On the 13th anniversary of celebrated designer Gianni Versace’s death, Jamaican Samantha E Feanny reflects how his wonderous Miami home continues to inspire and shares with SO her experience with the designer legacy. First published in Health Stories.

Bang. Silence. A thousand tears.

As Gianni Versace lay lifeless on the front steps of his Miami Beach home, I sat on the Spanish Steps in Rome watching a fashion show come together. It was July 15, 1997, and I was 12 years old. I knew nothing of fashion, but I knew the name Versace.

Sitting and watching the flurry of excitement on the steps was a well needed break from our busy tourist schedule of pointing and clicking at anything that looked remotely historical. As I gazed at models wearing beaded ball gowns in the sweltering midday Italian heat, something out of place caught my eye. A woman, no less beautiful than Aphrodite herself, looked as though she were in excruciating pain as she held a cellphone to her ear. She was dressed in white and her legs seemed impossibly long. When she put down the phone, she suddenly let out a piercing wail, “Perché Dio? Perché Gianni?” At that moment, everything stopped.

Thirteen years later, while working at the Miami-Dade County Health Department I became aware of an unusual assignment. A swimming pool inspection was going to take place at the old Versace mansion, Casa Casuarina. My colleague, Tracie, was assigned to go with the inspector, but this was by far the most exciting opportunity that had popped up since I’d begun working. With a bribe of a free lunch and a promise to keep my mouth shut, I weaselled my way onto the trip.

Three of us went on two pool inspections that day. The first was at a swanky South Beach hotel, where we simply flashed our badges and were given free rein to roam. When we arrived at Casa Casuarina, however, the scene was starkly different. Gianni Versace was South Beach royalty and we were mere peasants begging at the gate.

Despite the fact that we were acting as the State and thus entitled to enter the property, which was now a posh hotel, we waited patiently in the sun. To ward off the intense glare, Tracie pulled her sunglasses out of her bag and placed them on her face. Shining on her temple sat the iconic Medusa logo. I turned to her and said with a smile, “How fitting.” As the temperature climbed to 100 degrees and a musty sea breeze went by, my mind wandered back to that day in Rome.

On the morning Gianni died, Donatella, his sister, had been busily preparing for the Fall fashion show on the Spanish Steps. When she received the news that Gianni had become the fifth victim of Andrew Cunanan, a suicidal spree killer hiding out in Miami Beach, she was devastated. Her attempt to get out of Rome to see her brother sent the city into utter madness as paparazzi stormed the nearby Hotel De La Ville where she was staying. Aware of the increasing chaos, my family and I tried to get out of the area, but were somehow swept up and into the crowd. We spent the rest of the day fighting for taxis and battling our way back to our hotel.

Standing outside Casa Casuarina’s black and gold metal gate was different. I was dying to be a part of the Versace crowd this time. Perhaps the wait made it even more enticing, somewhat like being on the other side of the velvet rope at the hottest nightclub. I had walked by the mansion a hundred times, always pausing in front and wondering if I might be in the spot where Versace was gunned down on his doorstep. This time I would go inside.

Once the security guards and the maintenance crew confirmed our identity, the gate was opened. With Nick, our inspector, leading the way, we entered the courtyard. My eyes darted back and forth, taking in all the dazzling sights. It was as though we had walked into an issue of Italian Vogue. There were statues of bronze mermaids, lounge chairs covered in the finest of tapestries, grass that looked too good to walk on, hand-painted frescoes on every wall, and a marble mosaic floor patterned in the Versace logo — the head of Medusa. Then we saw the pool.

For a second I think we all forgot our reason for visiting the mansion. We actually had a job to do other than gawking. However, this was a pool so stunning that Michelangelo would have taken a second look. As we approached, Hector, the head of maintenance, smirked. “Nice, huh?” he said. There were many words I could have used to describe that pool. Plain old “nice” was not one of them.

The pool, shaped like a half-moon with two extended wings, is framed by marble tiles and lies against the South wall. The wall, covered in frescoes, reminded me of Renaissance-era cathedrals. However, the real glamour came from under the water.

The sunlight that escaped through the palms surrounding the property glistened curiously on the surface of the water. Sparks of every colour splashed off the wall onto the two large marble mermaid vases at the corners of the pool. I approached the edge of the water, looked down, and saw the reason this pool seemed so magical. Every inch of the pool floor was covered in hand-laid mosaic tiles, each no bigger than a square inch. There were yellow tiles, red tiles, green, orange, and a blue that could easily have been crafted from lapis lazuli. The shiniest and most striking tiles, however, were the gold ones. In the centre of the pool, the tiles once again formed the image of Medusa with her snake-like hair and whose piercing eyes seemed to follow our every move.

It is hard to picture this house being the site of such grief. It was even harder to know that we were there to deliver more heartache. The same tiles that had transfixed my gaze posed a risk to the guests of the hotel. Nick had explained this to me earlier. “If someone were to fall in and start drowning, the tiles would obstruct a possible rescuer’s view.” I thought of Narcissus staring at his reflection, and then imagined some tourist falling into the pool after meeting Medusa’s gaze. Rules were rules and this pool violated so many of them.

Nick and Tracie broke the bad news. “The pool has to be closed . . . guests can drown . . . too much tile . . . no depth markings . . . slippery surface.” As Hector took this all in, the three of us stood there with utter guilt on our faces. Versace may have rolled just a touch in his grave.

Not knowing what else to do, we began walking towards the entrance. I could see it in everyone’s eyes: we did not want this to be the end of our Versace mansion story.

Just as we were a few feet from the metal gate, Tracie suddenly piped up, “Maybe there is something else we can do.” Everyone stopped and turned to her. She looked at Hector and asked, “Do guests really use the pool much?”

“I haven’t seen anybody in it,” Hector responded.

“Then why keep it as a pool? What if you left it as is, and instead of using it as a pool, why not make it a fountain?” As Tracie finished her sentence, I could see everyone’s eyes light up.

We left that afternoon knowing no matter what, we would find a solution. Gianni Versace and Casa Casuarina were too much a part of Miami Beach for us to treat this as any other pool. Although Cunanan, much like Medusa in the tales of the ancient Greek, had left Versace frozen in time like a statue on his front steps, we could not let another bit of his legacy crumble away.

Samantha Feanny is a graduate of University of Miami School of Law and New York University. She presently works for the Miami-Dade County Health Department, Contracts Division. She is a native of Jamaica and a cat fancier.