Fugitive a Surprising Suspect

SAN DIEGO — At his farewell party three weeks ago at a trendy restaurant here, Andy DeSilva was his usual self: gracious, generous, interested in the finest food and drink and delighted to be surrounded by good-looking men.

As the cake, balloons and champagne were brought to his table, he told the festive gathering that he was moving to San Francisco for a lucrative business venture, but that first he had to go to Minneapolis to see a former lover and a mutual friend.

He was vague on details, but mystery was part of his charm.

In the upscale nightspots and restaurants of San Diego’s gay neighborhood of Hillcrest, the 27-year-old with the dark eyes and distinctive laugh was known as a dedicated “party boy,” the center of attention wherever he went, with an unending supply of cash that he used to pick up tabs for dinner parties several times a week.

He loved to dance bare-chested at hard-rock bars preferred by young professionals and off-duty military personnel. He told friends that he was the heir to a family fortune and was being sought by casting directors for acting roles in movies and television.

“Everybody knew Andy,” said Tim Barthel, owner of Flicks, a popular bar. “Everybody liked Andy. When he talked, everybody listened.”

Now the charismatic young man who called himself DeSilva--but whose real name is Andrew Phillip Cunanan--is a fugitive being pursued by the FBI and police in several states, a suspect in four brutal killings in Minnesota, Illinois and New Jersey.

Dead are a Minneapolis architect who police say was a former lover of Cunanan; a Naval Academy graduate who knew Cunanan while stationed in Coronado; a graveyard worker killed during a car theft; and, most mysteriously, a wealthy Chicago land developer who was tortured, mutilated and wrapped like a mummy.

As for a possible motive, police have speculated that Cunanan recently learned he is HIV-positive and snapped in response, or that the murder spree began as a jealous rage.

Gay communities in New York and San Francisco are afraid that Cunanan is headed their way. A former roommate in Hillcrest has gone into hiding. Prominent men in San Diego are said to be worried that their names will surface as intimates of Cunanan.

People who thought they knew him are shocked that he is a suspect in the brutal crimes and chagrined at the web of lies that he apparently spun so effortlessly.

The truth, say friends and police, is that Cunanan lived off the largess of older men eager for gay companionship but worried about privacy.

Cunanan’s mother has been quoted as saying her son, from whom she has been estranged for years, is a “high-class male prostitute.”

Nicole Ramirez-Murray, a columnist for a San Diego gay newspaper who saw Cunanan frequently at parties, has a different word to describe how Cunanan survived after dropping out of college.

“He was a male gigolo,” Ramirez-Murray said. “If you saw the movie ‘American Gigolo,’ with Richard Gere, he was Richard Gere, just not as good-looking.”

Ramirez-Murray said Cunanan “lived in two distinctly different parts of the gay world. He ran in the elite gay set of La Jolla, with parties at posh homes with wealthy men, some still closeted. And he also made the more public gay scene in Hillcrest, where he wanted to be seen and admired.”

Cunanan told friends that his father owned a chain of parking lots or, on other occasions, that he ran a sugar plantation in the Philippines.

Court records indicate that Cunanan’s father, Modesto Cunanan, retired from the Navy in 1972 and then became a successful stockbroker in San Diego. He became a fugitive in 1988, possibly fleeing to the Philippines, after being indicted on charges of financial chicanery.

Maryann Cunanan, now living in public housing in Illinois, asserted in a divorce petition in 1996 that her husband took nearly all the family money when he fled and that he had not contacted her in five years. Before fleeing, he sold the family home in Rancho Bernardo.

The youngest of four children, Andrew Cunanan attended the exclusive Bishop’s School in La Jolla, a popular college prep school for the sons and daughters of San Diego’s elite.

At Bishop’s, where the annual tuition is now $12,000, Andrew Cunanan was on the cross-country team, excelled in languages and was remembered for his outgoing and, at times, over-the-top behavior. He once wore a red leather jumpsuit with an oversized zipper to school and explained that it was a gift from a boyfriend, classmates said.

His classmates voted him the student “most likely to be remembered.”

He graduated from Bishop’s in 1987 and enrolled that fall at UC San Diego. He spent a year as a history major, dropped out and then returned in 1991 for another year, leaving without a degree.

The slayings and Cunanan have been a major topic on Web sites devoted to issues of interest to the gay community. At one site is a picture of Cunanan and an anonymous warning: “He is very personable and intelligent, with a vast knowledge of international events. A chameleon, he invents his history by absorbing facts from the lives of people he’s met.”

The first of the bodies to be found--on April 29, just five days after the farewell party at the California Cuisine restaurant--was that of 28-year-old Jeffrey Trail, a former Navy officer who, according to acquaintances, knew Cunanan while stationed at the amphibious base in Coronado. Trail was employed as an engineer for a utility company in Minneapolis.

Bludgeoned to death with a claw hammer, Trail was found in the Minneapolis apartment of David Madson, 33, an architect and former lover of Cunanan, friends say. Madson and Cunanan had been spotted a few nights earlier dining and dancing.

On May 3, Madson’s body was found near a lake north of Minneapolis. He had been shot to death at close range. Police speculate that Madson was killed because he witnessed Cunanan attack Trail.

A day later, Lee Miglin, 72, a millionaire real estate developer, was found stabbed and slashed to death and wrapped in tape in his townhouse on Chicago’s posh Gold Coast. His 1994 Lexus was missing, but Madson’s Jeep Cherokee was found nearby.

A Miglin family spokesman has denied that any member of the family knew Cunanan, and Chicago police have declined to comment. But members of the gay community in San Diego said they believed that Cunanan may have known Miglin’s son, Duke, 25, an aspiring actor in Hollywood.

New Jersey police believe that Cunanan, eager to ditch the Lexus and get a new car, shot to death graveyard worker William Reese, 45, on May 9 while stealing his red truck in Upper Deerfield Township in New Jersey. Miglin’s Lexus was found outside the cemetery. Minneapolis police said initial indications are that Madson and Reese may have been killed with the same caliber gun.

Officials involved in the nationwide manhunt for Cunanan say he is proving an elusive and resourceful fugitive.

“He’s highly intelligent, has a source of considerable money, and unlike most fugitives, he has had no contact with law enforcement,” said William Sorukas, a coordinator with the Justice Department’s violent crime task force. “Most fugitives have had prior contact so you can put together their patterns. That’s not true here. We’re playing catch-up, trying to find out about this guy.”

Times researcher John Beckham in Chicago contributed to this story.