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

Transcript

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

0:00
Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a
0:21
Speaker 1: story about a fashion icon, an icon named Gianni Versace,
0:25
Speaker 1: who outfitted some of the biggest celebrities on the planet, Madonna,
0:30
Speaker 1: Prince Sylvester Stallone, De me More, and too many to name.
0:34
Speaker 1: But this is also a story about a serial killer,
0:38
Speaker 1: about the mafia, about Gianni Versace's closest friends, Elton John
0:43
Speaker 1: and Princess Diana, and about living large, living like Louis
0:48
Speaker 1: the fourteenth Large, living like a rock star, while outfitting
0:51
Speaker 1: rock stars, rock stars who made great music. Unlike that
0:57
Speaker 1: music I played few at the top of the show.
1:00
Speaker 1: Wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my
1:05
Speaker 1: melotron called roland Ricky MK one. I played you that
1:10
Speaker 1: loop because I can't afford the rights to I'll Be
1:13
Speaker 1: Missing You by Puff Daddy and Faith Evans. And why
1:17
Speaker 1: would I play you that specific slice of illegally sampled cheese?
1:22
Speaker 1: Could I afford it? Because that was the number one
1:26
Speaker 1: song in America on July fifteenth, nineteen ninety seven, And
1:30
Speaker 1: that was the day that one of America's most wanted
1:33
Speaker 1: assassinated Gianni Versace in broad daylight on his own front steps.
1:39
Speaker 1: In Miami's South Beach. On this episode, a serial killer,
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Speaker 1: the Mafia Elton John, Princess Diana, and the strange deaths
1:49
Speaker 1: of fashion icon Gianni Versachi. I'm Jake Brennan. In this
1:56
Speaker 1: This Disgrace.
1:57
Speaker 2: Land.
2:19
Speaker 1: Sylvester Stallone was playing golf when the Feds told him
2:22
Speaker 1: his life was in danger. This wasn't one of his
2:25
Speaker 1: many on screen action hero lives. Not the life of
2:29
Speaker 1: mythical vet John Rambo, who barrowed through the jungle in
2:32
Speaker 1: a bullet bandolier and a headband on the run from
2:35
Speaker 1: Vietnamese soldiers, nor the life of Marion Cobra Cobretti, member
2:40
Speaker 1: of LAPD's elite zombie squad, who took down a cabal
2:44
Speaker 1: of New World terrorists with the aid of his badass
2:47
Speaker 1: ray bands. This was Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone's real life.
2:54
Speaker 1: The life that saw a young man with partial face
2:56
Speaker 1: paralysis catapult to a global sex symbol during the Hairsprayed
3:00
Speaker 1: Heyday of the nineteen eighties. The rags to rocky life
3:04
Speaker 1: that brought a hungry Italian Stallion from sleeping at New
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Speaker 1: York City's Port Authority bus terminal to living large on
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Speaker 1: an eleven acre villa with nine bathrooms in an Olympic
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Speaker 1: sized pool here in Miami, and according to the FBI,
3:18
Speaker 1: the real life of Sylvester Stallone was under threat. It
3:24
Speaker 1: was summer nineteen ninety seven, and Stallone was at an
3:28
Speaker 1: inflection point in his career. After five Rockies, three Rambos,
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Speaker 1: and an arsenal of other American gladiator roles, the fifty
3:36
Speaker 1: one year old wanted to be more than a hired
3:38
Speaker 1: muscle nun. Sylvester Stallone wanted to be appreciated as an actor.
3:43
Speaker 1: He hoped his newest movie, Copland, would do the trick.
3:47
Speaker 1: It was a proper film, not as typical Shoot Him
3:50
Speaker 1: Up Fair, a novelistic, neo noir thriller. In Copland, Stallone
3:56
Speaker 1: played a subdued small town sheriff, beaten down by fates
4:00
Speaker 1: and justices and dirty cop corruption. He'd gained forty pounds
4:04
Speaker 1: for the role and worked for scale. He held his
4:07
Speaker 1: own against ace tough guys Robert de Niro, Harvey Kaitel,
4:10
Speaker 1: and Ray Liota. He was brooding. He was great. Early
4:15
Speaker 1: buzz suggested that the critics noticed, but just as Stallone
4:20
Speaker 1: was deliberately moving away from ultraviolence. Ultraviolence was moving toward him.
4:27
Speaker 1: On the golf course. Stallone noticed six helicopters hovering about
4:31
Speaker 1: four hundred yards away. The distant buzz was unnerving, and
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Speaker 1: for good reason. All around him, one of the largest
4:40
Speaker 1: manhunts in FBI history was unfolding a dragnet on the
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Speaker 1: scale of the legendary search for nineteen thirties gangster John
4:47
Speaker 1: Herbert Dillinger. More than two weeks earlier, one of the
4:51
Speaker 1: FBI's ten most wanted was spotted in West Palm Beach,
4:56
Speaker 1: and that was more than seventy miles north from where
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Speaker 1: stallone was. But Miami VPDE now had very good reason
5:02
Speaker 1: to believe the armed and very dangerous fugitive was in
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Speaker 1: their midst. Officials identified the suspect as twenty seven year
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Speaker 1: old Andrew Philip Cunan and sometime alias Andrew da Silva.
5:14
Speaker 1: White male, dark brown hair, brown eyes, known to pretend
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Speaker 1: he's rich, and sometimes he was, but always with other
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Speaker 1: people's money. According to the fugitives own mother, her son
5:26
Speaker 1: got by as quote a high class homosexual prostitute. DOJ
5:31
Speaker 1: posters said Kunanan was wanted for second degree murder and
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Speaker 1: questioning in four other deaths. What flyers didn't reveal was
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Speaker 1: the sheer, sadistic brutality of these killings. The first victim
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Speaker 1: was found in a Minneapolis loft, a twenty eight year
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Speaker 1: old ex navyman rolled up in a rug, head bludgeoned
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Speaker 1: with a claw hammer. Oddutopsy revealed he was struck not
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Speaker 1: once or twice, but twenty seven times. The second, a
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Speaker 1: thirty three year old architect, was also in Minnesota, sixty
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Speaker 1: miles north, shot once in the head, left near a lake.
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Speaker 1: The third victim, Holy Shit, a seventy two year old
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Speaker 1: real estate tycoon, discovered bound, gagged and dead on the
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Speaker 1: floor of his Chicago garage. His chest stabbed numerous times
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Speaker 1: with either a screwdriver or a pruning pole, it was
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Speaker 1: hard to tell, and both were turned up in the investigation.
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Speaker 1: His neck was cut with a sob blade, wound so
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Speaker 1: deep he was nearly decapitated. The man's of ribs were
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Speaker 1: all broken, apparently crushed by the two cement bags left
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Speaker 1: beside his corpse. His head was also wrapped in masking
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Speaker 1: tape like a mummy. Again, only Shit and the rich
6:46
Speaker 1: man's green lexus was also missing until it wasn't A
6:52
Speaker 1: few days later, police located the vehicle on a Pennsylvania cemetery,
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Speaker 1: parked near the body of a forty five year old
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Speaker 1: caretaker who'd been shot execution style in the back of
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Speaker 1: the head. And the execute demand's red Chevy pickup was gone.
7:07
Speaker 1: And now the FEDS had intel that someone fitting this
7:10
Speaker 1: lunatics description had been asking around Florida about Stallone. It
7:15
Speaker 1: was no secret Sly lived in Miami Beach. Locals called
7:19
Speaker 1: his extravagant bayside villa Casa Rocki. The actors sometimes had
7:24
Speaker 1: trouble with nosy boters anchoring behind his state to see
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Speaker 1: what they could see. Stallone even made local headlines when
7:31
Speaker 1: he tried to block a public path near his property
7:33
Speaker 1: with an eight foot security fence. Rollerbladers were pissed off.
7:37
Speaker 1: So when a customer a Planet Hollywood's recent opening in
7:40
Speaker 1: Key West started asking where Stallone was, bartenders didn't think
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Speaker 1: much about it. Everybody knew that Stallone was one of
7:48
Speaker 1: the chain's five celebrity investors who was part of the attraction.
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Speaker 1: Just seemed like the chit chat of a starstark room
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Speaker 1: amped for some signed memorabilia in an overpriced drink changed
8:00
Speaker 1: on July fifteenth, when a gunman who looked like that
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Speaker 1: customer at Planet Hollywood, who in turn looked like the
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Speaker 1: psycho from America's Most Wanted, executed someone else in broad
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Speaker 1: daylight in front of witnesses. And this nutjob had assassinated
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Speaker 1: a celebrity, and not just any celebrity. One of Sly
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Speaker 1: Stallone's friends, another Italian signor, Gianni Versachi Versacei, the runway
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Speaker 1: genius who lived like a Medici prince. Versacei, the household
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Speaker 1: name partly responsible for Miami Vice's pastel suited style. Stallone
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Speaker 1: knew Versacei from the early nineties, when the actor was
8:42
Speaker 1: dating supermodel Janis Dickinson. Versacei courted him with truckloads of
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Speaker 1: expensive gifts, full pantries of fine china, rooms of luxe fabric,
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Speaker 1: trunks of clothes. Versacei, as was his way with celebrities,
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Speaker 1: spared no expense, reciprocated by helping launch a versace housewar's line.
9:03
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety five, in a provocative ad, he posed
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Speaker 1: nude with Claudia Schiffer in an Adam and the homage
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Speaker 1: Porcelain versace plates covered their X rated bits. Stallone was
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Speaker 1: a guest at Versace's lavish lakeside house in Italy. They
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Speaker 1: hit the gym together. He even shows Versace to design
9:23
Speaker 1: his costume for his nineteen ninety five film Judge Dredd,
9:27
Speaker 1: who cares that critics panned the movie is one of
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Speaker 1: Stallone's worse. He looked badass and that gilded future cop
9:33
Speaker 1: get up was unmistakably Versace. Chunky golden ephulettes, black cat suit, eurotrash,
9:39
Speaker 1: wet dream. It even had a codpiece. And now Versace
9:44
Speaker 1: was dead. It could have been Stallone. It could still
9:49
Speaker 1: be Stallone. The murder was so brazen it seemed like
9:52
Speaker 1: a mob style hit. Before nine am, VERSACEI was outside
9:56
Speaker 1: his Ocean Drive mansion fumbling with his keys when a
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Speaker 1: gunman walked up, shot him point blank in the head twice,
10:03
Speaker 1: and then coolly walked away. And the shooter was still
10:06
Speaker 1: on the loose. It had to be Andrew ku Nanon.
10:10
Speaker 1: Within the hour, police found the stolen red Chevy from
10:13
Speaker 1: Kunanin's alleged fourth victim in a parking garage near the
10:15
Speaker 1: Versace mansion. Beside the truck was a heap of freshly
10:19
Speaker 1: sweaty clothes. But well, it's more the vehicle had been
10:22
Speaker 1: parked there since June twelve, and that was more than
10:26
Speaker 1: a month ago. Stallone still couldn't believe it. This guy
10:31
Speaker 1: had been in town for weeks and weeks, and locals
10:34
Speaker 1: were only on high alert now after he'd murdered a
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Speaker 1: celebrity in broad daylight. And the more Stallone learned, the
10:40
Speaker 1: more infuriated he became. Miami Beach was what ten blocks long?
10:45
Speaker 1: Why hadn't cops plastered South Florida with his photo? And
10:48
Speaker 1: the guy was known as a gay hustler and there
10:50
Speaker 1: were only like ten gay clubs in the city, But
10:53
Speaker 1: why hadn't the police dispatched under covers in each one.
10:56
Speaker 1: Stallone knew a few things about cops. Shit, he just
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Speaker 1: played one, and he knew that it sounded like they
11:02
Speaker 1: hadn't been doing their jobs. And maybe if the miamipe
11:05
Speaker 1: had been less worried about Stollone's game, taking a break
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Speaker 1: from interviewing every stupid rollerblader outside his house, maybe his
11:12
Speaker 1: friend would still be alive. Then maybe he wouldn't be
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Speaker 1: having this conversation with black suits on the green, and
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Speaker 1: maybe those helicopters wouldn't still be hovering standing there, surrounded
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Speaker 1: by the manicured grass in the ocean and the sky
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Speaker 1: Stallone had to admit, though, you know, if it had
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Speaker 1: to happen, then this wouldn't be such a bad place
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Speaker 1: to go. It was the fourth July weekend in nineteen
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Speaker 1: ninety five and Madonna was having trouble falling asleep. Maybe
12:05
Speaker 1: it was all the naked men around the house. Naked
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Speaker 1: dead men sculpted an alabaster and marble artifacts of past centuries.
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Speaker 1: Madonna kept wanting to press her face against their cool,
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Speaker 1: hard bodies. Gianni Versacei is lavish villa at northern Italy's
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Speaker 1: Lake Como, where Madonna was vacationing for the American Holiday.
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Speaker 1: Was a four story monument of flamboyant distractions, opulent bedrooms,
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Speaker 1: three acres of fairytale gardens, a museum worthy collection of
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Speaker 1: oil paintings in nineteenth century furniture, a tennis court, a
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Speaker 1: private dock, and an impressive array of naked dead men.
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Speaker 1: It was all very versace Bruce Springsteen honeymoon at the
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Speaker 1: Lake Como retreat in nineteen eighty five, and Versacei's good
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Speaker 1: friend Elton John was a frequent guest over the years
13:00
Speaker 1: were staying and his wife, Trudy Prince had been there too,
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Speaker 1: VERSACEI found Prince strange. It took the little guy three
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Speaker 1: days to notice he'd been staying on a lake. And
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Speaker 1: now the Italian designer had generously invited Madonna to unwind
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Speaker 1: here after wrapping her second Versace campaign, a minimal and
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Speaker 1: sophisticated evening gown shoot that would help class up her image.
13:23
Speaker 1: After last year's Late Show fiasco when she said the
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Speaker 1: word fuck fourteen times and asked David Letterman to smell
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Speaker 1: her panties, Madonna's image needed some serious scrubbing. In six months,
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Speaker 1: she would be shooting her dream role as Eva Perone,
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Speaker 1: the Argentine first Lady in the Oscar Bait movie version
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Speaker 1: of Andrew Lloyd Webber's nineteen seventy eight musical. Madonna needed
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Speaker 1: to be convincingly elegant, and Versace's Late Como Villa was
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Speaker 1: the perfect place to practice. Madonna felt like a spoiled princess.
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Speaker 1: She brought an entourage and Sri Lankan servants, and white
14:01
Speaker 1: gloves tended to every whim of Madonna and her guests.
14:04
Speaker 1: New Varsagi gallons appeared daily, Fresh bullinis arrived every sunset
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Speaker 1: which they drank under a giant magnolia tree. Beside the
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Speaker 1: crystal clear lake. A speedboat captain was on standby if
14:16
Speaker 1: they wanted to swim. Gorgeous Italian bodyguards even took Madonna's dog, Jaiquita,
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Speaker 1: on long, doting walks. Lucky little bitch. Madonna pinched herself
14:26
Speaker 1: to make sure she wasn't dreaming. Now. This wasn't an
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Speaker 1: impressionable nineteen eighties era Madonna, fresh from watching Basquiat shoot
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Speaker 1: up on a mattress. This was the eighty million records
14:41
Speaker 1: sold Madonna. Madonna who'd done Dick Tracy and co star
14:45
Speaker 1: Warren Baby Businessmocha Madonna, who'd been on the cover of
14:48
Speaker 1: Forbes in nineteen ninety and secured a wapping sixty million
14:51
Speaker 1: dollar advance for a multimedia joint venture with Time Warner
14:55
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two. This madonna also had her own
14:59
Speaker 1: Miami p mansion right near Stallone's Kasaraki. This Madonna knew massive,
15:05
Speaker 1: massive wealth, and to this Madonna, the world's most celebrated
15:10
Speaker 1: material girl. The ruthless extravagance of Versacei's lifestyle was daunting.
15:15
Speaker 1: Maybe that's why she couldn't sleep. They called Gianni Versacei,
15:23
Speaker 1: the son king of fashion. For good reason. At Lake Como,
15:27
Speaker 1: one of his four opulent residences, he cultivated his own
15:31
Speaker 1: personal Versailles Versacei's mansion in Miami South Beach was equally
15:36
Speaker 1: unreal when he purchased it in the early nineteen nineties.
15:41
Speaker 1: Versace invested thirty three million to renovate the former apartment
15:44
Speaker 1: complex and next door hotelity to a palatialist state of
15:48
Speaker 1: sixteen bedrooms, two kitchens, a fifty four foot mosaic swimming
15:52
Speaker 1: pool flecked with twenty four carrot gold in a shower
15:55
Speaker 1: reportedly big enough for ten people to share simultaneously, you know,
16:01
Speaker 1: as one does. There was also at least one toilet
16:04
Speaker 1: made of onyx. And ever since he opened his own
16:07
Speaker 1: fashion house in nineteen seventy eight with his older brother
16:10
Speaker 1: Santo's help, Versace had been spitting in the eye of
16:13
Speaker 1: so called good taste. He turned the delicate craft of
16:17
Speaker 1: hauktur into an erotic spectacle. He made men's silk shirts
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Speaker 1: with ornately tacky prints into luxury goods. He put socialites
16:25
Speaker 1: in bondage gear. He put Princess Diana in gold studs.
16:29
Speaker 1: He posed supermodeled into Evangelista in a sea through top,
16:33
Speaker 1: grabbing her crotch and touching her breast in the New
16:35
Speaker 1: Yorker's erudite pages. He took high fashion from its precious,
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Speaker 1: self contained ptelier and yanked it out onto the street,
16:44
Speaker 1: and Versace created cultural moments, Hollywood moments, huge red carpet moments.
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Speaker 1: There was the nineteen ninety one Oscars when Cindy Crawford
16:53
Speaker 1: turned up with Richard Gear still smoldering from Pretty Woman's
16:57
Speaker 1: success and the spectacular red Versachi gown with a plunging
17:01
Speaker 1: neck and elegant backslid. That couple those red carpet photos,
17:05
Speaker 1: that red hot dress. That was a moment. It was
17:09
Speaker 1: a moment in nineteen ninety four when actress Elizabeth Hurley
17:12
Speaker 1: went from Hugh Grant arm Candy the household name, which
17:15
Speaker 1: he wore an astounding black Versace gown held seductively together
17:19
Speaker 1: with giant gold safety pins to the premiere of Four
17:22
Speaker 1: Weddings in a Funeral in twenty seven years later, the
17:26
Speaker 1: dress has its own Wikipedia entry in j Loo's emerald
17:30
Speaker 1: Green Naval Cleavage Wauser from the two thousand Grammys. That
17:34
Speaker 1: was a Moment's moment, and they weren't creating fabulous cultural moments.
17:40
Speaker 1: Back in Versace's hometown, born Giovanni Maria Versacei and Reggio, Calabria,
17:46
Speaker 1: a southern city riddled with earthquakes, bandits in Malaria who
17:50
Speaker 1: Versacei's mother was a successful dressmaker. His family was firmly boucheois.
17:56
Speaker 1: But one of twenty somethings, versace moved to Milan to
17:59
Speaker 1: pursue con tracks with the country's established fashion houses. He
18:03
Speaker 1: found that Northern Italians generally regarded as Southern ilk as
18:07
Speaker 1: peasants and wastrels, yellow toothed brutes from a cursed region
18:12
Speaker 1: to northerners. Versacei's native Calabria was the stinky foot in
18:16
Speaker 1: their fine leather Italian boot. But Versacei assimilated. He was ambitious.
18:22
Speaker 1: He lost his Southern accent cut ties with friends from home,
18:26
Speaker 1: did the cosmopolitan things a young, upwardly mobile man does
18:29
Speaker 1: to air kiss asses in a European city and build
18:32
Speaker 1: a network. But the more Versacei ascended Milan's upper echelons,
18:37
Speaker 1: the more he found them uptight, stodgy and intention of drab,
18:42
Speaker 1: and the narrower he found the guardrails of this polite society.
18:45
Speaker 1: The more liberally he experimented in his work. VERSACEI experimented
18:51
Speaker 1: by mixing elements of fashion that would supposedly clash, leather
18:55
Speaker 1: and silk, swede and linen, denim and satin. He experimented
18:59
Speaker 1: by sending women down the runway and bikini bras and
19:01
Speaker 1: tailored pantsuits. Way back in nineteen eighty, he experimented with
19:06
Speaker 1: the metal used in Butcher's gloves and invented an entirely
19:09
Speaker 1: new material for evening wear, a metal mesh fabric called orotone.
19:14
Speaker 1: He experimented with fetishware tropes and scandalized the fashion world
19:18
Speaker 1: when his fall nineteen ninety two collection Miss SMM showcased
19:22
Speaker 1: a bevy of leggy models in variously edgy displays and
19:26
Speaker 1: leather studs, dog collars, and harnesses. And the more successful
19:30
Speaker 1: Versace became with these experiments, the more the old money
19:34
Speaker 1: bores turned up their noses, resorted to their tribalist conditioning,
19:38
Speaker 1: and complained about another Southern interloper trampling their sacred tenet
19:42
Speaker 1: of good taste. So Versace called bullshit on quote unquote
19:47
Speaker 1: good taste, because what was good taste anyway, a highly
19:52
Speaker 1: subjective code dictated by sexless bitties and heavy fur coats,
19:56
Speaker 1: a charade to keep blue blooded bloodlines intact, to keep
20:00
Speaker 1: out new ideas from new people. Good taste was polite oppression.
20:05
Speaker 1: Good taste was arbitrary restraint. Into versace, the point of
20:09
Speaker 1: wealth or luxury was freedom. Freedom to VERSACEI meant treating
20:14
Speaker 1: his much younger sister Donatella like an adult from a
20:17
Speaker 1: young age, coming out to her early on, bringing her
20:20
Speaker 1: to nightclubs when she was still a child. Freedom meant
20:23
Speaker 1: nurturing don Tella's outre instincts and molding her into a
20:27
Speaker 1: platinum blonde camp queen who people would liken to atchain
20:29
Speaker 1: smoking Janice from the Muppets. Freedom meant being in a
20:33
Speaker 1: long term relationship with his partner Antonio, but also procuring
20:37
Speaker 1: well vetted male escorts to join them periodically. Freedom meant
20:41
Speaker 1: knowing money was made to be spent and they would
20:44
Speaker 1: always be more to make. Freedom was knowing that good
20:47
Speaker 1: taste was a ruse. When the weapon of good taste
20:50
Speaker 1: failed to stop Forsacci, Northern Italy's polite society tried to
20:55
Speaker 1: discredit him in another way, and they said the secret
20:58
Speaker 1: to Versace's success must be the so called Kalabrian Mafia
21:02
Speaker 1: aka Trinagita aka one of the most feared organized crime
21:06
Speaker 1: groups in the world dating back to the nineteenth century.
21:10
Speaker 1: It was the Calabria mafia who kidnapped John Paul Getty Theird,
21:14
Speaker 1: the teenage grandson of oil bajillionaire J. Paul Getty, in
21:17
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, and what a feet of fuckuppery that was.
21:21
Speaker 1: See this kidnapping was so poorly executed the demand for
21:24
Speaker 1: ransom seemed like a hoax. So when notorious titwad Grandpa
21:28
Speaker 1: Getty boked at their nearly seventeen million dollar demand, the
21:32
Speaker 1: Southern Italian savages sliced off young Getty's year, stuffed it
21:36
Speaker 1: into a plastic envelope, and mailed it to a Rome
21:39
Speaker 1: newspaper to do some quick convincing. But there was one problem.
21:43
Speaker 1: They'd forgotten about Italy's national postal strike, and the severed
21:47
Speaker 1: years sat in transit for three weeks while their cash
21:50
Speaker 1: cow almost died from infection. And those were the geniuses
21:55
Speaker 1: they said were responsible for Versace's independent success. Versace came
22:00
Speaker 1: to understand was that the old money elite weren't upset
22:04
Speaker 1: because he designed loud clothes that looked like overpriced pawnshot fantasies.
22:08
Speaker 1: They were upset because they felt threatened because Versace represented
22:12
Speaker 1: something they couldn't control new Wealth and knew Wealth's only
22:17
Speaker 1: master was freedom. We'll be right back after this. We're, We're, We're.
22:31
Speaker 1: Ronnie knew a hustler when he saw one, and the
22:34
Speaker 1: dark haired guy in the baseball hat and sunglasses was
22:37
Speaker 1: definitely on the take. Ronnie saw the guy around the
22:40
Speaker 1: hotel at odd hours, late nights, early mornings, always alone,
22:45
Speaker 1: always with a backpack, and never saying a word, always
22:49
Speaker 1: shooting Ronnie furtive, searching glances, but darting his eyes before
22:53
Speaker 1: they made contact. Finally, one day, Ronnie dispensed with the
22:57
Speaker 1: subtlety and made a show of using him hard. The
23:01
Speaker 1: guy finally spoke see something he'd like. Ronnie told him
23:05
Speaker 1: he had a cute ass and he could make some
23:07
Speaker 1: money off of it. Then Ronnie asked how big he was,
23:11
Speaker 1: and the guy came up to Ronnie's room to show him.
23:14
Speaker 1: The guy said to call him Andy. Ronnie made some
23:17
Speaker 1: calls for Andy to help make him some cash, set
23:21
Speaker 1: him up with some old rich guys, and they used
23:24
Speaker 1: Ronnie's room, and Ronnie took his cut that way, a
23:27
Speaker 1: small fee for a neutral location. Ronnie was a gay
23:31
Speaker 1: HIV positive, often barefoot, forty three year old who'd been
23:35
Speaker 1: living at Miami's Normandy Plaza hotel for months when one
23:39
Speaker 1: of America's most wanted rolled up and introduced himself as
23:43
Speaker 1: Andy in May nineteen ninety seven. With its constant churn
23:49
Speaker 1: of transience and tourists, Miami was a good town to
23:52
Speaker 1: hide in plain sight, especially someone like Andy aka Andrew Cornanin,
23:58
Speaker 1: a twenty seven year old who's half Filipino half Italian.
24:01
Speaker 1: Features could scan Cuban. The Normandy Plaza was especially ideal,
24:07
Speaker 1: a single occupancy hotel located in Miami's lacklustered North Beach neighborhood.
24:13
Speaker 1: The place was cash only, right on the water. Rooms
24:16
Speaker 1: started at twenty nine bucks. A night phone service was extra.
24:21
Speaker 1: Staff didn't look too closely at your ID, Maids weren't
24:24
Speaker 1: concerned when he wouldn't let them in, and there was
24:27
Speaker 1: even a spot out front park you're stolen truck. At
24:31
Speaker 1: nine pm, the Normandy Plaza opened its back gate onto
24:35
Speaker 1: the beach so you could come and go discreetly without
24:38
Speaker 1: passing of the guests or the front desk, and as
24:41
Speaker 1: long as your room bill was paid up, nobody asked questions.
24:45
Speaker 1: Q Nning kept the lowest possible profile, borrowed in like
24:49
Speaker 1: a nightcrawler, by day reading in his room, recovering, or
24:52
Speaker 1: getting high with Ronnie, who introduced him to a crack
24:55
Speaker 1: dealer who sold ten dollars forty dollars one hundred dollars rocks,
24:59
Speaker 1: the price variation depending on weight. After dark, Keunana would
25:04
Speaker 1: pull his baseball hat down low and head out into
25:07
Speaker 1: the salty air. He'd grab fast food or cheap takeout,
25:11
Speaker 1: cheap vodka from the liquor store and visit a nearby
25:14
Speaker 1: adult superstore to buy porn bags with names like Inches
25:17
Speaker 1: and Jock. Drive to plan in Hollywood to do some reconnaissance.
25:22
Speaker 1: He'd go to gay clubs and loiter looking for rough trade.
25:25
Speaker 1: He'd get water from the bar, I'm a cigarette and wait.
25:31
Speaker 1: Qunonin found this existence tolerable for a while, but after
25:35
Speaker 1: two months, q ninon was sick of it all, sick
25:39
Speaker 1: of anonymity, sick of pretending he was no one special
25:42
Speaker 1: because Andrew Kunonin was special. He was smart Genius level smart.
25:49
Speaker 1: He read the whole Bible by age seven. In the
25:51
Speaker 1: third grade, as IQ tested at one forty seven, q
25:56
Speaker 1: Nanin was superior. Made the Gifted program in junior high
26:00
Speaker 1: went to a prestigious private high school in Mahalla, California,
26:03
Speaker 1: with diplomat's children voted most likely to be remembered in
26:07
Speaker 1: the senior yearbook. He'd be remembered alright. He read Vogue, GQ,
26:12
Speaker 1: and Vanity Fair religiously. Those were his people. Qu Nana
26:17
Speaker 1: was spoiled. The last of four kids. He was his parents' favorite.
26:22
Speaker 1: His siblings called him the Prince. One time, the Prince
26:26
Speaker 1: got sick and missed the high school field trip, and
26:28
Speaker 1: his father bought him a brand new Nissan three hundred
26:31
Speaker 1: ZX Turbo to make him feel better. Sure, his father
26:35
Speaker 1: had since fled the Philippines to evade prosecution for selling
26:38
Speaker 1: fake stocks, but Keunona took his dad's point to heart.
26:42
Speaker 1: He deserved the finest things, and for a while he
26:46
Speaker 1: had them. He'd been a kept man, lived with a
26:50
Speaker 1: retired millionaire, had a thirty three thousand dollars infinity in
26:54
Speaker 1: an allowance of twenty five hundred dollars a month, flew
26:57
Speaker 1: around the country on the sugar Daddy style, but that
27:01
Speaker 1: arrangement fell apart after qunon and met David, the waspy
27:05
Speaker 1: looking architect he'd fallen for and then left dead by
27:08
Speaker 1: the Minnesota Lake. I'm sure Qunon had fibbed along the
27:12
Speaker 1: way to get what he deserved. Said he went to
27:14
Speaker 1: Yale or show, said he was in the Israeli Army
27:17
Speaker 1: even though he wasn't Jewish. Said he had a daughter
27:19
Speaker 1: from a failed marriage. Said his parents were rich but
27:22
Speaker 1: cut him off from his inheritance when they learned he
27:25
Speaker 1: was gay. Neglected to mention his father's exile or that
27:29
Speaker 1: his mother had gone completely batshit. Sometimes qunon and had
27:34
Speaker 1: a hard time keeping his story straight, but he only embellished,
27:38
Speaker 1: so he didn't waste time proving he was worthy. Why
27:41
Speaker 1: should he have to prove he was special when he
27:43
Speaker 1: clearly was. He just skipped a step. Gianni Versace knew
27:51
Speaker 1: Andrew Cunon and was special. In nineteen ninety, out of
27:55
Speaker 1: San Francisco gay club, the Italian Fashion King mistook unon
27:59
Speaker 1: And for someone he knew and briefly chatted him up.
28:02
Speaker 1: Qunanin went along with it. Of course, and then told
28:05
Speaker 1: everyone for years that he knew versace because Andrew Kunonin
28:09
Speaker 1: would know Versace in a way no one else ever would.
28:13
Speaker 1: Qunanin slipped up one night at the South Beach club Twist.
28:17
Speaker 1: He was grinding on the dance floor with a hairdresser
28:20
Speaker 1: from West Palm Beach who asked what he did for
28:22
Speaker 1: a living. I'm a serial killer, he admitted. Keunonin couldn't
28:26
Speaker 1: help himself. For once, the truth was more impressive than
28:30
Speaker 1: the lie. But then he laughed, said he was an
28:33
Speaker 1: investment baking and took off, which was a shame because
28:36
Speaker 1: Twist was where he needed to be. His old friend,
28:39
Speaker 1: Gianni VERSACEI, lived down the street. What Keunonin didn't know
28:44
Speaker 1: was that Gianni VERSACEI had been quietly preparing for his
28:47
Speaker 1: own death. In August nineteen ninety four, VERSACEI noticed hearing
28:53
Speaker 1: loss and an extreme swelling on his head's right side.
28:56
Speaker 1: His doctor's diagnosis, a rare form of inner ear cancer.
29:02
Speaker 1: Surgery came with the high risk of disfiguring Versace's face.
29:06
Speaker 1: A businessman of esthetics, Versacei instead opted for chemotherapy, but
29:11
Speaker 1: administered at a low enough dose that the treatment wouldn't
29:14
Speaker 1: leave him bald or listless. VERSACEI worked throughout the chemotherapy,
29:20
Speaker 1: running the Fashion House from his Milan apartment above the
29:22
Speaker 1: company's headquarters, with nurses visiting him periodically to administer his treatment.
29:28
Speaker 1: He kept his diagnosis secret, but people could see something
29:32
Speaker 1: was wrong. Signor Versace must have aids, they said. And
29:36
Speaker 1: there were other problems. Donatella, who had long been her
29:42
Speaker 1: brothers thickest, seas muse and sidekick, had assumed more prominence
29:46
Speaker 1: during Versacei's illness as his cancer went into remission. The
29:50
Speaker 1: shift drove a deep rift between the two, and by
29:53
Speaker 1: late nineteen ninety six, Donatella was hoovering up cocaine like
29:57
Speaker 1: a human dirt devil in The relationship had become acrimonious. Meanwhile,
30:02
Speaker 1: his brother Santo tried to tamp down on Versace's spending
30:06
Speaker 1: after his recovery, so in September nineteen ninety six, VERSACEI
30:12
Speaker 1: mostly erased both siblings from his will, leaving the majority
30:15
Speaker 1: of his fortune to his ten year old niece Celegra. Then,
30:20
Speaker 1: in early nineteen ninety seven, Versace had an embarrassing public
30:24
Speaker 1: flap with Crown Jewels celebrity conquest Princess Diana. She had
30:28
Speaker 1: agreed to write the foreward for Versace's newest coffee table book,
30:32
Speaker 1: Rock and Royalty, since proceeds would benefit the AIDS Foundation
30:36
Speaker 1: of their mutual friend, Elton John. But when Versace sent
30:40
Speaker 1: a finished copy, the Princess of Wales was horrified to
30:44
Speaker 1: discover a family portrait with her two young sons, William
30:47
Speaker 1: and Harry, pages away from nearly nude men. She publicly
30:52
Speaker 1: demanded the forward be excise and bowed out of the
30:54
Speaker 1: highly publicized launch event. But by the morning of July fifteenth,
30:59
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, things were again looking up for the
31:02
Speaker 1: fifty year old Versacei's cancer was officially in the clear,
31:07
Speaker 1: a development he toasted six months ago with glasses of champagne.
31:12
Speaker 1: He had reconciled with Princess Stay and was already designing
31:15
Speaker 1: the world's most famous new divorcee some new threads, and
31:19
Speaker 1: earlier in the month he had signed with Wall Street
31:21
Speaker 1: firm Morgan Stanley to take his eight hundred million dollar
31:24
Speaker 1: fashion dynasty public. Gianni Versaci would soon be the first
31:29
Speaker 1: Italian designer with his name on both the Borsa Italiana
31:34
Speaker 1: and the new York Stock Exchange. It was around eight
31:39
Speaker 1: forty a m. When Versacei returned to his South Beach
31:42
Speaker 1: mansion after buying five magazines from a cafe. He worked
31:47
Speaker 1: for a second to decipher which key opened up his
31:49
Speaker 1: front door, and as he did so, Versacei smiled at
31:53
Speaker 1: a passing neighbor, and then within seconds Gianni Versacei was
31:58
Speaker 1: brain dead. Qunanin's first bullet hit the base of Versachi's brain,
32:04
Speaker 1: tore the top of his spinal cord, and exited from
32:07
Speaker 1: his neck. A second bullet tore through the right side
32:09
Speaker 1: of Versachi's face, cracked the top of his skull, and
32:12
Speaker 1: then stuck in his head. Versacei slumped on the steps.
32:16
Speaker 1: Keunanin walked off, leaving behind a shocked eye witness and
32:20
Speaker 1: a gory tableau. And there was so much blood. The
32:23
Speaker 1: front steps looked vandalized with thick crimson pain. So much blood,
32:28
Speaker 1: in fact, that the blood still remains right where Versachi's
32:32
Speaker 1: body lay on that day, his sunglasses, sandals, and a
32:35
Speaker 1: dead bird. In a freakish coincidence, a piece of the
32:40
Speaker 1: first bullet had exited Versachi's neck, hit the front gate,
32:43
Speaker 1: and then killed a bird. It wasn't just any bird
32:46
Speaker 1: that died by Versachi's side. It was a dove, specifically
32:51
Speaker 1: a mourning dove mourning with a U. After its mournful coup,
32:56
Speaker 1: the sun King was dead, and nature wept. Kurt Damars
33:26
Speaker 1: in room three twenty two, said he'd be down to
33:28
Speaker 1: pay his bill in ten minutes. Thirty minutes went by.
33:32
Speaker 1: The Normandy Plaza hotel clerk went upstairs to find room
33:35
Speaker 1: three two two empty. On Saturday July twelfth, nineteen ninety seven,
33:41
Speaker 1: Kurt Damars aka Andrew Kunanin skipped out on his last
33:45
Speaker 1: bill and then re emerged three days later to carry
33:48
Speaker 1: out his favorite murder. Six days later, there'd still be
33:53
Speaker 1: no trace of the serial killer, even though twelve arms
33:56
Speaker 1: of the law were devoted to cunan In to capture
33:58
Speaker 1: the killer was still out there somewhere. When Versace's memorial
34:02
Speaker 1: service took place on Tuesday, July twenty second, exactly one
34:05
Speaker 1: week after his death, a crowd of more than two
34:08
Speaker 1: thousand gathered at the Lawns Duomo, the city's exquisite Gothic cathedral,
34:13
Speaker 1: along with a bevy of supermodels, Sting and a sobbing
34:16
Speaker 1: Elton John, who was comforted by Princess Diana. The following day,
34:22
Speaker 1: at about three forty five in the afternoon, Fernando Careria,
34:26
Speaker 1: a seventy one year old property caretaker and twenty year
34:29
Speaker 1: resident of Florida, was making a routine check in on
34:32
Speaker 1: a houseboat forty one blocks north of Versace's mansion. Coreria's
34:37
Speaker 1: wife was with him when he noticed the front door's
34:39
Speaker 1: busted top lock. The bottom lock was already unlatched. Somebody's
34:44
Speaker 1: been in here, he told his wife. Korea pushed the
34:47
Speaker 1: door open. Inside, all the lights were on and the
34:50
Speaker 1: curtains were closed. Korea headed to the living room. Sofa
34:54
Speaker 1: cushions were on the floor with a blanket. An overturned
34:57
Speaker 1: chair was positioned like a makeshift barricade. Then Corea saw
35:01
Speaker 1: a pair of sandals. Somebody is in here now, he
35:04
Speaker 1: told his wife. Miami had crimes. So Careria kept a
35:09
Speaker 1: handgun in his waistband for moments just like this. As
35:13
Speaker 1: he went to grab it, a loud, startling bang rang
35:16
Speaker 1: out from upstairs. Korea and his wife both ran outside. Terrified.
35:21
Speaker 1: Corea thought the intruder had shot him and missed. He
35:24
Speaker 1: didn't want to be a sitting duck, so he and
35:26
Speaker 1: his wife hid in the bushes. Cops came quickly with
35:30
Speaker 1: the ongoing man hunt. They'd been on high alert for
35:33
Speaker 1: suspicious local activity, and immediately approached the scene as if
35:36
Speaker 1: the intruder could be Versace's killer. Over the next five hours,
35:41
Speaker 1: a fusillade of special Forces helicopters, boats, dogs, and grenades
35:45
Speaker 1: laid siege to the houseboat. They'd been waiting for this
35:48
Speaker 1: opportunity for days. After the tear gas cleared, two sergeants
35:53
Speaker 1: ventured inside, and they found q Nane in an upstairs bedroom.
35:58
Speaker 1: His eyes were open, blood covered his ears, eyes, and lips.
36:03
Speaker 1: He was dead. qNaN And had shot himself in the
36:06
Speaker 1: mouth with the same gun he'd used to kill Versace
36:10
Speaker 1: and the sergeants who'd id'd his body high five For
36:14
Speaker 1: eight frantic days, Andrew Philip qu nan And loomed large
36:18
Speaker 1: in the national consciousness. But here, in a stained bed
36:21
Speaker 1: propped up by bloody pillows, he looked like any other self.
36:25
Speaker 1: Beach clubs, scum, small, pathetic, nothing unique at all, scoffed
36:31
Speaker 1: one of the high fivers. The Miami Herald dubbed the
36:35
Speaker 1: crime scene a houseboat of horrors, but inside scanned more yep,
36:39
Speaker 1: be tweaker de in. A set of binoculars sat on
36:42
Speaker 1: the kitchen counter. The broken front door lock was in
36:44
Speaker 1: the fridge. Butter tray, pill bottles, rubbing alcohol, and a
36:47
Speaker 1: bloody bandage littered a coffee table, And there were fast
36:51
Speaker 1: food wrappers and used cotton balls in the bathtub. And
36:54
Speaker 1: in a pile of magazines was a freshly thumbed copy
36:57
Speaker 1: of Vogue. It was a very Andrew touch eerily. The
37:02
Speaker 1: house bow was about four hundred yards away from the
37:04
Speaker 1: golf course where Sylvester Stallone learned about Q nine. The
37:08
Speaker 1: whole ordeal shook Stallone to the core. He put his
37:12
Speaker 1: Miami Beach villa on the market in August nineteen ninety seven,
37:16
Speaker 1: right after Cobbland was released. Six weeks after Versace's murder,
37:21
Speaker 1: Princess Diana died in the limousine ride that claimed her life.
37:25
Speaker 1: She wore black Versace satin shoes. In two thousand, Donatella
37:29
Speaker 1: sold Gianni South Beach mansion for nineteen million dollars to
37:33
Speaker 1: a telecom bigwig, who remodeled it into a luxury hotel
37:36
Speaker 1: in event Space. In twenty thirteen, the former Versace mansion
37:42
Speaker 1: was resold at auction for forty one point five million dollars.
37:45
Speaker 1: The winning bidder was a scion of Georda Ash Stetham.
37:49
Speaker 1: The second highest bid came from another famous con man
37:52
Speaker 1: prone to hyperbolic flourishes in vulgar wells, but Donald Trump
37:58
Speaker 1: came up a half million short. The property remains a
38:02
Speaker 1: luxury hotel. Its primary selling point is its Versace Mansion past.
38:07
Speaker 1: The hotel's gold flecked pool is a popular backdrop for
38:11
Speaker 1: Instagram influencers, who can also take selfies in front of
38:14
Speaker 1: the gate where Versace once lay dead. Two out of
38:18
Speaker 1: town men were recently found dead in one of the
38:20
Speaker 1: mansion suites, an apparent murder suicide, and they were found
38:25
Speaker 1: on the afternoon of July fourteenth, twenty twenty one, the
38:29
Speaker 1: day before the twenty fourth anniversary of Versace's murder. And
38:34
Speaker 1: in the annals of American true crime, the assassination of
38:38
Speaker 1: Gianni VERSACEI has become a turn of the millennium classic,
38:42
Speaker 1: up there with the OJ Simpson trial that has everything glamour, sex, celebrity,
38:48
Speaker 1: a lured crime scene, a serial killer, and so much disgrace.
38:55
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Brennan. This this disgraceland.
39:11
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39:14
Speaker 3: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
39:18
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40:07
Speaker 2: He's a bad, bad man, h