by Maureen Orth
THE HELICOPTERS FINALLY heeded and did not return until the power was cut off. The media had been given no information whatsoever to indicate that the police suspected Cunanan might be inside, and since no one really knew if he was or not, the regular business of getting the story out continued apace. The Vanity Fair issue in which my story would appear, for example, was officially closed. Any changes at that point would have to be made on final proofs—an expensive process—not to mention that the article had already been rewritten once, after Versace was killed. I watched MSNBC cable at home in Washington—desperate to learn if Andrew was on that houseboat—until it was time to leave for the Washington premiere of Air Force One, which starred Harrison Ford as the President and in which Duke Miglin had a walk-on part as a pilot.
That week, the Rifat family in San Diego had dug up a number of old photographs of Andrew—Rachel Rifat had even unearthed her high school diary, in which she recorded that Andrew had confessed to her that he was gay—and decided to see what their material could fetch in the still white-hot media marketplace. They were offering Halloween photos of Andrew and Rachel dressed as a nun and a priest, plus interviews on background. By Wednesday, People magazine had already called.
“Let’s open at twenty-five thousand dollars,” Anne Rifat recalls them offering. The National Enquirer was also interested. The tabloid’s Los Angeles office had telephoned on Wednesday morning, asking, “What do you want?” Rifat wasn’t sure: “What are you prepared to offer?” Could they make a deal on the whole package—pictures and diary? The Enquirer promised to get back late in the day with a specific amount. Then Hard Copy called, Rifat says, and made a preemptive bid: “We’ll give you forty-five thousand dollars.” Anne Rifat told Hard Copy she needed to hear back from the Enquirer. By then the houseboat was surrounded and the Enquirer did not call back that day. Whether Andrew was on the houseboat or not would determine bidding prices.
By the time the evening news went on, the houseboat scene was alternating with pictures of Gianni Versace’s elaborate funeral, which had taken place Tuesday in Milan’s historic Duomo. Princess Diana and Elton John were there, seated next to each other. Perhaps remembering that the princess had backed out not long before from his AIDS benefit, which was supposed to launch Versace’s book Rock and Royalty, Elton John did not appear overeager to acknowledge Diana’s attempts to comfort him. (All that would change in a matter of months, with Diana’s death.) Knowledgeable sources in the Italian government whispered that the Versaces had donated one billion lira, or $750,000, to the church for the honor of having Gianni’s funeral in the cathedral.
At 8 P.M. the Metro-Dade SRT began to shoot pepper and CS gas into the houseboat. “Again we tried to establish communication, but no response,” says Officer Bobby Hernandez. He had called his boss, Al Boza, around seven, telling him that he ought to come to the scene. “Honestly, Bobby, I’m swamped with calls,” Boza told him. Hernandez, wary of being overheard by the press, then told Boza in Spanish, “Creo que tenemos nuestro socio” (I think we have our pal). Boza says, “That was my first indication this may be Cunanan.” He left for the houseboat. Michael Band had also just been called by Navarro: “Michael, this may be it.” Band caught a ride with Boza, but they did not discuss the case. Band says, “Most of the media who had half a brain are figuring something is up if I’m at the scene.”
A few minutes after eight, Chief Barreto arrived. Much to the chagrin of the assembled reporters, who were cordoned off from the scene, John Walsh was once again in tow. “The local news people were really angry,” Tom Doerr says. “They were kept out, and John Walsh was allowed to walk around with police up to the houseboat. It irks me to see local law enforcement buddy-buddy with national figures.”
At 8:20, the Metro-Dade SRT entered the houseboat for the first time. They searched the first floor, with negative results. On the second floor, however, they found a body in the master bedroom, “with a gunshot to his head and a handgun in his hand.” In the dry language of their police report, “The subject was cold to the touch and had no pulse. The subject appeared to have been deceased for several hours.”
But was it Andrew Cunanan? And was there anyone else on the boat? The SRT continued to search the bilges, “with negative results.” Then a serious error occurred. Al Boza was told that the “primary search was negative,” meaning that there was no live body aboard. Boza misunderstood and thought “negative on the primary search” meant that no body had been found. “At one point a call came: ‘It’s all clear,’” Boza says. “A sergeant asks, ‘Can we move traffic? It’s all clear.’ I asked him to go to a command channel, and I said, ‘I heard that it’s all clear.’ He says, ‘Yes, apparently it is clear. They’re doing a more thorough search, and we’ll keep you informed.’”
“SRT members reenter the houseboat a short time later,” according to a report prepared subsequently for the Miami Beach city manager’s office. “Miami Beach police officers interpret this activity: No arrest and no resistance met, as an indication that the ‘primary search’ is negative, ‘starting secondary now.’” (Secondary means looking for someone hiding in the bilges.) The report concludes: “This is an incorrect assumption made by MBPD officers on the scene, based on their observation and assessment of activity.”
Wanting to be helpful, Boza, without confirmation, began putting the word out to the media that Andrew Cunanan’s body was not on the houseboat. That fact was immediately broadcast over the airwaves, and nobody who knew differently bothered to correct it. (The Washington Post and the Miami Herald had page-one headlines in their early editions blaring that the houseboat was another false alarm.) Once the search was complete, the scene was returned to the authority of the Miami Beach police. “I didn’t know till quite a bit later they had announced no body found,” says Metro-Dade police spokeswoman Lieutenant Linda O’Brien. By that time, she says, “it was not our case.”
“What was amazing was that everybody was looking at the story [on the houseboat] as the climax,” says NBC Channel 6’s Don Browne. “Then Boza says nada.” Browne and Channel 10 decided to keep all their crews at the site anyway, but the Miami Herald and the other channels left, including the popular, intensely competitive Fox Channel 7, whose tabloid style made it the favorite channel of South Beach drag queens, who told me they “loved the drama.” “I’m not sure whether he’s there or not,” Browne continues. “I made a decision to stay because, one, Miami Beach is paralyzed; you couldn’t get in or out. My point is this: If Cunanan is not in there, why take this incredible risk screwing up the community? They claimed it was routine.”
IN WASHINGTON, I was too nervous to sit through the movie. Duke Miglin, shown for brief seconds, could hardly be recognized in pilot’s gear. There was no way of telling if he really was Andrew’s “type.” In the middle of an exciting action sequence, I edged past twenty people in my row and ran out to a pay phone. “Have they found Cunanan’s body?” I asked a colleague. “No,” the answer came back. “Relax, he’s not on the boat.” I breathed a sigh of relief, but still it was hard to believe, particularly because all along the police had been so closemouthed and so misleading. Few working on the story believed anything they said; I basically ignored them.
Scrimshaw got home to Miami from Quantico at 9 P.M. He called his partner Marcus, at home, and was told by his wife, “He’s at the beach.” Scrimshaw recalls, “I turned on the TV and saw Marcus standing there, on live TV, with the commentators saying there is no body on the houseboat, nothing’s going on. I’m thinking, What a boondoggle this is—all these guys there scarfing up overtime on one more false lead. Then the phone rings and Pelosi says, ‘Get in here, because we got him.’
“I say, ‘Who?’
“‘Cunanan.’
“‘Where is he?’
“‘He’s on the houseboat.’
“‘I’m looking at the TV. You’re kidding me.’
“‘He capped himself,’ Richie said. It’s a police term for suicide.
“I said, ‘The TV says there’s nobody in there.’
“‘We lied.’
“‘I’ll be there.’”
At the houseboat, excitement was running high. “We had to go back and forth and see it on TV in the firehouse. And then I’d go back to the houseboat,” Marcus says. TV, he continues, was presenting “the magnitude of it, and then I’d go back outside and see the real thing. It’s like you’re watching history being made. You definitely felt the importance of doing it well.” Sanchez, the rookie detective, says, “I was honored I got picked to go into the houseboat. It feels good when your supervisor says, ‘I want you to handle this.’ You’re being asked to do it because they think you can.”
It was essential to identify the body. Even after fans were brought in to clear the air, the amount of tear gas inside the houseboat precluded entry without gas masks. Sergeant Navarro and Keith Evans, both in masks, went in first and opened windows and doors. When they entered the bedroom area about 9:30 P.M., they turned to each other instantly and cried in unison, “It’s him!” Andrew, eyes open, with several days’ growth of beard, was lying in a pool of blood on a pillow propped on another pillow. He had shot himself through the mouth. Blood from his ears, nose, and mouth had caked, and the pillow was also soaked in blood. Jeff Trail’s gun was still in his hand, resting on his stomach, and a single spent bullet casing was lying next to the sliding glass window. “We immediately high-fived each other,” says Navarro. But at the same moment George Navarro suddenly experienced an overwhelming “adrena-line down. This guy created so much work, and so much energy spent. He’s sitting in front of us—he looks like a typical Miami Beach yuppie, nothing unique at all. He could look Oriental or Hispanic; he could fit in anywhere.”
By 10 P.M., all of the top brass knew: The manhunt for Andrew Cunanan was over.
Forensic experts swung into action, videotaping and photographing the scene. There were oddities throughout. The front-door lock, for example, was found in the refrigerator’s butter compartment. Most of the kitchen cabinets were open, and a pair of binoculars lay on the counter. There were fast-food wrappers in the bathtub and a plate of nut shells two inches high on the living room coffee table. Andrew was found to have an abscessed wound the size of a pencil eraser on his abdomen below the naval. On a cluttered table in the living room were rubbing alcohol, gauze bandages, a bloody bandage, and an empty Tylenol bottle. There was also a bottle of prescription medicine with “Reineck” typed on the label. A stack of magazines indicated that right up to the very end, while the unprece-dented manhunt raged on, Andrew was still reading Vogue.
FINDING CUNANAN TURNED things upside down. “The joke afterwards,” says Michael Band, “was that the first thing I did when I saw Cunanan was I gave him CPR. Because I said, ‘You’re ruining my book deal! Marcia Clark got a book deal—you can’t do this to me!’” While Band made jokes, the media and the public still knew nothing—but the media race was on.
“I remember leaving, thinking, Man, what fools are we,” says Tom Doerr, recalling the mood after the announcement that Cunanan’s body had not been on the houseboat. “We’re going to suspect Cunanan under every rock. Like headless freaks, we get into this pack mentality and see Cunanan everywhere, and make people nuts, and not do ourselves any favors.” While Channel 10 had dropped the story at 9:15, and Doerr was driving to Coral Gables to get away, the crew for the competition, WTVJ Channel 6, stayed at the houseboat and got word by 9:25 that in fact Cunanan’s body may have been found. Reporter Robin Kish had a source who told her yes to all three of the big questions: Is there a body? Is it self-inflicted? Did it appear to be Cunanan? But the story needed further confirmation. Reporter Mike Williams asked a source of his the same three questions, and was told, “You’ve really been doing a good job, Michael.” It was 9:45 when he hung up. “That’s not a confirmation,” said Assistant News Director Ramon Escobar.
At 10:19, NBC network newsman Pete Williams (no relation), in Washington with federal sources, reported on both CNBC and MSNBC that “a body was found on the houseboat.” When Mike Williams got back to his local source, he got a direct confirmation, and the source also told him, “Remember the gun.” He meant that cops on the scene could see that Andrew had shot himself with the same gun that had killed Gianni Versace. At 10:24, WTVJ was the first to announce that a body presumed to be Andrew Cunanan’s—pending final fingerprint identification—had been found, and that he appeared to have committed suicide.
The news was out, but the Miami Beach authorities wanted to convene the media in front of the houseboat to confirm the finding. The FBI’s Paul Philip arrived in black tie—he had been called to the scene from a dinner for the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Officers. The ambitious mayor of Dade County, Alex Penelas, flew to the crime scene in his helicopter. Seymour Gelber, Miami Beach mayor at that time, remained at home, where he took several calls from the press. About 9 P.M., the former mayor says, “I was told by the city manager that it was Cunanan. When I was called by media people who said they had deadlines, I said I was fairly certain it was Cunanan.” Miami TV later cut between the mumblings of the police chief, who did not disclose at an 11 P.M. press conference that the body they had found was Andrew Cunanan’s, and the irrepressible Gelber, who contradicted him. “So I told reporters I was fairly certain and I would go with it. TV, I did the same thing. So I’m responsible for identifying Cunanan,” says Gelber. Officially, however, there was no word.
The houseboat siege, like the O.J. white Bronco chase, was broadcast live across the country. Unable to resist the moment, Torsten Reineck popped up on TV in Las Vegas to claim ownership of the houseboat. He was seen by the German authorities in Miami, who had been looking for him in order to charge him with tax fraud. They meant business. The Miami Beach police had been notified in the afternoon that there might be a connection between Reineck and Versace, and that night a German confidential informant who went by the name Galleto, appeared at police headquarters, accompanied by Agent Dieter, a German narcotics officer assigned to the DEA.
Detective Dale Twist was already there, waiting to interview Fernando Carreira and his wife to see if their story held. Agent Dieter, it turned out, had actually tried previously to interest the police in a group of rich, shady Germans living in Miami Beach, but had gotten nowhere. Reineck was linked to them. Now Galleto told Twist that one of Reineck’s associates had been friendly with Versace, and had bragged that Versace gave him a watch. Twist recalls, “Dieter comes and says, ‘Hey, this guy is the one I’ve been telling you all about.’ He’s been trying to tell everyone about it, but nobody has taken the case.”
Dale Twist listened briefly and assumed that the FBI would follow through. He then went to interview Carreira, who said that Reineck was definitely the houseboat owner and that he had called on Tuesday, the day before, to check on things.
According to Galleto, Carreira was having a rough time at the station: “His wife was close to a heart attack. The police brought in the son. Carreira said that Reineck always called him, and he had no number for Reineck. Then the police asked the kid, and the kid said, ‘Dad is always calling him—why is he lying about that?’ His wife cried and screamed. The police lady tried to calm her down.” Galleto contends that the police came close to arresting Carreira that night. “Then he’s on TV, the big hero.” Twist says Carreira was not in danger of arrest. “He stuck to his statement and was pretty clear on most everything.” Nevertheless, Dale Twist in his gut did not trust him. “I didn’t like Carreira. There was something about him I wasn’t comfortable with,” Twist says. “I wasn’t comfortable with him and his contact with the Germans.” Twist admits the police could never get to the bottom of their suspicions, however. “We’ve never been able to prove otherwise; every time we even come close, it ends up in a dead end.”
IN ORDER FOR the forensic identification of Andrew to be made in the middle of the night, the Metro-Dade police, once again in charge, had to move i
n the Metro-Dade Roadside Command Post Bus, which would serve as the mobile command post. Their technicians, who had never worked at a crime site before, would make the identification matches of Andrew’s fingerprints. Around 1 A.M. Navarro and Evans approached Andrew’s body again, this time to remove the gun from his hand. First Navarro scribbled the gun’s serial number down on his own hand. It came back a match to Jeff Trail’s gun. “I removed the firearm from Cunanan’s hand and handed it to Keith, and the gun cocked, so a bullet could shoot. We had to be very careful. Keith made it safe—I held it while he uncocked it.” Earlier, forensic experts had come in to swab the gunpowder burns between Andrew’s fingers in order to certify that it was Andrew who had pulled the trigger and killed himself. The number of bullets Andrew had killed his victims and himself with matched the number of bullets missing from the gun magazine. According to Navarro, “We can account for every missing round.”
At 3 A.M., Navarro held Andrew’s hands to take the swabs for positive fingerprint identification. “It was extremely difficult, because he was as stiff as a board.” Inside the hot, humid command module, two nervous fingerprint technicians were supposed to match the corpse’s thumbprint to Andrew’s thumbprint on the pawnshop form and his driver’s license. The original driver’s license was at the FBI lab in Washington, which made their job even more difficult. They had to work off a copy while the bosses in charge paced in the background, breathing down their necks.
The VIP’s would not go home. They all seemed determined to lend their presence to this high-profile event—the chief and assistant chief of the Miami Beach police, the mayor of Dade County, the city manager and assistant city manager of Miami Beach, the FBI’s Paul Philip, the FDLE head of Dade County, Michael Band and Rose Marie Antonacci-Pollock, and the medical examiner.
As Navarro recalls the moment, “The chief is waiting. Everyone’s gawking. Ties are loosening.” To complicate matters, Chief Barreto’s teenage daughter had recently been struck by a car and was scheduled for surgery in the morning, and he wanted to be with her. Nevertheless, Navarro took his time. He needed to be thorough, to document the scene thoroughly, “as found. It might be important, especially if conspiracy theories pop up.” The fingerprint technicians, dubbed by the cops as the nutty professors, hunched over their magnifying glasses and scrutinized the loops and whorls of Andrew’s right thumb, but could not agree on a positive ID. At 3:45 Navarro was sent out again to take more swabs. The wait was excruciating, but the alternative was worse. “My God, what if we’re wrong? What if it’s his evil twin?” says U.S. attorney Wilfredo Fernandez, who was on the scene. “You don’t want to make a mistake.” Finally, at 5:10 A.M., the technicians put down their magnifying glasses: The match was made. Andrew Phillip Cunanan was officially dead. At the press conference called at 5:15 A.M. to announce that Cunanan had been officially identified, Chief Barreto was still pronouncing his name incorrectly, with the accent on the first syllable.
