The houseboat where a fugitive's manhunt ended, and the case closed without a trial

The houseboat was a squat white box tied to a dock on Miami Beach, and inside it, on July 23, 1997, they found Andrew Cunanan.

Eight days after the shooting, his body was there, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The .40-caliber pistol lay with him.

Ballistics testing confirmed it: the same weapon used in the Versace killing, and in at least two of the earlier murders.

Cunanan was already a fugitive when Versace was shot.

He was the subject of a national FBI manhunt, a 27-year-old drifter linked to five killings.

The manhunt had not caught him.

It ended here, on the houseboat, without an arrest, without handcuffs, without a courtroom.

The case was formally closed after his death was confirmed.

No trial.

No charges filed.

The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office had been preparing charges of first-degree murder, but his death ended that.

One question was answered: who.

Another was not: why.

The source does not establish a motive for the killing.

What Cunanan did in the eight days between the shooting and his death is also not detailed in the source.

His movements were traced through witness accounts and surveillance footage, the record says, but the days themselves remain a gap.

The weapon answered the ballistics question.

The houseboat answered the manhunt question.

The closed file answered the legal question.

The rest — the why, the eight days, the man himself — that would require evidence the record does not provide.

She was on the ground below, the steps of Casa Casuarina, but that is another section.

Here, the boat floats, the case is closed, and the file holds only what was found.

8:45 A.M. — THE STEPS OF CASA CASUARINA

The morning began as an errand.

On July 15, 1997, at approximately 8:45 a.m., Gianni Versace was shot and killed on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion, Casa Casuarina.

He was returning from a walk to a nearby newsstand.

The shooter, later identified as Andrew Cunanan, approached Versace from behind and fired two shots at close range with a pistol.

Two shots, close range, on the steps of a home.

Versace was pronounced dead at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Cunanan fled the scene on foot.

He fled on foot, and then by bicycle.

Versace's partner was present in the house at the time of the shooting.

He was inside when the shots were fired.

He later testified about the events.

What did Versace buy at the newsstand that morning?

Who else saw the shooter approach?

What was said in those final seconds?

The source does not specify what Versace purchased at the newsstand.

The source does not establish whether anyone else saw the shooting besides the shooter and the victim.

Those details are not in the record.

The record holds the time, the place, the two shots, and the flight.