Andrew Cunanan

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Andrew Cunanan killed five people in the space of three months in 1997. Four of them had been his friends, lovers, or strangers who simply owned something he wanted. The fifth was one of the most famous fashion designers in the world. For weeks the first killings drew little attention outside the cities where they happened. Then the pace and the victims changed, and Cunanan became one of the most wanted men in the United States. Even the label for what he did is contested. The FBI and several other sources call him a serial killer, while others insist he was a spree killer. Who was this man, and how did someone so talkative, so fond of attention, and so bad at covering his tracks stay free for so long? And after the shooting stopped, what did anyone learn about why it began?

  36214549

• 2. A Talker From San Diego

  ›

  Andrew Phillip Cunanan was born on the 31st of August 1969 in National City, California, the youngest of four children. His father, Modesto, was serving in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War at the time. Modesto later left the navy as a chief petty officer and worked as a stockbroker. His mother was Mary Anne Schillaci.

  In 1981 Modesto enrolled his son at The Bishop's School, an independent day school in the affluent La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego. There Andrew met Elizabeth "Liz" Cote, who would remain his closest friend for life. Classmates remembered him as bright and very talkative, and he tested with an IQ of 147.

  He was also remembered as a prolific liar. As a teenager he told tall tales about his family, claiming that his mother was Jewish and that his father came from "Filipino royalty" and had been a general under Ferdinand Marcos. He changed his appearance to suit whatever he thought looked most attractive at the moment. In high school he identified as gay and began relationships with wealthy older men. His classmates voted him "Most Likely Not to Be Forgotten", a title that some media reports later softened to "Most Likely to Be Remembered".

  After graduating in 1987, Cunanan enrolled at the University of California, San Diego, where he majored in American history. There the stories grew more elaborate. He began going by the surname DeSilva to distance himself from his Filipino heritage and pass as Portuguese. He said his father was an Israeli millionaire, that his parents had disowned him for coming out, and that he had once been married to a "Jewish princess".

  The year 1988 broke his family apart. When Andrew was 19, his father fled to the Philippines to avoid arrest for embezzlement and remarried there. Around the same time Andrew started frequenting local gay clubs and restaurants, and his deeply religious Catholic mother found out. In an argument he threw her against a wall and dislocated her shoulder. In 1989 he dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco's Castro District, into the home of Cote and her boyfriend, Phil Merrill.

  510135617

• 3. Patrons and Pressure

  ›

  San Francisco gave Cunanan more room to repeat what had worked in high school. He kept befriending wealthy older men, and he reportedly began producing violent pornography. His social circle stretched to the Hillcrest and La Jolla neighborhoods of San Diego and to Scottsdale, Arizona, where one description said he lived off the generosity of whichever patron was available. He is also believed to have dealt drugs, including prescription opioids, cocaine, and marijuana.

  One meeting may or may not have happened. According to some accounts, Cunanan met the designer Gianni Versace in San Francisco in October 1990. Versace was in town to be honored for costumes he made for the San Francisco Opera's staging of Richard Strauss's Capriccio, and the encounter possibly took place at the nightclub 1015 Folsom. Versace's family has always denied the two men ever met.

  A more consequential meeting came in December 1995, when Cunanan met David Madson, a Minneapolis architect, in a San Francisco bar. They began a long-distance relationship. By the spring of 1996 Madson had ended it, telling friends he sensed something "shady" about Cunanan. Cunanan nonetheless described Madson to friends as the "love of his life".

  In September 1996 Cunanan broke up with Norman Blachford, a wealthy older man who had been housing him and paying his way. Soon his credit cards were maxed out. Jeffrey "Jeff" Trail, a close friend and former naval officer who managed a propane delivery company's district in Minneapolis, told his former roommate Michael Williams that Cunanan was selling drugs again. Cunanan also used drugs heavily, especially methamphetamine.

  By April 1997 friends said he was abusing painkillers and drinking as if there were no tomorrow. He told them he was going to Minneapolis to settle some business with Trail, who had lately pulled away from him. Trail told his sister he did not want Andrew to come. A week before his death, Trail told Williams that he had suffered a "huge falling out" with Cunanan, adding, "I made a lot of enemies this weekend... I've got to get out of here. They're going to kill me."

  1420252729

• 4. Two Friends in Minneapolis

  ›

  On the 24th of April, Cunanan and four friends went to a going-away party at California Cuisine in Hillcrest. It was unusual because he did not pick up the bill. He had hit the limit on both credit cards and had to request an extension just to buy his plane ticket to Minneapolis.

  He arrived the next day and stayed at the apartment of David Madson, who was a friend of both Cunanan and Trail. That night the two men ate at Nye's Restaurant and went to The Gay 90's nightclub. On the 26th of April Cunanan moved into Trail's apartment while Trail was out of town with his boyfriend, Jon Hackett. The following afternoon Trail told Hackett he needed a "pretty important" conversation with Cunanan. When the couple returned, Cunanan and his belongings were gone.

  Shortly after 9 p.m., Trail left to find Cunanan. He was probably let into Madson's apartment at 9:45 p.m. Cunanan had taken Trail's gun after an earlier argument and carried it to Madson's loft. From there he phoned Trail and told him to come and get it. When Trail arrived, Cunanan beat him to death with a hammer in front of Madson. This was the 27th of April 1997, the first of the killings.

  Two days later, a coworker worried about Madson's absence from work went to his apartment and found Trail's body rolled in a rug behind a sofa. Trail's watch had stopped at 9:55 p.m., which authorities took to be the time of the attack.

  David Jon Madson, who was 33, became the second victim. A neighbor saw him and Cunanan together in the elevator on the 28th of April, and another saw them walking Madson's dog the next day. Investigators first treated Madson as a suspect, although his family insisted Cunanan was holding him hostage. On the 2nd of May the pair were seen north of Minneapolis, driving Madson's Jeep and sharing lunch in a bar. The next morning Madson's body was found on the east shore of Rush Lake near Rush City, shot in the head and back with a .40-caliber Taurus PT100 pistol. It was the gun Cunanan had taken from Trail, and it would be fired again.

  2931343740

• 5. A Trail Across the East

  ›

  On the 3rd of May, Cunanan drove to Chicago and killed Lee Albert Miglin, a prominent real estate developer aged 72. He bound Miglin's hands and feet, wrapped his head in duct tape, and stabbed him more than twenty times with a screwdriver. He also cut his throat with a hacksaw and then took his car. Miglin's family maintains the killing was random. Gregg McCrary, a former FBI agent, argues that nobody would bind and torture a victim like this without some motive.

  Investigators noticed that Miglin's green 1994 Lexus LS sedan was gone from his garage. Madson's red Jeep was parked on the street nearby. The Lexus carried a car phone, and records showed it was activated on the 4th of May in Union County, Pennsylvania. Authorities began watching it and saw further activity on the 8th of May in Philadelphia and on the 9th near Penns Grove and Carneys Point Township, New Jersey.

  That same day, the 9th of May, Cunanan was at Finn's Point National Cemetery in Pennsville Township, New Jersey. There he shot William Richard "Bill" Reese, the 45-year-old caretaker, who had not come home for dinner. His wife went to the cemetery and found the office door ajar and a radio playing inside. She called the police, who found Reese shot in the head by the same Taurus pistol that killed Madson.

  The other victims seemed to have personal ties to Cunanan, but authorities believe Reese died only because Cunanan wanted his 1995 red Chevrolet pickup. Cunanan used it to drive to Florida, abandoning the Lexus trail that investigators had been following.

  3133343752

• 6. Hiding in Plain Sight

  ›

  On the 12th of May, Cunanan checked into the Normandy Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida, paying $29 a night in cash. On the 12th of June he was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. The manhunt concentrated on Reese's stolen truck, yet Cunanan stayed in the city for two months, hiding in plain sight.

  He was not careful. On the 7th of July he pawned a stolen item under his own name, though he knew police routinely checked pawn shop records. By the 14th of July he seemed to have run out of money and left the hotel without paying for his last night.

  Around 8:45 am on the 15th of July 1997, Cunanan shot Giovanni Maria "Gianni" Versace, aged 50, on the front steps of Casa Casuarina, the designer's mansion in Miami Beach. Versace was coming back from the News Cafe, where he had picked up magazines. He was hit once in the back of the head and once in the left cheek, with the same pistol used on Madson and Reese. A witness chased the gunman but lost him when he ran into a nearby parking garage. Versace was pronounced dead at Jackson Memorial Hospital at 9:21 a.m.

  Police soon found Reese's stolen truck in that garage. Inside were Cunanan's clothes and newspaper clippings about his earlier murders. The nationwide search now had a name, a face, and a precise place to start looking.

  3740444350

• 7. Motive and Ending

  ›

  Cunanan's motive remains unknown. During the manhunt, the press and public widely speculated that he had learned he was HIV positive. An autopsy later showed he was HIV negative. Some experts who examined his behavior afterward suggested he may have had antisocial personality disorder, which involves a lack of remorse and empathy.

  On the 23rd of July 1997, a caretaker told police he had heard a gunshot from a luxury houseboat in Miami Beach. Cunanan's body was inside. He had shot himself in the head with the Taurus pistol stolen from Trail, the same weapon used on Madson, Reese, and Versace. Police searched the houseboat and found no suicide note and very few personal belongings. Investigators noted that Cunanan had a reputation for getting money and expensive possessions from rich older men. Among the few items they considered notable were several tubes of hydrocortisone cream and a sizable collection of fiction by C. S. Lewis.

  His cremated remains are interred in a mausoleum at Holy Cross Cemetery in San Diego. His father Modesto had other ideas about what the world should believe.

  484545241

• 8. Aftermath and Retellings

  ›

  Modesto Cunanan was living in Plaridel, Bulacan, when his son was named as the suspect in the Versace murder. He reportedly left his house, leaving behind a white cross wrapped with a blue ribbon and a note reading, "My son was an altar boy. He is not a serial killer or a homosexual."

  In September 1997 Modesto, who maintained that his son was innocent, told the Los Angeles Times he planned to make a documentary with filmmaker Amable "Tikoy" Aguiluz. He said he believed his son had been framed in a "deep cover-up" by "renegade FBI" agents. He had turned down two offers from film studios in the Philippines, fearing they would vilify his son in the FBI's favor. He also wanted to be named executor of the estate, to use any money from it to support the Montana-based Church Universal and Triumphant and build a religious site in his son's memory. As of 2018, it was unclear whether the project was ever completed.

  Cunanan has since appeared on screen many times. Shane Perdue played him in the film The Versace Murder in 1998, and Jonathan Trent played him in Murder in Fashion in 2009. Luke Morrison took the role in the television film House of Versace in 2013. Darren Criss won an Emmy Award for playing him in The Assassination of Gianni Versace, the second season of American Crime Story, in 2018.

  He has also turned up in music, in songs by Shyne, Eminem, Modest Mouse, and Mickey Avalon. True crime programs have covered him too, including Mugshots on Court TV, Six Degrees of Murder, 20/20 on ABC, and Most Evil on Investigation Discovery, where Columbia University forensic psychiatrist Michael H. Stone examined his behavior. Dateline NBC gave him a two-hour episode.

  756585962