When Capote died in 1984, his will named Dunphy as the chief beneficiary. Eight years later, Dunphy died of cancer in New York at age 77. Dunphy and Capote had separate houses in Sagaponack, New York. Following their deaths, some of the money from their estates was donated to The Nature Conservancy, which used it to acquire nearby Crooked Pond on the Long Island Greenbelt between Sag Harbor, New York and Bridgehampton, New York, and their mingled ashes were scattered by the pond where a marker commemorates them. Joanne Carson, the second wife of Johnny Carson, has maintained that she also has some of Capote's ashes (a claim Dunphy denied) which she had kept at her home in Bel Air in the house where Capote died. After the ashes in California were stolen and returned, she bought a crypt for Capote's ashes at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Brentwood, California, although it is unclear if the ashes ever were deposited there.