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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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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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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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 deadly 1979 shootout at Dadeland Mall in broad daylight between Colombian traffickers– quickly dubbed ”the Cocaine Cowboys” by a police officer on the scene — heralded the beginning of South Florida’s bloody and violent drug wars in which drug dealers competed for Miami’s wholesale markets. The mob-style execution and growing violence in the streets […]
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South Florida made the world news as Liberty City-born Luther Campbell and two members of his band, the 2 Live Crew, are acquitted on obscenity charges. Broward Sheriff’s deputies had arrested them at a concert in June 1990 at Hollywood’s Club Futura. But when prosecutors played nearly unintelligible tapes of the vulgarity-filled concert, jurors mostly […]
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Legal and illegal gambling has long been a part of Florida.
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After a March 1, 1969, concert in the old Dinner Key Auditorium, rocker Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, was arrested in Miami on charges he exposed himself onstage.
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A teen violin prodigy and champion surfer, Jack “Murph the Surf” Murphy seemed to be destined for folklore when he and two accomplices stole the Star of India sapphire and the 100-carat Delong ruby from the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
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