Gianni Versace, the world-famous designer who created the Miami Vice look, had elegant homes around the world. But the multi-million-dollar mansion called Casa Casuarina on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach was his favorite. At 8:44 a.m. Tuesday, July 15, 1997, serial killer Andrew Cunanan, 27, shot and killed Gianni Versace, 50, on the steps of […]
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Migrant farm workers are the backbone of Florida’s agricultural industry, but they live and work in places where tourists and even lifelong residents never go. This series of photos by the Miami Herald, spanning from the mid-1960’s to the 1980’s, show us a glimpse into their lives.
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In the early-morning hours of March 28, 1966, a portly, graying gunman broke into the Surfside house that 17-year-old Danny Goldman shared with his mother and father. The gunman bound Danny’s parents and demanded $10,000 cash; when no money was found, the attacker left with Danny, threatening to kill the teen if the Goldmans didn’t […]
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Opening in 1936, with a building designed by Miami architect, August Geiger, Coral Way Elementary was the first bilingual school in the country. Responding to the first influx of refugees following Fidel Castro’s 1959 rise to power in Cuba, school officials in the early 1960s began planning entirely bilingual schools. With funding from the Ford […]
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On New Year’s Eve, 1958,Havana witnessed a startling series of events that was to lead to the mass migration of 750,000 Cubans to the U.S. On December 1975, Tropic Magazine published the inside story of the night that changed Cuba -and Miami- forever. This is part two. Click here for part one.
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Through the 1970s and into the ’80s, local law enforcement authorities were chasing bombers all over Miami. Just as one bomb was ripping apart a Little Havana cigar shop, another was going off at “Fidel friendly” magazine offices. The Mexican consulate was hit, as were “Castro compliant” shipping companies. During this wave of violence, Emilio […]
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Kidnappers took Barbara Jane Mackle of Coral Gables from a Georgia motel room on December 17, 1968, buried her alive in a box on an isolated hillside and demanded a half-million-dollar ransom from her father, developer Robert Mackle. For 83 hours, the 20-year-old Emory University student remained underground until the ransom was paid and Mackle […]
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It started on April 17, 1961. The soldiers of Brigade 2506 were Cuban exiles fighting to rid their land of Communist domination. They had the political and military support, they thought, of the U.S. government. Fidel Castro’s days were numbered. The invasion ended in blood and confusion and the deepest despair a fighting force could […]
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FBI agents and two suspected bank robbers exchanged at least 131 shots during the April 11, 1986 shootout on a residential South Dade street that left two agents and the two gunmen dead. Forty of the bullets were fired by Michael Lee Platt, a former U.S. Army Ranger, who carried a rapid-fire, .223-caliber Ruger Mini-14 […]
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The battle of the billboards started in 1965 when Lady Bird Johnson championed a law aimed at banning billboards “to preserve (the) natural beauty” of the nation’s open roads. Not only did the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 not work — it hasn’t been cheap. Taxpayers paid about $214 million to billboard owners as compensation […]
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