The Death of Gianni Versace

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Speaker 4 Giant Versace was not for the faint of hearts.

Speaker 4 You didn't wear a Versace dress if you didn't want to be seen.

Speaker 5 Gianni Versace was a true original.

Speaker 6 Life always came with fireworks.

Speaker 4 I don't think there was a model that wasn't in love with him.

Speaker 6 He was on top of a mountain.

Speaker 8 Andrew Kunanen lusted for a taste of that world.

Speaker 7 Versace seemed to personify a lot that he wanted to be.

Speaker 11 He always had a big want list, you know, oh, I want that, I would like that.

Speaker 8 What was he willing to do to get it?

Speaker 9 He looked at me and he said, you have no idea what I'm capable of.

Speaker 2 There was a rug that was rolled up and there was a body inside.

Speaker 7 He killed the guy for his truck.

Speaker 12 Canannon really became their prime and only suspect.

Speaker 10 By that time, he was far away.

Speaker 13 It seemed like we were always one step behind him.

Speaker 7 Andrew just walked up right behind him and shot him.

Speaker 13 A lot of things that were left unanswered.

Speaker 7 He was determined to be remembered.

Speaker 7 The only way to be remembered is to kill for fame. He was willing to kill for fame.

Speaker 2 Once there was a true genius who conquered the capitals of fashion and earned worldwide fame.

Speaker 2 And once there was a man who earned fame another way.

Speaker 2 This is the story of how brilliance meant bitter envy.

Speaker 2 Of how, and maybe why, the bright light that was Johnny Versace was snuffed by a failure named Andrew Kunan.

Speaker 7 He was fixated by celebrity.

Speaker 7 He was determined to be remembered.

Speaker 2 And what Kunanen killed was indeed true magic.

Speaker 2 No one understood that magic or the power of fame, the pull of celebrity, quite like Johnny Versace.

Speaker 4 That was the hottest ticket in town. He was a major, major star.

Speaker 2 So other stars would want to go and be there. Yes.

Speaker 2 All of them dying to see Versace's latest surprise. He dispensed with the tailored suits and shoulder pads and baggy pants of the 80s

Speaker 2 and set out to celebrate the body. Suddenly, everything went sexy.

Speaker 4 Everything went sexy and it had colors and it was loud.

Speaker 7 It was different.

Speaker 2 Legendary model Beverly Johnson watched from the runway as Versace exploded on the world.

Speaker 9 You know, even the name had that kind of appeal.

Speaker 2 Versace.

Speaker 2 Versace, his big brother Santo and little sister Donatella, were born on the very toe of the boot of Italy, growing up, literally, among the ruins of the ancient Roman Empire.

Speaker 2 His parents were modest, hard-working people. Versace learned at the knee of his dressmaker mother, learned that every stitch mattered, that quality was paramount.

Speaker 2 He was 25 when he set out for the capital of Italian couture, Milan.

Speaker 2 This was the Versace

Speaker 2 house. It's here we met Antonio D'Amico, Versace's partner in life and in business.
So here is... Oh, see the Medusa there.
Yeah, yeah, on the door.

Speaker 2 He told us the story behind Versace's logo, the Medusa, and how Johnny spotted it right on the front door of his new house. It was already there.
And that was the idea for the Media.

Speaker 2 It was the idea to keep the Medusa as a logo. What did Medusa say to you?

Speaker 2 Medusa, you know, it's a seduction. Something that you look at

Speaker 2 and you cannot take off the

Speaker 2 way.

Speaker 2 That's why seduction is like and that was the fashion of Versace seduction. In myth, whoever looks on the face of Medusa turns to stone.

Speaker 2 In reality, the fashions behind that logo were impossible not to look at.

Speaker 2 Ballet empresarios, movie directors, rock stars came running.

Speaker 2 Elton John became a friend. And remember Miami Vice? In its final season, the stars wore Versace.
Some of these photographs of famous people in those clothes are iconic. They're world famous still.

Speaker 2 Like Princess Diana in that blue sheep. She didn't want to wear like an English old style, so she asked Johnny to make dresses for her.

Speaker 2 His fashion shows made history. Like the one in 1991 with Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington, all on the same runway.

Speaker 2 Unforgettable, said the noted fashion journalist Hal Rubenstein.

Speaker 6 The music was amazing, the color was amazing, the men and women were breathtaking. This was him.

Speaker 6 This is how he wanted you to see life. Life always came with fireworks.

Speaker 4 Johnny Versace was not for the faint of heart. Right.
Because when you put that on, from the time you walk out of your door, all eyes are on you.

Speaker 2 Well, there are some famous ones too, right? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 The safety pins.

Speaker 2 Elizabeth Hurley, 1994, at her boyfriend Hugh Grant's movie premiere. She wasn't really a star back then, but she was after she wore the Versace safety pin dress.

Speaker 4 It was a celebration of the woman's body. and really being proud of your sexuality.

Speaker 2 And Versace wasn't just a brilliant designer. An openly gay man, he became a champion for a community badly in need of one by embracing his sexuality and showing others they could too.

Speaker 6 It's even more amazing to realize what he did when you realize why and when he did it. And especially in America having come through the 80s when AIDS was so devastating.
We became terrified of sex.

Speaker 2 But not Versace.

Speaker 2 His designs made a statement. Be bold, be brave.

Speaker 6 I loved the audacity of what he did. I loved his fearlessness.

Speaker 4 He's not apologizing to anyone.

Speaker 12 It's a force to be reckoned with.

Speaker 14 Fantastic.

Speaker 2 He talked to Katie Couric about his fashion philosophy when he visited the Today Show in 1996.

Speaker 14 It's very important for people to look themselves, to express themselves. That's the only heart in fashion, to be yourself.

Speaker 14 And I think we designers have to help people to be glamorous, happy, and alive.

Speaker 2 By 1997, he was getting ready to take his company to a new level.

Speaker 7 This was an auspicious time in Versace's life.

Speaker 2 Maury North covered the Versace case for Vanity Fair.

Speaker 7 He wanted to be the very first Italian designer to get on the New York Stock Exchange, and he was getting his whole business ready for an IPO.

Speaker 2 Taking his company public. He was on top of a mountain.

Speaker 6 He was happy as can be. Everything was right.
Everything was going right.

Speaker 2 So, having met the money men in New York, Gianni Versace retreated to his luxurious mansion in Miami Beach, blissfully unaware that the name Versace would soon again be splashed across headlines, put there by a killer intent on stealing the fame of a genius, and who, even now, was eluding police as he drove inexorably toward his destiny.

Speaker 2 A very different path to fame.

Speaker 16 Andrick spent time with wealthier men who could help keep him in a life that he aspired to.

Speaker 2 A life that would take on one strange turn after another.

Speaker 9 He looked at me and he said, Stacy, you have no idea what I'm capable of.

Speaker 2 Around the world in San Diego and a lifestyle away from the Versace Empire, Andrew Kunanen started small, but also had designs on doing big things.

Speaker 2 Andrew was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he was raised as if he was.

Speaker 7 He was the adored baby fourth child, and he was treated like a little emperor.

Speaker 2 Maureen Orth, a Dateline consultant, wrote the book on Kunanen, Vulgar Favors.

Speaker 7 He was the product of an extremely dysfunctional family, a very unhappy marriage, a Filipino father who was incredibly materialistic and pretentious, and a Sicilian mother who was sort of beaten down by the father who had her own mental health issues.

Speaker 2 Andrew adored his father, mostly ignored his mother, and focused on getting what he wanted for himself, according to his close friend, Stacey Lopez.

Speaker 11 He always had a big want list, you know, oh, I want that. I would like that.

Speaker 2 Fancy car?

Speaker 10 Yes, and I think going to a school like Bishops, you know, some kids drove to school in a Lamborghini.

Speaker 2 The exclusive Bishops School in Ritzy-La Holla. Andrew's father pinched pennies to send him here.

Speaker 2 To get in, Andrew wrote this admissions essay, illustrating just how much he wanted it too, despite the misspellings.

Speaker 2 I'd long looked forward to my tour and interview at Bishops, envisioning classrooms and teachers the like of Mr. Chips and Miss Jean Brody, I was not disappointed.

Speaker 16 He knew even then that flattery will get you somewhere.

Speaker 2 Roman Jimenez, a freelance journalist, was editor of Update, a San Diego gay and lesbian newspaper.

Speaker 16 He had brains and he had looks and he had charm.

Speaker 10 I remember when he came to school, you know, he just had such a big personality.

Speaker 2 Even at that stage,

Speaker 10 oh, yes. Oh, yes.

Speaker 10 I thought he was very brave because

Speaker 10 back in the early 80s, generally people were not openly gay, and he was.

Speaker 2 Out and proud, but never at home.

Speaker 10 Due to religious reasons, he felt his family would not be as accepting.

Speaker 7 He hid his homosexuality from his family forever.

Speaker 2 But Andrew and Stacy accepted each other unconditionally, as his inscription in her yearbook attests. Can you read that? Sure.
Thanks.

Speaker 10 It's too bad I'm gay, or I'd be madly in love with you. Love always, Andrew.

Speaker 2 Andrew started dating at bishops, but not boys his own age.

Speaker 16 Andrew spent time with wealthier men who could help keep him in a life that he aspired to.

Speaker 2 He was a boy toy. Sure.
A boy toy who liked to show off the gifts he received.

Speaker 10 He had come to the dance in this red leather jumpsuit.

Speaker 11 And I remember going, wow, Andrew.

Speaker 10 He says, Yes, my boyfriend Anthony bought it for me.

Speaker 2 Stacy liked to tease Andrew about his dating choices.

Speaker 7 I said, Oh, so who's your sugar daddy now?

Speaker 10 And he was like, Wouldn't you like to know?

Speaker 2 At Bishop's, Andrew cruised along academically.

Speaker 10 Most of us had to study, but you never saw him in the library studying.

Speaker 2 Coasted through. Exactly.
So, was it a prophecy when on graduation in 1987, he was voted most likely to be remembered?

Speaker 10 He just had a very dynamic personality and was very funny and everybody loved him.

Speaker 2 After bishops, Andrew tried college, but the boy who coasted through high school found UC San Diego altogether too demanding and costly. So he bailed.
There were problems at home, too.

Speaker 2 Andrew's father, a stockbroker, was accused in a civil lawsuit of embezzling $100,000.

Speaker 2 And he fled the country, left his family, never came back.

Speaker 7 Without telling them, he sold their house out from under them. He took the money, and he went to the Philippines and completely abandoned them.

Speaker 2 Andrew was now on his own, and he turned to the older men he knew could support him. He cruised Hillcrest, San Diego's gay area.

Speaker 2 and fell deeper into his world of sugar daddies who took care of his financial needs.

Speaker 7 I think Andrew grew up thinking that maybe the world owed him a living and he didn't really have to work for things.

Speaker 2 For the older men in his life and others, Andrew invented a new identity for himself, Andrew De Silva, and made up stories about a gilded past, about accomplishments that never were,

Speaker 2 and impressed those men by appearing well-read and cultured. told them he loved art and opera.

Speaker 2 So Andrew was moving in more elite circles now and traveling. He went to the San Francisco Opera House in 1990 and a chance meeting afterwards would change his life and change history.

Speaker 2 That meeting was with Johnny Versace, who was in San Francisco designing costumes, as this sketch shows, for the opera Capriccio.

Speaker 7 There was a party where Versace was going to appear, and Andrew's friends scored some tickets. And so, during the party, he claimed, and other people claimed, that Andrew met Versace.

Speaker 2 Mind you, Antonio, remember him, Versace's partner? He was at the party and claimed that meeting never happened. But Andrew's excitement was off the charts.

Speaker 2 He couldn't contain himself with some of his friends.

Speaker 7 He jumped on the foot of their bed and said, I met Versace, I met Versace, I met Versace. He was so thrilled that he had done it.

Speaker 2 He admired everything the superstar designer had achieved. Fame, fortune, and freedom as a confident gay man.
But there was one difference as big as a runway is long.

Speaker 2 Andrew Cunanen wasn't willing to work for any of it.

Speaker 2 And that meant disappointment and trouble might lay ahead.

Speaker 9 I remember he looked at me and he said, Stacy, you have no idea what I'm capable of.

Speaker 2 As Versace's star rises, Kunanen finds a spotlight of his own.

Speaker 7 Andrew would come here almost every night. He would hold court here.
He pretended to the whole world he was this rich kid living off a trust fund.

Speaker 2 In the 1990s, almost anyone might have gotten a little thrill meeting the fabulous Gianni Versace.

Speaker 2 But Andrew Kunanen?

Speaker 2 Something more than that for him.

Speaker 7 Versace seems to be somebody that he studied a lot because Versace seemed to personify a lot that he wanted to be.

Speaker 2 But in 1991, when Versace was launching his fall line, a dazzling supermodel studded event,

Speaker 2 Andrew had dropped out of college and was working a menial job at a drugstore. He was also dealing party drugs to his pals.

Speaker 2 In six years, everyone would know his name. But in 1991, Andrew Kunanen was living in obscurity and scratching around for his next meal ticket.

Speaker 10 Andrew didn't like to work really hard, but he liked nice things. I fully expected him to be in a relationship with somebody older that was catering to his needs.

Speaker 2 Sure enough, in 1994, Cunanon scored. He was still posing as Andrew Da Silva when he met a wealthy older man who seemed for a time happy to pay the bills.

Speaker 7 He's kept by this really rich guy, Norman Blatchford, who gives him an infinity to drive around.

Speaker 2 Now Andrew was living in a beachfront condo in Pricey La Jolla. This new relationship put Kunanen in rarefied company of the sort he liked a lot.

Speaker 7 Norman Blatchford belonged to a very secretive, very affluent gay fraternity called Gamma Moo. They would have these very lavish meals and brunches and dances.

Speaker 2 And when he wasn't brunching and dancing with the older guys, he liked hanging out with the beautiful young crowd in the Hillcrest neighborhood, San Diego's gay place to see and be seen.

Speaker 7 This bar right here flicks.

Speaker 2 Maureen Orth learned a lot about Andrew Kunanen when she came here.

Speaker 7 Andrew would come here almost every night. He would put people together here.
He would hold court here.

Speaker 2 He was the life of the party. And every night was a party.

Speaker 7 And he would just sort of sit and watch and see if there were any new cute guys in town. Man, he would be the first guy to know who they were and like start presenting them.

Speaker 2 Like a non-working man about town.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Didn't seem to have any interest in having a job or a career of any kind.

Speaker 7 No, I think think he pretended to the whole world he was this rich kid living off a trust fund and he didn't need to work.

Speaker 2 And for some reason, people bought his story. Jeff Trail, for instance, an upstanding guy who became Andrew's friend.

Speaker 7 Jeff Trail was the all-American boy, a graduate of the Naval Academy. Politically conservative.
He hated drugs. He didn't drink.

Speaker 2 One of Jeff's closest friends was John Wainwright.

Speaker 20 People liked Jeff.

Speaker 20 He just had a lot going on for him.

Speaker 7 Jeff was very tentative about coming out. He never came out to his family.

Speaker 2 The friendship worked for a while. And while Jeff shied away from drugs, Andrew didn't.
Desperate to be noticed, he'd do almost anything, legal or not.

Speaker 7 So he became the drug dealer, he became the procurer, he became the guy who connected people together, and he was the one who always picked up the dinner tab.

Speaker 2 With Norman's money, of course. But in 1995, as Norman's kept man, Andrew met a handsome young architect named David Madsen and fell in love.

Speaker 7 I think that David was a kind of a do-gooder, lovely human being. Everybody remembers him from his small town.

Speaker 2 But David, according to Maureen Orth, did have a weakness for material things.

Speaker 2 which Andrew was only too happy to cater to.

Speaker 7 He gave him fancy Cartier watch and fancy suits and David always accepted his gifts.

Speaker 2 And Andrew was on top of the world, finally living the good life he felt entitled to. This was the best it would ever get.
Didn't they call him the mayor of Hillcrest?

Speaker 20 That was one of the titles and you know he reveled in it because it was the center of attention.

Speaker 2 But and this is no surprise, Andrew Coonanen's happiness was built on a fragile foundation.

Speaker 2 For months, he juggled his benefactor Norman and his lover David until in the fall of 1996, the man with the money got wise.

Speaker 7 Andrew wanted a Mercedes and he tells Norman that unless he can have a Mercedes, he's going to walk out. And Norman says, okay, go ahead.
And Norman let him walk, which stunned him.

Speaker 7 So that took away a big piece of his income.

Speaker 2 And that mattered to him.

Speaker 20 That absolutely mattered because, you know, that's who he was.

Speaker 2 Norman's rejection began a kind of implosion. John Wainwright saw it.
Andrew started to let himself go.

Speaker 20 He was looking unkempt, which was so unlike Andrew.

Speaker 2 And then, like a line of dominoes, his social world came tumbling down. The love of his life, David Madsen, broke up with him.
His friend, Jeff Trail, moved on.

Speaker 2 told friends they'd had a falling out.

Speaker 2 And the mayor of Hillcrest began a rapid decline.

Speaker 16 When the allowance went away, there were lots of reports that surfaced about him during this time being more heavily involved in the drug trade.

Speaker 2 Harder stuff now, like crystal meth.

Speaker 7 At some point, as he became more and more unhappy, I think he also became more dependent. And of course, Crystal Meth brings you up, but Crystal Meth also takes you down.

Speaker 2 And as Maureen Orth discovered, Andrew developed a taste for violent sex.

Speaker 7 The S ⁇ M part of this was very very disturbing to me because I spoke to FBI profilers who told me that for certain people, if they don't have real relationships of any kind in their life and then they depend on this to excite them, then the fantasies have to escalate.

Speaker 7 And he was just living off a diet of porn magazines, SM porn videos. They were always around him.

Speaker 2 And getting more and more intense all the time.

Speaker 7 And getting more and more intense.

Speaker 2 By early 1997, both Jeff Trail and David Madsen had moved away, both coincidentally, to Minneapolis, and a ruthless and unwanted Andrew Kunanen had gotten fat and puffy.

Speaker 10 He had told me that he was very depressed,

Speaker 10 and he's like, I'm fat and I don't look good and nobody's going to want me.

Speaker 2 And when he picked up a fashion magazine now, he read about all the things he didn't have, would never have.

Speaker 2 He could read about Elton John's glittering 50th birthday party in London, for instance, where Johnny Versace was a guest.

Speaker 2 That is when, in his own small world in San Diego, Cunanon planned a party of his own, a last supper with his few remaining friends, told them he was moving to San Francisco, but that first...

Speaker 16 He was going to Minneapolis to settle some business, as he put it.

Speaker 2 But it's clear now, Andrew Cunanon wasn't planning any move to San Francisco. What his friends couldn't have known was that he'd bought a one-way ticket to Minneapolis.

Speaker 2 Whatever happened there, he had no intention of coming back.

Speaker 16 I spoke to the waiter from the restaurant, and at the end of the meal, he remembers Andrew Coonan leaning back in his chair and looking at his friends and saying, All of you think you know

Speaker 2 the real Andrew, but none of you really know the truth.

Speaker 2 A mystery in Minneapolis. There was a rug that was rolled up, and you could see that there was a body inside.

Speaker 2 Andrew Kunan shed his life in San Diego like a man planning to die.

Speaker 7 He gave his clothes away. He gave his shoes away.

Speaker 7 He had it all marked out about who he wanted to have what. By the time he left San Diego for the last time and came to Minneapolis, he was completely, basically, broke.

Speaker 2 And angry.

Speaker 7 And very, very angry.

Speaker 2 Reeling from the loss of his benefactor, Kunanen landed in Minneapolis. And this is where it all began to go wrong.
He first called on his old friend, Jeff Trail.

Speaker 2 Jeff may have sensed Kunanan's visit wouldn't go well. In fact, Jeff called John Wainwright in in San Diego to talk about it.

Speaker 20 I could just tell that there was apprehension in his voice. He definitely wasn't happy about it, but at the same time, you know, he invited Andrew to stay with him at the...

Speaker 2 Why would he do that?

Speaker 20 I think he knew Andrew was on this downward spiral as well.

Speaker 20 So just trying to be a friend, being supportive.

Speaker 2 Jeff left Andrew in his apartment while he and his boyfriend went away for the weekend.

Speaker 2 On Sunday, Andrew moved to his ex-lover David Madsen's fourth floor loft in the city's eclectic warehouse district and persuaded Jeff to drop by for a visit.

Speaker 7 Sometime in the next hour or so, a neighbor reported hearing somebody yell, get the F out of here, and heard banging.

Speaker 2 The neighbor peered into the hallway, saw nothing, and the building went quiet again. But next morning, neither Jeff Trail nor David Madsen showed up at work.

Speaker 7 Jeff's boyfriend called the police, and the police were just said, oh, give me a break. You know, we don't pay attention unless people are missing for at least 72 hours.

Speaker 2 By Tuesday, worried friends persuaded the building manager to unlock ex-lover David's apartment. David's dog darted out as the open door revealed something horrifying.

Speaker 2 In the main room, there was a rug that was rolled up, and you could see that there was a body inside. Dale Barsness, chief of the Minneapolis Homicides Unit.

Speaker 2 Blood Blood splattering on the wall and on the floor. He'd been bludgeoned with, we found out later, a hammer.
Police assumed David Madsen was the victim. After all, it was his apartment.

Speaker 2 But when crime techs unrolled the rug, they found Jeff Trail. The attack was brutal and personal.
27 blows to the head and face and chest. David and his red jeep Cherokee were missing.

Speaker 2 Friends of both Madsen and Trail told police someone named Andrew was visiting from San Diego, but he too had vanished.

Speaker 2 So if Madsen wasn't the victim, thought the police, maybe he and this Andrew killed Jeff. Evidence of the scene pointed police to a possible motive.

Speaker 21 Duct tape, some handcuffs,

Speaker 2 you know, stuff that

Speaker 2 people involved in sex would use. It could have been a love triangle of sorts.
Witnesses even reported to the police they saw David and Andrew together after the time of the the murder.

Speaker 7 Neighbors saw them walking the dog. It means David was with Andrew and did not appear to be trying to escape.

Speaker 12 Police believe at this time David and Andrew Cunanon are together, are together willingly,

Speaker 12 and are on the run.

Speaker 2 Minneapolis newspaper reporters Jim Walsh and Chris Graves started digging and quickly heard a different story from David's friends who didn't buy the Love Triangle motive.

Speaker 12 Everybody who knows David says that can't be true. It's not in his DNA.
It's not who he is.

Speaker 2 The reporters talked to those who said they too saw David and Andrew with the dog. But it looked like David had been crying.

Speaker 12 David was described moody,

Speaker 12 a bit withdrawn, and sort of grumpy, I think is the word that people used. It just didn't seem right.

Speaker 2 Friends who knew David's dog walking routine insisted there was no way he was home at the time of Jeff's murder. Madsen walked on

Speaker 2 before the 10 o'clock news every night.

Speaker 12 Right. And so the presumption is that Jeff comes to the house, has to be buzzed in, walks up,

Speaker 12 the door gets open, there is a confrontation at the door because remember we know the neighbors here is get out, get out.

Speaker 2 Then, sometime after the murder, went the theory, David and the dog return to the apartment.

Speaker 12 What we presume happens, David, not thinking anything, walks in and Andrew had rolled up Jeffrey Trellett in the rug and pulled him behind the couch.

Speaker 2 Police searched David's bedroom and found Andrew's duffel bag. Inside was an empty gun holster and 40 caliber bullets, but no gun.
Did that mean David and Andrew were now armed?

Speaker 2 Investigators certainly suspected David and Andrew killed Jeff Trell,

Speaker 2 yet they issued no bulletin for David's missing Jeep. No be be on the lookout for either one of those men.
It was the beginning of what Maureen Orth would later call the largest failed manhunt in U.S.

Speaker 2 history.

Speaker 7 It's just one hapless mistake after another.

Speaker 2 And four days after they found Jeff Trail's bludgeoned body.

Speaker 13 We're going up to East Rush Lake.

Speaker 2 It would take

Speaker 22 30 to 40 minutes to drive from Minneapolis.

Speaker 2 Saturday, May 3rd, Chicago County Deputy Chris Hendrickson was called to work on his day off. Fishing season was starting and two men scouting a prime spot found a dead man instead.

Speaker 22 He was well dressed. He wasn't dirty, didn't appear to be in a fight.
He had a defensive wound in his hand and then a gunshot wound to his head.

Speaker 2 The police confirmed the victim by the lake was David Madsen.

Speaker 12 And I said, whoa, wait a minute, this just changes everything.

Speaker 2 A.40-caliber gun killed Madsen. Shell casings matched the ammunition found in Kunanan's duffel bag in David's apartment.

Speaker 2 By this time, police knew the missing gun from the holster belonged to Jeff Trail, that Andrew had stolen it from Trail's apartment.

Speaker 2 An alert was now posted for Madsen's red jeep and for the man they now feared was a double murderer.

Speaker 12 That's when I believe Andrew Cananen really became their prime and only suspect. And by that time,

Speaker 2 he's far away.

Speaker 2 And it was already too late for victim number three.

Speaker 2 A killer who makes himself right at home.

Speaker 5 Whomever was in the home had helped themselves to ham, some ice cream. They had gone upstairs and shaved.

Speaker 2 Chicago. This is where America's romance with skyscrapers began more than a century ago.
A romance that's called dreamers ever since.

Speaker 5 When I saw that Sears Tower building, I said, you know, that looks pretty good. I think I can do that.

Speaker 2 Paul Beitler made it happen when he joined forces with developer Lee Miglund four decades ago.

Speaker 5 We were giants, and we didn't realize it. We were moving at a lightning speed and changing the skyline literally overnight.

Speaker 2 You two were tired of the hip.

Speaker 5 Yeah, he was my best friend. He was a person that I spent five days a week with, 12 hours a day.
He was just that close.

Speaker 2 As their company prospered, Miglund organized an annual thank you ceremony with a symbol for the employees, a special gold coin.

Speaker 5 And he said, you know, people can hold that gold in their hands and they can say, this job got me this gold.

Speaker 2 At the same time, Miglund's wife Marilyn was building her own empire, a cosmetics line popular on the home shopping network.

Speaker 5 She and Lee were a perfect couple, a perfect team. They worked together very, very well.

Speaker 2 And then one Sunday morning, when Marilyn flew home from an appearance on Home Shopping Network, Lee wasn't at the airport as planned.

Speaker 2 At their townhouse on Chicago's fashionable Gold Coast, her worry turned to alarm. No sign of Lee.
And then, down the alley behind his house, a neighbor found Lee Mickland dead in his garage.

Speaker 2 Marilyn called Paul Beitler.

Speaker 5 I was frozen.

Speaker 5 I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It didn't dawn on me to ask what happened or how he was murdered or when,

Speaker 5 only that I had just lost. the most important person next to my family in my life.

Speaker 2 Beitler rushed to the Minklin home and headlong into chaos.

Speaker 5 It was like a three-ring circus. In the front yard were all the news media with the lights blaring.

Speaker 2 Investigators could see that this was not a typical robbery homicide. Lee's Lexus was gone, as were clothes and more than $2,000.
The killer had left evidence, looked like he'd spent the night.

Speaker 5 Whomever was in the home

Speaker 5 had helped themselves to some food in the refrigerator, some ham, some ice cream, that they had gone upstairs and shaved. Apparently the bristles from his beard were on the floor.

Speaker 2 But the most disturbing evidence.

Speaker 23 There are aspects of the homicide that indicate that there was some torture that occurred.

Speaker 2 More than some, much more.

Speaker 7 He practically slit his whole throat with a bow saw. He put him in a kind of an S ⁇ M mask with just two holes for for the nostrils after he had been repeatedly stabbed.
He'd been battered.

Speaker 7 There was so much hatred and so much anger in that murder.

Speaker 2 Suddenly widowed, Marilyn Miglund made a public plea for information leading to the killer.

Speaker 9 What do you say about a man you loved passionately for 38 years?

Speaker 2 A man who exemplified courage and honor and dignity.

Speaker 2 Thousands packed Holy Name Cathedral to pay respects to the widely admired member of the Chicago establishment. But days were going by, and the investigation was going nowhere.

Speaker 2 Until police stumbled on a red Jeep parked literally around the corner from the Miglund townhouse.

Speaker 7 You have a red Jeep Cherokee that's got three tickets on it and nobody bothers to check the bin number or anything until the fourth ticket, after four days or five days.

Speaker 2 When the number came back a match to David Madsen's missing Jeep, reporters Chris Graves and Jim Walsh, who'd been covering the murders in Minnesota, began reporting on the Chicago case, too.

Speaker 2 The question right away was, what's the connection between Koonanin and Lee Maiklin, who is an extremely wealthy, older man?

Speaker 2 Beitler tried to stop the media speculation.

Speaker 25 We'd really like to make this known. The family has been...

Speaker 25 The family does not know Koonan and there's been no connection with the family whatsoever.

Speaker 2 Then Beitler discovered a few Chicago police were leaking tips to the media. What did they say?

Speaker 5 They drew an inference that Lee

Speaker 5 was known to be involved in the gay community in Chicago.

Speaker 2 Beitler, a major contributor to then-Mayor Richard Daly's campaigns, called the police superintendent to shut that down too.

Speaker 5 I said, this is a character assassination that's going on right now.

Speaker 5 If you have evidence, that you can bring forward that shows that what your detectives are offering to the media is true, then let's see it.

Speaker 5 It didn't take much on the part of the various people within the police department to realize that there was no upside to this investigation.

Speaker 5 That if they got out in front of this thing too far and they made mistakes, this could be a career changer.

Speaker 2 It appeared the investigation withered, said Maury North.

Speaker 7 You know, the Chicago police were so intent on not finding out what happened.

Speaker 2 They were were so intent on not finding out what happened?

Speaker 7 They were intent on not finding out what happened. Lee Miglin was, quote, a very happily married, very upstanding member of the community.

Speaker 7 All the most important, influential people were calling it a random crime. Therefore, the police aren't too stupid.
They realized it was supposed to be a random crime.

Speaker 2 In a statement to Dateline, the Chicago Police Department said in part, we stand behind the work of department investigators who base their conclusion on verifiable facts and evidence.

Speaker 2 Yet, in 1997, Minneapolis reporter Jim Walsh flew to San Diego and thought he found a connection between Lee Miglund and Andrew Coonannen. I interviewed a bookstore owner who said

Speaker 2 that Andrew Coonannen

Speaker 2 was friends with Duke Miglund, Lee Miglund's son.

Speaker 2 Duke was a small-time actor in Hollywood, and he said Cunan always talked about Duke Miglund, talked about him all the time, that he knew him well, they played tennis together.

Speaker 2 But less than 24 hours later, the bookstore owner denied he'd ever heard about Duke Miglund directly from Kunanan.

Speaker 2 Back in Chicago, Duke Miglund addressed the rumors with his father's staff.

Speaker 5 And he was very forthright and he said, look, I will tell you the truth. The truth is, no, I don't know Kunanan.
I haven't been engaged with Kunanan.

Speaker 2 But by then, Andrew Kunanan had escaped, another dead man in his wake, flush with Lee Miglund's cash at the wheel of Miglund's Lexus, which was his first miscalculation.

Speaker 2 That fancy Lexus was equipped with a cell phone that could be traced.

Speaker 2 Police tipped their hand.

Speaker 7 Authorities had confirmed to the Chicago media that the FBI was tracking Andrew in Lee Miglund's car. That immediately went out all over the airwaves.

Speaker 2 And Kunanen was listening.

Speaker 7 He realized he had to get out of that car and had to find a place where he could get a vehicle.

Speaker 2 Johnny Versace not only designed fashions for sexy and elegant supermodels, he made clothes that everyone could wear.

Speaker 2 In May 1997, he was unveiling his ready-to-wear collection on a runway in Istanbul.

Speaker 2 And what was Andrew Kunanen doing that May? He was running away. He had a big jump on the Chicago police, who had taken three days to figure out he killed Lee Miglund and those two men in Minnesota.

Speaker 2 Police now realized an extremely dangerous killer was careening across the country, and they put the word out.

Speaker 9 Police say the missing Lexus is Black Jade Pearl.

Speaker 2 Bernandan was driving east in the fancy Lexus he'd stolen from Meekland, but had no idea that the car's built-in phone was pinging off cell towers, or that by Friday, May 9th, he'd picked up a tale.

Speaker 2 The FBI

Speaker 2 cell phone surveillance was primitive back then and lacked pinpoint targeting, but agents were closing in.

Speaker 7 But that was when something really bad happened. The Chicago authorities had confirmed to the Chicago media that the FBI was tracking Andrew in Lee Miglund's car.

Speaker 7 That immediately went out all over the airwaves.

Speaker 26 In Philadelphia, police say a cellular phone was activated from the stolen Lexus taken from murder victim Lee Miglund.

Speaker 7 Andrew obviously heard it.

Speaker 2 He couldn't miss it at that time.

Speaker 2 In her book, Maureen Orth called the police leak tipping off Kunanen, quote, probably the most serious blunder of the entire manhunt.

Speaker 7 He then tried to destroy the antenna of the car. He tried to rip out the phone, but the phone box was in the trunk of the car, which he didn't know.

Speaker 7 But in any case, he realized he had to get out of that car and had to find a place where he could get a vehicle.

Speaker 2 A place where he could fly under the radar, way off the beaten path. where no one would know he was coming with a gun.

Speaker 2 He drove through miles of marshland before finding this unlikely spot, a Civil War burial ground, Finns Point National Cemetery in Pennsville, New Jersey.

Speaker 28 If I gave you directions or told you to put it in your GPS, you probably would not be able to find it.

Speaker 2 Alan Cummings is the Pennsville Police Chief. In 1997, he was a 32-year-old patrolman.

Speaker 28 I've never heard of Andrew Cananin before that date.

Speaker 2 Neither had this man, William Rees, 45 years old, the caretaker at the cemetery. He was a kind and gentle man, said his wife, Rebecca.
She spoke with us in 1997.

Speaker 29 He was the kind of husband who would keep a list the entire year of things you said you wanted. So at Christmas time, he had them.

Speaker 30 When my mom and I had off from school, we would always go see my dad and his workplace, like surprise him with picnics. I love being in the cemetery because I was with my father.

Speaker 2 Troy Reese was adopted by William and Rebecca when he was six. They raised him with love and special nurturing.
He'd been born with fetal alcohol syndrome.

Speaker 2 Troy said William taught him to never give up.

Speaker 30 Every time I fell on my bike, he would encourage me to get up, keep trying, never quit. Bruise after bruise until I got it finally right.

Speaker 2 That Friday, 12-year-old Troy was waiting for his father to pick him up from school, but he didn't show up.

Speaker 30 And then my mom said, let's go look for your dad.

Speaker 2 At the cemetery, Rebecca noticed her husband's red Chevy pickup truck was gone. In its place, a black Lexus with Illinois plates, parked in front of the garage.

Speaker 30 I could see a look in her eyes that a kid never wants to see because she knew something was wrong.

Speaker 2 They walked to William's office. The door was wide open.

Speaker 31 We went upstairs, searched for him. Then we went to the middle floor, searched for him.

Speaker 30 The only place they didn't look was the basement from what my mom told me there was a holy spirit guiding her away from the basement she contacted the local police and we sent an officer down there to look for him and there he was

Speaker 2 william reese shot once in the back of the head

Speaker 30 When my mom was crying, I knew something bad happened to my dad. She told me, your dad's never coming home, but he's in a better place in heaven.

Speaker 2 Troy asked to watch his mother's interview from back in 97.

Speaker 2 He had never seen it.

Speaker 29 And at that point, I think my entire world and my son's world began to crumble.

Speaker 2 This would not be Troy's only loss. His mother died of pancreatic cancer in 2005,

Speaker 2 forcing him to fend for himself at age 19.

Speaker 30 I just wish we could have a happy family like we once had when I was a kid.

Speaker 2 The different police agencies, lacking coordination, had been slow to understand how dangerous and apparently desperate Andrew Kunanen was. But they realized it now.

Speaker 7 The FBI has now joined local law enforcement agencies in San Diego, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New Jersey in the search for Kunanen.

Speaker 2 They could piece it all together because Kunanen left so much evidence of the cemetery. In the basement, a shell casing from the same.40 caliber gun that killed David Madsen.

Speaker 2 Outside, Lee Minglund's Lexus, and inside the car, his credit cards and a bloody screwdriver evidently used in his brutal stabbing.

Speaker 2 The Pennsville PD was now part of the manhunt, but Chief Alan Cummings wonders today, as he did then, whether William Reese's murder could have been prevented.

Speaker 28 We had found out that the Philadelphia police was aware of him being in the area, but our police department was not advised of him possibly being in our vicinity.

Speaker 28 What if the information was put out to our community? Maybe we could have prevented this horrible tragedy.

Speaker 7 One of the things about this investigation is that there were so many different police entities, and for a long time, they didn't cooperate sufficiently.

Speaker 2 And because of that, by Friday night, Kunan had escaped another murder scene. and sped away in Reese's red Chevy pickup truck with jersey plates, which could be probably fairly easily identified.

Speaker 7 Yes, but he stopped in South Carolina in a Walmart parking lot. He stole somebody's license plate to switch out Reese's license plate.

Speaker 2 Clever? No, mostly lucky. The stolen Carolina plate was never reported missing.
And now the red pickup truck was in the clear, and Andrew Cunanon was in the wind.

Speaker 2 A killer who likes to party.

Speaker 7 He was lying low during the day. He was out at night.

Speaker 2 Up to his old tricks.

Speaker 7 He brought one guy in and he was wearing a Cartier bracelet. And when he left, he was no longer wearing it.

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Speaker 2 Andrew Coonan was hurtling down the east coast,

Speaker 2 wanted now in four murders, some of them quite grisly. And police, slow to realize who he was, had no idea where he was.

Speaker 2 So they sounded the alarm. And after William Reese was shot to death just for his car,

Speaker 2 the national media jumped all over the story. Police say there's a serial killer loose in the country tonight, and law enforcement officials are racing against time.

Speaker 2 With murders in three states, The FBI was now overseeing the Kunanen case. And no one seemed safe after the random murder of victim number four.

Speaker 2 New York City, two hours from Pensville, New Jersey, was on high alert, particularly in the gay community.

Speaker 27 Cunanan could be in New York or on the way to New York. He seems to be targeting gay men.

Speaker 2 But he was nowhere near Manhattan. In fact, he was 1,300 miles away, heading for another popular island.

Speaker 2 On the night of May 11th, Cunanon quietly slipped into Miami Beach in that stolen pickup truck with its switched-out plates.

Speaker 2 Andrew Coonan came here, to South Beach, to the crowds, the noise, the music, the looky-loos staring at each other.

Speaker 2 Strange place to come for a man who had to know he was the subject of a massive manhunt. Andrew Coonanen decided to hide in plain sight.

Speaker 2 Under an assumed name, he shelled out $29.99 plus tax, the daily rate, to stay at the Normandy Plaza Hotel, five miles north of the Versace mansion it may as well have been five million miles as far as luxury living goes the plaza what was reputation to the place it was a dump police say that correspondent Kerry Sanders covered the story for NBC News you'd drive by and maybe even lock the door and roll the window up when you drove by it was just a it was a nasty place

Speaker 2 Which is why it's now out of business and boarded up. Back then, it was a good place to hide out, especially for an unconventional tourist choosing to avoid the sun and live in the shadows.

Speaker 7 He was lying low during the day, he was out at night. He was an easy guy to blend in.
He was half Filipino, half Italian. He could have passed for any number of ethnicities.

Speaker 2 Once he lived large on a rich man's allowance in an oceanside condo and picked up tabs for pricey dinners. Now?

Speaker 7 He's living off of maybe one submarine sandwich a day.

Speaker 2 And once again, he was doing drugs and turning tricks.

Speaker 7 Getting some old guys that probably had some money and he was robbing, doing petty robbery. He brought one guy in and he was wearing a Cartier bracelet and when he left, he was no longer wearing it.

Speaker 2 By mid-June, Kunanen had been in Miami Beach for a month and had settled into his seedy routine of the Normandy. He wasn't moving, but for some reason he decided his truck needed to.

Speaker 2 He drove that red pickup truck to this garage, just two blocks from the Versace mansion. Versace wasn't home.
He was preparing with his supermodels to show his fall-winter collection at Paris.

Speaker 2 Kunanen, in his own way, was also making a big name for himself. The FBI had just put him on its 10 most wanted list, publicizing it on some relatively new computer technology.

Speaker 7 He was one of the very first people they ever put up on the internet as a fugitive.

Speaker 2 The FBI had actually received a few tips that Kunan might be in Florida, but they didn't communicate that to the Miami Beach Police.

Speaker 21 Well, the FBI is notorious for sharing information one way. That's from you to them.

Speaker 2 Richard Beretta was the Miami Beach Police Chief 20 years ago.

Speaker 21 They could have probably done a little better job in sharing information.

Speaker 2 Then a possible break, though it had nothing to do with the FBI. America's Most Wanted did a story on Kunanan, and a counterman at the sub shop near Kunanen's hotel saw it.

Speaker 24 I looked up and I saw his face and I

Speaker 24 automatically recognized him from America's Most Wanted.

Speaker 2 He dialed 911.

Speaker 24 He's inside the store now and they told me to try to delay his order.

Speaker 2 Miami Beach police responded within minutes, but it was too late. If it was Kunanan, he'd already taken his tuna sub and soda and left.

Speaker 2 There was no doubt, however, that it was Kunanan who walked into the cash on the beach pawn shop. Running low on money, he decided to pawn a gold coin.

Speaker 2 The shop owner, who didn't recognize him, paid him $190.

Speaker 2 Coonannen actually signed his own name and the owner submitted the paperwork to the Miami PD as required by law.

Speaker 2 Then Andrew Coonannen returned to the Normandy Plaza, where the closest he got to his past life as bon vivant and cultural wannabe was in fantasy.

Speaker 7 He was surrounded by Vogue and Vanity Fair and all these upscale magazines and he had art books and books of history and architecture and all the things he all aspired to and that he pretended in his own fantasy world he was part of.

Speaker 2 No way of knowing what was in that mind of his. But we do know that the latest Vanity Fair had just come out.

Speaker 2 It had a splashy story and pictorial that featured the richest and gaudiest house in all of South Beach. Owned by a man Kunan bragged about meeting in better days, Johnny Versace.

Speaker 2 And the superstar designer was coming home.

Speaker 2 Johnny Versace's love affair with Miami Beach was mutual.

Speaker 6 Johnny's face was always big and open, and his eyes were always wide. And he was, remember, he was staring at everybody, so he was making eye contact.

Speaker 6 Now you're not going to say hello.

Speaker 2 But someone had a different greeting in mind.

Speaker 2 in the late spring of 1997 the fugitive andrew kunanen was living in the shadows turning tricks dealing drugs scratching around for a little sandwich money in miami beach

Speaker 2 All while his one-time idol was on top of the world and enjoying a very different kind of life.

Speaker 2 May found Gianni Versace in Milan attending a press conference about his new men's collection. A stop in Venice for the city's famous Art Expo.

Speaker 2 Then

Speaker 2 Paris for the premiere of his new Haute Couture line. The new collection was a smash.

Speaker 6 I had been to the show in Paris and it was amazing.

Speaker 2 After Paris, Versace and his partner Antonio stopped in New York to make final plans to to take his company public. On July 10th, they joined their friend Hal Rubenstein for a dinner in Manhattan.

Speaker 6 Johnny loved to go out to eat. He said he would go eat anything, but frankly, he would only eat at places that basically had some version of pasta.

Speaker 6 So he would eat Chinese food because they had la Mei.

Speaker 2 And then it was time to relax.

Speaker 7 He was coming down to South Beach where he often loved to just kick back after having an intense time. He loved it.
It was his playground.

Speaker 2 Versace's love affair with South Beach, the vibrant gay Mecca on the island of Miami Beach, began five years earlier when the town was enjoying a dazzling revival.

Speaker 2 That's when he got to know Hal Rubenstein.

Speaker 6 Gianni was on his way to Cuba and his plane, his charter, got delayed by 10 hours. And so he told the driver to take him someplace that isn't boring.
So he took him to the news cafe.

Speaker 6 He sat there for about five or ten minutes and was astounded by what he saw.

Speaker 2 What did he see?

Speaker 6 Beauty everywhere. Beauty everywhere.

Speaker 6 It was the music. It was the rollerbaiting.
It was the bodies. It was the beauty.

Speaker 2 Antonia was with him. Johnny was kind of like, oh my God, genius, this place is genius.

Speaker 6 Johnny took one look at this and basically, in about five minutes, canceled his trip

Speaker 2 to Cuba.

Speaker 6 And he said,

Speaker 6 I want somebody to show me around. Show me around.
Show me around.

Speaker 2 Hal was then a New York Times reporter and South Beach Denizen. A friend asked him to give Versace a tour.
So what did he say when he came here? Oh, he was deliriously happy.

Speaker 6 He got to see people. He got to see people interacting.
And he loved to watch people flirting and coming on to each other. There's a certain kind of exhibitionism

Speaker 6 I think that is exhibited in Miami. The fact that everybody's eating outside, that everybody's, like I said, everybody's watching everybody else.
Yep.

Speaker 2 Versace decided to make it permanent. He set his sights on a tired old Mediterranean villa on Ocean Drive.
It would need a gut renovation, of course. Yeah, it was beautiful.

Speaker 2 But inside we have to change things. We add, you know, the pool, we add a second part of the house with a garden.

Speaker 2 They made it spectacular in a Versace kind of way. He chose every fabric, every bit of furniture, every stone and tile, insisted on getting it perfect, his way,

Speaker 2 perfectly over the top.

Speaker 2 And from here he reigned as the crown prince of the New South Beach.

Speaker 2 The Today Show came to call in 1994.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I think it's like a global village here. Everyone is from Cuba, from New York, from Italy, from Germany.
And that is modern to me, the mixture of people.

Speaker 15 You don't care if you are black or white.

Speaker 2 You care just over your heart over your mind it's cool I like it and the town loved him right back people recognize him and say hello Mr.

Speaker 6 Versace how are you all good good thank you ciao he had a very distinctive look and he's just one of these people who sort of carried himself a certain way Johnny's face was always big and open and his eyes were always wide and he was remember he was staring at everybody so he was making eye contact

Speaker 6 Now you're not going to say hello.

Speaker 2 Of course. Did you worry about him? He was a big star.
Well,

Speaker 2 I never worry about that. But his brother worried.
Santo talked to Johnny about hiring some protection. So that conversation happened.
Yeah, yeah. His brother wanted him to have a bunny guess.

Speaker 2 But he didn't want that. And so there they were, in July of 1997, fresh from a whirlwind trip to Europe and Manhattan and home in South Beach.
A rare chance to relax with dinner and a movie.

Speaker 2 We were to see a movie in Coconut Grove.

Speaker 2 And then we started to watch TV and then he was kind of falling asleep on the couch.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 after nine o'clock, it was always like.

Speaker 2 But then he'd been pushing himself for weeks. A good night's sleep was certainly in order.
You never know what tomorrow will bring.

Speaker 2 Two shots heard round the world. I heard the shot.

Speaker 2 Something said to me,

Speaker 2 something happened.

Speaker 2 July 15th, 1997. A Tuesday.

Speaker 2 Johnny Versace rose early, and before the heat and humidity became oppressive, he left the mansion on ocean drive and strolled down the street to the news cafe a morning ritual he loved to buy magazines and newspapers and get his coffee he was uncommonly alone and reading up on the latest fashion news his own runway show was over but not the competitions so he went there early because he wanted to see what was going on in paris yeah fashion week usually we go together

Speaker 2 He has to go by himself. You know, he couldn't wait.

Speaker 2 That same morning, said Maureen Orth, Andrew Cunanon most likely awoke in the pickup truck he'd stolen from his most recent victim, the truck he'd parked in a public garage two blocks from the mansion.

Speaker 2 But now as the sun heated the air on Ocean Drive, he stood across from the mansion, watching, waiting.

Speaker 7 Andrew was wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a baseball cap and a t-shirt.

Speaker 2 Just before 8.45 a.m., Johnny walked home. Three blocks.
He climbed his coral steps toward his Medusa logoed front gate, fidgeted with his keys, had no idea.

Speaker 7 Andrew just very boldly crossed the street, walked up right behind him, and shot him in the head.

Speaker 2 Two bullets, execution style. And Andrew turned and walked away.

Speaker 2 I heard the shot. My heart stopped to beat.

Speaker 2 Something said to me,

Speaker 2 something happened.

Speaker 2 Anyway, so

Speaker 2 I ran out and I saw Johnny lay down on the stairs in a blob.

Speaker 2 901 mercy,

Speaker 2 emergency on Road 16 Ocean Drive. From inside the mansion, Versace's chef called 911.

Speaker 2 This is Johnny Versace.

Speaker 2 He was entering his house. We just heard guns from the bomb outside.
He's on the steps of the house.

Speaker 7 And there was a woman who had just walked her daughter to school. She saw it completely, and Andrew just nonchalantly walked fast down the street.

Speaker 2 Sergeant Glassie northbound was running with the gun. What were you doing?

Speaker 19 I was in charge of the bike squad here on Miami Beach at the time when the call went out.

Speaker 2 Howard Zeifman was a sergeant then. He still serves as a reserve officer.
What was the situation when you got here?

Speaker 19 The rescue had already arrived. I saw that they were working on a gentleman on the steps.
I didn't know at the time. Right here.
Right here.

Speaker 19 It could be anybody walking by because this was a famous mansion. People stopped by all the the time and took pictures.
One of the officers said, hey, it's Versace.

Speaker 2 At 9.21, Gianni Versace was pronounced dead at the local trauma center. He was 50, murdered in broad daylight.

Speaker 2 The Miami Beach Police Department is just blocks from the mansion. It was the hour of shift overlap.
The night officers still around. Chief Richard Barreto.

Speaker 2 We had a whole lot more policemen on the street than we would have an hour later.

Speaker 19 And I asked people as they were walking by, you know, do you see anybody running from here? Do you see anybody that moving in the area?

Speaker 2 One witness saw a man duck into the 13th Street garage two blocks away. We need a mark unit to the garage.

Speaker 2 Zeifman and other officers rushed over. What did you find here on the third level?

Speaker 19 Truck parked there, out of state plates.

Speaker 2 But what looked suspicious was outside the truck.

Speaker 19 From what my recollection is, there was clothes laying on the ground.

Speaker 2 Zeifman thought the killer probably changed his clothes to avoid being identified. How would he have gotten out of here?

Speaker 19 You can go down the elevator, go down the stairs, people walking out, you just blend in with them.

Speaker 2 Didn't catch him, but at least you locked down the island.

Speaker 21 Locked down the island as quick as we could.

Speaker 2 Homicide chief George Navarro was called in. He was taking charge of what would be the biggest case of his career.

Speaker 13 I went straight to the scene.

Speaker 2 It was now just past noon. Blood was still on the steps, but so was a dead bird.
And that caused rumors to fly. Was that a signature signature of a mafia hit or something?

Speaker 13 It was, back in the day. Turns out we autopsied the pigeon, and it was just a fragment of the round, one of the rounds that hit Mr.
Versace. Ricochet and hit the pigeon.

Speaker 13 It was the first and last time we autopsied a bird.

Speaker 2 It was that kind of a story.

Speaker 13 I quickly realized that this wasn't just

Speaker 13 another homicide because of the amount of media.

Speaker 26 Buenos Aira, Gianni Versace.

Speaker 27 The media from around the world is covering the story of murder, mystery, and high fashion.

Speaker 2 Versace's murder was of course part of a much bigger case, but Navarro, like the rest of his department, knew nothing about it until...

Speaker 13 An FBI agent approaches me and says to me, can we talk about this case? I said, sure, what do you got? He goes, I think

Speaker 13 we may know someone that may have done this.

Speaker 2 The FBI man, Kunanen's chief tracker, had eyeballed the shell casings of the scene and told Navarro they might match Kunanen's other murders. What was it like to hear that story from the FBI agent?

Speaker 13 I got goosebumps because now this was bigger than just Johnny Versace getting murdered. And then he mentioned the last homicide of Mr.
William Reese. and the red pickup and it clicked.

Speaker 2 Navarro knew his guys in the garage were all over a red pickup truck with South Carolina plates that looked suspicious.

Speaker 13 So I called my detective that was running that scene at the garage on the radio and I asked him to read the VIN number on the vehicle.

Speaker 2 For Navarro, it was like winning a lottery.

Speaker 13 When we made a match, we knew that was Mr. Reese's car.

Speaker 2 That night, Chief Barretto held a press conference to tell the global media that Andrew Kunanan was the killer. and Johnny Versace was victim number five.

Speaker 37 Coonanan is known to be a male prostitute prostitute with services affluent clientele. Kunanan is well educated, well dressed, and is very articulate.

Speaker 2 So at the end of day one, Chief Investigator Navarro knew he had his hands full with a slippery killer who'd gotten away four times before.

Speaker 13 You try to think like he thinks. It's a cat and mouse game, you know.
Our job is to catch him and his job is to elude us.

Speaker 2 Kunanan was still at large, armed, desperate, and more dangerous than ever.

Speaker 2 The Versace family quickly leaves town.

Speaker 7 He was cremated immediately and they left with his ashes, and that was it.

Speaker 2 Did Kunanan also make a quick getaway?

Speaker 13 The director felt that Kunanen wasn't on Miami Beach, that he had slipped away.

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Speaker 2 There's a reason July is off-season in Miami Beach. Temperatures that mirror the humidity and drive all but hardcore sun worshipers inside.

Speaker 2 In the days after Johnny Versace died on his mansion's coral steps, Detective George Navarro was most definitely feeling the heat. How much pressure was on you?

Speaker 13 Oh, incredible.

Speaker 13 Never had that much pressure on me, ever. Literally working around the clock, sleeping two hours, three hours.

Speaker 2 How'd he keep going?

Speaker 13 I was young back then.

Speaker 2 So much they didn't know. Would he kill again? Was this a vendetta against people who'd upset him? Was he targeting gay men? Was Versace, the most prominent gay man in town, one of a list?

Speaker 2 The Versace family wanted no part of finding out.

Speaker 7 Versace's family obviously was devastated. How could they not be? However, they wanted to get him out of there.

Speaker 7 They got all kinds of privileged treatment. All kinds of protocols were broken.
And he was cremated immediately, and they left with his ashes. And that was it.

Speaker 2 The family skipped the Miami Beach Memorial Service, which investigators attended, hoping perhaps Kunanen would show up to revel in his kill. He didn't.

Speaker 2 The police drag then is intense in South Florida.

Speaker 2 The 230 investigators now assigned to the case chased more than a thousand leads in the 18 square miles of Miami Beach, knowing, given the intense coverage, that Kunanen had to be watching their every move.

Speaker 13 That's why we had to use runners and cell phones and landlines instead of our radios.

Speaker 2 In other words, you're trying to keep the media from finding out because the media would be telling him directly. Correct.

Speaker 13 But when you do that,

Speaker 13 it's kind of a double-edged sword.

Speaker 13 When you don't give the media what they're looking for, they kind of try to go find it on their own.

Speaker 2 That's exactly what Minneapolis reporter Chris Graves did. She followed the Coonan Trail first to Chicago, then Miami, and here discovered a missed clue.

Speaker 12 So I'm in South Beach, and there was a strip mall in the near vicinity, and I just start going door to door to door to door to ask people if they knew Andrew Coonannen.

Speaker 2 At Cash on the Beach Pawn Shop, Graves hit the jackpot.

Speaker 12 This woman came up and said,

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 12 we know him. I said, what?

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 2 It was the shop where Kunanen had pawned that gold coin, signed his real name on the pawn slip, gave the Normandy Plaza address, and provided his fingerprint.

Speaker 27 The guy doesn't look like a serial killer.

Speaker 2 And remember, as required by law, the pawn shop sent police the transaction. They got it five days before the murder.

Speaker 12 Lo and behold, the South Beach police had a copy of that pawn slip days before Gianna Versace was dead.

Speaker 2 So could they have prevented the murder? Up in Chicago, Paul Beitler read Grave Story and... Do you remember finding out about this coin being found?

Speaker 5 Oh, I couldn't believe it. I knew immediately what those gold coins were.
In fact, they were probably the coins that I had actually handed to Lee Miglund.

Speaker 2 So that coin tied Kunan to Lee Miglund's murder and revealed where he was hiding in Miami Beach. That is, if police have been looking.

Speaker 2 But before the murder, they weren't, even though Kunanen was on the FBI's most wanted list.

Speaker 13 Took a beating over to the pawn shop. Right, Police O?

Speaker 2 Because the one officer whose job was to check pawn slips didn't get to it. He was assigned elsewhere that week.

Speaker 13 So was sitting on his desk for almost a week.

Speaker 2 What did that detective feel like when he realized what had happened?

Speaker 13 It felt terrible, but it's that old Murphy's Law again and a very antiquated antiquated system that we had back then.

Speaker 2 But the pawn shop discovery did point Detective Navarro to that rundown hotel, the Normandy Plaza.

Speaker 13 Let's talk to everybody, let's interview all the employees, show pictures of Andrew. Nobody's ever seen this guy.

Speaker 2 And then the next day, a memory suddenly improved. Which does he most closely resemble?

Speaker 13 When the manager of the hotel all of a sudden remembered Andrew Kunanen

Speaker 13 And remembered that he's under this name Kurt de Mars from Paris, France.

Speaker 2 By then, Kunanen was long gone, skipped out on his rent. Another miss in a growing list of misses across four states.

Speaker 2 What was that like? Knowing that you can't see him, he's not around, he's gone now.

Speaker 13 Very frustrating. It seemed like we were always one step behind him.

Speaker 2 Then it got worse.

Speaker 13 The FBI pulled all their special agents out except for four.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 13 The director felt that Kunan wasn't on Miami Beach, that he had slipped away. At the time, I was pissed because we had leads still coming in, hundreds, you know.

Speaker 2 Then, eight days into the search, just when it seemed police would never catch a break.

Speaker 13 So

Speaker 13 we get a call on the radio from Dispatch.

Speaker 2 We got a house, the blue houseboat.

Speaker 13 Shots fired at this houseboat. And I thought to myself, what a perfect place to hide.

Speaker 2 Closing in on a killer.

Speaker 13 He was like a trapped rat.

Speaker 2 Eight days after the murder of Johnny Versace, leads were still coming in, hundreds every day. And then, July 23rd, late afternoon.

Speaker 2 The call came from a pier in Miami Beach. A caretaker had been checking on a powder blue houseboat.
The owner was away. But it looked like someone was inside.

Speaker 2 And something was wrong.

Speaker 2 You saw a light on the wall.

Speaker 2 The latch was on. He approached the boarding door, and then a gunshot.
I hear shot. Boom.

Speaker 2 In an instant, hundreds of Miami Beach police, the FBI, out-of-town investigators, an army of reporters were converging on the pier.

Speaker 2 It's gone now. The houseboat was knocked down years ago.
Only a few rotting posts and a square of concrete marked the spot.

Speaker 2 But that day, that moment.

Speaker 13 So when we first got here, Uniform Patrol had a perimeter set around the houseboat. We called Marine Patrol to cover the water perimeter to make sure whoever was in there wouldn't get away.

Speaker 13 Then we called the SWAT team in.

Speaker 2 Where were the cameras of the world?

Speaker 13 We took over that parking lot right next to the fire station. So that's where we set up the media staging area.
So all the filming was being done from across the street.

Speaker 13 It was too dangerous to be here.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 16 There were a few over there on the other side of the water.

Speaker 13 There were some on the other side of the water. That snuck in.

Speaker 2 Snuck in? What do you mean, snuck in? Snuck in. No, they knew.
We actually knew what he meant.

Speaker 2 Some of us from NBC, including me, found a perch across the waterway where we got a direct view of the houseboat.

Speaker 2 And when the police cordoned off the scene around the houseboat, NBC correspondent Kerry Sanders found another way to get closer.

Speaker 36 It was a roadblock, police weren't letting anybody in. And I looked over to my left and I saw a construction worker who was on his bicycle and he was riding home on the sidewalk.

Speaker 36 And I ran over to him and I go, can you give me a ride on your handlebars?

Speaker 36 And I hopped up on his handlebars, gave him $20, and he rode me down on the bicycle about four or five blocks to get to where this was all going on.

Speaker 2 A siege atmosphere settled in. How did you try to reach him?

Speaker 13 To get word of him? We had hostage negotiators on scene from the FBI and from the local sheriff's office, and they attempted to make contact via the landline telephone, but he didn't answer it.

Speaker 13 So we tried a bullhorn and no response.

Speaker 2 Everybody waited, the world watching. At one point, some officers moved in quietly, busted a window, and tossed a listening device into the houseboat.

Speaker 13 We were getting absolutely nothing from inside the houseboat. So we were pretty confident he was either gone or he was dead.

Speaker 2 Gone? How would he be gone?

Speaker 13 He slipped away from us before, more than once.

Speaker 2 They gave it 30 minutes. And then it seemed clear that if someone was inside that boat, they were not going to come out.

Speaker 2 There was a SWAT team standing by, armed with tear gas.

Speaker 2 When they went in, what was it like?

Speaker 13 They cleared the house boat, and when they went to the second floor bedroom, they discovered a white male with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Speaker 2 Was it him? Maybe, maybe not. Detective Navarro had fans brought in to disperse the tear gas.
And then he and the FBI man went in with a camera. The space looked more like an apartment than a boat.

Speaker 13 We went upstairs without touching anything and we had, you know, booties on and gloves and went up there and looked at them.

Speaker 2 And they knew after staring at pictures of that face for so many days, it was certainly Andrew Kunanen.

Speaker 13 We were very excited that it was over. We actually high-fived each other.
We were happy that nobody else was going to die.

Speaker 2 The police camera captured Kunanen's last refuge, his exit scene. What did he have in there with him?

Speaker 13 Books and magazines and stuff. He was out of food.
He was out of money. Actually, that houseboat kind of gave me the sense he was like a trapped rat.

Speaker 2 In the living room, a spread of glossy magazines. with their high-fashion ads and reminders of a life he could never have.

Speaker 13 There was some pecans and stuff that were eaten like empty. The whole bowl was eaten like there was no food left in the house.

Speaker 2 There was a TV on the boat. Police believe he'd been watching and so knew had to have that he was finally a famous man.

Speaker 2 And so at that stage of desperation where he knew he couldn't go anywhere, couldn't do anything, couldn't get food, couldn't.

Speaker 13 I think that's why he killed himself, you know. I think what happened was in Kunanen's mind, when he hears the caretaker walk in

Speaker 13 and say something, whatever, he thought that was a police. Yeah.
I think he kills himself then.

Speaker 2 And when he did, he took his secrets with him. He left no note, no explanation for why he killed Jeff Trail and David Madsen and Lee Miglin and William Rees and Gianni Versace.

Speaker 2 But now we've learned more about Andrew Cunanen and the consequences, the aftershocks of his terrible acts.

Speaker 2 Looking for answers and saying goodbye.

Speaker 6 You took somebody away at the height of their career, at the height of their happiness, and devastated a family, a close family.

Speaker 2 While the world's attention was focused on a fugitive killer, It shifted momentarily to this exquisite old cathedral in Milan.

Speaker 2 If Gianni Versace brought celebrity to the runway, celebrities paid their respects in kind.

Speaker 13 The world is coming.

Speaker 2 Everyone is a state funeral.

Speaker 6 It is a state funeral.

Speaker 2 Versace's memorial mass in Milan.

Speaker 6 You took somebody away at the height of their career, at the height of their happiness.

Speaker 6 Devastated a family, a close family.

Speaker 2 We watched on television as Donatella and Santo made their entrance. Fashion stars like Giorgio Armani, Carl Lagerfeld, and Naomi Campbell were there.

Speaker 2 And the greatest star of them all, Princess Diana, the most famous woman of her time, sitting with a tearful Elton John.

Speaker 2 Even then, people couldn't help but wonder what would happen to the house of Versace.

Speaker 2 Didn't know then that another Versace was willing to carry the torch. Like so many others, modeled Beverly Johnson had her doubts.

Speaker 4 We thought that was it.

Speaker 4 It was over.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 4 when Donatella was going to take over, we were like, oh, wow.

Speaker 2 Good luck with that.

Speaker 4 And then we realized how uber-talented she was. It was a testament of the genius that that family had.

Speaker 2 And Miami, Moscow, New York, Tokyo, with countless cities in between, are reminders of the boy from southern Italy who built a fashion empire.

Speaker 2 Antonio D'Amico is carrying on with his own designs, working on a new sportswear line. His first collection focuses on golfwear.

Speaker 2 He lives a quiet life outside of Milan, surrounded by reminders of the man he loved.

Speaker 2 Do you find yourself thinking about that?

Speaker 2 What you saw on the steps that day? Does it come back to you often?

Speaker 2 It was a nightmare for years.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 it's a question of timing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Time, as they say, heals you, but it doesn't go away.

Speaker 2 The other men who lost their lives are equally mourned. The people who love Jeff Trail and David Madsen understand that these two men simply befriended the wrong guy.
and Lee Miglund.

Speaker 2 Friends and family will not fully recover, ever. And even now, his death remains a mystery.
Was it a random killing? Or was there some connection that made Miglund a target?

Speaker 2 It's an unfinished chapter for Paul Beitler.

Speaker 5 Then the only two people who can solve that riddle aren't on the earth anymore.

Speaker 2 Are you done? I mean, if you found a string to pull, would you pull it?

Speaker 2 I'd pull it.

Speaker 5 I haven't given up.

Speaker 5 And if there's somebody out there that can solve this problem and this riddle and has more information, I'd love to hear it.

Speaker 2 Now you live with it. Yeah.
And what does he mean to you in memory?

Speaker 2 Only good.

Speaker 2 Only good.

Speaker 5 He was a giant of a human being.

Speaker 2 George Navarro, who now runs his own security consulting business, is also frustrated that Kunanen took the easy way out. So was it an upsetting thing to hear?

Speaker 13 Upsetting because I had a lot of questions for him, you know. It's a lot of things that were left unanswered that I'd like to know the answer to.

Speaker 13 Why he did it, you know, what the connection was with the victims and that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 The ordeal, five murders, three months, inexplicable violence, did teach law enforcement a tough lesson.

Speaker 7 One of the strong underlying themes of this whole story is just really the lack of participation, the lack of collaboration and cooperation among law enforcement authorities in so many different areas of the country.

Speaker 2 Communication is so much better now. Things do change.

Speaker 2 But one thing hasn't. The world's fixation with the famous.

Speaker 2 And the puzzle. What drove a guy like Andrew Kunanen? What made him a killer?

Speaker 2 Stacey Lopez doesn't have any answers. To this day, she thinks about her friend Andrew and feels only confusion and pain.

Speaker 10 And it's not something that I talk about often. I mean, who do you talk to about something like this?

Speaker 17 You know, yes, I loved a serial killer. I mean,

Speaker 10 it sounds so awful, but he was a big part of my adolescence, and he was my friend.

Speaker 2 Did you find yourself mourning his passing?

Speaker 11 I found myself mourning the friend that I knew.

Speaker 10 and i had a very hard time

Speaker 9 accepting what he had done

Speaker 6 have you spent any time thinking about what he was about or no i don't care i'll be honest i'm gonna i'm gonna cut you short on that one that's okay i don't care and he and to put it this way he's a footnote in history

Speaker 6 just one more person with a gun

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 2 screw you you get nothing how rubenstein would rather talk about his friend Johnny, what that man taught him about life.

Speaker 6 If you're going to still be here, don't sit there with one foot in the back door waiting to stop. No, no, no.
You grab life for as long as you get the chance.

Speaker 6 And you grab it to yourself and you make the most out of it.

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