If celebrity death tells us about celebrity life, then one great celebrity death of 1997 was a mother lode of information. The untimeliness contributed to the universal sense of shock, as did the violence, while the unsolved mysteries of the case added a macabre police-blotter spell. But a quick, rough, unexplained end alone did not account for the emotions that were unleashed—from Elton John’s distress at the funeral to the many flowers left at the death site of Gianni Versace.

Who? Right, the last celebrity dead person of 1997 before Princess Diana. Before ,him were Marshall Applewhite and the members of the Heaven’s Gate cult. After her, on the last day of the year, was Michael Kennedy. They followed one another like jumbo jets lined up to land at O’Hare Airport. They did not exercise equivalent power over us: Heaven’s Gate has already become a trivia question; Gianni Versace will be relegated to subcultures—crime and fashion buffs and gays. Princess Di and Michael Kennedy belong to ongoing sagas. But more deaths will come—Sonny Bono’s already has—each at the moment of impact sharing the same plane of celebrity.

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