Versace’s shocking murder still ‘epitomizes Miami Beach’ for many, even 25 years later
On July 15, 1997, 25 years ago, international fashion designer Gianni Versace was murdered on the front steps of his Ocean Drive South Beach mansion Casa Casuarina by serial killer Andrew Cunanan.
A quarter-century ago the world woke to the news that international fashion icon Gianni Versace had been shot to death on the steps of his opulent Ocean Drive retreat in Miami Beach, just moments after returning from his regular stroll to the nearby News Cafe to eat breakfast and buy Italian-language newspapers.
That beautiful sunny, seaside Tuesday morning at 8:45 on July 15, 1997, the shooting on the coral keystone steps leading into Versace’s Casa Casuarina mansion triggered a massive manhunt for a spree killer that riveted millions around the world and had South Florida on edge.
A handsome 27-year-old narcissist who could have fit the physical description of any number of clubhopping young men of the time that Versace’s fame and presence drew to the neighborhood eluded a cross-country FBI manhunt. Andrew Cunanan, with a bloodthirsty taste for a lavish lifestyle, was suspected of at least four grisly murders that began in Minneapolis on April 27, 1997. By May 12, using an alias, Cunanan rented a room at North Beach’s far less glamorous Normandy Plaza Hotel.
Just over two months later, the serial killer ended Versace’s life. Versace was only 50. Cunanan would be 52 today.
Cunanan eluded the law long enough to pump two bullets at close range into Versace, one to the back of his head, the other into his left cheek. The designer was about to turn the keys in the lock of his iron front gate 25 years ago this Friday.
Cunanan would remain the subject of a mammoth manhunt for just over another week, until he was found dead from a selfinflicted gunshot in a houseboat moored off Collins Avenue on July 23, 1997.
The South Florida community has had its share of horrific crimes and notorious denizens — gangster Al Capone lived on Palm Island, after all. And who can forget the Cocaine Cowboys’ spraying gunfire and killing two next year.
It’s a boomlet, leading Republicans say, that has
drug dealers and injuring four bystanders inside a Dadeland Mall liquor store on another warm July day in 1979, and the Causeway Cannibal on Memorial Day 2012, and the FBI Suniland shootout in April 1986?
Still, the Versace murder and Cunanan manhunt 25 years ago ranks among the most notorious.
“It epitomizes Miami Beach, for many people. It was the confluence of celebrity, a spree killer of dubious origin, some failings by the police. It has something for everyone,” former Miami-Dade chief homicide prosecutor Michael Band, who worked on the case, told the Miami Herald on the 20th anniversary. “And Versace lives on — his brand did very well. People recognize the name.”
They still do.
VERSACE ENDURES
Forty-four years after Versace founded his company in Milan in 1978, the Versace brand still designs, manufactures and distributes haute couture, prèt-à-porter, accessories, jewelry, watches, eyewear, fragrances and home furnishings worldwide to over 200 boutiques in major cities — including a Versace Miami in the Design District — and over 1,500 wholesalers worldwide.
Howard Cohen: 305-376-3619, @HowardCohen