have included Sofia Vergara, Melanie Griffith, Brooke Shields, Ashlee Simpson, Usher, Huey Lewis, Michael C. Hall and Jerry Springer.