If he is convicted of all the crimes linked to him, high-profile fugitive Andrew Cunanan could achieve a distinctive place among the gruesome pantheon of serial killers.
Even the experts were shocked by the brazenness of the public killing last week of world-famous fashion designer Gianni Versace, for which Cunanan is the prime suspect.
“There aren’t many serial killers who have killed famous people,” said James Allen Fox, dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston. “Mostly, they select obscure victims who are accessible.”
Cunanan’s cross-country flight is a study in contrasts, beginning with four alleged murders painstakingly hidden to allow the attacker ample time to flee. Then came the slaying of Versace, a crime that appeared to be a polar opposite of the others.
The seemingly erratic pattern of Cunanan’s alleged crimes clearly complicates the task of his pursuers. Even so, experts say there is no such thing as a textbook serial killer.
“They’ve all got their idiosyncrasies,” explained retired FBI agent Bill Hagerty, who was involved in the investigation of serial killer Ted Bundy.
“They’re pushed by whatever fantasy they have that turns them on. To some it may be the sexual act, to others it’s the pursuit, and to others it’s the taunting of authority.”
Versace’s death has launched a cottage industry in analyzing the mind and motives of Cunanan, his alleged assailant. Criminologists and psychologists have argued semantic points over what genus of fiend an alleged criminal like Cunanan might properly be assigned to–spree killer, serial killer or nomadic killer.
And they’re arguing about what may be driving him.
One theory–unproven, of course, like all the others–is that Cunanan had recently learned he was HIV positive and was seeking revenge on former lovers.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Saturday that Cunanan had told a self-described counselor that he might have contracted the AIDS virus and would “get” the person who may have transmitted it to him.
Police have been unable to verify whether Cunanan does indeed carry the virus that causes AIDS. And while he knew two of the victims, the others may have been strangers.
Another theory is that Cunanan may have snapped because his high-flying lifestyle had unraveled: He was broke, had lost a wealthy suitor who had supported him for years and been rejected by another man he loved, Jeffrey Trail, who allegedly became Cunanan’s first victim.
Still another theory is that Trail tried to interfere with Cunanan’s efforts to rekindle a romance with David Madson, a Minneapolis architect, who was the second in the string to die.
Such conjecture might explain the early deaths, but the speculation gets fuzzier as the body count rises. Cunanan allegedly stole getaway cars from Chicago developer Lee Miglin, the third victim, and William Reese, a New Jersey cemetery caretaker who was next.
But Miglin’s slaying in his Gold Coast home was so vicious that it raises questions about whether it was merely an act of convenience to obtain a vehicle and stay ahead of police.
Miglin’s face was carefully wrapped in masking tape with a hole around the nostrils, and his chest was crushed and riddled with puncture wounds, apparently from a screwdriver.
The attack on Versace also defies easy explanation. The killing–in daylight and in public– was risky and would only complicate efforts to avoid capture.
Afterward, though, Cunanan’s notoriety was greater than ever, and the crime spree was international news.
And that could have been the point. “It would seem he’s enjoying the chase and knowing police are looking for him,” Hagerty theorized.
If true, Cunanan may be following a trail blazed by many serial killers, from Bundy, who bragged after being caught that he viewed killing as a test of his skills, to “Son of Sam” David Berkowitz, who teased his murders in letters to newspapers.
Given that so much is yet unknown about Cunanan’s possible motives, it shouldn’t be surprising that for every theory about Cunanan there is a counter-theory.
Robert Scigalski, a former FBI official in Chicago, sees Cunanan not as someone enjoying a deadly game but as a man who is losing control.
“No longer is he the gregarious, look-at-me charmer and center of attention who loves to talk to people and be `in your face’ about himself,” said Scigalski, who headed the bureau’s behavioral profiling and fugitive apprehension units in Chicago before joining Schaumburg-based Quest Consultants International. “Now, he can’t show himself, which seems to be a basic part of his personality, for fear of arrest. So he is not the personality he used to be, and that is disturbing. I see a degeneration.”
Targeting someone of Versace’s stature might be unusual for a serial killer, but in other ways the criminal activities attributed to Cunanan fit some familiar patterns.
Like Cunanan supposedly has done, Larry Eyler, who eventually confessed to killing 21 young men and boys in Illinois and Indiana from 1982 to 1984, continued his spree after he knew he had come under police suspicion.
Most serial killers confine themselves to a small area and take great pains to hide their crimes.
But like Cunanan, some have gone on cross-country binges. Bundy was one, as was Christopher Wilder, an Australian-born race car driver who went on a four-week spree of rape, torture and murder in 1984 that took him from Florida to California to Indiana and New Hampshire, where he killed himself.
There are other parallels between Wilder and Cunanan. Both have been described as accomplished chameleons who seemingly could juggle personas at will.
Wilder posed as a professional photographer to lure many of his victims, once bluffing his way into a Miss Florida beauty pageant. Yet some of his closest friends said they never even knew he owned a camera.
In his native San Diego, the 27-year-old Cunanan was known as a namedropper and braggart who interspersed fact and fiction to create an image of a worldly and fun-loving gay aristocrat.
He sometimes used the alias Andrew DeSilva and was known as a smart and sophisticated party-boy with a seemingly limitless bank account and no apparent job.
He traveled extensively, wore expensive clothes and often picked up the tab at trendy restaurants and bars.
The graduate of an exclusive private school, Cunanan claimed his family was fabulously wealthy and owned property throughout the world.
In reality, Cunanan’s stockbroker father abandoned his family in the 1980s while facing embezzlement charges, and his mother, broke and embittered, eventually ended up in public housing in central Illinois.
And Cunanan’s money didn’t come from a trust fund either. He was allegedly a high-priced hustler who catered to wealthy older men.
He was a one-time member of Gamma Mu, an organization of wealthy gay men, most of them older, who raise money for AIDS research and hold periodic parties throughout the country.
In a recent letter from Gammu Mu warning its members to be on the lookout for Cunanan, officials note that he was a “roommate to several influential members” in the San Diego area, though it did not list any names.
In another bizarre twist, authorities say they have now confirmed that Cunanan has a preschool-age daughter even though he has lived a flamboyantly gay lifestyle since high school.
In recent months, Cunanan eschewed his preppy good looks for a more sinister image that included a buzz cut and leather. Starting in January, Cunanan’s finances also took an unexplained turn.
Sources say that $75,000 was deposited and then withdrawn from Cunanan’s bank account. And while Cunanan didn’t have a criminal record, one former lover, Madson, confided in friends that he broke off the relationship because Cunanan had a dark side that made him nervous.
Some friends now see that as an accurate, and chilling, observation.
In April, Cunanan let it be known that he was moving to San Francisco; first he had to make a brief business trip to Minneapolis.
But he purchased only a one-way ticket.
