Andrew Phillip Cunanan (August 31, 1969 - July 23, 1997) was an American spree killer who murdered at least five people, including fashion designer Gianni Versace and Chicago tycoon Lee Miglin, during a three-month period in mid-1997. On June 12, 1997, Cunanan became the 449th fugitive to be listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Cunanan's string of murders ended on July 23 with his suicide by firearm. He was 27 years old.
In his final years, Cunanan had lived without a specific job, befriending wealthy older men and spending their money to impress acquaintances in the local gay community, by boasting about social events at clubs and often paying the check at restaurants. One millionaire friend had broken up with Cunanan in 1996, the prior year. Actor Darren Criss portrays Cunanan in Ryan Murphy's 2018 production, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.
Video Andrew Cunanan
Early life and education
Andrew Phillip Cunanan was born August 31, 1969 in National City, California, to Modesto "Pete" Cunanan, a Filipino American, and Mary Anne Schillaci, an Italian American, the youngest of four children. Modesto was serving in the US Navy in the Vietnam War at the time of his son's birth; after leaving the Navy, where he had served as a career officer, he worked as a stockbroker.
In 1981, Cunanan's father enrolled him in the independent day school, The Bishop's School in the affluent La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego. At school, Cunanan was remembered as being bright and very talkative, and testing with an I.Q. of 147. As a teenager, however, he developed a reputation as a prolific liar given to telling fantastic tales about his family and personal life. He was also adept at changing his appearance according to what he felt was most attractive at a given moment. Nonetheless, in high school he was voted Least Likely to be Forgotten.
In 1988, when Cunanan was 19, Modesto deserted his family and moved to the Philippines, to avoid arrest for embezzlement. That same year, Cunanan--who was openly gay in high school and even then had liaisons with wealthy older men--had begun frequenting local gay clubs and restaurants, and his deeply religious mother Mary Anne learned that Cunanan was gay.
During an argument, Cunanan threw his mother against a wall, dislocating her shoulder. Later examination of his behavior from reports indicates that he may have suffered from antisocial personality disorder, a personality disorder characterized by an abnormal lack of empathy.
After graduating from high school in 1987, Cunanan enrolled at the University of California, San Diego, where he majored in American History. After dropping out, two years later, he settled in the Castro District of San Francisco.
Maps Andrew Cunanan
Adult life
In San Francisco, Town and Country reports, Cunanan - who also used the aliases Andrew DeSilva, Lt. Cmdr. Andy Cummings, Drew Cunningham, and Curt Matthew Demaris - "became a fixture in the nightlife of the Castro district, a gay neighborhood, befriending wealthy older men, and also reportedly took an interest in creating violent pornography." Cunanan also socialized in the Hillcrest and La Jolla neighborhoods of San Diego, as well as in Scottsdale, Arizona, "apparently living off the largess of one wealthy patron or another", and at least, in part, supporting himself by dealing drugs.
In 1990, Cunanan met Gianni Versace at Colossus, a San Francisco nightclub. Versace was in town to be feted for the costumes he had designed for the opera Capriccio.
In 1996, Cunanan and Norman Blachford, the wealthy older man who had been hosting and financially supporting him, broke up. Cunanan, now on his own, maxed out his credit cards. Cunanan's friend, Jeffrey "Jeff" Trail, had told Trail's former roommate, Michael Williams, that Cunanan had resumed his old profession: selling drugs. Cunanan also began increasingly consuming them.
In late April 1997, Cunanan told friends he was leaving town, beginning with a visit to Minneapolis to visit two men (both of whom had distanced themselves from him): his former lover David Madson, 33, an up and coming architect, and their mutual friend Trail, 28, a district manager at the propane delivery company Ferrellgas and former US Navy officer, after which Cunanan was moving to San Francisco. (A week before Cunanan killed him, Trail had told Williams "that he had had a 'huge falling out" with Cunanan and "I made a lot of enemies this weekend . . . I've got to get out of here. They're going to kill me.")
On April 24, Cunanan and four friends attended a going away party at California Cuisine, a rare occasion when Cunanan did not cover the food tab. On April 25, Cunanan arrived in the Twin Cities and stayed at Madson's loft apartment.
Murders
Cunanan's killing spree began in Minneapolis on April 27, 1997, with the murder of his close friend Jeffrey Trail, a former US Navy officer and propane salesman. Following an argument, Cunanan beat Trail to death with a claw hammer and left his body rolled in a rug in a loft apartment belonging to architect David Madson.
Madson, who had once been Cunanan's lover, was his second murder victim; Madson's body was found on the east shore of Rush Lake near Rush City, Minnesota, on May 3, 1997, with gunshot wounds to the head and back.
Cunanan next drove to Chicago and killed 72-year-old Lee Miglin, a prominent real estate developer, on May 4, 1997. Miglin had been bound with duct tape securing his hands and feet, and wrapped around his head. He was then stabbed over 20 times with a screwdriver, and had his throat sawn open with a hacksaw. Following this murder, the FBI added Cunanan to its Ten Most Wanted list.
Five days later, Cunanan, who had taken Miglin's car, found his fourth victim in Pennsville, New Jersey, at Finn's Point National Cemetery. Cunanan shot and killed 45-year-old caretaker William Reese, and stole his red pickup truck.
While the manhunt focused on Reese's stolen truck, Cunanan "hid in plain sight" in Miami Beach, Florida, for two months, before committing his fifth and final murder. He even used his own name to pawn a stolen item, despite knowing that police routinely check pawn shop records for stolen merchandise.
On July 15, 1997, Cunanan murdered Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace, by shooting him twice on the front stairway of Casa Casuarina, Versace's Miami Beach mansion. A witness attempted to pursue Cunanan but was unable to catch up to him. Responding police officers found Reese's stolen vehicle, as well as Cunanan's clothes, an alternative passport, and newspaper clippings of Cunanan's murders, in a nearby parking garage.
Death
On July 23, 1997, eight days after killing Versace, Cunanan killed himself with a self-inflicted gunshot through the mouth, in the upstairs bedroom of a Miami Beach houseboat. He used the same gun he had used to kill Madson, Reese, and Versace: a Taurus PT100 semi-automatic pistol in .40 S&W caliber, which he had stolen from the first victim, Jeff Trail. Cunanan's cremated remains are interred in the mausoleum at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in San Diego, California.
Motive
Cunanan's precise motivation remains unknown. At the time of the murders, there was extensive public and press speculation that tied the crimes to Cunanan's discovery that he was HIV positive; however, an autopsy found him to be HIV negative.
Although police searched the houseboat where Cunanan died, he left no suicide note and few personal belongings, surprising investigators, given his reputation for acquiring money and expensive possessions from wealthy older men. Police considered few of the findings to be of note, except multiple tubes of hydrocortisone cream and a fairly extensive collection of fiction by C. S. Lewis.
In popular culture
- Films
Cunanan is portrayed by Shane Perdue in the film The Versace Murder (1998), and by Luke Morrison in the television film House of Versace (2013).
- Literature
Indiana, Gary. Three Month Fever: The Andrew Cunanan Story. Cliff Street/HarperCollins.
Orth, Maureen. Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History. ISBN 044022585X.
- Music
The American rock band Modest Mouse's album Strangers to Ourselves (2015) includes a song named after the case: "Pistol (A. Cunanan, Miami, FL. 1996)".
- Television
Cunanan is portrayed by Darren Criss in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, the second season of the anthology series American Crime Story, which premiered on January 17, 2018.
The Court TV (now TruTV) television series Mugshots released an episode covering Cunanan, titled "Andrew Cunanan - The Versace Killer".
References
Sources
- Golan, Menahem (writer-director) (1998). The Versace Murder. (non-fiction film)
- Indiana, Gary (1999). Three Month Fever: The Andrew Cunanan Story. ISBN 0-06-019145-7. (non-fiction)
- Morris, Daniel (2010). Thrillkillville. ISBN 0-9827928-0-8. (novel)
- Orth, Maureen (1999). Vulgar Favors. Dell. ISBN 0-385-33286-6. (non-fiction)
- Sanes, Ken. "How Andrew Cunanan Became a UFO". Transparency.now. (editorial article)
- Schecter, Harold; Everett, David. The A-to-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. ISBN 0-671-02074-9. (non-fiction)
External links
- Andrew Cunanan at Find a Grave
- Andrew Cunanan's FBI file
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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