Gianni Versace: Sly Stallone, Madonna, Elton John, a Serial Killer, and the Death of the Sun King

Gianni Versace was a runway iconoclast who outfitted the likes of Madonna, Demi Moore, Prince, Sylvester Stallone, and Don Johnson. He lived like Louis XIV and counted Princess Di and Elton John among his friends. He was plagued by rumors of ties to the Calabrian mafia and a secret health diagnosis. Those rumors continued to persist long after he was gunned down by a serial killer who had been on the lam after murdering four other men in three states.

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Speaker 1: What's up guys at Zethlondi, good doctor here at Double

Speaker 1: Elvis and co host of the Hollywood Lamp podcast. Welcome

Speaker 1: once again as we wind the reels back for another

Speaker 1: story from our archive, this one on Gianni Versachi. It

Speaker 1: was twenty nine years ago this week on Wednesday, on

Speaker 1: July fifteenth, nineteen ninety seven, that Gianni Versacei was shockingly

Speaker 1: murdered by a spree killer who shot the fashion icon

Speaker 1: in the cold light of day as he was walking

Speaker 1: back to his mansion in Miami Beach. Versacei's death rocked

Speaker 1: not only the fashion world, but the music and movie

Speaker 1: worlds as well, where he had so many connections, from

Speaker 1: Madonna and Whitney Houston to Sylvester Stallone, the latter who

Speaker 1: was warned by the FBI that Versacei's killer may be

Speaker 1: coming for him as well. I hope you dig this

Speaker 1: episode on Gianni Versacei, and I hope you join me

Speaker 1: here again in the feed on Wednesday for the Rap

Speaker 1: Party where I answer your calls and texts, and then

Speaker 1: again on Friday for a new installment of the Screening Room.

Speaker 1: I'm going to do a deep dive in the nineteen

Speaker 1: ninety nine film The Talented Mister Ripley.

Speaker 2: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.

Speaker 2: Please check the show notes for more information. Hollywood Land

Speaker 2: is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Gianni

Speaker 2: Versace are insane. He was a runway iconoclast who outfitted

Speaker 2: the likes of Madonna, Demi Moore, Prince Sylvester Stallone, and

Speaker 2: Don Johnson. He lived like Louis the fourteenth and counted

Speaker 2: Princess Die and Elton john among his friends. He was

Speaker 2: plagued by rumors of mafia ties and the secret health

Speaker 2: diagnosis rumors that persisted long after his death. He was

Speaker 2: gunned down by a jig Low serial killer who'd been

Speaker 2: on the lamb for two months after murdering four other

Speaker 2: men in three states. And Gianni VERSACEI made great fashion

Speaker 2: that was featured in great films, unlike that clip I

Speaker 2: played for you at the top of the show that

Speaker 2: wasn't from a great film. That was a fair use.

Speaker 2: Sample from the Library of Congress of the Frisco Jazz

Speaker 2: Band performing Nighttime in Little Italy in nineteen nineteen. I

Speaker 2: played you that clip because I can't afford the rights

Speaker 2: to a clip from Barry Sonenfeld's Men in Black and

Speaker 2: why would I play you that specific slice of balchini

Speaker 2: and cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the

Speaker 2: number one movie in America on July fifteenth, nineteen ninety seven,

Speaker 2: And that was the day that one of America's most

Speaker 2: wanted assassinated Gianni VERSACEI in broad daylight on his own

Speaker 2: front steps in Miami's South Beach. On this episode hate

Speaker 2: Couture in trash Can Culture, Mafia Ties a jigglow serial

Speaker 2: killer and Gianni Versace I'm Jake Brennan and this is

Speaker 2: Hollywood Land. Sylvester Stallone was playing golf when the FEDS

Speaker 2: told him his life was in danger. This wasn't one

Speaker 2: of his many on screen action hero lives. Not the

Speaker 2: life of mythical vet John Rambo, who barrowed through the

Speaker 2: jungle in a bullet bandolier and a headband on the

Speaker 2: run from Vietnamese soldiers, nor the life of maryon Cobra Cobra,

Speaker 2: member of LAPD's elite zombie squad, who took down a

Speaker 2: cabal of New World terrorists with the aid of his

Speaker 2: badass Ray bands. This was Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone's real life,

Speaker 2: the life that saw a young man with partial face

Speaker 2: paralysis catapult to a global sex symbol during the Hairsprayed

Speaker 2: heyday of the nineteen eighties, The rags to rocky life

Speaker 2: that brought a hungry Italian Stallion from sleeping at New

Speaker 2: York City's Port Authority bus terminal to living large on

Speaker 2: an eleven acre villa with nine bathrooms in an Olympic

Speaker 2: sized pool here in Miami. And according to the FBI,

Speaker 2: the real life of Sylvester Stallone was under threat. It

Speaker 2: was summer nineteen ninety seven, and Stallone was at an

Speaker 2: inflection point in his career. After five Rockies, three Rambos,

Speaker 2: and an arsenal of other American gladiator roles, the fifty

Speaker 2: one year old wanted to be more than a hired

Speaker 2: muscle knot. Sylvester Stallone wanted to be appreciated as an actor.

Speaker 2: He hoped his newest movie, Copland, would do the trick.

Speaker 2: It was a proper film, not a typical shoot him

Speaker 2: up fair, a novelistic, neo noir thriller. In Copland, Stallone

Speaker 2: played a subdued small town sheriff beaten down by fates.

Speaker 2: And justices and dirty cock corruption. He'd gained forty pounds

Speaker 2: for the role and worked for scale. He held his

Speaker 2: own against ace tough guys Robert de Niro, Harvey Kayitel,

Speaker 2: and Ray Liota. He was brooding. He was great. Early

Speaker 2: buzz suggested that the critics noticed. But just as Stallone

Speaker 2: was deliberately moving away from ultra violence, ultra violence was

Speaker 2: moving toward him. On the golf course, Stallone noticed six

Speaker 2: helicopters hovering about four hundred yards away. The distant buzz

Speaker 2: was unnerving, and for good reason. All around him, the

Speaker 2: largest manhunts in FBI history was unfolding, a dragnet on

Speaker 2: the scale of the legendary search for nineteen thirties gangster

Speaker 2: John Herbert Dillinger. More than two weeks earlier, one of

Speaker 2: the FBI's ten most wanted was spotted in West Palm Beach.

Speaker 2: That was more than seventy miles north from where Stallone was.

Speaker 2: But Miamipde now had very good reason to believe the

Speaker 2: armed and very dangerous fugitive was in their midst. Officials

Speaker 2: identified the suspect as twenty seven year old Andrew Philip

Speaker 2: Cunan in sometime alias Andrew D. Silva, white male, dark

Speaker 2: brown hair, brown eyes, known to pretend he's rich, and

Speaker 2: sometimes he was, but always with other people's money. According

Speaker 2: to the fugitives own mother, her son got by as

Speaker 2: quote a high class homosexual prostitute. DOJ posters said Cunanan

Speaker 2: was wanted for second degree murder and questioning in four

Speaker 2: other deaths. What flyers didn't reveal was this year sadistic

Speaker 2: brutality of these killings. The first victim was found in

Speaker 2: a Minneapolis loft, a twenty eight year old ex navyman

Speaker 2: rolled up in a rug, head bludgeoned with a claw

Speaker 2: hammer odd toops. He revealed he was struck not once

Speaker 2: or twice, but twenty seven times. The second, a thirty

Speaker 2: three year old architect, was also in Minnesota, sixty miles north,

Speaker 2: shot once in the head, left near a lake. The

Speaker 2: third victim, Holy Shit, a seventy two year old real

Speaker 2: estate tycoon, discovered bound, gagged and dead on the floor

Speaker 2: of his Chicago garage. His chest stabbed numerous times with

Speaker 2: either a screwdriver or a pruning pole, it was hard

Speaker 2: to tell, and both were turned up in the investigation.

Speaker 2: His neck was cut with a sob blade wound so

Speaker 2: deep he was nearly decapitated. The man's of ribs were

Speaker 2: all broken, apparently crushed by the two cement bags left

Speaker 2: beside his corpse. His head was also wrapped in masking

Speaker 2: tape like a mummy. Again only shit and the rich

Speaker 2: man's green lexus was also missing, until it wasn't. A

Speaker 2: few days later, police located the vehicle in a Pennsylvania cemetery,

Speaker 2: parked near the body of a forty five year old

Speaker 2: caretaker who'd been shot execution style in the back of

Speaker 2: the head. And the execute demand's red Chevy pickup was gone.

Speaker 2: And now the FEDS had intel that someone fitting this

Speaker 2: lunatic's description had been asking around Florida about Stallone. It

Speaker 2: was no secret Sly lived in Miami Beach. Locals called

Speaker 2: his extravagant bayside villa Casa Rocky. The actors sometimes had

Speaker 2: trouble with nosy boters anchoring behind his state to see

Speaker 2: what they could see. Stallone even made local headlines when

Speaker 2: he tried to block a public path near his property

Speaker 2: with an eight foot security fence. Rollerbladers were pist off,

Speaker 2: so when a customer of Planet Hollywood's recent opening in

Speaker 2: Key West started asking where Stallone was. The bartenders didn't

Speaker 2: think much about it. Everybody knew that Stallone was one

Speaker 2: of the chain's five celebrity investors who was part of

Speaker 2: the attraction. Just seemed like the chit chat of a

Speaker 2: starstaruk Roub aimed for some signed memorabilia in an overpriced drink.

Speaker 2: But that changed on July fifteenth, when a gunman who

Speaker 2: looked like that customer at Planet Hollywood, who in turn

Speaker 2: looked like the psycho from America's Most Wanted, executed someone

Speaker 2: else in broad daylight in front of witnesses. And this

Speaker 2: nutjob had assassinated a celebrity, and not just any celebrity.

Speaker 2: One of Sly Stallone's friends another Italian signior Gianni Versachi Versacei,

Speaker 2: the runway genius who lived like a Menoici prince, Versacei,

Speaker 2: the household name partly responsible for Miami Vice's pastel suited style.

Speaker 2: Stallone knew Versacchi from the early nineties, when the actor

Speaker 2: was dating supermodel Jannis Dickinson. Versacei courted him with truckloads

Speaker 2: of expensive gifts, full pantries of fine china, rooms of

Speaker 2: lux fabric, trunks of clothes, Versacchi, as was his way

Speaker 2: with celebrities, spared no expense. Stallone reciprocated by helping launch

Speaker 2: a Versacei Housewar's line in nineteen ninety five. In a

Speaker 2: provocative ad, he posed nude with Claudia Schiffer in an

Speaker 2: Adam and Eve homage, Porcelain Versacei plates covered their X

Speaker 2: rated bits. Stallone was a guest at Versacei's lavish lakeside

Speaker 2: house in Italy. They hit the gym together. He even

Speaker 2: shows Versacei to design his costume for his nineteen ninety

Speaker 2: five film Judge Dredd, who cares that critics panned the

Speaker 2: movie as one of Stallone's worst. He looked badass and

Speaker 2: that gilded future cop get up was unmistakably versace Chunky,

Speaker 2: golden epaulettes, black cat suit, eurotrashwat dream. It even had

Speaker 2: a cod piece. And now Versace was dead, it could

Speaker 2: have been Stallone. It could still be Stallone. The murder

Speaker 2: was so brazen it seemed like a mob style a hit.

Speaker 2: Before nine am, Versace was outside his Ocean Drive mansion

Speaker 2: fumbling with his keys when a gunman walked up, shot

Speaker 2: him point blank in the head twice, and then coolly

Speaker 2: walked away and the shooter was still on the loose.

Speaker 2: It had to be Andrew kunan Within the hour, police

Speaker 2: found the stolen red Chevy from Kunanin's alleged fourth victim

Speaker 2: in a parking garage near the Versace mansion. Beside the

Speaker 2: truck was a heap of freshly sweaty clothes. But what's more,

Speaker 2: the vehicle had been parked there since June twelve, and

Speaker 2: that was more than a month ago. Stallone still couldn't

Speaker 2: believe it. This guy had been in town for weeks

Speaker 2: and weeks, and locals were only on high alert now

Speaker 2: after he'd murdered a celebrity in broad daylight. And the

Speaker 2: more learned, the more infuriated he became. Miami Beach was

Speaker 2: what ten blocks long? Why hadn't cops plastered South Florida

Speaker 2: with his photo? And the guy was known as a

Speaker 2: gay hustler and there were only like ten gay clubs

Speaker 2: in the city, But why hadn't the police dispatched under

Speaker 2: covers in each one. Stallone knew a few things about cops. Shit,

Speaker 2: he just played one in Copland, and he knew that

Speaker 2: it sounded like they hadn't been doing their jobs. And

Speaker 2: maybe if the Miamipe had been less worried about Stallone's gate,

Speaker 2: taking a break from interviewing every stupid rollerblader outside his house,

Speaker 2: maybe his friend would still be alive, and maybe he

Speaker 2: wouldn't be having this conversation with black suits on the green,

Speaker 2: and maybe those helicopters wouldn't still be hovering, standing there,

Speaker 2: surrounded by the manicured grass and the ocean and the sky.

Speaker 2: Stallone had to admit, though, you know, if it had

Speaker 2: to happen, then this wouldn't be such a bad place

Speaker 2: to go. It was the fourth of July weekend in

Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, and Madonna was having trouble falling asleep.

Speaker 2: Maybe it was all the naked men around the house,

Speaker 2: naked dead men sculpted an alabaster and marble artifacts of

Speaker 2: past centuries. Madonna kept wanting to press her face against

Speaker 2: their cool, hard bodies. Gianni Versace's lavish villa at northern

Speaker 2: Italy's Lake Como, where Madonna was vacationing for the American Holiday,

Speaker 2: was a four story monument of flamboyant distractions, opulent bedrooms,

Speaker 2: three acres of fairytale gardens, a museum worthy collection of

Speaker 2: oil paintings in nineteenth century furniture, a tennis court, a

Speaker 2: private dock, and an impressive array of naked deadness men.

Speaker 2: It was all very VERSACEI. Bruce Springsteen honeymooned at the

Speaker 2: Lake Como Retreat in nineteen eighty five, and Versacei's good

Speaker 2: friend Elton John was a frequent guest over the years

Speaker 2: as were staying, and his wife Trudy Prince, had been

Speaker 2: there too. VERSACEI found Prince strange. It took the little

Speaker 2: guy three days to notice he'd been staying on a

Speaker 2: lake and now the Italian designer had generously invited Madonna

Speaker 2: to unwind here after wrapping her second versace campaign, a

Speaker 2: minimal and sophisticated evening gown shoot that would help class

Speaker 2: up her image. After last year's Late Show fiasco when

Speaker 2: she said the word fuck fourteen times and asked David

Speaker 2: Letterman to smell her panties, Madonna's image needed some serious scrubbing.

Speaker 2: In six months, she would be shooting her dream role

Speaker 2: as Eva Perone, the Argentine first lady in the Oscar

Speaker 2: Bait movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's nineteen seventy eight

Speaker 2: Madonna needed to be convincingly elegant, and Versace's late Como

Speaker 2: villa was the perfect place to practice. Madonna felt like

Speaker 2: a spoiled princess. She brought an entourage and Sri Lankan servants,

Speaker 2: and white gloves tended to every whim of Madonna and

Speaker 2: her guests. New VERSACEI gowns appeared daily. Fresh bullinis arrived

Speaker 2: every sunset, which they drank under a giant magnolia tree

Speaker 2: beside the crystal clear lake. A speedboat captain was on

Speaker 2: standby if they wanted to swim. Gorgeous Italian bodyguards even

Speaker 2: took Madonna's dog, Jaquita, on long, doting walks. Lucky little Bitch.

Speaker 2: Madonna pinched herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming. Now.

Speaker 2: This wasn't an impressionable nineteen eighties era Madonna, fresh from

Speaker 2: watching Basquiach shoot up on a mattress. This was that

Speaker 2: eighty million records sold Madonna. Madonna, who Dune Dick Tracy

Speaker 2: and co star Awarred Baby Business Mocha, Madonna, who'd been

Speaker 2: on the cover of Forbes in nineteen ninety and secured

Speaker 2: a wapping sixty million dollar advance for a multimedia joint

Speaker 2: venture with Time Warner in nineteen ninety two. This madonna

Speaker 2: also had her own Miami Beach mansion right near Stallone's Casaaki.

Speaker 2: This madonna knew massive, massive wealth, and to this madonna,

Speaker 2: the world's most celebrated material girl, the ruthless extravagance of

Speaker 2: Versacei's lifestyle was daunting. Maybe that's why she couldn't sleep.

Speaker 2: They called Gianni Versacei the son King of Fashion for

Speaker 2: good reason. At Lake Como, one of his four opulent residences,

Speaker 2: he cultivated his own personal Versi Versacei's mansion in Miami

Speaker 2: South Beach was equally unreal when he purchased it in

Speaker 2: the early nineteen nineties, Versacei invested thirty three million to

Speaker 2: renovate the former apartment complex in De Store Hotel into

Speaker 2: a palatial estate of sixteen bedrooms, two kitchens, a fifty

Speaker 2: four foot mosaic swimming pool flecked with twenty four carrot gold,

Speaker 2: and a shower reportedly big enough for ten people to

Speaker 2: share simultaneously, you know, as one does. There was also

Speaker 2: at least one toilet made of onyx, and ever since

Speaker 2: he opened his own fashion house in nineteen seventy eight

Speaker 2: with his older brother Santo's help, versace had been spitting

Speaker 2: in the eye of so called good taste. He turned

Speaker 2: the delicate craft of haukuture into an erotic spectacle. He

Speaker 2: made men's silk shirts with ornately Tacki prints into luxury goods.

Speaker 2: He put socialites in bondage gear. He put Princess Diana

Speaker 2: in gold studs. He posed Supermodeled into Evangelista in a

Speaker 2: sea through top, grabbing her crotch and touching her breast.

Speaker 2: In the New Yorker's erudite pages, he took high fashion

Speaker 2: from its precious, self contained ptelier and yanked it out

Speaker 2: onto the street. And VERSACEI created cultural moments, Hollywood moments,

Speaker 2: huge red carpet moments. It was the nineteen ninety one

Speaker 2: Oscars when Cindy Crawford turned up with Richard Gear, still

Speaker 2: smoldering from Pretty Woman's success, and the spectacular red VERSACEI

Speaker 2: gown with a plunging neck and elegant backslid. That couple

Speaker 2: those red carpet photos, that red hot dress. That was

Speaker 2: a moment. It was a moment in nineteen ninety four

Speaker 2: when actress Elizabeth Hurley went from Hugh Grant arm candy

Speaker 2: the household name when he wore an astounding black versace

Speaker 2: gown held seductively together with giant gold safety pins to

Speaker 2: the premiere of four Weddings in a funeral in twenty

Speaker 2: seven years later. The dress has its own Wikipedia entry

Speaker 2: in j Loo's emerald green naval cleavage Wowser from the

Speaker 2: two thousand Grammys. That was a moment's moment, and they

Speaker 2: weren't creating fabulous cultural moments. Back in Versace's hometown, born

Speaker 2: Giovanni Maria Versacei and Red Joe, Labria, a southern city

Speaker 2: riddled with earthquakes bandits in Malaria, Versacei's mother was a

Speaker 2: successful dressmaker. His family was firmly boucheois, but one of

Speaker 2: twenty somethings, Versacei moved to Milan to pursue contracts with

Speaker 2: the country's established fashion houses. He found that Northern Italians

Speaker 2: generally regarded as Southern ilk as peasants and wastrels, yellow

Speaker 2: toothed brutes from a cursed region to northerners. Versacei's native

Speaker 2: Calabria was the stinky foot in their fine leather Italian boom,

Speaker 2: but Versacei assimilated. He was ambitious, he lost his Southern

Speaker 2: accent cut ties with friends from home, did the cosmopolitan

Speaker 2: things a young, upwardly mobile man does to air kiss

Speaker 2: asses in a European city and build a network. But

Speaker 2: the more VERSACEI ascended Milan's upper echelons, the more he

Speaker 2: found them uptight stagy, an intention of draft in the

Speaker 2: narrower he found the guardrails of this polite society. The

Speaker 2: more liberally he experimented in his work. Versace experiment by

Speaker 2: mixing elements of fashion that would supposedly clash leather and silk,

Speaker 2: swayed and linen, denim and satin. He experimented by sending

Speaker 2: women down the runway and bikini bras and tailored pantsuits.

Speaker 2: Way back in nineteen eighty, he experimented with the metal

Speaker 2: used in Butcher's gloves and invented an entirely new material

Speaker 2: for evening wear, a metal mesh fabric called orotone. He

Speaker 2: experimented with fetish ware tropes and scandalized the fashion world

Speaker 2: when his fall nineteen ninety two collection Miss S and

Speaker 2: M showcased a bevy of leggy models in variously edgy

Speaker 2: displays of leather studs, dog collars, and harnesses, and the

Speaker 2: more successful Versace became with these experiments, the more the

Speaker 2: old money bores turned up their noses, resorted to their

Speaker 2: tribalist conditioning, and complained about another Southern interloper trampling their

Speaker 2: sacred tenet of good taste. So Versace called bullshit on

Speaker 2: quote unquote good taste, because what was good taste anyway?

Speaker 2: A highly subjective code dictated by sexless biddies and heavy

Speaker 2: fur coats, a charade to keep blue blooded bloodlines intact,

Speaker 2: a way to keep out new ideas from new people.

Speaker 2: Good taste was polite oppression. Good taste was arbitrary restraint.

Speaker 2: Into Versace, the point of wealth or luxury was freedom.

Speaker 2: Freedom to Versace meant treating his much younger sister Donatella

Speaker 2: like an adult from a young age, coming out to

Speaker 2: her early on, bringing her to nightclubs when she was

Speaker 2: still a child. Freedom meant nurturing don Tella's utree instincts

Speaker 2: and molding her into a platinum blonde camp queen who

Speaker 2: people would liken to a chain smoking Janice from the Muppets.

Speaker 2: Freedom meant being in a long term relationship with his

Speaker 2: partner Antonio, but also procuring well vetted male escorts to

Speaker 2: join them periodically. Freedom meant knowing money was made to

Speaker 2: be spent and they would always be more to make.

Speaker 2: Freedom was knowing that good taste was a ruse. When

Speaker 2: the weapon of good taste failed to stop for Sachi,

Speaker 2: Northern Italy's polite society tried to discredit him in another way,

Speaker 2: and they said the secret to Versace's success must be

Speaker 2: the so called kalabri And Mafia aka Trinagita aka, one

Speaker 2: of the most feared organized crime groups in the world

Speaker 2: dating back to the nineteenth century. It was the Calabria

Speaker 2: Mafia who kidnapped John Paul Getty the Third, the teenage

Speaker 2: grandson of oil bajillionaire J. Paul Getty, in nineteen seventy three,

Speaker 2: and what a feet of fuckupery that was. See this

Speaker 2: kidnapping was so poorly executed the demand for ransom seemed

Speaker 2: like a hoax. So when notorious titwad Grandpa Getty boked

Speaker 2: at their nearly seventeen million dollar demand, these Southern Italian

Speaker 2: savages sliced off young Getty's year, stuffed it into a

Speaker 2: plastic envelope and mailed it to a Rome newspaper to

Speaker 2: do some quick convincing. But there was one problem. They'd

Speaker 2: forgotten about Italy's national post strike and the severed years

Speaker 2: sat in transit for three weeks while their cash cop

Speaker 2: almost died from infection. And those were the geniuses they

Speaker 2: said were responsible for Versace's independent success. What Versace came

Speaker 2: to understand was that the old money elites weren't upset

Speaker 2: because he designed loud clothes that looked like overpriced pawnshot fantasies.

Speaker 2: They were upset because they felt threatened because Versace represented

Speaker 2: something they couldn't control new Wealth, and new Wealth's only

Speaker 2: master was freedom. We'll be right back after this. We're

Speaker 2: were were. Ronnie knew a hustler when he saw one,

Speaker 2: and the dark haired guy in the baseball hat and

Speaker 2: sunglasses was definitely on the take. Ronnie saw the guy

Speaker 2: around the hotel at odd hours, late nights, early mornings,

Speaker 2: always alone, always the backpack, and never saying a word,

Speaker 2: always shooting Ronnie furtive, searching glances, but darting his eyes

Speaker 2: before they made contact. Finally, one day, Ronnie dispensed with

Speaker 2: the subtlety and made a show of cruising him hard.

Speaker 2: The guy finally spoke see something he'd like. Ronnie told

Speaker 2: him he had a cute ass and he could make

Speaker 2: some money off of it. Then Ronnie asked how big

Speaker 2: he was. The guy came up to Ronnie's room to

Speaker 2: show him. The guy said to call him Andy. Ronnie

Speaker 2: made some calls for Andy to help make him some cash,

Speaker 2: set him up with some old rich guys and they

Speaker 2: used Ronnie's room and Ronnie took his cut that way,

Speaker 2: a small fee for a neutral location. Ronnie was a gay,

Speaker 2: HIV positive, often barefoot, forty three year old who'd been

Speaker 2: living at Miami's Normandy Plaza hotel for months when one

Speaker 2: of America's most wanted rolled up and introduced himself as

Speaker 2: Andy in May nineteen ninety seven. With its constant churn

Speaker 2: of transience and tourists, Miami was a good town to

Speaker 2: hide in plain sight, especially someone like Andy aka Andrew Carnanin,

Speaker 2: a twenty seven year old whose half Filipino half Italian

Speaker 2: features could scan Cuban. The Normandy Plaza was especially ideal,

Speaker 2: a single occupancy hotel located in Miami's lacklustered North Beach neighborhood.

Speaker 2: The place was cash only, right on the water, rooms

Speaker 2: started at twenty nine bucks. A night phone service was extra,

Speaker 2: staff didn't look too closely at your id, Maids weren't

Speaker 2: concerned when he wouldn't let them in, and there was

Speaker 2: even a spot out front to park your stolen truck.

Speaker 2: At nine pm, the Normandy Plaza opened its back gate

Speaker 2: onto the beach, so you could come and go discreetly

Speaker 2: without passing other guests or the front desk. And as

Speaker 2: long as your room bill was paid up, nobody asked questions.

Speaker 2: Q Nning kept the lowest possible profile, borrowed in like

Speaker 2: a nightcrawler, by day reading in his room, recovering, or

Speaker 2: getting high with Ronnie, who introduced him to a crack

Speaker 2: dealer who sold ten dollars, forty dollars and one hundred

Speaker 2: dollars rocks, the price variation depending on weight. After dark,

Speaker 2: Kenana would pull his baseball hat down low and head

Speaker 2: out into the salty air. He'd grabbed fast food or

Speaker 2: cheap takeout, cheap vodka from the liquor store, would visit

Speaker 2: a nearby adult superstore to buy porn bags with names

Speaker 2: like Inches and Jock drive a plan at Hollywood to

Speaker 2: do some reconnaissance. He'd go to gay clubs and loiter

Speaker 2: looking for rough trade. He'd get water from the bar,

Speaker 2: from a cigarette and wait. Qunonin found this existence tolerable

Speaker 2: for a while, but after two months Q nine In

Speaker 2: was sick of it all, sick of anonymity, sick of

Speaker 2: pretending he was no one special because Andrew Kunonin was special.

Speaker 2: He was smart, Genius level smart. He read the whole

Speaker 2: Bible by age seven. In the third grade, as IQ

Speaker 2: tested at one forty seven, q nanon was superior, made

Speaker 2: the gifted program in junior high went to a prestigious

Speaker 2: private high school in Mahalla, California, with diplomat's children Voted

Speaker 2: most likely to be remembered in the senior yearbook. He'd

Speaker 2: be remembered all right. He read Vogue, GQ, and Vanity

Speaker 2: Fair religiously. Those were his people. Qu Nana was spoiled.

Speaker 2: The last of four kids. He was his parents' favorite.

Speaker 2: His siblings called him the Prince. One time, the Prince

Speaker 2: got sick and missed the high school field trip, and

Speaker 2: his father bought him a brand new Nissan three hundred

Speaker 2: ZX Turbo to make him feel better. Sure his father

Speaker 2: had since fled the Philippines to evade prosecution for selling

Speaker 2: fake stocks. But keunon And took his dad's point to heart.

Speaker 2: He deserved the finest things. For a while he had them.

Speaker 2: He'd been a kept man, lived with a retired millionaire,

Speaker 2: had a thirty three thousand dollars infinity in an allowance

Speaker 2: of twenty five hundred dollars a month, flew around the

Speaker 2: country on the sugar daddy's style. But that arrangement fell

Speaker 2: apart after Qunon had met David, the waspy looking architect

Speaker 2: he'd fallen for and then left dead by the Minnesota Lake.

Speaker 2: Sure Qunon had fibbed along the way to get what

Speaker 2: he deserved. Said he went to Yale or choke. Said

Speaker 2: he was in the Israeli Army even though he wasn't Jewish.

Speaker 2: Said he had a daughter from a failed marriage. Said

Speaker 2: his parents were rich but cut him off from his

Speaker 2: inheritance when they learned he was gay. Neglected to mention

Speaker 2: his father's exile, or that his mother had gone completely batshit.

Speaker 2: Sometimes qunan And had a hard time keeping his story straight,

Speaker 2: but he only embellished, so he didn't waste time proving

Speaker 2: he was worthy. Why should he have to prove he

Speaker 2: was special when he clearly was. He just skipped step.

Speaker 2: Gianni Versacei knew Andrew Kunonin was special. In nineteen ninety,

Speaker 2: at a San Francisco gay club, the Italian fashion king

Speaker 2: mistook unon And for someone he knew and briefly chatted

Speaker 2: him up. Qunan And went along with it, of course,

Speaker 2: and then told everyone for years that he knew Versacei

Speaker 2: because Andrew Cunanin would know versace In a way no

Speaker 2: one else ever would. Qunanin slipped up one night at

Speaker 2: the South Beach club Twist. He was grinding on the

Speaker 2: dance floor with a hairdresser from West Palm Beach who

Speaker 2: asked what he did for a living. I'm a serial killer,

Speaker 2: he admitted keunon and couldn't help himself. For once, the

Speaker 2: truth was more impressive than the lie. But then he laughed,

Speaker 2: said he was an investment baking and took off, which

Speaker 2: was a shame because Twist was where he needed to be.

Speaker 2: His old friend, Gianni Versacei lived down the street. What

Speaker 2: Keunonin didn't know was that Gianni vers Arsacchi had been

Speaker 2: quietly preparing for his own death. In August nineteen ninety four,

Speaker 2: Barsacchi noticed hearing loss an extreme swelling on his head's

Speaker 2: right side. His doctor's diagnosis, a rare form of inner

Speaker 2: ear cancer. Surgery came with the high risk of disfiguring

Speaker 2: Versace's face. A businessman of esthetics, Barsaci instead opted for chemotherapy,

Speaker 2: but administered at a low enough dose that the treatment

Speaker 2: wouldn't leave him bald or listless. Versacei worked throughout the chemotherapy,

Speaker 2: running the fashion House from his Milan apartment above the

Speaker 2: company's headquarters, with nurses visiting him periodically to administer his treatment.

Speaker 2: He kept his diagnosis secret, but people could see something

Speaker 2: was wrong. Signor Versacei must have aids, they said, And

Speaker 2: there were other problems. Donatella, who had long been her

Speaker 2: brothers thickest, these mused and sidekick, had assumed more prominence

Speaker 2: during Versacei's illness as his cancer went into remission. The

Speaker 2: shift drove a deep rift between the two, and by

Speaker 2: late nineteen ninety six, Donatello was hoovering up cocaine like

Speaker 2: a human dirt devil in the relationship had become acrimonious. Meanwhile,

Speaker 2: his brother Santo tried to tamp down on Versace's spending

Speaker 2: after his recovery, so in September nineteen ninety six, VERSACEI

Speaker 2: mostly erased both siblings from his will, leaving the majority

Speaker 2: of his fortune to his ten year old niece Celegra.

Speaker 2: Then in early nineteen ninety seven, versace had an embarrassing

Speaker 2: public flap with Crown Jewels celebrity Conquest Princess Diana. She

Speaker 2: had agreed to write the foreword for Versace's newest coffee

Speaker 2: table book, Rock and Royalty, since proceeds would benefit the

Speaker 2: AIDS Foundation of their mutual friend, Elton John, But when

Speaker 2: VERSACEI sent the finished copy, the Princess of Wales was

Speaker 2: horrified to discover a family portrait with her two young sons,

Speaker 2: William and Harry, pages away from nearly nude men. She

Speaker 2: publicly demanded the forward be excise and bowed out of

Speaker 2: the highly publicized launch event. But by the morning of

Speaker 2: July fifteenth, nineteen ninety seven, things were again looking up

Speaker 2: for the fifty year old Versacei's cancer was officially in

Speaker 2: the clear, a development he toasted six months ago with

Speaker 2: glasses of champagne. He had reconciled with Princess Stay and

Speaker 2: was already designing the world's most famous new divorcee some

Speaker 2: new threads, and earlier in the month he had signed

Speaker 2: with Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley to take his eight

Speaker 2: hundred million dollar fashion dynasty public. Gianni Versaci would soon

Speaker 2: be the first Italian designer with his name on both

Speaker 2: the Borsa Italiana and the New York Stock Exchange. It

Speaker 2: was around eight forty am when Versacei returned to his

Speaker 2: South Beach mansion after buying five magazines from a cafe.

Speaker 2: He worked for a second to decipher which key opened

Speaker 2: up his front door, and as he did so, versace

Speaker 2: smiled at a passing neighbor, and then within seconds, Gianni

Speaker 2: Versacei was brain dead. Keunanin's first bullet hit the base

Speaker 2: of Versachi's brain, tore the top of his spinal cord,

Speaker 2: and exited from his neck. A second bullet tore through

Speaker 2: the right side of Versachi's face, cracked the top of

Speaker 2: his skull, and then stuck in his head. Versacei slumped

Speaker 2: on the steps. Keunanin walked off, leaving behind a shocked

Speaker 2: eye witness in a gory tableau. And there was so

Speaker 2: much blood the front steps looked vandalized with thick crimson pain,

Speaker 2: so much blood, in fact, that the blood still remains

Speaker 2: right where Versachi's body lay on that day, his sunglasses, sandals,

Speaker 2: and a dead bird. In a freakish coincidence, a piece

Speaker 2: of the first bullet and exited Versacei's neck, hit the

Speaker 2: front gate and then killed a bird. It wasn't just

Speaker 2: any bird that died by versati side, it was a dove,

Speaker 2: specifically a mourning dove mourning with a u. After its

Speaker 2: mournful coup, the sun king was dead and nature wept.

Speaker 2: Kurt Damars in Room three twenty two said he'd be

Speaker 2: down to pay his bill in ten minutes. Thirty minutes

Speaker 2: went by. The Normandy Plaza hotel clerk went upstairs to

Speaker 2: find room three two two empty. On Saturday July twelfth,

Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven, Kurt Damars aka Andrew k Nanen skipped

Speaker 2: out on his last bill and then re emerged three

Speaker 2: days later to carry out his favorite murder. Six days later,

Speaker 2: there'd still be no trace of the serial killer. Even

Speaker 2: though twelve arms of the law were devoted to Cunanin's capture.

Speaker 2: The killer was still out there somewhere. When Versacei's memorial

Speaker 2: service took place on Tuesday, July twenty second, exactly one

Speaker 2: week after his death. A crowd of more than two

Speaker 2: thousand gathered at the lawns Duomo, the city's exquisite Gothic cathedral,

Speaker 2: along with a bevy of supermodels, Sting and a sobbing

Speaker 2: Elton John, who was comforted by Princess Diana. The following day,

Speaker 2: at about three forty five in the afternoon, Fernando Careria,

Speaker 2: a seventy one year old property caretaker and twenty year

Speaker 2: resident of Florida, was making a routine check in on

Speaker 2: a houseboat forty one blocks north of Versace's mansion. Corea's

Speaker 2: wife was with him when he noticed the front door's

Speaker 2: busted top lock. The bottom lock was already unlatched. Somebody's

Speaker 2: been in here, he told his wife. Korea pushed the

Speaker 2: door open. Inside, all the lights were on and the

Speaker 2: curtains were closed. Korea had to the living room. Sofa

Speaker 2: cushions are on the floor with a blanket. An overturned

Speaker 2: chair was positioned like a makeshift barricade. Then Coreria saw

Speaker 2: a pair of sandals. Somebody is in here now, he

Speaker 2: told his wife. Miami had crimes, so Corea kept a

Speaker 2: handgun in his waistband for moments just like this. As

Speaker 2: he went to grab it, a loud, startling bang rang

Speaker 2: out from upstairs. Corea and his wife both ran outside. Terrified.

Speaker 2: Corea thought the intruder had shot him and missed. He

Speaker 2: didn't want to be a sitting duck, so he and

Speaker 2: his wife hid in the bushes. Cops came quickly with

Speaker 2: the ongoing man hunt. They'd been on high alert for

Speaker 2: suspicious local activity and immediately approached the scene as if

Speaker 2: the intruder could be Versace's killer. Over the next five hours,

Speaker 2: a fusillade of special Forces helicopters, boats, dogs, and grenades

Speaker 2: laid siege to the houseboat. They'd been waiting for this

Speaker 2: opportunity for days. After the tear gas cleared, two sergeants

Speaker 2: bent inside and they found q nan in an upstairs bedroom.

Speaker 2: His eyes were open, blood covered his ears, eyes, and lips.

Speaker 2: He was dead. Q Nanon had shot himself in the

Speaker 2: mouth with the same gun he'd used to kill Versace,

Speaker 2: and the sergeants who'd id'd his body high fived for

Speaker 2: eight frantic days. Andrew Philip q nan and loomed large

Speaker 2: in the national consciousness. But here, in a stained bed

Speaker 2: propped up by bloody pillows, he looked like any other self.

Speaker 2: Beach clubs, scum, small, pathetic, nothing unique at all, scoffed

Speaker 2: one of the high fivers. The Miami Herald dubbed the

Speaker 2: crime scene in a houseboat of horrors, but inside scanned

Speaker 2: more yep be tweakered in set of binocular sat on

Speaker 2: the kitchen counter. The broken front door lock was in

Speaker 2: the fridge. Butter tray, pill bottles, rubbing alcohol and a

Speaker 2: bloody bandage littered a coffee table, and there were fast

Speaker 2: food wrappers and used cotton balls in the tub. And

Speaker 2: in a pile of magazines was a freshly thumbed copy

Speaker 2: of Vogue. It was a very Andrew touch eerily. The

Speaker 2: houseboat was about four hundred yards away from the golf

Speaker 2: course where Sylvester Stallone learned about q nanin The whole

Speaker 2: ordeal shook Stallon to the core. He put his Miami

Speaker 2: Beach villa on the market in August nineteen ninety seven,

Speaker 2: right after Copland was released. Six weeks after Versace's murder,

Speaker 2: Princess Diana died in the limousine ride that claimed her life.

Speaker 2: She wore black Versace satin shoes. In two thousand, Donatella

Speaker 2: sold Gianni South Beach mansion for nineteen million dollars to

Speaker 2: a telecom big wig who remodeled it into a luxury

Speaker 2: hotel and event space. In twenty thirteen, the former VERSACEI

Speaker 2: mansion was resold at auction for forty one point five

Speaker 2: million dollars. The winning bidder was a scion of Geordana Ashtenham.

Speaker 2: The second highest bid came from another famous con man

Speaker 2: prone to hyperbolic flourishes in vulgar wealth, but Donald Trump

Speaker 2: came up a half million short. The property remains a

Speaker 2: luxury hotel. Its primary selling point is its Versace Mansion past.

Speaker 2: The hotel's gold flecked pool is a popular backdrop for

Speaker 2: Instagram influencers, who can also take selfies in front of

Speaker 2: the gate where Versace once lay dead. Two out of

Speaker 2: town men were recently found dead in one of the

Speaker 2: mansion suites, an apparent murder suicide, and they were found

Speaker 2: on the afternoon of July fourteenth, twenty twenty one, the

Speaker 2: day before the twenty fourth anniversary of Versace's murder, and

Speaker 2: in the annals of American true crime. The assassination of

Speaker 2: Gianni Versace has become a turn of the Millennium classic,

Speaker 2: up there with the OJ Simpson Trial. It has everything, glamour, sex, celebrity,

Speaker 2: lurid crime scenes, a serial killer, and a Donald Trump PostScript.

Speaker 2: It's the kind of thing that ought to be in pictures.

Speaker 2: I'm Jake Brennan and this is hollywood Land.

Speaker 3: Hollywood Land was created by Years Truly and is produced

Speaker 3: in partnership.

Speaker 2: With Double Elvis.

Speaker 3: Follow like, rate and review hollywood Land wherever you get

Speaker 3: your podcasts and get in touch with us on social

Speaker 3: media at double Elvis. If you like hollywood Land, check

Speaker 3: out my other show, the award winning Disgraceland, which looks

Speaker 3: at the world of music through the lens of true crime.

Speaker 3: Just search for Disgraceland or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2: Good give a lot