Former Miami Beach Police chief speaks out about Gianni Versace murder case

MIAMI BEACH – Twenty-five years after Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace was gunned down in front of his South Beach mansion by serial killer Andrew Cunanan, former Miami Beach Police Chief Richard Barreto is speaking out about this case.

Former Chief Richard Barreto who is retired and living in Tavernier told CBS4’s Peter D’Oench that he vividly remembers what happened when Versace was shot twice and killed after returning from the News Cafe where he had just picked up some magazines.

It was 8:45 a.m. on July 15th of 1997. The case would receive worldwide attention.

“It happened during a shift change and we had twice as many officers on duty as we normally did and so we threw a lot of cops on the case who went to the scene and they started saturating the area and the parking lots very quickly and they located the truck that Cunanan had been using and its doors were open and there were a lot of items spilling to the ground. They got his ID and drivers license and you know the media beat us up for that but we couldn’t release that information for investigative purposes. We were working with the FBI and the FDLE,” said Barreto.

“It was incredibly busy,” he said. “When I arrived at the station there were satellite trucks and the station was swarming with reporters. There was a thirst for information.”

There was also fear in the community after it was learned that Cunanan had killed four other men in Minneapolis, Chicago and New Jersey. Cunanan had actually been in Miami Beach for more than two months and had been on the FBI’s most wanted list since June 12th.

Barreto said his nearly 400 officers were on the lookout and his department also was receiving help from Miami-Dade Police.

“There was particular fear in the gay community,” said Barreto. “Cunanan had already struck four people down. Gianni Versace was the fifth person and they didn’t know if they were going to be next, if he would show up at a club or a house or somewhere else that was popular. One of our biggest challenges was following protocol of homicide cases and protecting the case.”

The search would last 8 days.

A break in the case happened when the caretaker of a houseboat said he heard gunfire.

Barreto said, “All of a sudden he heard a shot and he ran and called police and said someone shot at me. We deployed a special weapons team and set up a command post. We had negotiators there. We finally made a decision to enter with our special weapons team and deploy tear gas and we went inside and that’s when we discovered him. He had committed suicide.”

Barreto said, “I believe he went directly from the crime scene to the houseboat. I believe he knew the houseboat was there. He had been there before.”

Barreto said, “He left no note and to this date we still don’t know the motivation. We can speculate all day long but we don’t know how Cunanan went from being a nondescript guy with no problems to someone going on to spree killings.”

He said, “To this say I am very proud of the police department and how they dealt with unprecedented challenges over 8 days. The whole population was concerned that something else might happen.”

He said the case impacted the way future investigations were handled,

“All of our investigators sat down and critiqued this whole thing and decided how we could interact better with the media and do things better,” he said.

“I just look back at it and it was probably our biggest case ever and I was proud to have been police chief in Miami Beach and work for such a competent police department. To this day I am very proud of how we responded.”

Barreto had been with Miami Beach Police for 31 years and retired in July of 2001 after being Chief for 7 years.

He told us he needed to spend more time with his family after his 18-year-old son Cory died in a car crash on Krome Avenue in March of 2001.

Barreto said he has stayed in touch with some of the detectives on the Cunanan case and currently travels a lot and does volunteer work in the community.

Cunanan’s other victims included 27-year-old Jeffrey Trail of Minneapolis who was beaten to death with a hammer in April of 1997 and 33-year-old David Madison who was shot in the head. 

In May of 1997, Cunanan drove to Chicago where police said he killed 72-year-old real estate developer Lee Miglin and then a few days later, Cunanan reportedly killed 45-year-old cemetery caretaker Will Reece in New Jersey, who was killed for his pickup truck which Cunanan drove to Florida.

Police say he started staying at the Normandy Plaza Hotel on May 12th of 1997, paying $29 a night.

Since the crime, the Versace mansion at 11th Street and Ocean Drive has been turned in to a boutique hotel and restaurant known as Villa Casa Casaurina at the former Versace mansion.

And a quarter of a century after Versace’s life was taken, his mansion is still a tourist attraction.