A "typical party boy" in San Diego's gay community, Andy was the target of a nationwide manhunt that came to a frenzy when he shot executed Gianni Versace in broad daylight in front of his Miami Beach mansion. Not the typical serial killer type, Cunanan was described by all who knew him as a "social beast" -- a darkly handsome bespectacled individual that was well educated, intelligent, charming and extremely friendly. At first police believed his murderous rampage stemmed from being diagnosed with the HIV virus. However, three unidentified sources told the Miami Herald that tests performed during the autopsy on his body showed he did not have the AIDS virus raising new questions about his deadly rampage.
The cross-country murder drama began on April 29, 1997, when police discovered the bludgeoned body of Jeffrey Trail, a district manager for a Minneapolis gas company, rolled in a carpet in the apartment of Minneapolis architect David Madson. On Trail's answering machine, police found a message from Cunanan inviting him to Madson's apartment. Madson, 33, was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds four days later on the edge of a lake north of Minneapolis. Friends and relatives said that Cunanan was Madson's former lover. Police believe that Madson might have been killed after he witnessed the Trail murder.
Next to go was Lee Miglin, 72, a millionaire real estate developer whose stabbed and slashed body was found May 4 wrapped in plastic in the garage next to his townhouse in Chicago's posh Gold Coast neighborhood. After the murder the killer reportedly fixed himself a ham sandwich and shaved with the dead man's razor. The morning after the murder was discovered police found Madson's red Jeep Cherokee parked near Miglin's home and Miglin's green 1994 Lexus missing.
On May 9 the green 1994 Lexus reappeared in a Pennsville, New Jersey cemetery along with the body of a caretaker, William Reese, 45, who had been shot in the head. It is unclear why Cunanan went to the Finn's Point National Cemetery, but after killing Reese he stole his red 1995 Chevy pick-up truck.
As the manhunt continued, photos of Cunanan were been plastered on the FBI's Web page and in gay nightspots from New York City to San Francisco. Police and acquaintances said Andy -- who enjoyed a life of luxury and claimed to be the son of a wealthy Filipino plantation owner -- was actually a hustler supported by older, wealthy men. His mother, not mincing words, described him as a "high class male prostitute." Others said he was a fun-loving, big spending charmer with a distinctive laugh.
The youngest of four children, Andrew was a precocious, handsome child, Orth writes. By third grade, Andrew had demonstrated his intelligence, scoring 147 on an IQ test that earned him a spot in a gifted program at school. But his brains weren't all that set him apart from his peers.
For a costume party in eighth grade, he dressed up as the Prince of Wales, a silk ascot wrapped around his neck. At a friend's birthday party, he complained that there was no Perrier. While his classmates ate sandwiches from brown bags, he ate lobster and rice.
"If you could make one wish, what would it be?" he was asked on a school application. "Success, a house overlooking the ocean, two Mercedes, four beutiful [sic] children, three beatiful [sic] dogs and a good relationship with God," Andrew wrote. His high school class voted him "Least likely to be forgotten."
After a couple of months of anonymity Andy blasted his way into the national consciousness when he targeted fashion mogul Gianni Versace at the doorsteps to his Miami Beach mansion. On the morning of July 15 he shot Versace on the head at point-blank range outside his South Beach villa. After the killing Cunanan brazenly walked away from the dying Versace and left a pile of bloody clothing in a nearby parking structure next to the red pick-up truck he stole from his previous victim.
For days after the killing more than 400 FBI agents scoured the 250-mile stretch of Florida's Atlantic coast searching for the elusive killer. Back in the Philipinnes, Andy's father, Modesto Cunanan said his son was innocent and insisted he was not gay. Modesto, a former stockbroker in California who abandoned the family in 1988 and fled to the Philippines when he learned he was wanted for alleged illegal financial dealings, disputed his ex-wife Maryann Cunanan's assertion that his son was a male prostitute. "My son is not like that... He had a Catholic upbringing. He was an altar boy."
Chameleonesque Andy, known for adroitly using disguises and makeup to change his appearance, was believed by the FBI to be walking the streets of Miami as a woman. As his nationwide manhunt captured headlines worldwide, Cunanan sightings poured in from as far as New Hampshire. Meanwhile in South Florida, Cunanan-mania reached a fevered pitch when several men vaguely resembling the handsome killer were assaulted in gay bars and clubs by panicked would-be vigilantes.
All speculation came to an abrupt end on July 23 when the lifeless body of America's Most Wanted killer was found in a two-story houseboat two and a half miles from the Versace crime scene. Ironically, the crafty killer blew his face off in a final act of public manipulation. Curiously, the killer had grown a beard dispelling any previous theories that he had reinvented himself as a drag queen.
Following Cunanan's death, Fernando Carreira, the caretaker who heard a shot in the houseboat that lead to the discovery of his body, filed several lawsuits claiming the $55,000 reward money for his capture. City officials in both New York and Miami Beach said the caretaker's call was not so much a tip as "happenstance" therefore making him ineligible for the reward. Showing a little more class, the FBI and the Manhattan-based Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project were quick to fork over their part of the reward money. Eventually Miami authorities paid there share of the reward, leaving New York City as the one cheapskate who has not paid up.
In a final note, two films about Cunanan and the murder of Gianni Versace have launched into production. The first, developed by ABC and Avenue Pictures, will not -- according to Cary Brokaw, the Chairman of Avenue -- be "a headline-exploiting movie." The second, bankrolled by Warner Brothers, reportedly has Madonna playing the part of Versace's sister, Donatella, and the Starship Commander Patrick Stewart as the famed fashion designer. Robert Downey Jr. -- freshly out of rehab -- is being sought to play Cunanan. Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss, the supermodels, will also be featured as, one would guess, supermodels. And, of course, like the Avenue Pictures production, it will be done in good taste and it won't be exploitative.
Two months after Andy's death Modesto Cunanan, his prodigal dad, arrived in LA to start production on a documentary on his alleged crime spree and develop a screenplay for a film based on his life and death. A follower of the apocalyptic Elithabeth Claire Prophet, of the Church Universal and Triumphant, the older Cunanan pledged that any money made from the film will go toward building "a church, a chapel or a temple" in memory of his son, the serial killer. "If any money comes out of it, it's sacred money."
With the help of an independent filmmaker, Amable "Tikoy" Aguiluz VI, Modesto wants to make a documentary to "find out what really happened" by interviewing friends and acquaintances of Andrew. In his pursuit of the truth, Modesto refused two lucrative offers from film studios in the Philippines because he thought they would portray his son as "Dillinger on the run" and the FBI as the "heroes." According to dad Andy was the victim of a conspiracy involving "renegade" FBI agents and a "deep cover-up." Like a true Hollywood veteran, he refused to give away the rest of the story and hopes we will wait for the film to find out the intriguing details.
Journalist Maureen Orth writes in "Vulgar Favors," an account of Cunanan's 1997 cross-country killing spree that is being released this week, that Versace had been diagnosed as HIV-positive before he was killed by Andrew Cunanan. Versace and his family were concealing his condition because he was preparing a public offering of stock in his fashion empire. "What no one in the fashion or business world was ever supposed to know was that Gianni Versace had contracted HIV," Orth writes. "The consequences to his business would be incalculable. Certainly the public offering would be jeopardized."
Orth learned of Versace's medical condition from Miami Detective Paul Scrimshaw, who reviewed the designer's autopsy results. Scrimshaw theorized that Cunanan killed Versace because the designer had infected Cunanan with AIDS. That theory was discarded when the killer tested negative for HIV.
"No matter how much Andrew Cunanan got, he always wanted more ‹ more drugs, kinkier sex, better wine," Orth writes. "He was always the life of the party, the smartest boy at the table. But at 27, he was also a narcissistic nightmare of vainglorious self-absorption, a practiced pathological liar."
Orth, who was the first to report that Cunanan and Versace initially met in 1990 in San Francisco, argues that investigators bungled their search for the killer by failing to distribute flyers showing his face in Miami gay bars he frequented in the weeks before he murdered the designer.