The new season of Ryan Murphy's American Crime Story started last week, and the first episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace was all kinds of intense. This season tracks the events leading up to the legendary designer's murder in Miami in 1997.
But Versace wasn't Andrew Cunanan's only victim. The serial killer also murdered Lee Miglin, David Madson, Jeffrey Trail, and William Reese. Miglin, his third victim, gets a subtle name-drop in tonight's episode, "Manhunt." (We'll see more of him in next week's episode, played by Mike Farrell, above right.) So who exactly was he?
1) He was a real estate magnate.
According to the official website of Miglin Properties, the magnate had an impressive "50-year career in real estate" before his death in May 1997 at the age of 72. Miglin's accomplished resume boasted a client list including General Motors, General Electric, Kimberly-Clark, and Robert Bosch. His company is still running today.
2) Cunanan tortured Miglin before killing him.
According to ABC7 Chicago, "The Cook County warrants for Cunanan's arrest state he killed Miglin 'by bounding him,' 'beating him,' 'stabbing him' and 'slashing his throat.'" The graphic murder was extremely violent, and Cunanan was associated with this kind of behavior.
ABC7 Chicago also reported that Miglin had "been tortured with a screwdriver and garden saw, ribs broken, bound at the wrists, [and] his head wound with tape appearing like a mummy." His murder at the hands of Cunanan wasn't slow, and could be described as elaborate.
3) At first, police thought the murder may have been committed by multiple killers.
In a report prior to Cunanan being identified as the murderer, The Chicago Tribune wrote, "a 72-year-old who was widely praised for his business acumen and philanthropy, was tortured by his killer or killers."
This reflects the truly graphic nature of Miglin's murder, including the fact that when his body was discovered, "Miglin's head was wrapped in masking tape, with only a small hole for his nose, and his body was covered with plastic and brown wrapping paper," according to The Chicago Tribune.
Another reason that police thought that multiple people may have been involved was because the killer or killers had clearly spent some time in the house following Miglin's murder. Vanity Fair reported:
"The murderer had slept in Miglin’s bed, left a half-eaten ham sandwich in the library, bathed in the sunken bathtub, and shaved in the white-marble bathroom, leaving beard stubble on the floor and a toy gun on the sink, almost as if to taunt the police.”
The toy gun apparently belonged to Lee's son Duke Miglin, and was usually found in his childhood bedroom in the house.
The fact that Cunanan spent so much time in Miglin's house—eating food, sleeping in one of the beds, shaving in the sink, and moving around his son's things—signals he was confident he wouldn't be caught immediately. And he left DNA evidence at the crime scene in the form of his beard shavings, almost like a calling card.
A close friend of Miglin's wife told Vanity Fair, "There was a horrible feeling in the house. Everywhere you turned, there was evidence. We couldn’t touch anything."
Interestingly, the Miglin family dog, "a Labrador named Honey, which had been there the whole time, was calm and unharmed," Vanity Fair reports.
4) Miglin was well-liked in the local community.
Following Miglin's murder, The Chicago Tribune reported that friends and colleagues described him as a "brilliant, generous businessman, and model neighbor."
The paper also noted that "The police department was extraordinarily tightlipped about the case—a testimony to Miglin's position of influence in political circles here."
After Miglin's death, architect Stanley Tigerman described him as a "rare breed of real estate person, neither venal, nor aggressive, nor self-absorbed, nor egocentric."
5) The real estate magnate was murdered on Saturday, May 3, 1997.
Miglin was last seen around 2 PM on May 3, 1997, and law enforcement speculated he was murdered later in the day in the garage of his house.
According to The Chicago Tribune, "There was no forced entry to the home, suggesting that Miglin knew his assailant or was accosted outside and forced into the home."
His body was discovered by his wife, Marilyn, when she returned home from a business trip on Sunday morning.
6) Investigators sought to link Cunanan to Miglin prior to the murder.
As Cunanan was well-known in the gay community, and had murdered an ex-boyfriend, the investigation attempted to make ties between Miglin's family and his murderer.
The former vice president of the Miglin-Beitler company told ABC7 Chicago in 2017, "It was a frenzy at that point, and the rumors were even worse, trying to tie Lee Miglin to Andrew Cunanan." The publication also noted that the "FBI looked into a few claims that Cunanan knew Miglin or his family, but no link was ever nailed down."
At the time of Miglin's murder, The New York Times reported unnamed sources who claimed Cunanan knew Duke Miglin, the victim's son. At the time, Duke was a 25-year-old fledgling actor who'd had a small role in Harrison Ford's Air Force One, and according to Vanity Fair, one source told the FBI "Cunanan had also said that he was going to start a business making prefabricated movie sets with a friend named Duke Miglin [Lee Miglin's son]."
Maureen Orth's book about Versace's murder, Vulgar Favors, cites several sources that claimed they had heard about a link between Cunanan and Duke, and suggests that Cunanan often bragged about knowing a successful family in Chicago. According to Orth, Cunanan's father claimed his son had "told him about a rich family in Chicago he spent the weekend with." The Miglins all deny that any such meeting took place. Even though no credible connection between the pair was ever found, former FBI agent Gregg McCrary told Vanity Fair it was "highly probable" that Cunanan knew Miglin.
Even so, Miglin's death appears to have been random. Like William Reese, the 45-year-old cemetery caretaker Cunanan murdered for his truck, it's believed Miglin was murdered for his car, which Cunanan stole, along with some valuable belongings.
Cunanan famously pawned a gold coin he stole from Miglin in a pawn shop in Miami before killing Versace. However, as pawn shops didn't yet have computerized systems, the police didn't locate Cunanan in time to stop his next murder.
7) His wife, Marilyn Miglin, is a cosmetics and fragrance entrepreneur.
According to Michigan Avenue magazine, she opened her first store in 1963 in Chicago and still sells her eponymous line on HSN today. She and Miglin had two children, Marlena and Duke, together. In 2012, Marilyn told Michigan Avenue of her late husband, “I think of him every single day.”
8) The Miglin family continues his legacy to this day.
Duke continued in the real estate business, and told ABC7 Chicago, "My father was a man we cared for very, very, very much... There's never really closure in a situation like this."
