On the morning of July 15, 1997, legendary fashion mogul Gianni Versace was walking back to his Miami mansion from a coffee run when he was shot twice in the back of the head by spree killer Andrew Cunanan (via Time). He was 50 years old. According to Vanity Fair, 27-year-old Cunanan claimed to have met the fashion icon in 1990 and bragged that the two were friends.
Versace's family denied these claims and law enforcement was unable to determine why Versace was targeted. "I don't know that we are ever going to know the answers," Miami Beach Police Chief Richard Barreto said at the time, per CNN. The name behind the iconic fashion brand was the last victim of Cunanan's cross-country murder spree, which claimed the lives of five men. Six days after Versace's murder, Cunanan's body was found on a Miami houseboat, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound (via CNN).
In 2018, the Ryan Murphy-produced "The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story" hit the airwaves, and Versace's family was not pleased. "The Versace family has neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming TV series about the death of Mr. Gianni Versace," their statement read (via Vanity Fair). "Since Versace did not authorize the book on which it is partly based nor has it taken part in the writing of the screenplay, this TV series should only be considered as a work of fiction."
newsoholic Time to become News Oholic!
