The Versace Killing Spree, 1997
Today's crime of the century was just horrible. It was all over the news - one, because the killer was gay, two, because the victim was a famous fashion designer and three, because he started killing everyone in his path. Can you imagine if someone tried killing Christian Dior, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein or Giorgio Armani today.
While the article by TIME (below) gives insight into the crime, you can also go here to read the drama as it unfolded during those awful three months in 1997.
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Dismissed by his mother as a "high class male prostitute" and defended
by his father as an "altar boy," Andrew Cunanan is indelibly cast in
popular memory as the drug-using gay spree killer with AIDS, even though
no one is certain what drugs he was on, if any, during his murderous
three month rampage in 1997 or even if he had been properly tested for
HIV before or after his death. Starting out in California, he would kill
five people in all: two former lovers, both in Minnesota; a rich man in
Chicago from whom he stole a Lexus; a cemetery caretaker in New Jersey,
from whom he took a pick-up truck, fearing that police were on to the
Lexus; and, most infamously, he killed the glitzy fashion designer
Gianni Versace in Miami. Cunanan, 27, finally killed himself in an
unoccupied houseboat not two miles away from the scene of his last
crime. From what is known of him, he liked to embellish his biography,
loved to spend money he did not have and learned to deal drugs. He was
fueled by envy, obsessed with status and fame. That, combined with the
realization that his looks were failing — and thus his marketability to
rich gay men — may have led to a panic. But only Cunanan knew for
certain what his motives were. The high life can produce very low forms
of existence.
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TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog. Hope you enjoy.
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To read the previous 20 crimes - click my logo below.
