Miami Beach Style (cont’d)
Murder In The Morning
Fashion
David Bowie
1980 — Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
((( >>> )))
yZ.
Living And Dying On Ocean Drive
VH1-Fashion Television did a South Beach feature story (1992), including an interview with Gianni Versace, and guests at the opening of his Miami Beach boutique in the heart of South Beach, Collins Avenue & 4th Street.
When Gianni Versace opened a boutique on Miami Beach, SOBE to the satorial hip, it was the fashion industry’s closest thing to a Second Coming. Unfortunately for most, his life on Ocean Drive was short, and ended violently, at the wrong end of a popular Florida gun.
Gianni Versace threw a lavish, international, fashion-industry party to announce his opening an American Flagship Boutique on Miami Beach, and his buying a $15-million Spanish-style mansion, and making it his primary home. Ocean Drive, Miami Beach.
Gianni Versace, slain on the steps of his South Beach castle
By MARA BOVSUN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
JULY 15, 1997
The height of Miami Beach being the “glamorous” media’s center of attention, was when Italian Fashion Icon Gianni Versace bought a $33-million home on Ocean Drive and opened his own “Flagship” Boutique in the heart of South Beach, at Collins Avenue & 4th Street.
Less than four years later, on a quiet Sunday morning, Versace was executed on the steps of his new, Ocean Drive home.
Immediately following, the media (including paparazzi, and purveyors of reality tv, coverage of the nation-wide hunt for Versace’s Killer, became more “ugly” than “glamorous.”
Five years after making Miami Beach his home, Versace’s Tropical Life came to a horribly violent end in July 1997.
One typical Summer day, after his routine morning of coffee and reading at the NEWS CAFE, a popular breakfast spot just two blocks north of Versace’s home.
It was there, at the coral steps, where Andrew Cunanan, after stalking Versace for thousands of miles, casually and silently walked up from behind and shot Versace in the back of the head.
For Sale
This month, a U.S. bankruptcy court approved the auction sale of a mansion
South Beach neighborhood of Miami, Fla.
23,000-square-foot, 10-bedroom Italian palazzo-style home,
featuring a 54-foot swimming hole lined in
24-karat gold tiles,
mosaic walkways,
fountains,
balconies,
statues,
frescoes
golden bathroom fixtures.
Despite all the over-the-top luxuries, this building’s claim to fame is murder.
yZ.
Moon Over Miami
WHEN THE BEACH WAS HOT
ART DECO (Architectural Style)
POOL TOYS (Aquatic Style)
Paradise Lost (Miami’s Vice)
SOUTH BEACH RENAISSANCE
VERSACE (Murder In The Morning)
MADONNA (“Sex” in Miami)
PRINCE (Glamorous)
DIAMOND TEETH MARY McLAIN (Devil Music)
@ Tobacco Road
SCOTT PUTESKY (Running With The Devil)
Palm Beach
FANTASY ISLAND
HELLO MOLLIE! (IMMIGRANT SONG)
THE WOMEN OF PALM BEACH
b/ Dominick Dunne (Vanity Fair)
The Day The Fashion Died
1992 — VH1 Fashion Television produced a “Day In The Life of South Beach” episode that included a short interview with Gianni Versace, at the opening of his new “Flagship” boutique on Miami Beach (SOBE), on the corner of 4th Street and Collins Avenue. At the time, Versace was the Fashion God of the Day, and this is one of the last interviews he had. Months later, he was shot and killed on the steps of his Spanish style mansion (with observatory) on the North End of Ocean Drive.
THE “NEWS” ACCOUNT OF GIANNI VERSACE’S MURDER
Versace brought added life to a neighborhood that had been on a steady rise since the Miami Vice, pastel-fashion revival. Four years later, Versace was shot and killed on the steps of his Spanish-style mansion on Ocean Drive.
Built in 1930 by an heir to the Standard Oil fortune, it bears the name of the man who was shot on the doorstep — the Versace Mansion.
The famed Italian fashion designer bought the property on Ocean Drive in 1992 spent $33 million sprucing it up, including the construction of the gilded pool. In the process, he revitalized the community of South Beach, luring luminaries like Elton John and Madonna to a place considered to be one of the largest of God’s waiting rooms.
Around 8:30 p.m. on July 15, 1997, Gianni Versace, 50, had taken a stroll to a favorite restaurant. Returning around 9, he was unlocking the wrought iron gate to his mansion when a stranger walked up behind him and shot two bullets into the back of his head.
Speculation over whether the killing was a mob hit was quickly overshadowed by the possibility that Versace was just one more victim of a California party boy turned spree killer, Andrew Cunanan, 27.
By the time he showed up in Miami, Cunanan was already the subject of a nationwide manhunt,a suspect in four other murders.
Born in 1969, Cunanan was the fourth child of the unhappy union between a Filipino-born U.S. Navy officer and his Italian wife.
Andrew was smart, an IQ of 147, handsome, and the apple of his mother’s eye. Growing up in the farming community of Bonita, Calif., he early on showed a flair for the dramatic and a mature style, showing up in suits when other kids were in shorts and sneakers.
Weapons used by killer Andrew Cunanan. The hammer was found in the Minneapolis apartment of David Madson, who was killed along with Jeffrey Trail.
Cunanan’s aspirations to fit into the world of wealth and privilege around him collapsed when his father, who had left the Navy to become a stockbroker, fled the United States and his family in 1988.
The boy put his talent for making up tall tales to good use, perfecting the role of trust-fund baby. Friends called him the “man of a million masks” and, long before he held a gun to Versace’s head, they noticed there was always a hint of danger about him, wrote Maureen Orth in her 2000 book on the case, “Vulgar Favors.”
Eventually the handsome youth slipped into San Diego’s gay party scene, making money as a drug dealer and gigolo for wealthy, closeted older men. These roles gave him access to credit cards, cash and celebrities.
In 1996, Cunanan suffered blows to his wallet and his heart. His status as boy toy for a very rich elderly man ended, as did romantic relationships with two young men, David Madson, 33, and Jeff Trail, 28. Both boyfriends left San Diego for work in Minneapolis that year.
Left behind, Cunanan failed in other romances, took more drugs, watched tons of porn, got fat, and drifted.
His road trip of death started in late April 1997, with a dinner for friends in San Diego. He had a one-way ticket to Minneapolis, where he said he was going to take care of some business.
Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace poses in the front of the dining room in his South Beach Miami, Fla., residence in this April 27, 1996 file photo. Versace was killed outside his oceanfront villa, shot twice in the back of the head at point-blank range. (John Riley/Listin Diario via AP)
Once there, he convinced his two old flames to meet at Madson’s apartment. The meeting ended with Trail dead, his skull crushed by Cunanan with a claw hammer. Madson, who was in the apartment at the time of the killing, helped conceal the body in a Persian rug. The two fled together, but Madson did not make it far. Cunanan shot him in the head 50 miles out of the city.
Next to die was a wealthy Chicago realtor, Lee Miglin, 72. On May 3, Miglin was alone in the home he shared with his wife, who had gone out of town. Somehow, Cunanan forced Miglin into the garage, where he wrapped his face with duct tape, beat him and stabbed him in the chest with a pair of pruning shears. Death did not come until Cunanan cut his throat with a hacksaw.
All that violence must have worked up an appetite, because after the murder, the killer calmly entered the Miglin home and helped himself to a sandwich. He stayed the night, sleeping in his victim’s bed before taking off the next morning in Miglin’s Lexus.
Cunanan struck again at a cemetery in Pennsville, N.J. He murdered caretaker William Reese, 45, and took off in the dead man’s pickup.
Although the FBI was on his tail, Cunanan seemed to vanish into thin air. The truth was he had landed in Miami, where he frolicked in the sun, sand and gay nightclubs without catching the eye of the law until the evening of July 15, when he killed Versace.
Eight days later, Cunanan shot himself in a luxury houseboat owned by a German millionaire who was on vacation in Las Vegas.
Police investigate a houseboat in Miami early July 24, 1997 after SWAT teams discovered that serial killer Andrew Cunanan had committed suicide.
Afterward, there would be unanswered questions about Cunanan’s motives, recriminations over how law enforcement missed him, a media circus and tremendous sadness over the designer’s death.
But some saw a silver lining. The house, one resident told reporters, was likely to become Miami’s “Strawberry Fields.” And for years, tourists flocked there to pose for pictures on the spot where the designer died.
Three years after the shooting, the property was sold and turned into a $4,000-a-night hotel. It is scheduled to go on the auction block on Sept. 17, with bids starting at $25 million.
THE END of the man hunt that had taken investigators and America’s attention on a coast-to-coast and international journey, it was ironic when fugitive Cunanan was found dead (of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head) in a Collins Avenue houseboat, across from the Eden Rock and Fontainebleau hotels, less than two miles north of the designer’s home, where Cunanan walked up calmly and shot the unsuspecting Versace dead.
Cunanan had been obsessed with Versace, and had stalked the designer for months before taking his opportunity to shoot and kill him on Miami Beach.
Cunanan’s body was wheeled out (inset) of the home by Dade County Coroner’s Office technicians. (HANS DERYK/AP; Colin Braley/Reuters)
Gianni Versace and supermodel Naomi Campbell in 1995. (Mitchell Gerber/Corbis)
Chicago developer Lee Miglin (left), 72, with his wife, Marilyn, and New Jersey caretaker William Reese (right). Both men were victims of Andrew Cunanan. (John Reilly/AP; AP)
Jeff Trail (left), 28, and David Madson, 33, were former flames and victims of Cunanan. (AP)
The Taurus .40 caliber handgun was used to kill fashion designer Gianni Versace and then Cunanan himself. (Minneapolis Police/AP; Miami Beach Police Dept./Reuters)
Police examine the crime scene at the palatial villa that was home to fashion designer Gianni Versace before he was gunned down on its front steps (at lower right). The home is now going up for auction, with bids starting at $25 million. (Patrick Farrell/Miami Herald via AP)
Gianni Versace poses with supermodels Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell in Milan in 1996. (P.Castaldi/AP)
A Miami Beach policeman looks over the bloodstained steps of Gianni Versace’s Ocean Drive mansion in Miami’s South Beach neighborhood after the famed designer was shot to death on July 15,1997. (ROBERT SULLIVAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Gianni Versace was murdered on the steps of his South Beach home in July 1997 — by Andrew Cunanan, who was found dead eight days later. (Alan Diaz/AP)