Former Mafia Member Says Gianni Versace's Murder A "Mob Hit"

Thirteen years after Gianni Versace's murder by serial killer Andrew Cunanan, who gunned down the designer on the steps of his Miami, Florida home on July 15, 1997, reports have surfaced in a new book that debts owed to the Mafia were the reason for Versace's death.

A former member of the N'drangheta, the Calabrian Mafia, Giuseppe Di Bella says Versace's fashion design business was a front being used to launder money. Di Bella told investigative journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi: "There were rivers of money from drugs, extortion, protection rackets, loan sharking, mountains of money and it had to be made clean.

"Bars, restaurants, property and luxury goods were used but also clean businesses like that of Versace."

While the Versace family calls the allegations "false and shameful," the Rome-based anti-Mafia authority Giancarlo Capaldo says, "We have opened a file into what Di Bella says — he is an informer and his information in the past has always proved correct."