Born on August 31, 1969, Andrew Phillip Cunanan grew up in Rancho Bernardo, California, an upscale suburb of San Diego. The youngest of four children, he possessed the kinds of qualities conducive to future success – a solid, highly literate intelligence; an outstanding (some say photographic) memory; an easy charm; clean-cut good looks. According to his mother, MaryAnn, her son read the Bible by the time he was six.
One characteristic that Cunanan most assuredly did not possess, however, was the virtue implied by his father’s first name: Modesto. From his days at the elite Bishop’s (prep) School in La Jolla, he behaved in a style that seemed, in part, a healthy (even admirable) display of gay pride, and partly a frantic bid for attention and notoriety.
For a young man so desperate for individuality, it must have been devastating when his father – after reportedly being accused of scamming money from his clients – fled to Manila in 1988, plunging his family into hardship. After trying to help his father, and failing, Cunanan returned to his mother, and ultimately relied on others’ possessions.
Andrew Cunanan was entirely dependent on the property of others, who really did have power in social environments. Though his mother would later bitterly describe him as a “high-class male prostitute,” Cunanan was actually more of a male mistress or giggolo – the kept companion of a succession of older gay men who would lavish clothes, cars, money, and gifts on him.
By the fall of 1996, however, something – no one knows or may ever know exactly what – caused Cunanan’s glitzy world to come apart. Some former acquaintances have hinted that the problem involved drugs; others point to a crisis in his relationship with his last benefactor, an elderly arts patron who abruptly dumped him. Cunanan went from a life of extreme comfort and glamour – driving a brand-new Infiniti, living luxuriously in his gentleman-friend’s oceanfront home to a desperate existence.
Andrew Cunanan’s first known murder was of his friend, Jeffrey Trail, a former US naval officer and propane salesman, on April 25, 1997, in Minneapolis. Two days later, police found Jeff Trail’s body rolled up in a carpet in Madson’s apartment. He had been bludgeoned to death with over two dozen savage hammer blows to the face and head.
Thursday, May 1, Cunanan drove with Dave Madson to a lake about fifty miles north of Minneapolis and there – using Jeff Trail’s handgun – pumped several .40-caliber Golden Saver bullets into the head of the man he had once described as “the love of my life.”
He next turned up in Chicago, where he somehow gained entrance to the home of a seventy-two-year-old real-estate mogul named Lee Miglin. There is no evidence that Cunanan had every met, let alone had a personal relationship with, the older man – though he may have known Miglin by name. What Cunanan needed from the millionaire developer was cash, a change of clothes, and a new getaway car.
Heading eastward in Miglin’s green 1994 Lexus, Cunanan next killed a forty-five-year-old cemetery caretaker named William Resse in Pennsville, New Jersey, shooting the victim in the head with the same .40-caliber pistol he had used to slay Madson, then making off in Reese’s red 1995 Chevy pickup. The date was Friday, May 9.
At around 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 14, 1997, Gianni Versace – following his usual morning routine – left Casa Casuarina and strolled a few blocks away to the News Café, where he purchased coffee and a handful of magazines. A few minutes later, he was back home. As he was opening the ornate wrought-iron gates to his Mediterranean-style mansion, a young man in a white shirt, gray shorts, and black backpack strode up and shot the fifty- year-old Versace twice in the head with a .40-caliber pistol.
A profiler working on Cunanan’s case once said, “The world would know two things after the murder of Gianni Versace. One, they would know who Versace was. And two, they would know his killer was Andrew Cunanan. That’s what Andrew wanted. ‘Look at me. I can get to anyone.’”
FBI Profilers were not able to do much before Cunanan killed himself on July 23, 1997. Though, they were able to profile his motives, before learning of his death, and warn people that may possibly be in danger in Cunanan’s wake. It is a difficult subject for several people to speak of Cunanan’s murders, but it is incredibly important when learning and analyzing spree killers.
It seems like most serial killers are often very intelligent. It also seems they have something happen to cause the change in their life or behavior. I think it’s really interesting that it was unknown what caused the change for Cunanan. I wonder what made him want to do all of this. It is weird to me that it was people he knew and loved that he killed.