Original subtitles

♪♪

I think I want to be remembered is what I will do tomorrow.

What I did is boring to me.

I think I'm too classic.

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

Even if you're not a fashionista,

you've probably heard of Gianni Versace.

Not only because of his work as one of the world's

most beloved fashion designers,

but also because of his shocking death.

Versace was cut down in his prime in broad daylight

in a trendy Miami neighborhood teeming with tourists.

What you may not know is that Gianni Versace

was just one victim of a troubled young man

whose murderous rampage had people living in fear

from coast to coast in the spring and summer of 1997.

Here's how it really happened.

♪♪

Gianni Versace was it.

Velez-Mitchell: I mean, he was the perfect meld

of celebrity and fashion.

He came on the scene like a meteor, like a nova.

The clothes were very sexy, very revealing.

He brought sex back to fashion.

And he was associated with the biggest names in the news.

Ball: He was friends with Princess Diana,

who was the ultimate trophy celebrity of the 1990s.

He was friends with Madonna, who really turned to Versace

to remake her look at a certain point.

Velez-Mitchell: Everyone from Cher, Elton John, Calvin Klein.

Ball: He was friends with Sylvester Stallone,

with Cindy Crawford.

He hung out with them.

He put them in the front rows of his fashion shows.

He dressed them.

He really was the celebrity designer of the 1990s.

Gianni Versace came from the poorest area of Italy.

In the early '70s, about 1972,

he moved north, he moved to Milan,

which was really just emerging as a fashion capital.

From there, he embarked in the world and started to open

more boutiques, and his brand just really grew

exponentially from there.

He came to Miami in 1991 to open a second boutique,

and he fell in love with the city.

He bought this extraordinary place.

It was right on South Beach.

Woman: They call it the crown jewel of Miami Beach,

Casa Casuarina.

A 23,000 square feet palace with 10 bedrooms,

11 baths, including one custom made suite for Madonna.

Velez-Mitchell: It was truly spectacular,

and the notable thing,

it's right there on the main drag in South beach.

Solomon: Versace decided to live right in the middle

of Ocean Drive.

He was at the epicenter of everything.

He felt secure enough in this community,

he would walk up and down Ocean Drive on a regular basis,

without escorts, without body guards.

We mentioned that a couple of times about not having security,

bodyguards or anything like that.

But Gianni wanted to be with the people.

His family was not pleased at all.

Velez-Mitchell: Donatella and other relatives

were telling Gianni, "Watch out. You're too exposed.

You're too out in the open. Anybody can target you."

But he wasn't afraid.

Velez-Mitchell: Poor Gianni Versace probably has

no idea that there's this mad man on a cross country

killing spree, and they are on a collision course

and nobody has any idea where this guy is.

♪♪

Cossack: We're looking at the mysterious murder of

Chicago real estate mogul, Lee Miglin.

Cronin: Lee Miglin was a very, very rich man in Chicago.

He and his partner had a real estate management team.

Lee was a very prominent Chicagoan.

People knew Marilyn and Lee Miglin

for many years on Oak Street.

Man: With Lee Miglin's encouragement,

Marilyn was inspired to found

her own successful cosmetic company.

She had just come back from doing one of her

Home Shopping events in Canada, and was surprised

when Lee wasn't at the airport to pick her up

because he always picked her up personally.

So she ended up going in a cab and going home.

Martin: First of all, their front gate isn't locked.

That strikes her as a little odd.

Apparently it always it.

The front window curtains are pulled closed,

which was also unusual.

But when she got into the apartment, it was apparent

that somebody other than her husband had been there.

Zwecker: She knew something was wrong.

Reporter: Police found the murdered Miglin

in a pool of blood.

We are treating this case as a homicide,

and the investigation is under way.

Fortunately, it was the police, and not Marilyn,

that discovered the body.

It was torture, plain and simple.

His head was fully wrapped in masking tape.

His head was almost completely severed with a garden saw.

Just for good measure, he then throws two cement bags

on top of his victim's body

and he breaks every rib in his body.

It was like something out of a horror movie.

And then the killer stays in the house, shaves, takes a bath,

eats a ham sandwich, leaves all these clues behind.

There was some dirty dishes, which was unlike her husband,

and there was also some beard stubble

from an electric razor in a bathroom

which is unlike her husband apparently.

That level of comfort does not exist in random burglaries

where they want to get in and get out immediately.

There was a very close neighbor of the Miglins

who saw Lee Miglin out in the alley the night before

he was murdered with a young man.

Here's the million dollar question about

the Miglin murder.

Jordan: Did they know each other?

Was there any kind of prior relationship?

I mean, this man had no enemies.

Graves: The Miglin family and the police have always said

that this was a random act of violence.

Zwecker: Yeah, the line "random act of violence"

became sort of the buzzword

for the entire connection involving Lee Miglin.

If that was a random act of violence, I'm George Clooney.

And my apologies to George Clooney.

There was nothing random about that.

It became what we call in law enforcement,

"a heater case."

Because the governor's office calls, the mayor's office calls,

even the cardinal's office calls, "How's this going?"

A couple of days after the Miglin murder,

a crucial clue turned up, a red jeep parked

around the corner from Lee Miglin's home.

Chicago Police realize from tips

that this jeep has parking tickets on it.

It's nearby. It's suspicious.

People said it had been parked there

and that nobody had claimed it.

And so they ran the plate, and that's when they tracked it

back to a murder vehicle in Minnesota.

The Chicago Police Department today announced

a warrant for the arrest of Andrew Cunanan

in connection with the Miglin murder.

King: Everyone was asking, "Who is Andrew Cunanan?"

Fleissner: This is a really bad person.

♪♪

Versace: Miami is cool.

Miami is a place where you can be yourself.

It's simple, beautiful, the weather's fantastic.

I'm very serene there.

Ball: In July, 1997, Gianni Versace was in Paris.

He was planning and organizing his last couture show.

So when he finished his show, he was really looking forward

to having a couple of weeks of rest in Miami.

He liked to be outside. He liked to be in crowds.

The interaction was nothing more than a wave and a hello.

He just had a very good time.

He had no clue, no idea that a psycho is tracking him down

and about to kill him.

Reporter: A nationwide manhunt is on for a California man,

wanted for murder in Minnesota,

and now suspected in the slaying of a Chicago real estate mogul.

King: Everyone was asking, "Who is Andrew Cunanan?"

If you think about all the people that you've met

in your life, that you've shaken hands with and talked to,

and you've been like, "This is a really bad person."

It doesn't happen very often.

Maybe two times in your life, maybe three?

I definitely felt that from Andrew right from the beginning.

The one thing that everyone seems to agree with about

Andrew Cunanan is that he was an incredibly accomplished phony

and a fake and a narcissist.

Velez-Mitchell: He wanted everything that comes to people

who work hard without working hard.

The best cars, the best homes, the greatest parties,

the fabulous dinners at the best restaurants,

but he didn't want to do a day of work.

Fleissner: He always had money.

We wondered, you know, how does he have money?

Why does he have money?

First we were like, maybe he's independently wealthy.

Maybe he was selling drugs.

Maybe he's a kept man.

White: His mother is the one that actually originally said

that he was a high class homosexual prostitute.

I never knew him as a gigolo.

He was very articulate, very knowledgeable

in fine wines, clothes.

Velez-Mitchell: Here with a guy who was very smart

and very educated.

That's why he was able to get these wealthy sugar daddies,

because he read books, he researched his sugar daddies,

what their interests were,

and then he would become an expert in that subject.

Like, something out of a film noir.

I never heard the word "gigolo",

just that he was jet setting around

and had an elaborate lifestyle.

King: Did you wonder how he got the money

to have that lifestyle?

Johnson: Yes, I often, you know, questioned it.

Andrew Cunanan always had his eye on the big prize,

a wealthy patron or benefactor.

Now, there are rumors that he actually met

Gianni Versace back in 1991.

We interviewed two people in San Francisco that say that

Cunanan and Versace were seen together at a club.

Gruenwald: Apparently Versace was in San Francisco

designing costumes for the San Francisco Opera,

and Cunanan told me that when he met Versace,

he said, "Yeah, right, you're Versace,

and I'm Coco Chanel, nice to meet you."

He is probably thinking, "Gianni Versace really likes me.

He's paying attention to me.

He's going to be my next great patron."

And of course, this is all a fantasy in his mind.

♪♪

He grew up in a relatively modest, even poor family.

An Italian mother, a Filipino father,

who had a terribly dysfunctional marriage.

He was the youngest of four children,

and absolutely everyone agrees spoiled.

Cunanan: A spoiled kid never hears the word "no" too often.

I used to think to myself, "Well, one day

he's going to have to deal with hearing the word no."

You know, but he was so intelligent

that I think if he would have applied himself,

he could have done anything that he wanted.

Allegedly he scored a 145 on his IQ test,

and that was enough to get him

into a very prestigious prep school.

Reporter: Cunanan attended the Bishop's School in La Jolla.

Jordan: Where he could commute to school,

hobnob and rub shoulders with the rich and famous kids,

learn from them, study their ways,

be able to speak their language,

and then go home where no one was possibly

going to ever see the little house that he lived in.

That's key, because then he saw how the other half lived.

And he said, "Uh-huh, I've seen both sides of the tracks,

and I know which side of the tracks I want to live on.

The rich side."

Except he wasn't from a rich family.

He began lying.

Klaidman: There does seem to be a lot of evidence that

Andrew Cunanan was someone who felt tremendous insecurities,

and had some kind of a compunction

to tell tall tales about himself.

Whitmore: Andrew had told me that he held dual citizenship

in Israel and the United States,

and had served in the Israeli Army.

White: He told us that he was from the Philippines

and his family had money from a sugar business

or sugar refinery there.

Horne: He told me that his father was a big-time

businessman and had set him up with a business making

pre-fabricated sets for Hollywood.

He told me he went to Yale and that he was an heir to

the Scripps newspaper fortune.

Cunanan: He always had a taste for the finer things in life.

So maybe he fabricated these stories

so that he could fit in better.

Everyone describes Andrew as being obviously gay.

For his family, even though it was as clear as day

to every around them, they wouldn't believe it.

King: Are you saying he was not gay?

By the way, it's no sin to be gay.

No.

You're saying he was not.

He was not. I knew the kid.

I knew him.

I knew his dates when he was in high school.

Junior, senior prom,

I had to caution him on several occasions.

and in no uncertain terms, "Don't get that girl pregnant,

you're going to be in trouble."

I was surprised because Andrew never admitted it openly,

and I wanted him to know that I loved him

regardless if he was an it or a she or a he or what.

I gave birth to him.

Jordan: In his high school year book,

not only was he voted most likely to be remembered,

but he chose under his own photo,

a famous quote from Louie XIV.

"Apres moi, le deluge."

Velez-Mitchell: "After me, the storm."

He was really predicting that he would go down in history,

that he would achieve something.

He really was a person of two faces.

He was unraveling on drugs.

He was deeper and deeper into this very rough pornography.

Velez-Mitchell: Andrew Cunanan is coming apart at the seams.

You know, you have to really break a barrier every day.

Fashion to me, born and die every day.

It's really tragic when you look at it

that there seem to be parallel paths.

Gianni Versace, rising in the world,

achieving more and more,

becoming a celebrity in his own right,

and this Andrew Cunanan, at the same time almost

living a parallel life, but it's all fantasy.

♪♪

Fleissner: Jeff was a Midwest guy.

Super warm, friendly, outgoing, and a very genuine person.

So he was like a brother to us.

There were a few people that he hung out with regularly

that were good friends of his,

and one of them was Andrew Cunanan.

Whitmore: They were inseparable. I mean, when they were in the --

King: Not lovers but friends, or both?

As far as I know, they never went out

with each other sexually.

But they were close friends?

Very close friends.

Orth: Jeff Trail had come to San Diego

as a young Annapolis graduate in the Navy,

and he was just coming out as a homosexual.

And Andrew was the bon vivant in all the clubs,

and he introduced Jeff and set him up and took him around.

Fleissner: Andrew wasn't ever mean to Jeff.

He tried to be controlling of Jeff.

If Jeff was in the room, Andrew wanted

his full attention the whole time that he was around.

"Look at me, look at me, look what I'm doing."

He was just a braggart.

He was, you know, just a total --

he was a total asshole.

Whitmore: He wanted to be everybody's friend.

He would come up, and he'd buy 6, 10 drinks, for people,

you know, a lot of times for people he didn't even know.

With his sort of more down to earth buddies,

he's buying drinks and playing the big shot.

Then he's got a whole different persona for the sugar daddies.

He's this high society, affected guy

who's quoting this, that, and the other

from books he's read.

For a while, he was supported by a very wealthy man in

La Jolla who took him around to Europe with him, et cetera.

So this sugar daddy gives Andrew Cunanan

all that he wants.

You know, gives him a luxury car to drive.

A $2,500 monthly allowance.

He really was a person of two faces.

He simply had a life by day and a life by night.

Then, in 1995, something very unexpected happened

in Andrew Cunanan's life.

He fell in love.

Velez-Mitchell: David Madsen was this good-looking,

clean cut guy, just a poster boy.

Orth: Andrew met him, he picked him up actually

when David was on a business trip in San Francisco.

Hovland: Andrew probably saw the same thing

that everybody did in David.

David had a charisma about him.

David's eyes were beautiful blue.

He had an aura about him, a big personality.

His laugh was contagious. [ Chuckles ]

People just loved being around David.

Velez-Mitchell: David Madsen was intrigued by Andrew Cunanan.

Andrew Cunanan was mysterious

and was living this glamorous life,

but David could never quite figure out what was going on.

Benning: He told me about Andrew Cunanan keeps calling him

and pursuing him, and that he wanted nothing to do with him.

He says, "I think he's into something shady, Dianne."

Orth: He was known as this sort of happy go lucky,

sort of gay social director of the gay community in San Diego.

But there were darker sides to him.

He is alleged to be a drug dealer.

He's alleged to have also been into crack himself,

and S&M pornography and S&M sadistic sex.

Velez-Mitchell: For a while, things were going great

with Andrew, but there was a point in 1996

where everything started going to hell in a hand basket.

Andrew was, you know, trying to establish this relationship

with David and sort of all falls apart.

He wasn't paying his bills.

He had tons of debt on credit cards.

He was in major depression. He wasn't himself.

He let his weight get out of control.

Fleissner: The last time I saw him, it was a barbecue.

Everyone's in T-shirts, flip-flops, and shorts,

and Andrew walks in his three piece suit.

I hadn't seen him for a couple months, and I just said,

"Andrew, oh, my God, you look so fat.

What happened to you?"

Velez-Mitchell: His con jobs weren't working anymore.

His sugar daddy was getting tired of his demands

for more, more, more.

So sugar daddy said bye-bye.

At the same time, the love of his life,

the man he really wanted to be with

was getting sick and tired of the lies and the mystery.

So David Madsen also said, "Hmm, not so much."

Navarro: After the string of really bad news,

it gets even more.

His friend Jeff Trail says to him, "I'm leaving.

I'm moving to Minneapolis."

I vaguely remember him saying something that he was upset

that Jeff was leaving town.

And he was just -- he wasn't happy with Jeff's decision.

This was a double rejection for Cunanan,

losing his best friend

and the man that he really wanted to be with.

Orth: His whole facade was crumbling.

He became filled with rage,

and he was going to get back at those people who had used him,

he thought, because he was always paying for the drinks

and hanging out in the bars and taking care of everybody,

and what were they doing for him?

In April 1997, Andrew Cunanan makes a life-altering decision.

He buys a ticket to Minneapolis, a one-way ticket,

first class, of course.

Apparently, he told friends in San Diego

that he was going to Minneapolis to visit David Madsen.

Graves: He also said, "Hey, coincidentally,

while I'm there, I'm going to see my buddy Jeff Trail."

Fleissner: Jeff said, "When he comes up this weekend,

I'm going to tell him that I don't want him

to come visit me anymore,

I don't want him to be around anymore."

And I said, "You're actually going to do that?"

And he said, "Yeah, I'm gonna do that."

He told Madsen and Trail he was just coming for a weekend visit.

Velez-Mitchell: A weekend visit? That's one way of putting it.

What could go wrong?

Graves: Things became very violent very quickly.

He could have just stopped there and been like,

"Holy shit, what did I just do?"

Why should people care about fashion?

Even if the people who say they don't care,

they care, I promise you.

Into fashion, you can find beauty, quality, life.

I think some puts color to our life.

Welcome back to "How It Really Happened."

By the early 1990s,

Gianni Versace was almost as famous as his A-list clientele.

When he wasn't working, Versace, oh, he was playing,

often at his mansion in Miami's South Beach.

He felt safe walking among the crowds, a man of the people.

Gianni Versace could not have know that a deeply troubled man

had set out on a cross country killing spree.

Their worlds were about to collide,

but only one of them knew it.

Graves: Andrew Cunanan had come to Minneapolis that Friday,

had flown in on a one-way ticket.

He mentioned in San Diego that he needed to go to

Minneapolis to take care of business.

We believe Andrew Cunanan made a call to Jeffrey Trail

based on some voicemail times.

No one knows what the call was, why they wanted to get together,

why Andrew wanted to see Jeff.

Jeff Trail tells his boyfriend,

"I'll meet up with you guys later,"

and heads over to see Andrew Cunanan

at David Madsen's apartment.

Graves: By 9:45, Jeffrey Trail had buzzed into the apartment,

and things became very violent very quickly.

Velez-Mitchell: We don't know what exactly happened

behind closed doors.

We do know there was an argument,

and neighbors heard shouting and something like,

"Get the 'bleep' out."

Jordan: My theory is Jeffrey Trail got in

Andrew's face, as only a friend could do

and called him out on all of his lies,

all of his B.S.

"I can't believe you came here, you're not welcome here.

I moved here," I think he probably said,

"To get away from you."

♪♪

He kills Jeff Trail with a claw hammer?

Yeah, very brutally. 23 blows to the face.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

There was blood on the walls outside the apartment,

inside the apartment.

He rolled up his body in a rug.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

Jeffrey Trail's watch is frozen in time.

The face is busted at,

I believe it was 9:52 and 44 seconds.

He could have just stopped there, and been like,

"Holy shit, what did I just do?"

You know, "I just killed my best friend, one of my best friends,"

and just stopped right there.

He didn't.

Hovland: I really don't think he was even

in the apartment when it happened,

and probably just walked into a pretty horrific crime scene.

If Madsen walked in and there's Trail

dead on the floor with Cunanan holding a hammer,

Madsen is the loser in this game.

There's no way to exit the situation

and leave Madsen alive.

And I think it took him a day or two to figure that out,

and he decided that would be the plan.

♪♪

[ Gunshot ]

Reporter: David Madsen, a 33-year-old architect,

is found dead in a lake near Minneapolis.

He was found towards I guess Friday night

or Saturday morning, early by a fisherman,

and he had been, you know, shot to death.

Graves: Once between the shoulder blades,

once a grazing wound on his face, and once in the eye.

Hovland: How terrifying that would have been for him

to be in that predicament,

to die in that way with this crazy person.

On checking personal property left behind

at David Madsen's apartment, we found a bag, Cunanan's bag.

In the bag, had an address book, had his driver's license.

We're sure it's Andrew Cunanan,

and we're sure he's fled the state.

That was truly the point of no return,

where he realized, "I'm on the lam.

I'm going to take Madsen's jeep, and I'm going to start driving."

And the real question is, "Where do I go now?"

Andrew Cunanan ends up in a very fancy neighborhood

of Chicago called Gold Coast, and it's in Gold Coast

where he crosses paths with a wealthy, wealthy guy.

Jordan: And of course his third victim, Lee Miglin,

is the biggest question mark of all.

I believe he had been in that house before.

Of course the Miglin family denies ever having any

associations with Andrew Cunanan,

but from a criminology perspective,

he was much too familiar with that house.

[ Heart beating ]

Then after killing Lee Miglin,

he takes his green Lexus and heads east.

Tracking cellphone calls from Miglin's stolen Lexus,

police thought they had cornered Cunanan

near Philadelphia last Friday,

but he managed to elude them again.

There is a media report, a radio report, as I recall,

with a state police captain that basically says,

"Hey, we're tracking serial killer Andrew Cunanan,"

and that goes on the air.

Man: Be on the lookout for a 187 suspect.

Suspect is an Andrew Phillip Cunanan.

The suspect is believed to be extremely dangerous and armed.

Graves: Andrew Cunanan happens to hear that,

presumably gets mad,

tries to rip out the phone, disables the phone.

He's freaking out.

He's trying to break the antenna in two.

He's trying to ditch the car. He doesn't know what to do.

And he pulls into this remote civil war cemetery,

where William Reese is the caretaker.

Graves: We just had to wait to see what came next.

I heard two loud pops, "Pop, pop."

Jordan: In studying and talking to serial killers,

they do become numb over time.

By this time, he's killed three men in a number of days.

It's like, "I'm all in, what does it matter

if I kill one more person?"

Andrew Cunanan pulls the green Lexus up at

sort of the office area.

The cemetery caretaker is there.

His name is William Reese.

He marched him down the stairs into the basement,

stood him against a concrete wall and executed him.

Andrew Cunanan marches back up, takes William Reese's

red pickup truck, and is on the run again.

This is just a planned deal to kill someone

to steal his pickup truck.

Just a heartless act.

Chambliss: That seems to be the signature

that this man leaves behind.

He takes the car of the last victim

and leaves it at the site of the next alleged victim.

Graves: He heads south, and then nobody hears from him.

I mean, everything is cold.

We just had to wait to see what came next.

I believe he kept thinking, planning, like,

a theatrical production, "How is this gonna go down?

Am I gonna go out in a blaze of glory?"

Urness: We're looking at a week, two weeks after his

last known place was Pennsville, New Jersey.

What happened? Where is he?

Where is he going?

Andrew Cunanan went to South Carolina,

went into a parking lot,

took the plates off of the pickup truck,

obviously to avoid detection by law enforcement,

slaps on a South Carolina plate, and then heads south.

♪♪

[ Heart beating ]

Andrew Cunanan registers under an alias

at the Normandy Plaza.

It's the type of hotel that you would go to if you didn't have

a lot of money but you wanted to be close to the beach.

This was no Fontainebleau.

June 12th, a month to the day that Andrew arrives in Miami,

he's made the FBI's Most Wanted list.

The FBI as well as all of the local authority

believe that he is one of the most wanted people

in this country today.

He was also on "America's Most Wanted"

the TV show, twice, and I remember one of his roommates

really giving some insight into his personality.

Man: Ferris Bueller in real life.

He can get away with anything, everyone loves him.

He's bigger than life.

And that's how he attracts everybody to him.

The hottest call we had was from a Miami Beach sub shop.

A kid that worked there, he called 911,

and said, "Have a guy here that's ordering food,

and I know I saw him on 'America's Most Wanted.'"

The 911 operator tried to get as much information as possible.

They missed Cunanan by five minutes.

Your sister helps you run the company, Donatella.

She does. She does a lot.

She's kind of first criticism to me.

We have a great relationship.

She's my friend. She's my first customers.

♪♪

Ball: So in the very early morning of July 15th,

he awoke at about 3:00 a.m., which is 9:00 a.m. in Milan,

and he was thinking right away of the fashion show

that Donatella was organizing in Rome.

So he started calling his sister,

and was starting to give her orders

and pepper her with questions

and really interrogate her about how that show was going.

Then he went back to sleep.

Gianni Versace was known for paying attention

to every detail in every show.

Ball: He woke again at about 8:00,

called Donatella a couple more times,

and finally she just wouldn't take his call.

She just put the phone down. So he got up.

He decided to go, as he did most mornings,

and take a walk down to the News Cafe.

Velez-Mitchell: Everybody knows the News Cafe in South Beach.

It's like the place to go.

And Gianni Versace would go there in the morning

and get coffee and get magazines and stroll back.

It was very public.

Ball: Antonio D'Amico, Gianni's boyfriend, came down

after Gianni had already left the house.

He came down, he had an early tennis date with Lazaro,

a friend of theirs who lived in Miami.

Antonio needed someone to play tennis every time

they came in to town.

So I went inside, and I stood by Antonio,

and he's sitting at the end of the table.

After grabbing his newspaper and magazines, Gianni Versace

made it back down here to his mansion four blocks away.

Velez-Mitchell: Here's this famous man, who's loved

by everybody, just going about his life, planning shows,

waking up in the morning in South Beach,

going to get coffee and magazines,

just living his life, enjoying his life.

Mr. Versace was walking back from the News Cafe,

and as he's walking up the steps to his house...

Orth: He passed a woman who's just taken her child to school,

and they kind of smile at each other.

He's up leaning over to unlock the big iron gate,

and she turns around to look one more time

just to sort of glance at Versace,

and she sees this young man walking very quickly,

diagonally across the street, and all of a sudden,

he just sticks the gun out.

Bang, bang.

Antonio goes over to the window

that faces the entrance to the mansion.

And he yells, "No, no!"

[ Heart beating ]

Escobar: Most of the news organizations were in their

editorial meetings because it happened in the morning,

and someone from the assignment desk

comes into our meeting, opens the glass doors and says,

"There's a shooting in South beach."

Wow. This is going to be one of the biggest stories

to hit Miami in a long, long time.

I was out on the beach, um, relaxing,

and I heard two loud pops.

Pop, pop.

He was laying right on the steps.

It looked like an execution style.

One shot to the head.

Miami Beach Police are looking for the man

who walked up to fashion designer,

Gianni Versace this morning

and shot him twice in the back of the head.

Gianni was just laying there.

So I grabbed him, and I felt to see if he was breathing,

but there was nothing.

It was not a survivable injury,

and indeed, he had no evidence of neurologic function.

He was brain dead.

Velez-Mitchell: It was such a shock.

The idea of a celebrity being gunned down in broad daylight,

executed on their front steps was just unthinkable.

Witnesses say, "The man who fatally shot

Gianni Versace ran down an alley

and disappeared into a nearby parking garage."

Navarro: He ran into the garage.

He ran up to where the red pickup truck was

with all his belongings in it.

He changed clothes.

He threw all his hot, sweaty clothes on a pile on the floor.

Here's a guy that kept that red pickup truck

for a couple of months.

Here's a guy that left his passport

and a check with his name in that pickup truck.

So now we know it's Andrew Cunanan.

Miami Beach Police investigators in cooperation with agents

of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement

are currently looking for Andrew Phillip Cunanan

as a suspect in the murder of Gianni Versace.

Williams: Where is Andrew Cunanan?

That was the question that hung heavy over all of Miami Beach,

a place that was on edge.

I had never seen a manhunt like that in my career.

We hope that he's still within the state of Florida.

We hope. But that's not a fact right now.

There was a whole segment of the newsroom who believed

he left Miami a long time ago, and he's probably

in Mexico somewhere or Cuba, or you know, who knows.

♪♪

The family had Gianni's body cremated immediately after

his murder in Miami, but they wanted to return to Milan

to have a really extraordinary funeral for him.

Donatella Versace had told her assistant,

"They shot Gianni like a stray dog.

I want to have a funeral fit for a prince for him."

♪♪

♪ Oh, the Lord's my shepherd ♪

♪♪

Gianni's funeral was an A-list affair.

There was Princess Diana, who was comforting

Elton John, who was distraught at the death of his friend.

There was Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfeld,

Sting and his wife, Naomi Campbell.

Everyone was there, and they were all in shock.

And of course, Andrew Cunanan is still in hiding somewhere,

probably watching all the coverage of it on TV,

knowing that he made all of it happen

and loving the power of that.

♪♪

Reporter: The latest on the manhunt for

the alleged killer of Gianni Versace

and four other men.

Possibility a man involved in gunfire

at a Miami Beach houseboat

might be that most wanted suspect, Andrew Cunanan.

King: Authorities closed in on a houseboat on Miami Beach.

We get a call into the newsroom that there is police activity

on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach.

That's a very quiet area.

Very little crime in that area.

There's a caretaker that comes to check

on the houseboat for the owner.

Escobar: The caretaker sees

that the lock to the houseboat has been broken,

and he steps in to see what's going on,

and that's when he hears a gunshot

and gets his son to call 911.

Reports began coming out, and we could see that police

were converging on a houseboat on Miami Beach.

Reporter: The houseboat is located only two and a half

miles from the spot where Versace was gunned down

last week in front of his oceanfront villa.

Jordan: I think everyone remembers watching it

live on 24-hour news.

The helicopters over the houseboat,

and John Walsh pulling up in his limousine and waving.

It was theater, and sick as it is,

it's exactly what Andrew Cunanan wanted.

King: Mary Anne, did you watch the scene at the boat?

Mary Ann: I was in the Miramar Lodge,

kept there by the FBI,

and I was not supposed to leave my room.

And I was watching the TV, and I was waiting.

Escobar: There was a S.W.A.T. team,

major, major police presence.

Navarro: Right before the S.W.A.T. team went in,

they threw I believe five rounds of tear gas.

And then they made entry.

Penelas: After the police stormed the home,

the first attempt was to bring the suspect out.

King: Elana, did you try to reach Andrew?

We did have a spokesperson for us.

We prepared a plea.

But apparently he didn't hear it.

Reporter: They have been telling us all night,

they're going to tell us something in 10 minutes.

That was two hours ago.

Then they said they're having a press conference at 10:00.

We were here waiting for that. It did not happen.

They made entry, and they found a body

deceased in the upstairs bedroom.

They find Andrew Cunanan dead from a single gunshot wound.

Navarro: Big sigh of relief.

We fingerprinted the corpse and identified him

as Andrew Cunanan for sure.

We think he was out of money.

He didn't have a stolen vehicle.

He may have been out of ammunition.

Obviously it has turned out to be his last stand.

Velez-Mitchell: When somebody actually came to check on

the houseboat and just made a little noise,

he knew it was over, and that person heard a gunshot,

and that was Cunanan blowing his brains out, end of story.

At 6:30 a.m. this morning,

the body of Andrew Cunanan was removed from the scene

and delivered to the office

of the Dade County Medical Examiner.

The medical examiner has confirmed that he has died

of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

We'll never know what motivated Andrew Cunanan to kill,

but certainly we know now that he'll never kill again.

I'm frustrated that we couldn't have a sit-down

after he was caught.

Like reading a book and stopping in the middle

and not knowing how it ended.

This is the picture we had on our dart board

in the fugitive task force office

for 79 days of Andrew Cunanan.

It's got just a few holes in it.

Fleissner: The whole thing is just a tragedy.

He decided to make himself a name and be this,

you know, splashy killer of all these people,

and once again, had no interest in the people

that he was killing or the people

that were left behind that loved these people that were killed.

That's Andrew's whole story,

is that he just basically was all about Andrew.

It was the Andrew story.

More than 20 years after Gianni Versace

was gunned down on the steps of his Miami mansion,

the beloved designer's legacy lives on.

The business he built into a global fashion empire

continues to thrive with his family still at the helm.

As for Andrew Cunanan, we reached out to his family

for an interview, and they declined.

But one of his sisters told us that her children

don't know anything about their infamous uncle.

I'm Hill Harper. Thanks for joining us.

Good night.