American Murder Houses

by Steve Lehto

  Despite the fact that he did little to hide his crimes, the police had a hard time catching Cunanan. He drove to Florida and checked into the Normandy Plaza Hotel at 6979 Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, after inquiring about monthly rates. He spent a couple of months in the Miami area and gave the police a golden opportunity to catch him. When he had killed Miglin, he had also stolen some rare coins from Miglin’s house. To get spending money in Miami Beach, Cunanan decided to pawn one of the coins at a local shop called Cash on the Beach on July 7. The pawn shop followed the law and had Cunanan fill out a pawn slip for the coin he was pawning, and Cunanan filled it out with his actual name and the address of the hotel where he was staying. He showed the proprietor identification that showed his name was Andrew Cunanan. The shop gave him his money and he left. The shop then turned the pawn slip in to the Miami Beach Police Department, where the slip sat unnoticed in a pile of paperwork from July 8 until July 15. The delay had monumental consequences. July 15 was the same day Cunanan shot Versace.

  When Gianni Versace was gunned down on the front steps of his mansion, Miami Beach police realized very quickly that Cunanan was the killer. But they could find no connection between the two men. It was a question that was never answered satisfactorily. It very well could be that Cunanan simply decided to kill someone famous before his killing spree ended. Others suggested that Cunanan may have met Versace someplace previously and felt slighted. While this theory is possible, it has never been verified by the police that the two ever met previously.

  After shooting Versace, Cunanan did not run far. He found an unoccupied double-decker houseboat docked at Indian Creek, just a few miles from Versace’s mansion, and broke into it. The boat was called The New Year and it was docked at 5250 Collins Avenue. Meanwhile, the police sent a SWAT team to the hotel where Cunanan had been staying and burst into the wrong room without realizing it. The room was vacant. It would be two more days before they realized their mistake and went back to search the room he had listed on the pawn receipt. No one was in that room either, but there was a pile of books Cunanan had checked out from the Miami Public Library, mostly on art.

  Eight days after Versace had been killed, the caretaker of the houseboat at Indian Creek arrived to check on it. When he got aboard, he noticed that a door on the boat had been forced open. Carefully looking inside, he saw that someone was living in the boat. Then, he heard a gunshot. The caretaker called the police, who quickly came and surrounded the boat. A few hours later, with hundreds of law enforcement personnel swarming the dock, police entered and found Cunanan dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The gun he had shot himself with was identified as the murder weapon used to kill two of his victims and had been stolen from his first victim, Jeffrey Trail. News reports indicated that Cunanan had shot himself in the face. He was positively identified by a thumbprint.

  Identifying the ownership of the houseboat Cunanan had moved into was confusing as well. Early news reports said it belonged to a man named Torsten Reineck, a fugitive from German law enforcement who was wanted for tax evasion. He owned the Apollo Spa in Las Vegas, which was well known in the gay community. It was unclear if Cunanan knew Reineck. Later news reports said the boat was actually owned by a man named Frank Matthias Ruehl.

  In January 1998, the Miami Beach PD held what they called the “final” news conference on the Versace murder. Newspapers called it “the biggest department case ever.” The police noted that there were several possible explanations for why Cunanan had targeted Versace, but little evidence to support any of them. With Cunanan’s death, the questions would remain unanswered. “We had a million questions we wanted to ask him,” a Miami Beach PD representative told the press, referring to Cunanan. There were a million questions the public wanted to ask of the Miami Beach PD. Why hadn’t they found Cunanan when the pawn slip was given to them? Why didn’t anyone notice the stolen truck that sat abandoned for two months before Versace was killed? Several credible tips had been given to the police before the murder that Cunanan was in Miami Beach. Why hadn’t the public been warned?

  On July 24, a funeral for Gianni Versace was held in Milan, attended by many of his friends. Elton John and Sting sang a duet as part of the service. Princess Diana and Carolyn Kennedy were in attendance. Well-known members of the fashion universe such as Giorgio Armani, Karl Lagerfeld, and Naomi Campbell paid their respects.

  The houseboat where Cunanan had hidden after the murder was in the news for a bit longer. The New Year suffered a mishap in December 1997. Its bilge pump became blocked by something and the boat partially sank into Indian Creek. When the owner, Ruehl, took no steps to repair or remove the boat, the city threatened to have it condemned. After sitting on the bottom of Indian Creek for a month, the partially submerged boat was demolished by the city at a cost of $16,000.

  The Versace mansion on Ocean Drive remained empty for a few years after Versace’s murder. Then a man named Peter Loftin bought the home in 2000 for a reported $19 million. He turned it into the Villa by Barton G Hotel and Restaurant; Forbes magazine called it a “high-end boutique hotel.” Rooms started at around a thousand dollars a night and each one included a private butler. In 2012, the mansion was put up for sale with an asking price of $125 million, making it one of the two most expensive residential properties for sale in the United States at the time. With the real-estate listing, many of the home’s finer details became more publicized. The pool, for example, is fifty-four feet long and lined with twenty-four-karat gold. The interior walls of the house are hand-painted with murals, and each room was individually designed by Versace.

  By July 2013, the asking price of the mansion had been lowered to a mere $75 million, but still there were no takers. The holder of the mortgage began moving toward foreclosure, and that same month the owner of the home filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Allegations and accusations flew between the parties. Meanwhile, the former business tenant—Villa by Barton G—had vacated. Eventually the mansion was sold at auction in September 2013. The sale price of $41.5 million was a far cry from the opening price of $125 million. Papers reported that Donald Trump had bid $41 million for the mansion but had been bested by an investor group that plans on reopening it as a hotel.

  The mansion at 1116 Ocean Drive is privately owned but visible from the street and sidewalk. There is a small barricade to keep people away from the gates and steps where Versace was murdered by Cunanan, and people still come by to get their photos taken in front of the home. Other than the address, there is nothing to indicate the notorious history of the property.

  *Maureen Orth, “The Killer’s Trail,” Vanity Fair, September 1997.

  America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer

  GARY RIDGWAY—THE GREEN RIVER KILLER

  1998

  21859 32nd Place

  SeaTac, Washington 98198

  In 1982, a young woman walking the streets of Seattle climbed into a pickup truck driven by a man who offered to pay her for sex. He drove her to his nearby home, where they had sex and then he strangled her. He dragged her body back out to his truck and drove to the nearby Green River, where he dumped her. The body would be found later with little evidence to point to a killer. Because the young woman was a runaway, possibly a prostitute, no one would notice her missing or be looking for her. The police would not know she existed until her body was found a week after she had been killed. The victim here, however, was simply a small piece of a much larger puzzle. Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing for almost two decades, Gary Ridgway would go on a killing spree of unprecedented scale, saying later that he may have killed eighty women before he was stopped. For a time during the 1980s, bodies of prostitutes and runaways were sometimes found on a weekly basis even as a task force combed through thousands of tips. Ridgway, nicknamed “The Green River Killer” after where some of his first victims were dumped, became the country’s most prolific serial killer, and for many years the local police department appeared to be compl
etely at a loss as to how to stop the killer in their area.

  Gary Ridgway was born in 1949 and joined the navy as a young man. He spent time serving on a ship off the shore of Vietnam while he had a wife back in the states. This marriage would end and Ridgway would eventually marry two more times. His relationships with women were troubled, to put it mildly. He began seeing prostitutes, probably while in the navy, but continued long after returning to civilian life. He moved to Seattle and began working at a plant that built trucks, where he got a job working in a paint booth.

  In January 1982, Ridgway bought a house in SeaTac, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. Around this time, a sixteen-year-old runaway named Wendy Lee Coffield was strangled, and her body was dumped in the Green River. A week later, some boys riding their bicycles across a bridge over the river looked down and spotted Coffield’s body floating in the river. They thought it was a mannequin and went down to investigate. When they realized it was a real body, they called police. Coffield would be the first of a string of victims, with Ridgway killing so often that his victims were often not found in the order they were killed, or sometimes were found in groups because he dumped more than one body in the same spot. He killed his second victim in the woods and left her there, where she would not be found for two months. His third victim was murdered on July 25 but not discovered until August 12, 1982. She was also found floating in the Green River. The three bodies were of women who had been strangled after being picked up on the streets of Seattle. If the police were not sure yet they had a serial killer on the loose, it would become painfully clear on August 15, 1982. A man rafting down the Green River found the body of a woman floating in the river. Shocked, he noticed another woman’s body just under the surface at the same spot. He went ashore and asked someone to call the police. When they arrived, they searched the area and found a third victim, another young woman who had been strangled, not far from the river.

  From this point forward, bodies of strangled prostitutes and runaways would be discovered scattered all over the area in an alarming number. Amazingly, Ridgway was known to the police during this time but only as a customer of prostitutes. He was arrested in April 1982, and again that May, for soliciting prostitution. Investigators did not link him to the killings. Over that summer, more women disappeared from the streets of Seattle, many of them last seen in the area where Ridgway was arrested. The area was well known as a place for prostitution and Ridgway was just one of many johns arrested in that area. Meanwhile, victims began turning up on a weekly basis.

  Despite the close calls, Ridgway continued picking up women and killing them, many of whom he brought to his house in SeaTac. Other times he would kill them in a secluded spot, outdoors, or while parked in his truck. Ridgway would then find an out of the way place to dump the victim’s body. Some locations he used more than once. Tips and leads flooded in but had the wrong effect; authorities appeared overwhelmed by the information and seemingly got nowhere. One confusing aspect of the crime wave was that the victims were not always discovered immediately. A series of women would disappear over a stretch of time without any bodies being found. Then someone would stumble upon a stash of victims’ bodies and notify the police.

  The bodies were also revealing very little information to investigators. DNA testing was still being developed, and little else was found at the sites where the bodies were found. Investigators found small amounts of body fluid that might have come from the killer, but otherwise they had little to go on.

  In 1982, the Green River Killer struck at least sixteen times. He killed twenty-four more times in 1983. Then he killed twice more in 1984 and stopped. Police were not sure at first, since bodies continued to be found. They formed a task force to work on the cases to date—authorities had identified only sixteen bodies they considered victims of the killer—although Ridgway had already killed more than three dozen. The task force combed through mountains of clues and tips, and Ridgway finally turned up on their radar. He was known to frequent the areas where the victims were last seen and had been arrested for soliciting prostitution. He was given a polygraph and the operator of the test concluded that Ridgway was being truthful when he denied any connection to the killings. Ridgway was released.

  In February 1985, Ridgway attended a singles event at a local bar and met a woman named Judith who was recently divorced after a marriage of almost two decades. Ridgway impressed her with what a gentleman he could be. He helped her with her chair when sitting down at a table; he opened doors for her. She later said that he made her smile every day. Unbeknownst to her, Ridgway had killed at least forty-two women by this time but had not killed anyone since March 1984. There were some odd things about him, though. When she first visited his house in SeaTac, the carpeting had recently been torn up and removed, and he was sleeping on a mattress and box spring that were lying on the floor. He told her that the carpeting had been damaged by the previous tenants of the house and that an ex-girlfriend had demanded her bed back after a breakup. Judith decided to overlook the shoddy décor. In later years, she would learn that he had removed the carpeting and the bed in an attempt to destroy evidence at a crime scene.

  Ridgway did not kill any women for the entire first year he dated Judith. But then he started coming home late and leaving for work early. He told her it was work related, union meetings he had to attend and so on. Again, since he treated her so well, she decided to believe him. The two were married in 1988. Ridgway did not kill anyone that year or the next. But he couldn’t help himself and began killing again in 1990 and again in 1998. The number of victims and the frequency with which he killed them had clearly been slowed, but authorities knew that the Green River Killer was alive and well.

  In 1987, the police had again taken a look at Ridgway. This time they took hair and DNA samples from him. It still took the police several years to find DNA evidence on a victim that could be matched to a killer, partially because advancements in DNA had not progressed enough yet. But when a match was finally made, it pointed to Ridgway. He was arrested on November 30, 2001, and charged with several murders. Once the investigators found out that Ridgway worked in a factory painting trucks, they went back through their evidence samples and found microscopic traces of paint that could be conclusively linked to the specific brand and type of paint Ridgway worked with at the time. Even more murder charges were leveled against him. And authorities were certain they had caught their man.

  Ridgway maintained his innocence at first while prosecutors indicated they would seek the death penalty. After a year or so, Ridgway agreed to cooperate with the authorities in exchange for the dropping of the death penalty from the possible outcomes of his case. His bargaining chip? He would help authorities locate the remains of other victims and also gave details for each so their cases could be closed. At the time the bargain was struck, the police only had evidence tying Ridgway to seven victims. He agreed to confess to a total of forty-eight victims, meaning that the police could close another forty-one cases with his cooperation.

  Ridgway pleaded guilty to forty-eight counts of murder in exchange for getting prison time instead of the death penalty. Authorities actually took Ridgway in a van and drove him around as he pointed out places where he had left victims’ bodies. The court sentenced him to forty-eight consecutive life sentences. In case anyone wondered what would drive someone to kill so many people, Ridgway told the court:

  I picked prostitutes because I hate most prostitutes and I did not want to pay them for sex. I also picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.

  In December 2010, another victim was found who had not been among the forty-eight victims Ridgway had confessed to earlier. The prosecutors filed charges and Ridgway pleaded guilty to a forty-ninth murder charge. The judge added a forty-ninth life senten
ce to the end of his already impossibly long sentence. In his discussions with police, Ridgway admitted killing as many as seventy-one women in all. Later, investigators wondered about the lie detector test Ridgway had passed. The “charts” created by the polygrapher were still in the file, and when they were examined by other polygraph experts, it was determined that Ridgway should have been deemed to have failed the test. The results had simply been misinterpreted.

  Ridgway’s wife initially believed that her husband was innocent. She visited him in jail and later spoke of how hard it was to be separated from the man she loved. Eventually, as she became aware of the strength of the case against him, she came to realize that he had led a double life and that he was, indeed, the Green River Killer. She filed for divorce and later cooperated with an author who wrote a book about her experience: Green River Serial Killer—Biography of an Unsuspecting Wife. As the years passed, Ridgway acknowledged that his estimates for how many women he killed had been low. He later said the number may have been as high as eighty. Investigators continued looking for the remains of his victims but have not found any more in recent years, even though Ridgway continues to give them details of where he dumped victims. Now, some think he may be leading investigators on a wild-goose chase.