- I'm Kate Snow, and this is "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
- Gianni Versace was not for the faint of heart.
You didn't wear a Versace dress if you didn't want to be seen.
- Gianni Versace was a true original.
- Life always came with fireworks.
- I don't think there was a model
that wasn't in love with him.
- He was on top of a mountain.
- Andrew Cunanan lusted for a taste of that world.
- Versace seemed to personify a lot that he wanted to be.
- He always had a big want list.
Oh, I want that.
I would like that.
- What was he willing to do to get it?
- He looked at me, and he said,
"You have no idea what I'm capable of."
- There was a rug that was rolled up,
and there was a body inside.
- He killed the guy for his truck.
- Cunanan really became their prime and only suspect.
By that time, he was far away.
- It seemed like we were always one step behind them.
- Andrew just walked up right behind him and shot him.
- A lot of things that were left unanswered.
- He was determined to be remembered.
If the only way to be remembered is to kill for fame,
he was willing to kill for fame.
**
- Hello. And welcome to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
Charismatic, popular, and a connector--
these qualities describe world-famous fashion designer
Gianni Versace, and paradoxically,
also Andrew Cunanan, the then unknown fan
who would take Gianni's life.
How did a gregarious young man secretly devolve
from playful maverick to spree killer?
Investigators were grappling with this question
as they raced to stop Cunanan before he struck again.
Here's Keith Morrison with "The Death of Gianni Versace."
- Once, there was a true genius
who conquered the capitals of fashion
and earned worldwide fame.
And once, there was a man who earned fame another way.
This is the story of how brilliance met bitter envy,
of how and maybe why the bright light
that was Gianni Versace was snuffed by a failure
named Andrew Cunanan.
- He was fixated by celebrity.
He was determined to be remembered.
- And what Cunanan killed was indeed true magic.
No one understood that, magic, or the power of fame,
the pull of celebrity, quite like Gianni Versace.
- He was the hottest ticket in town.
He was a major, major star.
- That's why the stars would want to go and be there?
- Yes.
- 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.
He set out to celebrate the body.
Suddenly, everything went sexy.
- Everything went sexy, and it had colors,
and it was loud.
It was different.
- Legendary model Beverly Johnson watched
from the runway as Versace exploded on the world.
- Even the name had that kind of appeal, Versace.
- Versace, his big brother Santo,
and little sister Donatella were born in the very toe
of the boot of Italy, growing up, literally,
among the ruins of the ancient Roman Empire.
His parents were modest, hardworking people.
Versace learned at the knee of his dressmaker mother,
learned that every stitch mattered,
that quality was paramount.
He was 25 when he set out
for the capital of Italian couture, Milan.
- This was the Versace house.
- It's here we met Antonio D'Amico,
Versace's partner in life and in business.
- So here is, I'll see the Medusa there.
- Yeah, yeah, on the door.
He told us the story behind Versace's logo, the Medusa,
and how Gianni spotted it right on the front door
of his new house.
- It was already there.
- And that was the idea for the logo.
- It was the idea to keep the Medusa as a logo.
- What did Medusa say to you?
- Medusa, you know, is a seduction.
Something that you look at her,
and you cannot take off your eyes.
- Yeah, you can't look away.
- That's why seduction is like.
and that was the fashion of the Versace,
seduction. - Sure.
In myth, whoever looks on the face of Medusa
turns to stone.
In reality, the fashions behind that logo
were impossible not to look at.
Ballet impresarios, movie directors,
rock stars came running.
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,
like Princess Diana in that blue sheath.
- She didn't want to wear like an English old style
so she asked Gianni to make dresses for her.
- 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. Unforgettable,
said the noted fashion journalist Hal Rubenstein.
- The music was amazing.
The color was amazing.
The men and women were breathtaking.
This was him.
This is how he wanted you to see life.
Life always came with fireworks.
- Gianni 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.
- Well, there are some famous ones too, right?
- Oh, yeah.
The safety pins.
- 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.
- It was a celebration of the woman's body
and really being proud of your sexuality.
- 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.
- 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.
- But not Versace.
His designs made a statement-- be bold, be brave.
- Fantastic.
- He talked to Katie Couric about his fashion philosophy
when he visited the Today Show in 1996.
- It's very important for people to look at themselves,
to express themselves.
That's the only heart in fashion-- to be yourself.
And I think we, designer, have to help people
to be glamorous, happy, and alive.
- By 1997, he was getting ready to take his company
to a new level.
- This was an auspicious time in Versace's life.
- Maureen Orth covered the Versace case
for Vanity Fair.
- 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.
- Taking his company public.
- He was on top of a mountain. He was happy as can be.
Everything was right. Everything was going right.
- So having met the moneymen 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.
- The killer, Andrew Cunanan, once an ambitious young man,
with designs of his own.
- Andrew spent time with wealthier men
who could help keep him in a life that he aspired to.
**
- Around the world, in San Diego,
and a lifestyle away from the Versace empire,
Andrew Cunanan started small,
but also had designs on doing big things.
Andrew was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth,
but he was raised as if he was.
- He the adored baby fourth child,
and he was treated like a little emperor.
- Maureen Orth, a "Dateline" consultant,
wrote the book on Cunanan, "Vulgar Favors."
- He was the product of an extremely dysfunctional family,
a very unhappy marriage, a Filipino father,
who is incredibly materialistic and pretentious,
and a Sicilian mother,
who was sort of beaten down by the father,
who had her own mental health issues.
- Andrew adored his father, mostly ignored his mother,
and focused on getting what he wanted for himself,
according to his close friend Stacy Lopez.
- He always had a big want list.
Oh, I want that.
I would like that.
- Fancy car? - Yes.
And I think going to a school like Bishop's--
some kids drove to school in a Lamborghini.
- The exclusive Bishop's School in ritzy La Jolla,
Andrew's father pinched pennies to send him here.
To get in, Andrew wrote this admissions essay,
illustrating just how much he wanted it, too,
despite the misspellings.
"I long looked forward to my tour and interview
"at Bishop's, envisioning classrooms and teachers
"the like of Mr. Chips and Miss Jean Brodie.
"I was not disappointed."
- He knew even then that flattery
will get you somewhere.
- Roman Jimenez, a freelance journalist,
was editor of "Update,"
a San Diego gay and lesbian newspaper.
- He had brains, and he had looks,
and he had charm.
- I remember, when he came to school,
you know, he just had such a big personality.
- Even at that stage, huh? - Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
I thought he was very brave
because back in the early '80s, generally,
people were not openly gay, and he was.
- Out and proud, but never at home.
- Due to religious reasons, he felt his family
would not be as accepting.
- He hid his homosexuality from his family forever.
- But Andrew and Stacy accepted each other unconditionally,
as his inscription in her yearbook attests.
Can you read that? - Sure.
- Thanks. - "It's too bad I'm gay,
"or I'd be madly in love with you.
"Love always, Andrew."
- Andrew started dating at Bishop's,
but not boys his own age.
- Andrew spent time with wealthier men who could help
keep him in a life that he aspired to.
- He was a boytoy. - Sure.
- A boytoy who liked to show off the gifts he received.
- He had come to the dance in this red leather jumpsuit.
- Oh, boy. - And I remember going,
"Wow, Andrew." He says, "Yes,
"my boyfriend Antoni bought it for me."
- Stacy liked to tease Andrew about his dating choices.
- I said, "Oh, so who's your sugar daddy now?"
And he was like, "Wouldn't you like to know?"
- At Bishop's, Andrew cruised along academically.
- Most of us had to study,
but you never saw him in the library studying.
- Coasted through. - Exactly.
- So was it a prophecy when on graduation in 1987,
he was voted "Most Likely to be Remembered."
- He just had a very dynamic personality,
and was very funny, and everybody loved him.
- After Bishop's, 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.
Andrew's father, a stockbroker, was accused in a civil lawsuit
of embezzling $100,000.
And he fled the country, left his family,
never came back.
- 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.
- Andrew is now on his own and he turned to the older man
he knew could support him.
He cruised Hillcrest, San Diego's gay area,
and fell deeper into his world of sugar daddies
who took care of his financial needs.
- I think Andrew grew up thinking that maybe
the world owed him a living
and he didn't really have to work for things.
For the older men in his life and others,
Andrew invented a new identity for himself,
Andrew DeSilva and made up stories
about a gilded past, about accomplishments
that never were,
and impressed those men by appearing well-read
and cultured, told them he loved art and opera.
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.
That meeting was with Gianni Versace,
who was in San Francisco designing costumes,
as this sketch shows, for the Opera Capriccio.
- 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.
- 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.
He couldn't contain himself with some of his friends.
- And 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.
- 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 as long,
Andrew Cunanan wasn't willing to work for any of it.
And that meant disappointment, and trouble might lay ahead.
- I remember he looked at me, and he said, Stacy,
you have no idea what I'm capable of.
- As Versace's star rises,
Cunanan finds a spotlight of his own.
- He pretended to the whole world
he was this rich kid living off a trust fund.
**
- In the 1990s,
almost anyone might have gotten a little thrill
meeting the fabulous Gianni Versace,
but Andrew Cunanan?
Something more than that for him.
- Versace seems to be somebody that he studied a lot
because Versace seemed to personify a lot
that he wanted to be.
- But in 1991, when Versace was launching his fall line,
a dazzling, supermodel-studded event...
Andrew had dropped out of college
and was working a menial job at a drugstore.
He was also dealing party drugs to his pals.
In six years, everyone would know his name, but in 1991,
Andrew Cunanan was living in obscurity
and scratching around for his next meal ticket.
- Andrew didn't like to work really hard,
but he liked to nice things.
I fully expected him to be in a relationship
with somebody older that was catering to his needs.
- Sure enough, in 1994, Cunanan scored.
He was still posing as Andrew DeSilva
when he met a wealthy older man, who seemed, for a time,
happy to pay the bills.
- He's kept by this really rich guy,
Norman Blatchford, who gives him an Infinity
to drive around.
- Now, Andrew was living at a beachfront condo
in pricey La Jolla.
This new relationship put Cunanan in rarefied company
of the sort he liked, a lot.
- Norman Blatchford belonged to a very secretive,
very affluent gay fraternity called Gamma Mu.
They would have these very lavish meals,
and brunches, and dances.
- 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.
- This bar, right here, Flicks.
- Maureen Orth learned a lot about Andrew Cunanan
when she came here.
- Because Andrew would come here almost every night.
He would put people together here.
He would hold course here.
- Didn't seem to have any interest
in having a job or career of any kind?
- No, I think he pretended to the whole world
he was this rich kid living off a trust fund
and he didn't need to work.
- And for some reason, people bought his story.
Jeff Trail, for instance,
an upstanding guy who became Andrew's friend.
- Jeff Trail was the all-American boy,
a graduate of the Naval Academy,
politically conservative.
He hated drugs.
He didn't drink.
- One of Jeff's closest friends was Jon Wainwright.
- People like Jeff.
He just had a lot going on for him.
- Jeff was very tentative about coming out.
He never came out to his family.
- 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.
- 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.
- With Norman's money of course.
But in 1995, as Norman's kept man,
Andrew met a handsome young architect
named David Madson and fell in love.
- I think that David was a kind of a do-gooder,
lovely human being.
Everybody remembers him from his small town.
- But David, according to Maureen Orth,
did have a weakness for material things,
which Andrew was only too happy to cater to.
- He gave him fancy Cartier watch and fancy suits,
and David always accepted his gifts.
- 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?
- That was one of the titles, and he reveled in it
because he was the center of attention.
- But, and this is no surprise, Andrew Cunanan's happiness
was built on a fragile foundation.
For months, he juggled his benefactor Norman
and his lover David.
Until, in the Fall of 1996,
the man with the money got wise.
- 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,
so that took away a big piece of his income.
- And that mattered to Andrew.
- Absolutely mattered, because that's who he was.
- Norman's rejection began a kind of implosion.
Jon Wainwright saw it.
- Andrew started to let himself go.
He was looking unkempt, which was so unlike Andrew.
- And then like a line of dominoes,
his social world came tumbling down.
The love of his life, David Madson,
broke up with him.
His friend Jeff Trail moved on,
told friends they'd had a falling out.
And the Mayor of Hillcrest began a rapid decline.
- 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.
- Harder stuff now, like crystal meth.
- 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.
- And as Maureen Orth discovered,
Andrew developed a taste for violent sex.
- The S&M part of this was 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, and he was just living off
a diet of porn magazines, S&M porn videos.
They were always around him all the time.
- And getting more and more intense all the time.
- And getting more and more intense.
- By early 1997, both Jeff Trail
and David Madson had moved away,
both coincidentally to Minneapolis.
And a ruthless and unwanted Andrew Cunanan
had put on weight.
- He had told me that, um, he was very depressed.
And he's like, "I'm fat, and I don't look good,
"and nobody's going to want me."
- And when he picked up a fashion magazine now,
he read about all the things he didn't have,
would never have.
He could read about
Elton John's glittering 50th birthday party in London,
for instance, where Gianni Versace was a guest.
That is when, in his own small world in San Diego,
Cunanan 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...
- He was going to Minneapolis,
"to settle some business," as he put it.
- But it's clear now,
Andrew Cunanan 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.
Whatever happened there,
he had no intention of coming back.
- I spoke to the waiter from the restaurant,
and at the end of the meal,
he remembers Andrew Cunanan leaning back in his chair,
and looking at his friends, and saying,
"All of you think you know the real Andrew,
"but none of you really know the truth."
- A mystery in Minneapolis.
- There was a rug that was rolled up,
and you could see that there was a body inside.
**
Welcome back to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Kate Snow.
Andrew Cunanan told friends he was moving to San Francisco,
but he had a secret.
Andrew had bought a one-way ticket to Minneapolis,
where his old friend Jeff Trail
and old flame David Madson now lived.
He was about to surprise them both with a visit,
but this would not be a happy reunion.
Back to Keith Morrison with "The Death of Gianni Versace."
- Andrew Cunanan shed his life in San Diego
like a man planning to die.
- He gave his clothes away. He gave his shoes away.
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.
- And angry. - And very, very angry.
- Reeling from the loss of his benefactor,
Cunanan landed in Minneapolis,
and this is where it all began to go wrong.
He first called on his old friend, Jeff Trail.
Jeff may have sensed Cunanan's visit wouldn't go well.
In fact, Jeff called Jon Wainwright in San Diego
to talk about it.
- 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, uh, apartment.
- Why would he do that? - I think he knew
Andrew was on this downward spiral as well,
so just trying to be a friend, being supportive.
- Jeff left Andrew in his apartment
while he and his boyfriend went away for the weekend.
On Sunday, Andrew moved
to his ex-lover David Madson's fourth floor loft
in the city's eclectic Warehouse District
and persuaded Jeff to drop by for a visit.
- Sometime, in the next hour or so,
a neighbor reported hearing somebody yell
"Get the F out of here!" and heard banging.
- The neighbor peered into the hallway, saw nothing,
and the building went quiet again.
But next morning neither Jeff Trail nor David Madson
showed up at work.
- 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. - But 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.
- In the main room, there was a rug that was rolled up,
and you could see that there was a body inside.
- Dale Barsness was chief of the Minneapolis Homicide Unit.
- Blood splattering on the wall and on the floor.
He'd been bludgeoned with, we found out later, a hammer.
- Police assumed David Madson was the victim.
After all, it was his apartment.
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.
Friends of both Madson and Trail
told police someone named Andrew,
who was visiting from San Diego,
but he too had vanished.
So if Madson wasn't the victim, thought the police,
maybe he and this Andrew killed Jeff.
Evidence at the scene pointed police to a possible motive.
- Duct tape, some handcuffs, uh, you know, stuff that--
that 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 murder.
- Neighbors saw them walking the dog.
It means David was with Andrew
and did not appear to be trying to escape.
- Police believe, at this time,
David and Andrew Cunanan are together,
are together willingly,
um, and are on the run.
- 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.
- Everybody who knows David says that can't be true.
It's not in his DNA. It's not who he is.
- The reporters talked to those who said they, too,
saw David and Andrew with the dog,
but it looked like David had been crying.
David was described moody,
um, a bit withdrawn, and sort of grumpy,
I think is the word that people used.
It just didn't seem right.
- Friends who knew David's dog walking routine
insisted there was no way he was home
at the time of Jeff's murder.
- Madson walks the dog every-- - Madson walks at the dog
before the 10 o'clock news every night.
- Right. Right.
And so the presumption is that Jeff comes to the house,
has to be buzzed in, walks up.
The door gets opened.
There is a confrontation at the door,
because, remember, we know the neighbors hear--
is, "Get out! Get out!"
- Then sometime after the murder, went the theory,
David and the dog returned to the apartment.
- What we presume happens,
David, not thinking anything, walks in,
and Andrew had rolled up Jeffrey Trail in the rug
and pulled him behind the couch.
- 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?
Investigators certainly suspected
David and Andrew killed Jeff Trail,
yet they issued no bulletin for David's missing Jeep,
no "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. history.
- It's just one hapless mistake after another.
- And four days
after they found Jeff Trail's bludgeoned body...
- We're going up to East Rush Lake.
Uh, it would take 30 to 40 minutes,
the drive from Minneapolis.
- Saturday, May 3,
Chris Hendrickson, a Chicago County Deputy at the time,
was called to work on his day off.
Fishing season was starting,
and two men scouting a prime spot
found a dead man instead.
- He was well dressed. He wasn't dirty.
He didn't appear to be in a fight,
And he had a defensive wound in his hand
and then a gunshot wound to his head.
- The police confirmed
the victim by the lake was David Madson.
- And I said, whoa, wait a minute.
This just changes everything.
- A .40 caliber gun killed Madson.
Shell casings matched
the ammunition found in Cunanan's duffel bag
in David's apartment.
By this time, police knew the missing gun from the holster
belonged to Jeff Trail,
that Andrew had stolen it from Trail's apartment.
An alert was now posted for Madson's red Jeep
and for the man they now feared was a double murderer.
- That's when I believe Andrew Cunanan really became
their prime and only suspect,
and by that time, he's far away.
- And it was already too late for victim number three.
- Whomever was in the home
had helped themselves to ham, some ice cream.
They had gone upstairs and shaved.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
- Chicago.
This is where America's romance with skyscrapers
began more than a century ago,
a romance that's called dreamers ever since.
- When I saw that Sears Tower building, I said,
"You know, that looks pretty good.
"I think I can do that."
- Paul Beitler made it happen
when he joined forces with developer Lee Miglin
more than four decades ago.
- We were giants, and we didn't realize it.
We were moving at a lightning speed
and changing the skyline literally overnight.
- You two were tied at the hip.
- Yeah. He was my best friend. - As their company prospered,
Miglin organized an annual thank you ceremony
with a symbol for the employees, a special gold coin.
- And he said, "You know,
"people can hold that gold in their hands,
"and they can say, 'This job got me this gold.'"
- At the same time, Miglin's wife, Marilyn,
was building her own empire,
a cosmetics line popular on the Home Shopping Network.
- She and Lee were a perfect couple, a perfect team.
They worked together very, very well.
- And then one Sunday morning, when Marilyn flew home
from an appearance on Home Shopping Network,
Lee wasn't at the airport as planned.
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 Miglin,
dead in his garage.
Marilyn called Paul Beitler.
- I was frozen.
I-I-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,
only that I had just lost the most important person,
next to my family, in my life.
- Beitler rushed to the Miglin home
and headlong into chaos.
- It was like a three-ring circus.
In the front yard were all the news media
with the lights blaring.
- 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.
- Whomever was in the home
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.
- But the most disturbing evidence...
- There are aspects of the homicide that indicate
that there was some torture that occurred.
- More than some.
Much more.
- 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 the nostrils.
After he had been repeatedly stabbed, he'd been battered.
There was so much hatred
and so much anger in that murder.
- Thousands packed Holy Name Cathedral to pay respects
to the widely admired member of the Chicago establishment.
The days were going by,
and the investigation was going nowhere,
until police stumbled on a red Jeep
parked literally around the corner
from the Miglin townhouse.
You have a red Jeep Cherokee that's got three tickets on it,
and nobody bothers to check the VIN number or anything
until the fourth ticket, after four days or five days.
- When the number came back
a match to David Madson's missing Jeep,
reporters Chris Graves and Jim Walsh,
who'd been covering the murders in Minnesota,
began reporting on the Chicago case, too.
- The question right away was,
what's the connection between Cunanan and Lee Miglin,
who is a extremely wealthy older man?
- Beitler tried to stop the media speculation.
- We'd really like to make this known.
The family has been-- the family does not know Cunanan,
There's been no connection with the family whatsoever.
- Then Beitler discovered
a few Chicago police were leaking tips to the media.
- What did they say? - They drew an inference
that Lee was known to be
involved in the gay community in Chicago.
- Beitler, a major contributor
to then-mayor Richard Daley's campaigns,
called the Police Superintendent to shut that down, too.
- I said, "This is a character assassination
"that's going on right now.
"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."
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.
That if they got out in front of this thing too far
and they made mistakes,
this could be a career changer.
- It appeared the investigation withered, said Maureen Orth.
- You know, the Chicago Police were so intent
on not finding out what happened.
- They were so intent on not finding out what--
- They were intent on not finding out what happened.
Lee Miglin was, quote, "A very happily married,
"very upstanding member of the community."
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.
- In a statement to "Dateline,"
the Chicago Police Department said, in part:
Yet in 1997,
Minneapolis reporter Jim Walsh flew to San Diego
and thought he found a connection
between Lee Miglin and Andrew Cunanan.
- I interviewed a bookstore owner
who said that Andrew Cunanan
was friends with Duke Miglin,
Lee Miglin's son.
Duke was a small-time actor in Hollywood,
and he said Cunanan always talked about Duke Miglin,
talked about him all the time,
that he knew him well. They played tennis together.
- But less than 24 hours later,
the bookstore owner denied
he'd ever heard about Duke Miglin directly from Cunanan.
Back in Chicago, Duke Miglin addressed the rumors
with his father's staff.
- And he was very forthright, and he said,
"Look, I will tell you the truth.
The truth is, no, I don't know Cunanan.
I haven't been engaged with Cunanan.
- But by then, Andrew Cunanan had escaped,
another dead man in his wake,
flushed with Lee Miglin's cash at the wheel of Miglin's Lexus,
which was his first miscalculation.
That fancy Lexus was equipped with a cell phone
that could be traced.
- Authorities had confirmed to the Chicago media
that the FBI was tracking Andrew in Lee Miglin's car.
That immediately went out all over the airwaves.
- And Cunanan was listening.
- He realized he had to get out of that car.
**
Gianni Versace not only designed fashions
for sexy and elegant supermodels,
he made clothes that everyone could wear.
In May 1997,
he was unveiling his ready-to-wear collection
on a runway in Istanbul.
And what was Andrew Cunanan 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 Miglin
and those two men in Minnesota.
Police now realized an extremely dangerous killer
was careening across the country,
and they put the word out.
- Police say the missing Lexus is Black Jade Pearl...
- Cunanan was driving east
in the fancy Lexus he'd stolen from Miglin,
but had no idea that the car's built-in phone
was pinging off cell towers,
nor that by Friday, May 9, he'd picked up a tail:
the FBI.
Cell phone surveillance was primitive back then
and lacked pinpoint targeting,
but agents were closing in.
- 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 Miglin's car.
That immediately went out all over the airwaves.
- In Philadelphia, police say a cellular phone was activated
from the stolen Lexus taken from murder victim Lee Miglin.
- Andrew obviously heard it, and of course--
- He couldn't miss it at that stage.
- He couldn't. - In her book,
Maureen Orth called the police leak tipping off Cunanan, quote,
"Probably the most serious blunder of the entire manhunt."
- 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.
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.
- 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.
He drove through miles of marshland
before finding this unlikely spot,
a Civil War burial ground,
Finn's Point National Cemetery in Pennsville, New Jersey.
- If I gave you directions
or told you to put it in your GPS,
you probably would not be able to find it.
- At the time,
Allen Cummings was a 32-year-old patrolman
with the Pennsville Police.
- I've never heard of Andrew Cunanan before that date.
- Neither had this man:
William Reese, 45 years old,
the caretaker of the cemetery.
He was a kind and gentle man, said his wife Rebecca.
She spoke with us in 1997.
- He was the kind of husband
who would keep a list the entire year
of things you said you wanted,
so at Christmastime, he had them.
- When my mom and I had off from school,
we would always go see my dad and his workplace,
like surprise him with picnics.
- 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.
That Friday, 12-year-old Troy was waiting for his father
to pick him up from school, but he didn't show up.
- And then my mom said, let's go look for your dad.
- 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.
- I could see a look in her eyes that a kid never wants to see,
because she knew something was wrong.
- She was right. Something was very wrong.
What happened to William Reese?
- From what my mom told me,
there was a holy spirit guiding her away from the basement.
**
Welcome back to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Kate Snow.
Andrew Cunanan appeared to be on a cross-country rampage,
and the media hungered for details about the FBI's pursuit.
But Cunanan was also secretly listening,
and after learning how police were tailing him,
he changed course.
The sequence of events about to unfold
were so diabolical,
they would destroy multiple families
and stunned the nation.
Back to Keith Morrison with "The Death of Gianni Versace."
- When William Reese was a no-show
to pick up his son, Troy, from school,
the boy and his mom started to worry.
They went looking for William at the cemetery where he worked,
and it wasn't what they found that concerned them,
It was what they didn't find.
His red pickup truck, for starters.
Then they walked to William's office.
The door was wide open.
- We went upstairs, searched for him.
Then we went to the middle floor,
searched for him.
- 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,
William Reese, shot once in the back of the head.
- When my mom was crying,
I knew something bad happened to my dad.
She told me your dad is never coming home,
but he's in a better place, in heaven.
The different police agencies, lacking coordination,
had been slow to understand how dangerous
and apparently desperate Andrew Cunanan was,
but they realized it now.
- The FBI has now joined local law enforcement agencies
in San Diego, Minneapolis, Chicago,
and New Jersey in the search for Cunanan.
- They could piece it all together because
Cunanan left so much evidence at the cemetery.
In the basement, a shell casing
from the same 40 caliber gun that killed David Madson.
Outside, Lee Miglin's Lexus.
And inside the car, his credit cards
and a bloody screwdriver,
evidently used in his brutal stabbing.
The Pennsville PD was now part of the manhunt,
but Officer Allen Cummings wondered then and still
when we sat down with him, whether William Reese's murder
could have been prevented?
- 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.
What if the information was put out to our community?
Maybe we could have prevented this horrible tragedy.
- 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.
- And because of that, by Friday night,
Cunanan 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.
- 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.
- Clever?
No, mostly lucky.
The stolen Carolina plate was never reported missing.
And now, the red pickup truck was in the clear,
and Andrew Cunanan was in the wind.
He was hurtling down the East Coast...
wanted now in four murders, some of them quite grisly.
And police, slow to realize who he was,
had no idea where he was.
So now, they sounded the alarm.
And after William Reese was shot to death just for his car,
the national media jumped all over the story.
Time and Newsweek both focused on the unlikely killer,
a gay gigolo from San Diego.
And network television noticed, too.
- Police say there's a serial killer loose
in the country tonight, and law enforcement officials
are racing against time.
- With murders in three states,
the FBI was now overseeing the Cunanan case.
And no one seemed safe after the random murder
of victim number four.
New York City, two hours from Pennsville, New Jersey,
was on high alert,
particularly in the gay community.
- Cunanan could be in New York or on the way to New York.
He seems to be targeting gay men.
- But he was nowhere near Manhattan.
In fact, he was 1,300 miles away,
heading for another popular island.
On the night of May 11, Cunanan quietly slipped
into Miami Beach in that stolen pickup truck
with its switched out plates.
Andrew Cunanan came here, to South Beach, to the crowds,
the noise, the music,
the looky loos staring at each other.
Strange place to come for a man who had to know
he was a subject of a massive manhunt.
Andrew Cunanan decided to hide in plain sight.
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 5 million miles
as far as luxury living goes.
The Plaza, what was the reputation of the place?
- It was a dump. - Police say that--
- Correspondent Kerry Sanders covered the story for NBC News.
- You drive by, and maybe even lock the door
and roll the window up when you drove by.
It was just-- it was a nasty place.
- Which is why it went out of business
and was boarded up.
Back then, it was a good place to hide out,
especially for an unconventional tourist
choosing to avoid the sun, live in the shadows.
- 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.
- Once he lived large on a rich man's allowance
in an oceanside condo
and picked up tabs for pricey dinners.
Now?
- He's living off of maybe one submarine sandwich a day.
- And once again, he was doing drugs and turning tricks.
- 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.
- By mid-June, Cunanan had been in Miami Beach for a month
and had settled into his seedy routine at the Normandy.
He wasn't moving, but for some reason,
he decided his truck needed to.
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.
Cunanan, 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.
- He was one of the very first people they ever put up
on the internet as a fugitive.
- The FBI had actually received a few tips that
Cunanan might be in Florida,
but they didn't communicate that to the Miami Beach Police.
- Well, the FBI is notorious
for sharing information one way.
That's from you to them. [chuckling]
- Richard Barreto was the Miami Beach Police Chief
at the time.
They could have probably done a little better job
in sharing information.
- Then a possible break, though it had nothing to do
with the FBI.
"America's Most Wanted" did a story on Cunanan,
and a counterman of the sub shop near Cunanan's hotel saw it.
- I looked up and saw his face, and I automatically
recognized him from "America's Most Wanted."
- He dialed 911.
He's inside the store now.
And they told me to try to delay his order.
- Miami Beach Police responded within minutes,
but it was too late.
If it was Cunanan, he'd already taken
his tuna sub and soda and left.
There was no doubt, however, that it was Cunanan
who walked into the Cash on the Beach pawn shop.
Running low on money, he decided to pawn a gold coin.
The shop owner, who didn't recognize him,
paid him $190.
Cunanan actually signed his own name.
And the owner submitted the paperwork to the Miami PD
as required by law.
Then Andrew Cunanan returned to the Normandy Plaza,
where the closest he got to his past life as bon vivant
and cultural wannabe was in fantasy.
- He was surrounded by Vogue, and Vanity Fair,
and all these upscale magazines, and he had art books,
and books of history, and architecture.
So obviously, during the day,
or the times when he couldn't go out,
he just lost himself in that world of antiques,
antiquity, art, architecture,
the lives of the rich and famous,
all the things we all aspired to
and that he pretended in his own fantasy world he was part of.
- No way of knowing what was in that mind of his,
but we do know that the latest Vanity Fair had just come out.
It had a splashy story and pictorial that featured
the richest and gaudiest house in all of South Beach,
owned by a man Cunanan bragged about meeting in better days...
Gianni Versace.
And the superstar designer was coming home.
- Coming up.
- He was astounded by what he saw.
- What did he see?
- Beauty everywhere. Beauty everywhere.
- Gianni Versace's love affair with Miami Beach,
it was mutual.
- Gianni's face was always big and open,
and his eyes were always wide, and he was-- I remember he was
staring at everybody so he was making eye contact.
How are you not going to say hello?
- But someone had a different greeting in mind.
When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
**
- In the late spring of 1997,
the fugitive Andrew Cunanan was living in the shadows,
turning tricks, dealing drugs,
scratching around for a little sandwich money
in Miami Beach,
all while his one-time idol was on top of the world
and enjoying a very different kind of life.
**
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.
Then...
Paris, for the premiere of his new haute couture line.
The new collection was a smash.
- I had been to the show in Paris.
It was amazing.
- After Paris, Versace and his partner Antonio
stopped in New York to make final plans
to take his company public.
On July 10, they joined their friend Hal Rubenstein
for a dinner in Manhattan.
- Gianni 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.
The only time-- so he would eat Chinese food
because they had lo mein.
- And then, it was time to relax.
- He was coming down to South Beach, where he often
loved to just kick back after having an intense time.
He was a fixture in South Beach.
He was the biggest celebrity they had
in the gay world down there.
- Mm-hmm. - He loved it.
It was his playground.
And he, and Antonio, his companion,
partied hardy down there.
They had fun.
**
- 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.
That's when he got to know Hal Rubenstein.
- 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.
He sat there for about 5 or 10 minutes
and was astounded by what he saw.
- What did he see?
- Beauty everywhere. Beauty everywhere.
**
It was the music. It was the rollerblading.
It was the bodies. It was the beauty.
- Antonio was with him. - Gianni was kind of like,
"Oh my God.
"Genius, this place is genius."
- Gianni took one look at this and basically,
in about five minutes, canceled his trip...
- To Cuba. - ...to Cuba.
And he said, I want somebody to show me around.
Show me around. Show me around.
**
- 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. 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, I think,
that is exhibited in Miami.
The fact that everybody is eating outside,
that everybody-- like I said,
everybody is watching everybody else.
- Yup.
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.
- It was beautiful, but inside,
we have to change things. So we add, you know, the pool.
We add a second part of the house with the garden.
**
- 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,
perfectly over the top. And from here,
he reigned as the Crown Prince of the New South Beach.
"The Today Show" came to call in 1994.
- Yeah, I think it's like a global village here.
Everyone is from Cuba, from New York,
from Italy, from Germany.
And that is more than to me, the mixture of people.
You don't care if you are a black or white.
You care just for your heart or for your mind.
It's cool. I like it.
- And the town loved him right back.
- People recognize him, and say, "Hello, Mr. Versace.
"How are you?" "Oh, 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.
Gianni's face was always big and open, and his eyes were
always wide, and he was-- I remember he was staring
at everybody, so he was making eye contact.
How are you not going to say hello?
- Of course. Did you worry about him?
He was a big star.
- Well, I never worried 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 bodyguard?
- Yes, but he didn't want it.
- 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.
- We were to see a movie in Coconut Grove,
and then we start to watch TV, and then he was kind of
falling asleep on the couch
because after 9:00, it was always like--
[chuckling]
- 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.
- Coming up.
Two shots heard around the world.
- I heard the shot.
My heart stopped beating.
Something said to me,
something happened.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
**
July 15, 1997, a Tuesday.
Gianni 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 competition's.
So he went there early because he wanted to see
what was going on in Paris, in Fashion Week.
- Yes, usually we go together.
He has to go by himself. He couldn't wait.
- That same morning, said Maureen Orth,
Andrew Cunanan 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.
But now as the sun heated the air on the Ocean Drive,
he stood across from the mansion,
watching, waiting.
- Andrew was wearing a pair of khaki shorts,
and a baseball cap, and a t-shirt.
- Just before 8:45 AM, Gianni walked home,
three blocks. He climbed his coral steps
toward his Medusa-logoed front gate,
fidgeted with his keys.
He had no idea.
- Andrew just very boldly crossed the street,
walked up right behind him, and shot him in the head.
- Two bullets, execution style.
and Andrew turned and walked away.
- I heard the shot.
My heart stopped to beat.
Something said to me...
something happened.
Anyway, so I ran out
and I saw Gianni lay down on the stairs, in the blood.
- From inside the mansion, Versace's chef called 911.
- 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.
- What were you doing?
- I was in charge of the Bike Squad
here on Miami Beach at the time when the call went out.
- Howard Zeifman was a sergeant then.
What was the situation when you got here?
- 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. It could be anybody walking by
because this was a famous mansion.
People stop by all the time and took pictures.
And one of the officers said, hey, it's Versace.
- At 9:21, Gianni Versace was pronounced dead
at the local trauma center.
He was 50, murdered in broad daylight.
The Miami Beach Police Department is just blocks
from the mansion.
It was the hour of shift overlap,
the night officers still around.
Richard Barreto was the department chief.
- We had a whole lot more policemen on the street
than we would have an hour later.
- And I asked people as they were walking by, you know,
did you see anybody running from here?
Did you see anybody that-- moving in the area?
- One witness saw a man duck into the 13th Street garage,
two blocks away.
- Zeifman and other officers rushed over.
What did you find here on the third level?
- Truck parked there, out of state plates.
- But what looked suspicious was outside the trunk.
- From one of my recollection is there was clothes
laying on the ground.
- Zeifman thought the killer probably changed his clothes
to avoid being identified.
How would he have gotten out of here?
- You can go down the elevator, go down the stairs.
People walking out, you just blend in with them.
- You didn't catch him, but at least
you locked down the island.
- Lock down the island as quick as we could.
- Homicide Chief George Navarro was called in.
He was taking charge of what would be
the biggest case of his career.
- I went straight to the scene.
- 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 of a mafia hit or something?
- It was, back in the day.
It turns out-- we autopsied the pigeon, and it was just
a fragment of the round,
one of the rounds that hit Mr. Versace.
It ricocheted and hit the pigeon.
It was the first and last time we autopsied a bird.
- It was that kind of a story.
I quickly realized that this wasn't just a...
another homicide,
because of the amount of media.
- They got there before you did?
- Oh, yeah, they got there before we did.
- So what did you see when you arrived?
- Media from all over. They just kept coming.
We had to shut down Ocean Drive.
- Those satellite trucks would pull up--
- All over the place.
All over the place, from all over the world.
It was crazy.
[speaking Italian]
- The media from around the world is covering
the story of murder, mystery, and high fashion.
- 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--
- 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 we may know someone
"that may have done this."
- The FBI man, Cunanan's chief tracker, had eyeballed
the shell casings at the scene and told Navarro
they might match Cunanan's other murders.
- What was it like to hear that story from the FBI Agent?
- I got goosebumps because now, this was bigger than
just Gianni Versace getting murdered.
And then he mentioned the last homicide
of Mr. William Reese and the red pickup,
and it clicked.
- Navarro knew his guys in the garage were all over
a red pickup truck with South Carolina plates
that looked suspicious.
- 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.
- For Navarro, it was like winning the lottery.
- And we made a match.
We knew that was Mr. Reese's car.
- That night Chief Barreto held a press conference
to tell the global media that Andrew Cunanan was the killer,
and Gianni Versace was victim number five.
- Cunanan is known to be a male prostitute,
who services affluent clientele.
Cunanan is well-educated, well-dressed,
is very articulate.
- 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.
- You try to think like he thinks.
It's cat and mouse game, you know?
Our job is to catch him, and his job is to elude us.
- Cunanan was still at large, armed, desperate,
and more dangerous than ever.
- At large and about to pull off another disappearing act,
Cunanan, this time, doesn't leave much
of a trail to follow.
- The Director felt that Cunanan wasn't on Miami Beach.
He had slipped away.
- When Dateline-- Secrets Uncovered continues.
**
Welcome back.
Fashion icon Gianni Versace was dead,
shot in broad daylight
in front of his home.
Miami investigators connected shell casings
and a red pickup truck to Andrew Cunanan,
who now had committed five murders in four states
then vanished.
Police would pore through thousands of leads
before picking up Cunanan's trail,
but could they catch him before he claimed
his next victim?
Back to Keith Morrison with The Death of Gianni Versace.
- There's a reason July is off-season in Miami Beach.
Temperatures that mirror the humidity
drive all of it hardcore sun worshipers inside.
In the days after Gianni Versace died
on his mansion's coral steps,
Detective George Navarro was most definitely
feeling the heat.
How much pressure was on you?
- Oh, incredible.
Never had that much pressure on me ever,
literally working around the clock,
sleeping two hours, three hours.
- How do you keep going?
- I was young back then.
- 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?
The Versace family wanted no part of finding out.
- Versace's family obviously was devastated.
How could they not be?
However, they wanted
to get him out of there.
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.
- The family skipped the Miami Beach memorial service,
which investigators attended, hoping, perhaps,
Cunanan would show up to revel in his kill.
He didn't.
- The police dragnet is intense in South Florida.
- The 230 investigators now assigned to the case
chased more than 1,000 leads in the 18 square miles
of Miami Beach, knowing, given the intense coverage,
that Cunanan had to be watching their every move.
- That's why we had to use runners, and cell phones,
and landlines instead of our radios.
- In other words, you're trying to keep the media
from finding out because the media would be
telling him directly. - Correct.
But when you do that,
it's kind of a double-edged sword.
When you don't give the media what they're looking for,
they kind try to go find it on their own.
- That's exactly what Minneapolis reporter
Chris Graves did.
She followed the Cunanan trail,
first to Chicago, then Miami.
And here discovered a missed clue.
- 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 Cunanan.
- At Cash on the Beach Pawn Shop,
Graves hit the jackpot.
- This woman came up, and said,
yeah, we know him.
I said, what?
What?
- It was the shop where Cunanan had pawned that gold coin,
signed his real name on the pawn slip.
Gave the Normandy Plaza address,
and provided his fingerprint.
- The guy doesn't look like a serial killer.
- And remember, as required by law,
the pawn shop sent police the transaction.
They got it five days before the murder.
- Lo and behold, the South Beach Police had
a copy of that pawn slip days before
Gianni Versace was dead.
- So could they have prevented the murder?
- Up in Chicago, Paul Beitler read Graves' story.
And do you remember finding out about
this coin being found?
- 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 Miglin.
- So that coin tied Cunanan to Lee Miglin's murder
and revealed where he was hiding in Miami Beach,
that is if police had been looking.
But before the murder, they weren't
even though Cunanan was on the FBI's Most Wanted list.
- Took a beating over the pawn shop, rightfully so.
- Because the one officer whose job was
to check pawn slips didn't get to it.
He was assigned elsewhere that week.
- So he was sitting on his desk for it almost a week.
- What did that detective feel like when he realized
what had happened?
- He felt terrible, but it's that old Murphy's law again
and a very antiquated system that we had back then.
- But the pawn shop discovery did point detective Navarro
to that rundown hotel, the Normandy Plaza.
- So let's talk to everybody.
Let's interview all the employees,
show pictures of Andrew.
Nobody's ever seen this guy.
- And then the next day, a memory suddenly improved.
- Which does he most closely resemble?
- When the manager of the hotel
all of a sudden remembered Andrew Cunanan
and remembered that he's under this name
Kurt DeMars from Paris, France.
- By then, Cunanan was long gone,
skipped out on his rent.
Another miss in a growing list of misses
across four states.
What was that like knowing that you can't see him?
He's not around. He's gone now but--
- Very frustrating.
It seemed like we were always one step behind them.
- Then it got worse.
The FBI pulled all their special agents out,
except for four. - Why?
- The Director felt that Cunanan wasn't on Miami Beach.
He had slipped away.
At the time, I was pissed because we had
leads still coming in, hundreds.
- Then eight days into the search,
just when it seemed police would never catch a break.
- So we get a call on the radio, from dispatch.
- We got a blue houseboat.
- Shots fired at this houseboat.
And I thought to myself,
what a perfect place to hide.
- Coming up...
- Uniformed patrol had
a perimeter set around the houseboat.
We called marine patrol to cover the water perimeter.
Then we called the SWAT team in.
- Closing in on a killer.
- Come out now.
Come on. Let's go.
- He was like a trapped rat.
- When Dateline-- Secrets Uncovered continues.
**
- Eight days after the murder of Gianni Versace,
leads were still coming in, hundreds every day.
And then July 23, late afternoon.
- 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
and something was wrong.
- You saw a light on?
- Yeah, all the lights was on.
- He approached the boarding door,
and then a gunshot.
- I heard a shot.
- In an instant, hundreds of Miami Beach Police,
the FBI, out-of-town investigators,
an army of reporters
were converging on the pier.
It's gone now.
The houseboat was knocked down years ago.
Only a few rotting posts and a square of concrete
marked the spot.
But that day, that moment.
- What color is it? - It's the blue one.
- So when we first got here, uniformed 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.
Then we called the SWAT team in.
- Where are the cameras of the world?
- 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.
It was too dangerous to be here.
- Sure, there were a few over there
on the other side of the water.
- There were some on the other side of the water
that snuck in.
- Snuck in? What do you mean snuck in?
- Snuck in, yeah--
- We actually knew what he meant.
Some of us from NBC, including me,
found a perch across the waterway
where we got a direct view of the houseboat.
And when police cordoned off the scene around the houseboat,
NBC correspondent Kerry Sanders found
another way to get closer.
- There's 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.
And I ran over to him, and I go,
can you give me a ride on your handlebars?
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.
- A siege atmosphere settled in.
- How did you try to reach him, to get word to him?
- So, 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.
So we tried a bullhorn, and no response.
- Everybody waited.
The world, watching.
At one point, some officers moved in quietly,
busted a window, and tossed a listening device
into the houseboat.
- We were getting absolutely nothing
from inside the houseboat so we were pretty confident.
He was either gone or he was dead.
- Gone? How would he be gone?
He slipped away from us before, more than once.
- They gave it 30 minutes, and then it seemed clear
that if someone was inside that boat,
they were not going to come out.
There was a SWAT team standing by,
armed with tear gas.
- Come out now. Come on. Let's go.
- When they went in, what was it like?
- They cleared the houseboat.
And when they went to the second floor bedroom,
they discovered a white male with a self-inflicted
gunshot wound.
- Was it him?
Maybe, maybe not.
Detective Navarro had fans brought in to disperse
the tear gas, and then he and the FBI men
went in with a camera.
The space looked more like an apartment than a boat.
- We went upstairs without touching anything,
and we had booties on and gloves,
and went up there, and looked at him.
- And they knew, after staring at pictures
of that face for so many days,
it was certainly Andrew Cunanan.
- We were very excited that it was over.
We actually high fived each other.
We were happy that nobody else was going to die.
- The police camera captured Cunanan's last refuge,
his exit scene.
- What did he have in there with him?
- Books, and magazines, and stuff.
He was out of food.
He was out of money.
Actually, that houseboat gave me the sense
he was like a trapped rat.
- In the living room, a spread of glossy magazines
with their high fashion ads
and reminders of a life he could never have.
- 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.
- 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.
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--
- I think that's why he killed himself.
I think what happened was, in Cunanan's mind,
when he hears the caretaker walk in,
and say something or whatever,
he thought that was the police.
I think he kills himself then.
- And when he did, he took his secrets with him.
He left no note.
No explanation for why he killed Jeff Trail,
and David Madson, and Lee Miglin,
and William Reese, and Gianni Versace.
But now, we've learned more about Andrew Cunanan
and the consequences, the aftershocks
of his terrible acts.
- Coming up.
Looking for answers and saying goodbye.
- He took somebody away at the height of their career,
at the height of their happiness.
- When Dateline-- Secrets Uncovered continues.
- While the world's attention was focused on
a fugitive killer, it shifted momentarily
to this exquisite, old cathedral in Milan.
If Gianni Versace brought celebrity to the runway,
celebrities paid their respects in kind.
- The world is coming. Everyone--
- It's state funeral. - It is a state funeral.
- Versace's Memorial mass in Milan.
- He took somebody away at the height of their career,
at the height of their happiness.
Devastated a family, a close family.
- We watched on television as Donatella and Santo
made their entrance.
Fashion stars like Giorgio Armani, Karl Lagerfeld,
and Naomi Campbell were there.
And the greatest star of them all, Princess Diana,
the most famous woman of her time,
sitting with a tearful Elton John.
Even then, people couldn't help but wonder
what would happen to the House of Versace.
Didn't know then that another Versace was willing
to carry the torch.
Like so many others, model Beverly Johnson had her doubts.
- We thought that was it, that it was over.
And when Donatella was going to take over,
we were like, oh, wow.
- Good luck with that.
- And then we realized how uber talented she was.
It was a testament of the genius that family had.
And just when you thought it couldn't get any better
with Gianni Versace and all was lost,
that she just picked up the baton and just--
and that's rare, that a brand can continue.
I think that's a real testament to Gianni Versace.
- In Miami, Moscow, New York, Tokyo,
or countless cities in between,
our reminders of the boy from southern Italy
who built a fashion empire.
When we last spoke, Antonio D'Amico was carrying on
with his own designs, working on a new sportswear line.
His first collection focused on golf wear.
He was living a quiet life outside of Milan,
surrounded by reminders of the man he loved.
- Do you find yourself thinking about that?
What you saw on the steps that day,
does it come back to you often?
- It was a nightmare for years,
but...
it's a question of timing.
Time is the side that heals you,
but it doesn't go away.
- The other men who lost their lives
are equally mourned.
The people who love Jeff Trail and David Madson
understand that these two men simply befriended
the wrong guy.
And Lee Miglin, 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 Miglin a target?
It's an unfinished chapter for Paul Beitler.
- And the only two people who can solve that riddle
aren't on the Earth anymore.
- Are you done?
I mean, if you found a string to pull,
would you pull it?
- I'd pull it.
I haven't given up.
And if there's somebody out there
that can solve this problem and this riddle
and has more information,
love to hear it.
- Now, you live with it. - Yeah.
- What does he mean to you in memory?
- Only good.
Only good.
He was a giant of a human being.
- George Navarro, who now runs
his own security consulting business,
is also frustrated that Cunanan took the easy way out.
- So was it an upsetting thing to hear?
- Upsetting because I had a lot of questions for him.
There's a lot of things that were left unanswered
that I'd like to know the answer to.
Why he did it?
What the connection was with the victims
and that sort of thing?
- The ordeal, five murders, three months,
inexplicable violence did teach law enforcement
a tough lesson.
- 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.
Communication is so much better now.
Things do change. - Right here--
- But one thing hasn't, the world's fixation
with the famous and the puzzle,
what drove a guy like Andrew Cunanan?
What made him a killer?
Stacy Lopez doesn't have any answers.
To this day, she thinks about her friend Andrew
and feels only confusion and pain.
- And it's not something that I talk about often.
I mean, who do you talk to about something like this?
Yes, I loved a serial killer.
I mean, it just-- it sounds so awful,
but he was a big part of my adolescence
and he was my friend.
- Did you find yourself mourning his passing or--
- I found myself mourning the friend that I knew,
and I had a very hard time
accepting what he had done.
- Have you spent any time thinking about
what he was about or--
- No, I don't care. I'll be honest.
I'm going to cut you short on that one.
- That's okay. - I don't care.
And to put it this way, he's a footnote in history,
just one more person with a gun,
so screw you.
You get nothing.
Hal Rubenstein would rather talk about his friend Gianni,
what that man taught him about life.
- 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 as long as you get the chance.
And you grab it to yourself and you make the most out of it.
**
- That's all for this edition of Dateline-- Secrets Uncovered.
I'm Kate Snow.
Thank you for watching.