A housekeeper at the Versace Mansion in Miami, Florida, found the bodies of two men inside a hotel room a day before the anniversary of the murder of Giovanna “Gianni” Versace.
What We Know:
- On Wednesday, Miami Beach Police arrived at The Villa Casa Casuarina, also known as the Versace Mansion, around 1:20 p.m after a housekeeper discovered two dead bodies in the hotel’s “Villa Suite.” The bodies were identified as Adam Rashap, 31, of Randolph, New Jersey, and Alexander Gross, 30, of York, Pennsylvania.
- Rashap and Gross both died from gunshot wounds to the head. Miami Beach Police Department spokesman Ernesto Rodriguez stated that it was either a double suicide or a murder/suicide. Currently, the police department does not know the order of events, nor have they located any suicide notes. Family members of the deceased were contacted but refused to comment.
- Police are also looking into if the suicides correlate with the anniversary of the murder of Versace. On July 15, 1997, Versace was returning from the News Cafe, located near his home, when he was gunned down on his mansion steps. His murder, Andrew Cunanan, then went to a boathouse in Miami and killed himself eight days after committing the murder. It’s said that Cunanan was a serial killer as Versace was his fifth male-killing in over a three-month span. Celebrities such as Naomi Campbell, Elton John, Giorgio Armani, and the late Princess Diana were in attendance at his funeral in Italy.
- Versace was considered one of the biggest names in Italian fashion and received the reputation of being “Italy’s leading ready-to-wear designer.” He brought “rock, art, sexuality, and brilliant colors into contemporary fashion.” According to Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, Versace was the first designer to take into account the benefits of having celebrities sitting in the front row of fashion shows and paying supermodels their worth. After his death, his sister Donatella Versace took over his fashion empire and sold the over two-billion-dollar company to Capri Holdings (Michael Kors) in 2018.
Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office will verify both men’s official cause of death after conducting their autopsies.
