Original subtitles

- Gianni Versace, the fashion icon, has been shot.

Our suspect is responsible for four other homicides.

- In Minneapolis, a person had been

beaten to death with a hammer.

- The face was obliterated.

Investigators were not able to determine who's lying there.

- The homicide in Chicago was incredibly vicious.

The victim has been stabbed over 20 times

with a screwdriver.

He is almost decapitated.

- The suspect was involved in drugs.

He used people to get money.

He liked to prey on older gay men.

- We're missing someone, and we have four bodies.

This is not good.

- He's armed and dangerous.

- We know he's going to strike again.

Where's he going?

What's going to happen?

- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.

Drug busts,

mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

- Get down! Get down!

- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it.

- Freeze! - FBI.

- FBI! - Action!

- But they don't know the half of it.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking agent-to-agent.

This is "FBI True."

- Hey, there she is.

Hey. How are you?

Good to see you. - How are you?

- Nice to meet you.

- Peter Ahearn is a 29-year veteran of the FBI.

He investigated violent crimes, public corruption,

and terrorism.

- I'm so excited to talk about this case with you.

- We're looking forward to it.

- Michael Band is a former chief assistant state attorney

for Miami-Dade who worked on some

of the city's most high-profile homicide

and public corruption cases.

- So Pete, this case starts with a murder in Minneapolis.

How did you hear about it?

- Kristy Kottis is a 24-year veteran of the FBI.

She worked gangs, crimes against children, as well

as human and drug trafficking.

- It was late April of '97.

At the time I was in San Diego, California,

as the assistant special agent in charge,

and we first heard about this when a lead came

in from the Minneapolis division of the FBI

to make contact with the San Diego Police Department

on a 619 area code phone number that they had picked

up in the investigation.

The crime scene was an apartment in Minneapolis.

On the landline phone, investigators find

a 619 number on the caller ID.

Down in our area, the PD is running

the phone number to see, what's that connection?

We were told, you know, by Minneapolis that it

was a pretty brutal murder.

A person had been beaten to death with a hammer.

- The homicide was incredibly violent, over-the-top.

And when I say over-the-top, 27 blows

is obviously far more than one might need to dispatch someone.

This was indicative of an individual who

had an issue with the victim.

- It was a personal thing.

And he was wrapped up in a rug,

it looked like, for potential disposal.

- What are we learning about the victim at this point?

- The Minneapolis team up there identified this individual

eventually, because it was pretty hard to do,

as not the owner of the apartment but an individual

by the name of Jeff Trail.

He was former military.

He had lived in San Diego, was assigned,

you know, down there with the U.S. Navy.

The owner of the apartment was a individual named Madson.

- Madson was working in Minneapolis,

had a master's in architecture.

- Madson and Trail were friends and were

part of the gay community, but he's nowhere to be found,

and that assumption would be that he could

be the person of interest.

- They soon discover Madson's red Jeep

is not at the scene.

It's missing.

Days later, a fisherman finds a body.

The victim had been shot three times

in the back, head, and face.

He also had a defensive wound on his hand.

Being shot in the face is indicative of an anger

situation, probably someone who knows someone.

It's complicated, though, because we discover

that body is Madson, individual law

enforcement is looking for.

The lead potential suspect in the Trail murder is dead.

He's been shot.

Law enforcement says, OK, there's somebody else involved.

Somebody else is out there, and we have two bodies.

This is not good.

- So the 619 phone number

that was found in Madson's apartment

has now been sent to San Diego.

What do we get from that?

- San Diego Police Department traced the number

to an apartment landline and interview

the tenant, a man named Erik.

Right away Erik says, no, no, I have no involvement,

but I think it could be my roommate, Andrew Cunanan.

And I knew Andrew Cunanan had left the apartment

and said he was going up to Minneapolis

to see friends of his that he knew at the time

to be Madson and Trail.

And Andrew had said, I'm leaving

to go up there because I have some business to do.

- Do they have anything in Madson's

apartment to connect Cunanan outside of the phone number?

- Cunanan's bag is discovered in the apartment,

and within the bag is a box

of Golden Saber .40-caliber ammunition.

But there's no gun, which would give them pause.

Why isn't there a gun here?

There should be a gun here.

They discover that Trail did own a weapon.

He owned a .40-caliber Taurus semiautomatic weapon

that was missing from the apartment.

- Madson was killed with a .40-caliber weapon,

so investigators are starting to think that Andrew

Cunanan stole Jeff Trail's gun and used

it to kill David Madson.

- At this point of the investigation,

you have two people connected to Cunanan.

They know him.

There was the suggestion that Cunanan had a relationship

with the folks in Minnesota, a romantic one with Madson that

apparently had run its course, but Cunanan didn't want

it to end, and he was angry.

Could this be a romantic triangle issue,

a love affair gone wrong?

We don't know.

- But clearly the suspect was shaping

up to be Andrew Cunanan.

A day later, there was a murder in Chicago.

At the time, it was not connected to anything.

It was a murder of an individual

by the name of Miglin.

He was a very rich individual, an elderly man

that turned up murdered in a townhouse in Chicago.

His wife had come home and actually found the body.

- The murder of Lee Miglin was horrific.

The body is discovered, feet and hands bound.

There is duct tape wrapped around his head

along with a plastic bag.

He's been stabbed over 20 times with a screwdriver.

And the final indignity is he had

been cut with a bow saw on the neck and almost decapitated.

This is incredibly vicious, angry.

There are items missing from his home.

Money, approximately $2,000 in cash, credit cards,

and gold coins are also missing.

- Days go by and they find a car down the road

with parking tickets on it.

They make a connection by calling

Minneapolis to run the tags, and the bells and whistles

go off.

That turns out to be the red Jeep that was owned by Madson.

They also knew that the car that Miglin owned was gone.

- We now have information that puts Cunanan potentially

at that crime scene.

- Correct, yeah.

- And now we have another missing vehicle.

- At that point it was not a full-fledged federal violation.

The FBI filed a unlawful flight to avoid prosecution,

and the full weight of the Bureau

starts to get involved at that point.

- So you're starting to develop a picture

from your interviews.

What are you learning?

- Well, you're talking to friends,

and a picture is emerging of his lifestyle.

He was involved in drugs.

He used people.

He used people to get money.

We found out, too, that he liked to prey on older gay men

because they had money, they had notoriety.

So he'd move in with one and be supported,

and that's how his lifestyle was financed.

He was very intelligent, highly intelligent,

manipulative like hell.

- So it seems like we're starting to see

a pattern here.

Jeff Trail and Madson are both openly gay.

Then we have Miglin.

Do we believe he's gay also?

- There doesn't seem to be any direct connection

between Lee Miglin and Cunanan, but we don't know.

- Time is going by, and we have a missing car again.

Now we have Miglin's Lexus.

The information is being put out nationwide on a BOLO.

- Because Miglin's car was equipped with a phone,

the phone sends out a signal and the Bureau was

able now to track the vehicle.

From Chicago, we start observing

that Cunanan is traveling east towards Philadelphia.

- The media is picking up on the fact

that the police are looking for this vehicle

that could belong to a killer.

And it gets out to the public, and we believe Cunanan

heard that on the radio.

And then a phone call comes in that there's

a body found in New Jersey.

The victim is a man named William Reese.

He was a caretaker for a VA cemetery.

- Single man in a single location,

secluded, shot with a .40-caliber weapon.

- And there's a vehicle found there too, a green Lexus.

- So we have Miglin's car, the Lexus,

in proximity to the homicide.

Mr. Reese had a pickup truck, which was missing.

This was a crime of opportunity.

Cunanan took the opportunity to shoot Mr. Reese,

take his vehicle, and head god knows where.

And the trail runs cold.

- Pretty clear he's dangerous.

- He's incredibly dangerous.

- He's A&D.

How would he react if he were stopped by law enforcement?

And that picture is developing that it will not end well.

- We know he's going to strike again.

This is a guy who's on a spree, at the end of his rope,

has little money as far as we can determine,

save what he has taken from people.

- The decision is made by Washington that there's

an opening on the top 10 list, and they put him on the list

after the Reese killing to make this a nationwide manhunt

and get that media push to get his photo out there.

But it's difficult for us to interpret Cunanan's next move.

He knew two of his victims.

We're not sure about the third,

and the fourth seems random.

There doesn't seem to be a pattern.

- After the murder of Reese, a couple of months

have passed by, and then something

momentous happens in Miami.

- I'm sitting in my office, the state attorney's office.

I get a call.

Gianni Versace,

the fashion icon, has been shot.

Shot on Miami Beach, literally on his doorstep.

- Michael, tell me about the scene.

- I arrived.

I'm there with my assistant.

I was the chief assistant state attorney

in charge of all the homicides in Miami-Dade County.

At that juncture, the body had been removed.

Some crime scene folks are still there.

There was evidence of blood on the ground.

There is a dead pigeon found on the steps.

Versace had been shot with a .40-caliber

weapon twice in the back of the head, much like a hit.

The assailant fired his rounds and then fled.

Versace had been a member of the Miami Beach community

for some time.

Casa Casuarina was his home on Ocean Drive.

Tourists would often stop by to take pictures.

It was a landmark.

Versace had a routine in the morning.

He'd get up, walk down the street to the News Cafe,

grab a coffee, grab all the papers

he enjoyed reading or magazines.

And it was upon his return to his home where he was shot.

- I saw Gianni Versace laying face down on his

steps with his head blown off.

- It wasn't random in the sense

that it seemed to be directed,

and it didn't appear to be a robbery.

Nothing was taken.

There wasn't, like, a stick-up, give me your money.

It was a deliberate shooting.

There was a host of theories.

Could it have been a disgruntled lover,

disgruntled former employee?

Could it have been over some business deal that went south?

Could it have been a hit because there was money owed,

or they're trying to send a message?

- People were saying, well, jeez, you found a dead pigeon.

You found Versace, an Italian.

Could this be a mob hit?

Because, historically, the mafia

would do something like that.

So when you found a bird next to a mob guy,

person might be construed as a stool pigeon.

You know, traitor to the mafia.

- But the dead pigeon was just a coincidence.

A bullet fired at Versace ricocheted

off the gate and hit the bird,

who just happened to be flying by.

- The notoriety of the killing

was not just a local story or even a national story.

It was an international story.

Versace was a larger-than-life individual,

and the media frenzy was something unseen.

It got tremendous publicity, which in some fashion

increased the pressure on law enforcement

to solve it, solve it quickly, get it done.

- Can you give me a description of the shooter?

What were you hearing?

- We heard initially that he was a youngish white male,

possibly Hispanic.

He appeared to be a little disheveled,

wasn't well-dressed, wasn't dressed

like a tourist or anything.

There were a few witnesses, one of whom

followed the assailant to the point

where the assailant turned around with the weapon,

backed the witness off.

But the witness was able to observe him

going into a parking garage.

- Police search the parking garage

and find a pile of clothes next to a red pickup truck.

Inside the truck, they find ID with the name Andrew Cunanan.

- Cunanan removed the plate from Reese's truck

and switched it with a South Carolina plate

so that if it had been stopped,

it wouldn't be connected.

But he can't change the VIN.

So we were able to connect that vehicle with the Reese homicide

in New Jersey, which then connected us to the Miglin

murder in Chicago, which connected us then to the two

murders in Minnesota.

We then learned that Cunanan had been in Miami Beach

without even trying to hide his whereabouts.

One of the gold coins that Cunanan took from Mr. Miglin

in Chicago was pawned on Miami Beach.

And traditionally what happens is the police

check all the pawns for a day, look at

whether or not there's a connection with any thefts

or anything like that.

In this case, the pawn officer didn't do that for a few days.

Cunanan, when he pawned the coin,

actually used his license.

He had put down a local address he was living at,

kind of a fleabag hotel.

Cops go to the hotel, pretty much establish,

yeah, he was living here, but he's not living here anymore.

He checked in four days after the homicide of Reese.

We reached out to the gay community to say,

hey, anybody seen this guy?

Anybody know this guy?

The media is alerted.

There's a picture of Cunanan put on local news.

- Police have already narrowed their search to just

one man, Andrew Cunanan.

The FBI thinks he's a serial killer.

- The next thing, I get a call from Sergeant George Navarro--

--who is the lead on the case.

And he says, there's this houseboat on Miami Beach.

Somebody heard a shot from inside.

We think we found him.

- Law enforcement arrived on the scene, surrounded it.

And Sergeant Navarro says the media's all over the place.

I said, send me a unit.

We drive to the scene, and they were getting ready

to send in the SWAT team.

- Send in the gas canisters.

See if anybody would come out.

- Back in San Diego, you know, we're hearing that.

And it's all over the news.

I remember watching SWAT teams surrounding the place.

- SWAT entered the houseboat.

Navarro and I board the houseboat.

We walk into the cabin.

And there's a guy on the bed,

a weapon on his side,

and a gun wound to his head.

I'm trying to focus on the face.

And it's a little bit distorted,

because it's a head wound.

But it looked like Andrew Cunanan.

The fingerprints match.

It's him.

Richie Barreto, Chief of the City of Miami Beach Police

Department, and I felt comfortable

we can make this announcement.

- Tonight, all across the nation,

our citizens can stand down and breathe a sigh of relief.

The reign of terror brought upon us by Andrew Cunanan

is over.

- But the case wasn't over with yet.

We had to analyze the gun,

compare the projectiles found in Minnesota,

in New Jersey, in Miami Beach to make sure

that that was the weapon used, which would tie

Cunanan to all the homicides.

And ultimately, we did that.

- Did they find a suicide note?

- There was no note found in the houseboat.

There was no indication why he did it, though one could

easily suspect the jig was up.

He had killed an international figure,

and there was nothing left for him to do.

We can only guess why Cunanan targeted Versace.

Versace was famous, rich, and beloved,

everything Cunanan wasn't.

Could it have been jealousy, obsession?

We'll never know.

- You look back at his background,

and in his high school yearbook, they voted him "most

likely to be remembered."

His personality possibly drove him to the Versace killing,

because it puts him on the front page.

- He was going to be remembered at this point.

Here we are still talking about the death of Gianni Versace.

The fascination remains without answers as to the why.

And as you combined celebrity,

a spree killer,

a suicide at the end,

people will be talking about this

long after we're gone.