TO OUR READERS

By BRUCE HALLETT/PRESIDENT

Miami bureau chief Tammerlin Drummond was sipping coffee and scanning the wires last Tuesday when the bulletin flashed: Gianni Versace had been shot. Drummond dashed out the door and drove straight to the designer's South Beach villa, where his blood still stained the front steps. What she discovered there was more like a Versace catwalk than a crime scene. "It was totally surreal," says Drummond. "There was a squirrel on a leash perched atop a man's head. A dachshund wearing a necklace pranced about, and models were everywhere, mugging for the cameras."

The death of one of fashion's most energetic tastemakers, apparently at the hands of one of the FBI's most wanted, immediately sent News Service director Richard Hornik to the phone. Los Angeles bureau chief Cathy Booth, who met Versace during reporting stints in Rome and Miami, arrived in South Beach that night and visited the gay bars and nightclubs where the designer and his killer may have crossed paths. In New York City, reporter Stacy Perman sorted through Versace's finances, while Georgia Harbison traced his influence on the next generation of designers. Former Rome bureau chief Jordan Bonfante flew to Italy from his Bonn post to call on Milan's great fashion houses, while Rome correspondent Greg Burke, who interviewed Versace for an April 1995 TIME fashion cover that featured Claudia Schiffer in a white Versace suit, reported on the impact of the murder on Versace's family and countrymen.

Back in the U.S., Elaine Shannon monitored the FBI manhunt, and James Willwerth and Laird Harrison retraced the steps of the only suspect, alleged serial killer Andrew Cunanan, while Julie Grace began the sad task of tracking down the families of other victims.

The correspondents' dispatches were filed to New York City, where senior writer Richard Lacayo shaped the police news into a gripping crime narrative and staff writer Ginia Bellafante followed the threads of Versace's career to profile the exuberant designer. Meanwhile, Richard Zoglin, who edited the cover, called Versace's close friend and favored clothes horse, Madonna, to see if she was interested in writing something. Not only was Madonna interested, but within a day she had turned in a moving tribute filled with the sort of observed detail that would stand out in any journalist's notebook.