The second season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology series, titled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, explores the titular designer’s brutal 1997 murder at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan. We’re walking through all nine episodes with Miami Herald editorial board member Luisa Yanez — who reported on the crime and its aftermath over several years for the Sun-Sentinel’s Miami bureau — in an effort to identify what ACS: Versace handles with care versus when it deviates from documented fact and common perception. The intention here is less to debunk an explicitly dramatized version of true events than to help viewers piece together a holistic picture of the circumstances surrounding Versace’s murder. In other words, these weekly digests are best considered supplements to each episode rather than counterarguments. Below are Yanez’s insights — as well as our independent research — into the veracity and potency of events and characterizations presented in the grisly third episode, “A Random Killing.”

What They Got Right

The Lee Miglin murder
“The Miglin murder was always the thing that made the murders come alive,” says Yanez. “Before that, I don’t even remember having any knowledge that there was a guy who killed two other men, but with Miglin, he was well known. This was somebody prominent in the community of Chicago. Things changed after Miglin. People are really looking for Cunanan now. This is not just a guy killing people he knows. Now he’s a spree killer.”

How Cunanan killed Miglin
The degree to which Miglin and Cunanan were acquainted and/or lovers remains a point of contention (as you’ll see below), but the grittiest details of Miglin’s final moments ring true. In a 1997 Washington Post interview, a medical examiner summed up that there was no indication of “ritualistic torturing” of the Chicago businessman’s body. And though the use of a cement-mix bag to crush Miglin’s ribs may have seemed a bit on the nose, it apparently was one of his weapons of choice.

The car phone mistake
“It’s the first example of the police kind of blundering,” Yanez says regarding Chicago and Philadelphia cops’ failure to track down Cunanan via the pinging car phone in Miglin’s Lexus. (Though in fairness, the FBI was arguably more guilty of dropping the ball later on than Miami PD.) “I remember the beeping phone. That came out at the time.”

The Sky Needle
We couldn’t confirm whether Cunanan burned the design specs, or if Miglin had bragged to Andrew about his passion project, but Lee was indeed working for years on a looming Chicago skyscraper he dubbed the Sky Needle. (The name intended, no doubt, as a rebuke of Seattle’s Space Needle, much as its height would have eclipse Sears Tower.) Alas, Miglin’s plans to develop the world’s tallest building were thwarted by a weak Chicago office-space market, and those honors now belong to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

Marilyn Miglin’s reaction
It’s impossible to confirm whether Miglin’s cosmetics-queen wife had suspected all along that Lee was gay. But according to Yanez, the rest of Judith Light’s embodiment of the widowed millionaire scans as on-point. “It was always, ‘We don’t know who this person is. He was a complete stranger. He wouldn’t have known [Cunanan] that way. He wouldn’t have called anyone like that to the house.’ They never allowed the notion that this was someone that he knew.”

What They Took Liberties With

The Miglins’ ties to Cunanan
There has been speculation for years, even from the FBI, that Miglin (and perhaps even his son, Duke) had some kind of ongoing relationship with Cunanan. But as reporting at the time asserted and Yanez explains, “It was never confirmed. The Miglin family played a role in keeping his private life private. The same way whether [Cunanan and Versace] knew each other or not — you can’t really get a grasp on it — it was the same way with Miglin. That was all part of the Cunanan lore.” Still, Yanez confesses that it’s enticing to wonder aloud, “I don’t know how he would have known Miglin, but then again, how did he find him so quickly in Chicago?” (For what it’s worth the Washington Post observed that Miglin’s home was only a few minutes from the neighborhood’s main nightclub district.)

The William Reese attack
In one “Random Killing” sequence, Andrew pulls into a New Jersey state park, gun in backpack, anxiously ready to ditch Miglin’s Lexus and carjack an innocent victim. That all checks out. But what’s curious is the episode’s suggestion that he initially descended on an older woman, only swerving when William Reese showed up in his red pickup truck. “That’s artistic license,” Yanez insists. “We do know the murder of convenience is Reese. That somebody had said, ‘Oh, he almost carjacked me,’ no, nothing like that. I guess they’re just trying to show how randomly he picked Reese.”

Cunanan’s visit to a Versace store
There’s no doubt that Andrew swept through New York between murdering Miglin and making his way to Miami. It’s laid out in detail — down to his having attended movie screenings of Liar Liar and Devil’s Own — in the FBI files (see: pages 322-323). But nowhere has any official account included an indulgent tour of Versace’s namesake Manhattan boutique. “Yes, he had gone to New York, but it was very brief,” Yanez says, adding that bogus calls and dead-end leadsnotwithstanding, “there was never any actual sighting of him except for what the phone showed.”

William Reese’s final words
As the show did with Gianni Versace in the premiere episode, it appears to have fabricated Reese’s last utterances for dramatic effect. Reese did indeed leave behind a wife, Rebecca, and preteen son, Troy, though whether he begged to be reunited with them is something only Cunanan could have known. In an unfortunate twist, Troy — who appeared on-camera for a Dateline interview just last spring — was recently arrested on charges of criminal intent to commit involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child under 16, statutory sexual assault, unlawful contact with a minor and criminal use of a communication facility. “I’m sure Cunanan’s responsible in some way for that,” Yanez laments.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Fact-checking Episode Three

The second season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology series, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, explores the designer’s brutal 1997 murder at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan. Each week, we’re taking a close look at what ACS: Versace handles with care versus when it deviates from documented fact and common perception. The intention here is less to debunk an explicitly dramatized version of true events than to help viewers piece together a holistic picture of the circumstances surrounding Versace’s murder. In other words, these weekly digests are best considered supplements to each episode rather than counterarguments. Below are the results of our digging into the veracity and potency of events and characterizations presented in episode two, “Manhunt.”

What They Got Right

The Normandy Plaza Hotel
Though Andrew Cunanan reportedly changed rooms more than once, ACS can be forgiven compressing time by jumping directly from his first accommodation to fateful room No. 322 with the ocean view. Otherwise, all the depressing details of his final lodging place check out, from the Mylanta-toned décor and decrepit hallways down to the lobby area’s Marilyn Monroe portrait and Cunanan’s affable rapport with manager Miriam Hernandez. The only minor discrepancies? The address shown on the building’s façade in “Manhunt” reads 7436, when the actual listing for Normandy Plaza was 6979 Collins Avenue. Also, all real-life documentation of Cunanan’s Kurt DeMars pseudonym spells on his passport with one “r,” not two.

The FBI fliers
As in episode one, “Manhunt” harps on the fact that FBI agents inexplicably failed to distribute fliers warning that Cunanan was on the loose in the greater Miami area, let alone within the gay community. In a flashback to the days before Gianni’s murder, G-men on hand even tell Miami PD that “fliers aren’t a priority for us right now.” Sadly, as the FBI file on Cunanan(see: page 158) illustrates, their position on that only changed in the hours after Versace had been brutally gunned down.

Donatella’s feud with Antonio
Last year, Antonio spoke publicly about Donatella’s supposed viciousness toward him, telling the Sun, “In public Donatella was crying on my shoulder and in private she was treating me like shit […] I felt she was doing everything she could to get rid of me from the business.” Donatella, for her part, told the New York Times in 1999 that, “My relationship with Antonio is exactly as it was when Gianni was alive. I respected him as the boyfriend of my brother, but I never liked him as a person, so the relationship stayed the same.” (Elton John, for whatever it’s worth, had Antonio’s back.) Their rift, underscored as it is in “Manhunt,” appears to be one of the few things all parties involved can agree upon.

The Versace family’s insecurities
Wall Street Journal writer Deborah Ball gained access to Donatella and brother Santo, among others, for her 2010 book, House of Versace. In it, she confirmed that there was a degree of jealousy and competition between the siblings, as “Manhunt” makes plain. Also, Gianni was definitely kept on his toes by then-upstarts like Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. However, if New York Times fashion critic Amy Spindler’s review of all three designers’ spring ’97 runway looks is any indication, Gianni was far from done as a pioneering designer.

What They Took Liberties With

The duct tape scene
It’s not entirely untrue that Cunanan wrapped an older, wealthy suitor’s head in tape and dined on his tab. But Cunanan’s real-life submissive was Lee Miglin, the Chicago businessman whom he killed roughly two months prior to murdering Versace. And he covered Miglin’s face with masking tape, not the duct variety, and left breathing holes in his nose, as opposed to puncturing an oral opening. Also, per at least one account, pruning shears were among his weapons of choice while brutally slaying his victims. And while the show’s portrayal of Andrew gorging on lobster and mic-dropping a champagne flute were dramatic flourishes, he capped off his far deadlier encounter with Miglin by making himself a ham sandwich.

The little girl in the parking lot
According to the voluminous FBI file on Cunanan, there’s little doubt he swapped out license plates on his stolen red pickup truck at a Walmart parking lot in Florence, South Carolina, around the second week of May. (See: page 49 of said file.) This is not to be confused with widespread reports of an anonymous tip that Cunanan had been spotted at a North Carolina Walmart after killing Versace. (That lead was a dead-end.) Still, there’s no evidence of a moment when Cunanan snags those S.C. plates while a terrified little girl stares blankly at him and he grins back like a murdery creep.

The date with Versace in San Francisco
Cunanan’s claim to Ronnie about Versace having proposed to him at San Francisco’s Stars restaurant is very much the kind of story he wanted people to believe. Except this particular fib is lifted from a similarly tall tale that Cunanan spun way back in 1990, one that was debunked by the San Francisco Gate two days after Versace’s death.

The SWAT raid on Ronnie’s room
Whether Ronnie referred to his Normandy Plaza bestie Cunanan as “Andy” is anyone’s guess, but in fairness to American Crime Story, very little about their relationship is clear. For one, a Washington Post piece reported that Ronnie’s girlfriend Fannie, not Ronnie, was occupying the room when SWAT teams burst in. But CNN’s on-scene story counters that Ronnie was in fact the one stirred by their raid. The two outlets also differed on whether law enforcement found Ronnie and Fannie’s room number on a pawn ticket or business card in Andrew’s stolen pickup truck. Minor details aside, there’s not much concrete evidence that Ronnie, as “Manhunt” implies, tacitly abetted Cunanan’s getaway. He was, however, a former florist.

The night before the murder
In “Manhunt,” Cunanan stops by popular Miami Beach gay dance club Twist, nearly crossing paths with Gianni and Antonio, who apparently spent their last night together in the same venue before departing and having an emotional conversation about marriage. In fact, Cunanan did hit the town late on July 14, but it was reported to police that he was seen at rival hotspot Liquid, where he stayed for hours. Also, an employee at Miami Subs was among the many who allegedly spotted Cunanan, according to the Washington Post, but he did not actually phone his sighting into the cops like his counterpart did in “Manhunt.” To be fair, depicting a close call with the law is more dramatically taut than detectives interviewing a would-be witness days later.

Fact-checking The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Episode Two, ‘Manhunt’

The second season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology series, titled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, explores the titular designer’s brutal 1997 murder at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan. We’re walking through all nine episodes with Miami Herald editorial board member Luisa Yanez — who reported on the crime and its aftermath over several years for the Sun-Sentinel’s Miami bureau — in an effort to identify what ACS: Versace handles with care versus when it deviates from documented fact and common perception. The intention here is less to debunk an explicitly dramatized version of true events than to help viewers piece together a holistic picture of the circumstances surrounding Versace’s murder. In other words, these weekly digests are best considered supplements to each episode rather than counterarguments. Below are Yanez’s insights into the veracity and potency of events and characterizations presented in episode one, “The Man Who Would Be Vogue.”

What They Got Right

Miami Beach circa 1997
“The look and the placing of the time is accurate,” Yanez says, referencing Ryan Murphy’s time as a writer for Miami Herald. “I’m sure he would have been careful to make everything true. You can always tell when there’s a scene shot in Florida because the sun is so bright. You could tell it was a Miami Beach production, which it was.”

Versace’s final morning (and that dead bird)
“I was waiting to see people going the wrong way on the street,” Yanez says of Versace’s final walk into town, but it all scans as authentic. “From somebody asking him for his autograph and him denying it to the bird that dies along with him.” That bird, she adds, “sparked a panic that this was a Mafia from Sicily hit,” though it turned out to be “a freak, accidental thing.” Yanez also still recalls how the “puddle of dried blood remained there for days” from Versace’s wounds. If there was any discrepancy, it’s that she remembers him purchasing the European Vogue, not its American counterpart, at News Café.

The initial manhunt
“Because Cunanan had been killing people along the way, they very quickly identified him as a suspect,” Yanez says. “Here you see the police chasing somebody in a red polo shirt, and it turns out it’s not Cunanan, but that happened a lot. Many men who looked like Cunanan were all of a sudden rounded up. And [Cunanan] managed to escape. For the next 15 days, this community was in a total panic. In fact, there’s a reporter who was stopped because he looked like Cunanan and he was taken into custody for a couple of hours.”

The pawn-shop tip
“This was my big scoop,” Yanez shares of her encounter with pawn-shop clerk Vivian Oliva. “We’d just spent the day chasing leads, and one of them was that [Cunanan] had pawned a coin he’d taken from one of his murder victims up north, and he had used his real name and address on the pawn form. I stayed around and talked to the lady, and she says, ‘I hope I didn’t do anything wrong.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ And she says, ‘Well, I sent those forms to the police department.’ Immediately, I realized this was a week before Versace was killed, so that became a big fiasco for the Miami Beach Police Department because that form just sat on a detective’s desk. That pawn-shop lady is significant, and I’m glad to see they featured [her] in episode one.” Although, Yanez does clarify that the real-life Oliva, unlike actress Cathy Moriarty, is Cuban.

The arrival of Donatella
“Once Donatella arrived, Antonio [D’Amico] became a little bit of a bad guy,” Yanez says. “She took over, and he became a guy in the house. I know he was interviewed by the police, but when Donatella gets here, the family takes over and Antonio falls into the background.”

The delayed IPO
“We had reporters assigned to Cunanan and Versace himself and then to his company,” Yanez explains. “It was a delicate time for the company. That came out when we started looking into Versace’s business thinking this was a Mafia [hit], looking for that angle.”

Cunanan’s never-ending lies
Whether waxing on about his father’s pineapple plantations or aspirations as a novelist, Cunanan was notorious as a grand fabricator. (In truth, his father was living far from luxury in the Philippines.) “That’s the thing with Cunanan,” Yanez says. “He would make these stories up about his life, and as we found out later, half of it was a lie. He made it so difficult to get a grasp of who he was.”

What They Took Liberties With

The meeting between Cunanan and Versace
Yanez is generally lauding of Maureen Orth’s reporting for Vanity Fair, which led to her 1999 book Vulgar Favors, the primary source material for Assassination: ACS. But on the question of whether Cunanan and Versace became acquainted in 1990 in San Francisco and over post-opera drinks in Paris, she is somewhat equivocal. “[Orth] managed to find that they did have a past,” Yanez says. “That was the only explanation as to, ‘Why did you pick Versace?’” As far as the veracity of Orth’s account, Yanez affirms she has “no dispute, except that Orth is the only one who found a solid link. It was always very hazy for the rest of us. We could never say, ‘Yes, they met, yes they knew each other.’ She did. We could never contradict, and other newspapers couldn’t either.”

How the shooting happened
“We never knew what Versace said,” Yanez says about the designer’s final word. (The episode suggests that Versace had turned and faced Cunanan, but the autopsy results clearly state he was shot from behind in the back of the head.) “Supposedly he was ambushed. So that’s artistic license, to have him say, ‘No.’ The assumption at the time was Versace didn’t know what hit him.”

Who witnessed the murder
“[The episode] shows that there’s nobody around and Cunanan walks right up to him,” Yanez says. “I think, in reality, there were some people around and they did notice a guy in a red cap, but didn’t pay much attention to him. People who heard the shot and turned and then saw what happened afterward, not the actual shooting.”

The AIDS rumors
“That was a big rumor with Versace and Cunanan,” Yanez says. “And ultimately, Cunanan did not have AIDS. [Whether Versace had AIDS] is one of those questions we could never get a solid answer to. The specter of AIDS did play a role for both of them.” In regards to the episode depicting Versace taking prescription medication and Donatella referencing her brother being sick, Yanez notes, “It’s one of the many questions to this. They are hinting there was something wrong with him.” She adds that AIDS “was an angle we all pursued,” even if ultimately inconclusive.

The Polaroid photo of Versace’s body
“There was never a picture or anything like that,” Yanez says of Versace being placed on a gurney by the paramedics. As a result, she’s skeptical that a man snapped a Polaroid shot of the designer in his last moments alive. “The most famous picture is when the lead detective, Paul Scrimshaw, arrives and you see him near the puddle of blood. Back then, you know, not everyone had a cellphone.”

The magazine ad dipped in Versace’s blood
Newsweek did report that a fan “ripped Versace ads from a glossy magazine and daubed them in the designer’s blood,” but it’s doubtful the display occurred as depicted in “The Man Who Would Be Vogue.” “That area was sealed off for days,” Yanez says. “I remember hearing vaguely of [the fan], seeing it in a local newspaper. That might have been lore or something that happened late at night, but that house was sealed off immediately. They couldn’t get to those steps if they wanted to.”

Gianni Versace’s final outfit
“At the time, we didn’t say, ‘Oh, he was wearing his own design,’” Yanez says about the image of Versace on the operating table, his black T-shirt — emblazoned with his line’s signature Medusa logo — being cut up the middle. (Actor Édgar Ramírez is also outfitted in white shorts for the scene.) Versace, however, is documented as having worn a white tee and black shorts that morning. Adds Yanez, “I don’t think he was wearing his brand.”

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Fact-checking the Season Premiere