He tracked possible sugar daddies with care and would say with a pout that he didn’t know whether to fly to New York or Paris for dinner. A voracious reader with a reported genius-level I.Q., he coveted the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Until recently, Andrew Cunanan, 27, was just a gay gigolo down on his luck in San Diego. He knew very well that the act of murdering Versace, the Calabrian-born designer whose flamboyant clothes virtually defined “hot,” who tarted up the likes of Princess Diana and Elizabeth Hurley but whose gowns also made Madonna and Courtney Love more elegant, would instantly catapult him to where he had always fantasized being: at the center of worldwide attention. The prime suspect, dressed in nondescript shorts and a baseball cap, came in close for the kill and then coolly walked away along Ocean Drive.
Now the emperor lay dead, gunned down almost Mob-style on the steps of his lavish Mediterranean villa, shot in the head and face in broad daylight. In Miami’s pagan, over-the-top South Beach, particularly among the large gay contingent, Gianni Versace had been a tanned, adored idol.
