Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions and/or images of violent, disturbing, or otherwise potentially distressing events.
Infamous Murders: Dorothy Stratten
Boris Spremo/Toronto Star via Getty ImagesDorothy Stratten poses for the Toronto Star in May 1980.
Dorothy Stratten was just a normal 18-year-old girl working at a Dairy Queen in British Columbia, Canada when she met Paul Snider. He wooed her with flattering words and told her that she was going to be a star.
Snider put the idea of modeling in Stratten’s head and even convinced her to move to Los Angeles to compete in Playboy’s 25th Anniversary Great Playmate Hunt. Snider latched himself onto Stratten’s rising star and intended to let her make him rich.
Hugh Hefner saw the same potential in Stratten and declared that she was going to be the next Marilyn Monroe. Stratten was featured in Playboy as Miss August 1979 and soon after began appearing in films like Buck Rogers, Fantasy Island, and Galaxina.
Stratten was quickly rising through the Hollywood ranks. The press was already calling her “one of the few emerging goddesses of the new decade.”
Getty Images Dorothy Stratten with her husband and murderer, Paul Snider in 1980.
Stratten locked down a movie role opposite of Audrey Hepburn. While filming the movie in New York, she began a love affair with the movie’s director, Peter Bogdanovich.
Snider began to grow suspicious of Stratten and hired a private investigator to tail his wife. However, once she returned home, she told her husband the truth: she was in love with Bogdanovich and wanted a divorce.
Snider didn’t say much, not in front of her, anyway. But his friends reported that after Stratten called it off, he started taking a strange interest in guns and hunting. He bought a 12-gauge shotgun, took a few shooting lessons, and started slipping into conversations that Playboy had a policy to not print nude pictures of a girl if she got murdered.
Julian Wasser/Getty ImagesDorothy Stratten and Hugh Hefner, holding up a plaque with her magazine cover as 1980’s Playmate of the Year.
On August 14, 1980, Stratten visited Paul Snider at his home to discuss a property settlement she had offered him in the divorce. However, Snider would take this opportunity where they were alone to make his move.
Snider took a 12-gauge shotgun and shot Stratten through the eye, killing her. He then raped his dead wife’s body before turning the shotgun on himself.
Stratten was once poised to be one of the next big Hollywood stars, but now her name is instead forever attached to her famous murder.
Gianni Versace
David Lees/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesGianni Versace in the home that would one day see one of the fashion world’s most famous murders. Sept 20, 1986.
The shooting of fashion icon Gianni Versace in broad daylight in front of his mansion in Miami’s South Beach still perplexes the public to this day.
At the time of his death, Versace was a well-known fashion designer; the man who created the Versace fashion house. He was a superstar in the fashion world, dressing world figures like Princess Diana of Wales.
But on the morning of July 15, 1997, Versace was acting strangely. Witnesses say that, moments before his death, he went down to a local café, passed the entrance and then circled back to enter. A hostess later remarked that it seemed as if he thought someone was following him.
Versace then bought a newspaper and turned back to his multi-million-dollar Mediterranean villa, but he would never make it through the front door.
It’s unclear exactly how Gianni Versace’s murder went down.
Some witnesses said they saw a young man in his twenties approach Versace from behind and shoot him twice in the head. Others said that the men looked like they knew each other and were struggling over a bag when a gun went off. However it happened, one of the world’s most iconic fashion designers was dead.
The man who responsible was 27-year-old Andrew Cunanan. He had a reputation in the local gay community as a flashy gold digger who targeted older men to squeeze free trips and expensive items out of them. But many people also called Cunanan unhinged.
Getty ImagesThe steps of Gianni Versace’s mansion after his death.
In the three months before murdering Gianni Versace, Andrew Cunanan killed four other men across the country and landed himself on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.
However, Cunanan would never answer for his crimes or reveal his motive for killing Versace. He then killed himself inside of a Miami houseboat shortly after Versace’s murder, leaving behind no note and just a few belongings.
