Versace Mourners Gather Under Police Surveillance

Gianni Versace (AFP)

MIAMI BEACH, July 18 — Undercover police officers seeking a brazen killer scanned mourners at a memorial service held here today for fashion designer Gianni Versace, as Miami Beach said good-bye to its adopted icon with a whiff of incense and the rustle of priestly smocks.

Police said Andrew Phillip Cunanan, the alleged killer identified as the only suspect in Versace's shooting, is so brazen he might have attended the memorial service. Law enforcement officials said they believe Cunanan still is in South Florida, though they would not say if any of the hundreds of tips received since Tuesday's assassination-like slaying have produced solid leads.

In addition to scrutinizing mourners at St. Patrick Catholic Church today, police were reviewing films and tapes taken by television news crews, security cameras and tourists on the sidewalk in front of Versace's villa and the seaside park across the street, in an effort to determine whether Cunanan might have returned to the scene of the crime to bask in the attention the crime has generated.

Tonight, Miami Beach police said Cunanan rented a room in a pastel-colored, Art Deco-style apartment hotel in North Miami Beach for about two months before Versace was killed. At the time, the FBI was actively searching for Cunanan in connection with four other killings. Employees of the Normandy Plaza hotel identified the brown-eyed, brown-haired Cunanan, 27, from police photographs, officials said.

Police and FBI agents, who had visited the hotel two days ago but did not find Cunanan, returned today and removed evidence from the room where hotel owner Roger Falin said Cunanan lived for two months and left behind barber clippers and fashion magazines.

Undated photo of Andrew Cunanan. (AP)

Miriam Hernandez, a desk clerk at the hotel, said the renter was "a nice, clean-cut man. He didn't make any calls. He didn't bring anyone into the hotel. He didn't talk to anyone."

He also didn't pay the bill for his last night's stay, which Falin said was "a day or two" before Versace was killed outside his mansion, five miles away. Hernandez said Cunanan, who used a French passport and a U.S. driver's license for identification, was charged $35.73 a night for the first four nights and then rented weekly for $195 plus tax, paying in cash.

Meanwhile, local and federal officials today backed further away from suggesting there were connections between Cunanan and two other slayings — the grisly strangulation death of a Cuban-born physician Thursday in nearby Miami Springs and the May 12 killing of an airline employee in Miami Beach.

Witnesses in the May 12 killing said a fleeing suspect was black — Cunanan is white — and the Thursday crime may have involved a family dispute, authorities have said.

That leaves investigators at least publicly at a loss to further trace the movements of Cunanan, whom they have identified as a high-priced male prostitute who they believe has cut an arc of murder from Minnesota to Chicago to New Jersey to Florida. Police wonder if more victims will be found on that path and worry that if Cunanan is not caught, he may kill again. Cunanan is wanted as a suspect in five killings — Versace, that of Cunanan's one-time male lover and another male friend in Minnesota, a businessman in Chicago whose family denies any previous connection to Cunanan, and a cemetery worker in New Jersey who may have been killed just for his pickup.

One theory to explain the insistence by law enforcement officials that Cunanan remains in the area — in the absence of any volunteered information to support that contention — is that if Cunanan has fled the area but believes that the manhunt is focused almost entirely on Florida, he might become careless.

The openly gay Versace, 50, was shot twice in the head at point-blank range outside his oceanfront home Tuesday morning. His remains were cremated here Wednesday, and his brother and sister, executives in his multimillion-dollar fashion business, returned with his ashes for a service and burial today in the picturesque Lake Como region north of Milan, where Versace began his spectacular rise in the fashion world as a young designer in the late 1970s.

Today's 75-minute farewell to him was in a style the flamboyant designer would likely have appreciated. For a man who strived to arouse through his fashion, the service was fittingly sensual, from a haunting solo rendition of Ave Maria to the elegant clerical gowns, from the soft flicker of candles and the curl of smoke to censers spreading incense.

The Rev. Patrick H. O'Neill, of the archdiocese of Miami, broke into a solo excerpt from fellow-Miami resident Madonna's performance of Evita, and delivered a homily from the Bible about Joseph's extraordinary coat.

People came to the ceremony dressed and less-dressed. There was a scattering of the high-heeled models Versace loved, city officials in dark suits and white shirts, men in leather vests, and gawkers sporting cutoffs, chiffon and cleavage.

"I wanted to pay respects to him, to say our last good-bye," said Arlene Tur, 20, a model dressed in black with a splash of red ribbon in her hair — "something he would have liked," she said.

Bob Kunst, a gay activist here, said Versace would have enjoyed the variety of flesh and fashion on display. "He wasn't just another designer. He put sexuality in outfits. He brought sexuality out of the closet."

But in a town that revels in the spotlight, there was sure to be some controversy.

Kunst berated "the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, which didn't say a word about him being gay."

Listening to him was an older woman, who would not give her name. She said she had lived in Miami Beach 55 years, and "this artsy crowd doesn't contribute anything. We never had problems like this before they came."

But most of those at the service and in Miami Beach credited Versace with helping to put the down-at-its-heels strip back on its feet by casting the limelight of fashion and swagger on the area.

"He brought South Beach and our community to the cutting edge of fashion in the world," said Alex Penelas, the mayor of Dade County.

Special correspondent Catharine Skipp contributed to this report.