HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You ready? We doing this? Are we recording? Whoa, we're recording. Wow. Man. (moaning)
MARCUS PARKS
(moaning) Is that how you're starting it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No man, I'm rocking them beta blockers.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh. Rocking them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You ever done that?
MARCUS PARKS
How do you rock a beta blocker?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just eat them.
ED LARSON
Yeah, just eat them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's kinda fun cause I feel like I'm in my own cockpit, like I'm a little pilot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just going like here we go, at our cruising altitude of 50,000 ft. don't look at those nightmares. Even though you're not asleep, the nightmares keep coming to your eyes. But we're just gonna cruise on over there. Take a look to your left and you can see the Grand Canyon. Don't jump. You're gonna wanna just keep on... Oh put the seatbelts on. And it's like yeah, I'm just in my head just constantly just like not dive bombing.
MARCUS PARKS
Hell yeah, man. Put your seatbelts on, it's time for Last Podcast on the Left everybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, whoa, yeah! Be careful!
ED LARSON
Yay!
MARCUS PARKS
Don't go into the nightmare canyon, stay away! My name's Marcus Parks, I'm here with Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You've been.
MARCUS PARKS
And Happy Birthday, Ed Larson!
ED LARSON
Yo! It's my birthday.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
42, feeling blue.
ED LARSON
40-poo, man. 40-poo. I had a big one today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
It was nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You earned it.
MARCUS PARKS
You just showed me a picture of your dog that your mom had dressed up with like a birthday cap for your birthday. Was that for your birthday?
ED LARSON
No, it was the dog's birthday.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, the dog knows, too. They know exactly what's happening. Guys, I'm legit excited about this topic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It has been a while since we've covered a true solid American villain.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it don't get much frostier than this.
MARCUS PARKS
It really doesn't. We're finally getting to one of the most well known spree killers in American history, Andrew Cunanan.
ED LARSON
Why'd it take so long?
MARCUS PARKS
For us to cover him?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because there was a huge miniseries.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he looked really sexy and then you kind of want to give it some space. We probably should have done it when the new miniseries came out. But we're not good at marketing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I actually argued when the series was coming out, I was like no, no, no, we can't do the series because like there's a miniseries out right now. And I didn't realize that like-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's like why people do that.
MARCUS PARKS
That's why you do it because people would be curious and would google and such. But I'm bad at it.
ED LARSON
Well what are you gonna do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nothing.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just wait three years.
ED LARSON
I started watching the series because of this. So there's that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See? We're helping them out.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh that's wonderful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm still under strike!
MARCUS PARKS
let's give FX the boost.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm still under goddamn strike.
MARCUS PARKS
Andrew Cunanan was a spree killer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh, Mr. Cunany. Do you not call him Mr. Cunany in your head?
MARCUS PARKS
Mr. Cunany? Who's Mr. Cunany?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Andrew Cunanan.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh, you call him Mr. Cunany.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's in my head all the time. Oh Mr. Cunany. Don't hurt him!
MARCUS PARKS
What's that? What are you talking about?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mr. Cunany, don't hurt him!
MARCUS PARKS
Andrew Cunanan was a spree killer who murdered five people over the course of three months during the summer of 1997. Up until the modern rash of spree killers in this century, Cunanan was probably the most famous, not least because he ended his spree with the murder of fashion icon Gianni Versace.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See I've already changed the shape of the word Cunanan in your head because you've been calling him 'Coo-nanan' this whole time because I called him Mr. 'Coo-nany'.
MARCUS PARKS
I didn't know his name was actually 'Q-nanan'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually don't know. Everybody says it different. One of the worst is that when I was watching like the footage of like the original manhunt, they also called him like 'Q-ninin'.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I've heard 'Q-ninin'. It's terrible. It's obviously the worst one.
ED LARSON
Well it's an annoying series of letters, let's be honest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Yeah, it's a spree murdering version of a banana.
MARCUS PARKS
But true to his transformation from spree killer to assassin, Cunanan was a shapeshifter, an empty vessel for whatever story might make him seem more impressive to peers and strangers. Specifically though, Andrew's greatest survival mechanism was his ability to transform into the perfect kept boy for wealthy old gay men.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, where's that genie's lamp? I can fucking take a look at it. He's sort of like if Bugs Bunny... He's a Bugs Bunny type character. He's a shapeshifter, he appears to you as he wants to be, he can be a sexy lady.
ED LARSON
Yeah. If Elmer Fudd was rich.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And he was right there. And then if Bugs Bunny like dyed, he bleached his hair to gay murderer white. You know how that happens? I've seen that happen a lot, I've heard that's like a joke when a friend of yours who goes bleach blonde, he's about to kill his fucking family.
ED LARSON
Robin Williams in One Hour Photo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting. But when it came to the casual lies, Cunanan might say he owned a construction company despite being in his early 20s. Other times he'd say he was an aspiring actor named Christopher.
ED LARSON
Well he probably was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He might have been. Oh yeah, he was an actor.
MARCUS PARKS
He was an actor in life.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Never landed a role though. Well we will talk about his career later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I'm saying.
ED LARSON
Yeah, all right.
MARCUS PARKS
Quote unquote "actor".
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Sometimes he'd be a naval officer or he'd claim that his father was a ranking member of the Israeli Mossad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whispering) And don't repeat that. Okay? I know it's a fun secret for you from me, Andrew Cunanan. All right?
MARCUS PARKS
But in reality, Andrew Cunanan was one part grifter and three parts parasite, whose fragile world of lies eventually crumbled into a rage that resulted in five murders. Now it's arguable what made Cunanan snap.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
It is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I feel like he snapped when he was born. He was not good necessarily from the top. Well it seemed innocuous at first and it slowly turned into the MO of a shapeshifting serial killer.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I'd say at no point would anyone describe Andrew Cunanan as chill.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
No. Or fun, I don't think.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well no, you'll see. He was fun in a way that you were like-
ED LARSON
Cocaine. He did cocaine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then like a fire at a toy factory, the sounds are fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Well one might say that the dam broke when it became clear that the high society lifestyle he always wanted would forever be out of reach. It could also be said that Cunanan had a pathological need to not only be liked but adored and admired.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And specifically for doing nothing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. When that need was not satisfied in relation to a specific man who had no sexual interest in Cunanan, it might have simply become too much for his fragile ego and it was all downhill from there. But most likely Cunanan's anger was always gonna be unleashed on the world in one way or another. As we'll get into at the end of this episode, Andrew eventually found something that gave him a justification for letting his homicidal urges run free. And it certainly didn't help that he was doing a lot of meth at that time.
ED LARSON
Ah, meth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It preps you. It preps you for that. It gets you ready, it gets you in the headspace to murder a bunch of people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was also a common phrase that he'd use all the time if you listen to one of the books. We'll get into the sources that are just as dubious as the man himself. But he said constantly, he's like, his main lament, 'If I get HIV< I'm going on a five state killing spree.'
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he'd say that a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
All the time. He didn't fulfill that promise, it was a four state killing spree.
ED LARSON
Oh okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, that's what's hard.
ED LARSON
What a loser.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. God.
ED LARSON
Does anyone do a little bit of meth?
MARCUS PARKS
I have heard of people like-
ED LARSON
Dabbling?
MARCUS PARKS
One of those things where it's like yeah, I tried meth once. It's really good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know people that tried it once and then they said that apparently it's like the five days of fucking is like a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah. I can imagine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But regardless of the reasons behind Cunanan's four state killing spree-
ED LARSON
Pussy.
MARCUS PARKS
The fact remains that he was a hollow person with hollow ambitions whose inhumanity resulted in the deaths of four everyday people and one of the most foremost fashion icons of the 20th century. Now as far as sources go today, there's surprisingly never been a serious book written about the Andrew Cunanan murder spree. Instead we got two old fashioned true crime paperbacks that are heavy on the homophobia but reliable with certain facts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are very salacious.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would not call them unserious necessarily. But they are thick, like 'Vulgar Favors' is thick.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But there's a lot of spin and there's a lot of character building within it. Because really if somebody who's a human labyrinth of a prism of different personalities who appears as different people to others, everybody's got a different read on him. Some people know him as a fucking flake, a criminal, a thief, a drug addict. There's other people that know him as like my best friend, godfather to my children. And so especially that book, they try to kind of like condense a bunch of different views of him in one. And it's hard because there was no Andrew Cunanan.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. There really wasn't. What was the phrase that you used when we talked about is that the constantly talking about the slippery gays?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well 'Vulgar Favors' is just the entire book is just about how like... 99% of gay men I have met are unbelievably boring.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right?
MARCUS PARKS
We've said this again and again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They do nothing, right, remotely interesting.
ED LARSON
Yeah, at all.
MARCUS PARKS
Because they're just people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they're people.
ED LARSON
They don't have a woman telling them what to do all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nice!
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Finally!
ED LARSON
I'll take out the trash whenever I feel like it. Good idea, Gary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what Gary? That's fucking awesome. Let's suck each other's dicks. I think it's more nuanced, Eddie. It's nuanced. But not every single gay man is in a sordid world of S&M sex, casual drug use, and coming in flower pots.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These guys have a different idea of...
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Even in these like quote unquote "down and dirty areas of gay culture", what they're like. Because I think a lot of times even those are kind of boring.
ED LARSON
Yeah, it's lots of staining furniture and stuff like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. We worked in a very intense gay bar in Florida in Tallahassee.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And when we were there, yeah, there was sometimes blood everywhere.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But a lot of times that was consensual.
ED LARSON
It could have been ours.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they wanted it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that was also just Tallahassee.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's not necessarily gay bar, there's a lot of bars in Tallahassee with blood everywhere.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Oh my god, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But these books, when I say they're not necessarily serious, I mean they're full of wild speculation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Unsourced claims, contradictory views. I mean the latter criticism of course is what Henry just said, it's Andrew Cunanan's inherent nature as a pathological liar. So there's bound to be contradictory views.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And many people that want to get involved in the story no matter what. Because of what he did in the sort of socially networking kind of way, adding Gianni Versace to his own murders which added him to the Gianni Versace Wikipedia page, that added everybody else who wants to talk about Andrew Cunanan and to the same exact morbid trail of attention.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. But at any rate, the first source is 'Death at Every Stop' by Wensley Clarkson.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very grizzly book.
MARCUS PARKS
Very.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
While the second-
ED LARSON
It's about riding a bus in Oakland.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the second, which was used as the basis for the FX Andrew Cunanan show a few years ago, is 'Vulgar Favors' by Maureen Orth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mr. Cunany. That's what it says here at the very top, the prologue, you have to remember. I love these books. I love true crime books.
MARCUS PARKS
Is Mr. Cunany, is that a Michael Jackson thing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hee-hee. I don't think so.
ED LARSON
No. I think Mr. Punany, that sounds fun. But Mr. Cunany, I don't know-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mr. Punany, I want him nowhere near my family.
ED LARSON
Yeah, absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, here we go. This is from Richard Strauss' opera 'Capriccio'.
MARCUS PARKS
Which we will be discussing.
ED LARSON
Sounds delicious.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(classical music plays) "Look at the vulgar favors that give the crowds of the capital such delight. Its amusements are insolent, obscene, clumsy, boorish. You despise these lewd doings and yet you suffer them."
ED LARSON
The book begins.
MARCUS PARKS
Ooh, I like lewd doings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm gonna steal that. I love lewd doings.
ED LARSON
Lewd doings is almost better than 'Vulgar Favors'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Lewd Doings is my burlesque name.
MARCUS PARKS
And there's also a fictionalized version of the story that our head researcher Joel read out of curiosity called 'Three Month Fever' by a guy seriously named Gary Indiana.
ED LARSON
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not a fake name.
ED LARSON
Well you know he's a piece of shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
A rat bit my sister. Hi, I'm Gary Indiana.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gary Indiana. And I wouldn't take her to the goddamn hospital because I'm sick of that bitch.
MARCUS PARKS
I didn't read it myself but it's apparently gonzo as fuck. Joel said it's great, he had a great time reading it. He said it uses phrases like:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Get the thrill of creaming."
MARCUS PARKS
And:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Got sucked deeper by the goop in the vagina."
ED LARSON
Ugh, Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what? It does sound like a gay man's version of sex with a woman.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But without further ado, let's get into the story of Andrew Cunanan, the murder of Gianni Versace-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian accent) Why you get a-me?
MARCUS PARKS
And the four murders that occurred along the way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh Mr. Cunany, we're coming for your fucking dead ass.
MARCUS PARKS
So Andrew Cunanan was born August 31, 1969 in San Diego, which is where we'll be hosting the LPN Beach Blanket Bingo Show on October 20th at the Balboa Theater. Tickets on sale now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a really good plug.
ED LARSON
That's really well done.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get them now, they're going fast. Cunanan's father was from the Philippines. He was some guy named Modesto who sometimes went by the more Americanized name of-
ED LARSON
Molesto.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No, Pete. Because he wanted to sound less ethnic.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He was a former naval officer who eventually switched careers to become a stockbroker. But as we'll find out later, Modesto was just as much of a fraud as his son was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, he at least had a fake job.
MARCUS PARKS
He did have a, well he had a real job that he was fake good at.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He turned fake. Yeah, yeah. He turned it fake. I don't know how to describe... He looks like an evil concierge. Have you seen Modesto? What he looked like?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With the paper thin little mustache, kind of a big, bulbous head, dressed to the nines in designer clothes. Like a lot of rings, a lot of jewelry.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
That's how I wanna dress.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Me too. Honestly, I wanna look like Leisure Suit Larry. Without all the other stuff attached to it.
ED LARSON
Man, I love that game.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well as far as Cunanan's mother went, she was a quiet, put-upon, devout Catholic named Mary Anne who met Modesto in a bar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She said it was like meeting the Filipino Elvis.
MARCUS PARKS
Well what other people described him was the Filipino Errol Flynn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He was dressed in a white tuxedo, had a pencil thin mustache, broad, strong.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he was like 5'4".
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, he was very small.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I like that though. Because again, you can be strong yet small. That's the whole point. You look like a torpedo.
ED LARSON
Do you think he got in as many fights as Errol Flynn?
MARCUS PARKS
You know what? Maybe more.
ED LARSON
Probably.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he was contractually allowed to win those fights. I don't know, if you actually went up to Errol Flynn and like popped him in the mouth, I don't know what he'd do.
ED LARSON
Well he was known for fighting people in public.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, is that real?
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's awesome.
ED LARSON
Errol Flynn was a fucking lunatic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I miss old actors. Old actors actually like did things in their lives.
MARCUS PARKS
Now like his son, Modesto was highly charismatic. He and Mary Anne were married within a year and six months later she was pregnant with the first of four children. The last child was Andrew Cunanan. Reportedly, and I'm gonna use that word a lot-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very good.
MARCUS PARKS
Because so much of Cunanan's story is taken from stories other people told.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just remember this too. Everything we cover, because both of these books are shockingly different-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At what they cover within his personal life. And the other stuff I was looking at, because this book, the 'Vulgar Favors' which they change into the miniseries version of it, like this was written for Vanity Fair.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which was partially trying to get it, we'll get a little bit into it, but they were trying to get Andrew's attention during the manhunt by putting articles out in his so-called favorite magazine that they knew that he'd read. They thought that he would get in contact with this woman. This woman was trying to get in contact with Andrew Cunanan for the entire time when they were tracking his crimes.
ED LARSON
Wow!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Because remember, Andrew's crimes happened over like three months.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. So it's very interesting to see, these two versions of the story are like just slamming together.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well reportedly Andrew was a quote "handsome child with a precocious sparkle". But like his father, Andrew hid his Filipino heritage from other kids, although he would sometimes lean on that side of his background in the future when it became a convenient detail to his story. Like if he was playing say, one of the things he would play is like the heir to a vast Filipino banana fortune.
ED LARSON
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You wouldn't believe how much money is in peels! It's crazy. It's like a drug over there. They love bananas.
ED LARSON
We have so many monkeys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We have so many quality control orangutans. And I'll kill one, one looks at me sideways, I'll fucking shoot it in the head. Sorry, daddy!
MARCUS PARKS
Now say what you will about Andrew Cunanan but in his own way, he was brilliant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He had an IQ of 147.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yup. 1+4=5. 5+7=12. 1+2=3. Go fuck yourself. Yeah, I'm funny.
ED LARSON
What's the highest IQ? I don't even know.
MARCUS PARKS
I think it's like 200.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's big.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe 300.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't think it's 300.
MARCUS PARKS
I think it's 200.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's deep blue.
ED LARSON
Has anyone ever taken an IQ test here?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
You have? Do you know what you got?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, 132.
ED LARSON
Woo!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel weird.
MARCUS PARKS
Saying it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
What'd you get?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got 151.
ED LARSON
Fuck yeah, you're smarter than Cunany.
MARCUS PARKS
Hell yeah, bro.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but this was a long time ago. Yeah, me and Cunany, we're the same. But this was a long time ago. This was again, the gifted class. I think I'm a lot dumber now.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I can't do math so that took the score down considerably.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I never even got offered to take the test.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. They just kinda looked at you and they were like well let's just say he's going into manual labor. It was nice about mine, it was like yeah, my test was really easy. I went into this room, right. And first they put a bunch of blocks there and they asked a bunch of trivia questions, that was really nice. And then this other guy came in and he was dressed, I'm gonna say dressed as Bill Clinton. And he said something about like have you ever played a recorder the French way?
ED LARSON
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I was like no. I mean I played it my way, we do it in school. And then I just start sucking this fucking guy-
MARCUS PARKS
And you apparently did it very intelligently.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. By going I love this. (recorder sounds)
ED LARSON
(recorder sounds)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm not coming. Excellent.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Andrew Cunanan also had a penchant for reading the encyclopedia for fun when he was a kid. But while that does seem like bullshit, it sounds like a family story, I think that when you consider the fountain of knowledge that Andrew drew upon to create persona after persona, I think it is true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he was a collector of things. I think he had a pointed intelligence.
MARCUS PARKS
yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That he collected ammo, this was like ammo.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There were points of phrases. It's kind of like legitimately how I play characters on this fucking show. I take a couple of attributes, you know you're trying to play these various attributes, you know these things... If I was this guy, I'd know these 10 things. So he's doing character prep. But a lot of people say, there was one woman that read him to filth in this book that's like he was not that deep, he was just an expert in trivia.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he did not have a broad grasp of concepts but he knew what to say in a quick succession that allowed you to believe that he knew what he was talking about.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's what all his teachers said.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Was that his intelligence was entirely superficial. Near photographic memory, he could recall details, he could recall trivia, but he had no critical thinking skills.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because he didn't want... I feel like there's a difference between those that wanna go deeper-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And those that don't. Where I think that he kind of felt like I'm incredible. I'm pretty incredible, so I don't really need all, like I don't practice anything. I'm with this guy and he taught me everything I really need to know about karate. I could literally, I could fucking knock your arm out of its socket if you want. My ligaments! My ligaments!
MARCUS PARKS
Now based on what Andrew learned from various books, he began telling wild stories about his background starting in junior high. Setting himself apart by wearing suits, pressed khakis, argyle vests, and penny loafers, Andrew tried to weasel his way into the rich kid crowd by claiming he owned stock in Coca-Cola and Wrigley Gum.
ED LARSON
Oh, so he got his ass kicked all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No! It's funny though, the added veneer-
MARCUS PARKS
He could talk his way out of anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He really had like one of those like silver tongues where people had a hard time pinning him down because he also kind of both... He used his weirdness as a way, kind of very similar weirdly. I don't think he had as much control over it, but Jeffrey Dahmer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The way Jeffrey Dahmer would act out in high school.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So when we covered Jeffrey Dahmer, we learned that he became like a class character where he'd do weird shit. People would dare him to do stuff and he'd do it and he gained a semi form of popularity. Actually Andrew Cunanan realized that he could formulate a personality that people would be drawn to but then the bad guys would kind of be repelled from because he would use his sort of like natural homosexuality. He would go into sort of a flamboyant thing and it would do both. It would kind of deflect things from him.
MARCUS PARKS
It's very weird. He could just confuse people.
ED LARSON
He probably would have been a great salesman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He would have been. He didn't do anything.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He literally didn't have a single tangible skill.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Well he didn't have a drive to work it seems like.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
That's what it was. No, he would have been an absolutely incredible salesman. Yeah, he could have sold you a piece of shit car and you wouldn't even know what happened until a year later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, that's constructive.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. But while Andrew could spin a good yarn that attracted plenty of attention, everyone knew that he was full of shit. Nobody bought it. When he finally did convince a kid to be friends with him, Andrew's mother made sure to alienate anyone Andrew brought over. To make sure the kid was good enough to be friends with her son-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I don't know what this is like.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Mary Anne would ask embarrassing probing questions, things so personal that Andrew stopped bringing people over altogether.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm so glad that you have spent some time with Andy. So tell me, are you circumcised?
ED LARSON
I was literally thinking that exact thing. I was literally-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
So you said you don't have any... Did your mother do that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well my mom-
MARCUS PARKS
Did she like interview potential friends for you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was just very, how do you put it? It's an over mothering thing. It was more like my mom wanted the kids to be her friends.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well in this, Andrew described his mother as overbearing and over loving, while others described her as over pampering.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pampering.
ED LARSON
Ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
I fucking hate that. I hate the term pamper.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pampering.
ED LARSON
Because Pampers, I mean like there are lots of awful things in terms of pampers.
MARCUS PARKS
Terrible things. And just with pampers, I feel like a mother who pampers pays a lot of attention to her son's butt.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine meeting a guy named Pampers?
ED LARSON
Oh yeah. Just covered in his own piss.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hi. It's a lack of impulse control. I just say I can't hold my water.
MARCUS PARKS
Andrew's father however was a domineering, physically abusive man who trained his family to bow to his will so well that they would leave the living room when he wanted to eat dinner so he could do so while watching TV in silence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kinda nice.
ED LARSON
Yeah. I mean it's a man who knows what he wants.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it is. No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No children at dinner.
ED LARSON
I mean that makes you want to have children.
MARCUS PARKS
So you so you can make them go away? Feel that power. But like his son, Modesto had delusions of grandeur and believed that he deserved far more than he had earned, especially after he started working as a phony baloney stockbroker years later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he started legit, he got into like whatever this like stockbroker training program at Merrill Lynch. And so there was like a hot second where he kind of was a real stockbroker.
MARCUS PARKS
For a bit, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then he immediately went further and further into fringe quote unquote "stockbroking" which like if you watch Wolf of Wall Street, you really can see like that was real, right. Like the idea of you can go from, you don't gotta be on Wall Street to sell a bunch of stocks. A lot of times you're getting a call from somebody and it sounds like there's like a busy office behind them. But that's literally because someone hit play on a recorder behind them and there's like phone calls and stuff. And it's just a guy alone in his house.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Oh dude, I did that when I was 18. We would sell penny stocks in fucking-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
I was in a whole penny stock operation. And I eventually stopped doing it because they fired me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's scams.
ED LARSON
I felt so guilty that like I would tell people like don't buy this, like while I was on the phone with them. It was crazy. And they eventually got raided and fucking the FBI came and everything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because it was supremely legal.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's called pumping and dumping.
ED LARSON
Yeah. They were like don't watch Boiler Room. And then gave him the exact speech from Boiler Room verbatim.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah dude. That's so funny. When I worked at the head hunting agency, I've told this story before, down in the financial district, they did the same thing where the during the onboarding process he made us all sit and watch Boiler Room.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it was like they all like die at the end of this movie.
ED LARSON
Yeah, what are you doing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's not good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But even though Modesto was abusive, he was also toxically proud of Andrew's intelligence. And he wouldn't tell other parents that his child was better than theirs, he would tell other children that his son was better than them.
ED LARSON
See I kinda like this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(metal guitar riff)
ED LARSON
See all you, you're all fucking idiots.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're all garbage. Do better, be better.
MARCUS PARKS
Later when the family moved to a new house when Andrew was in high school, Andrew was given the master bedroom while his father slept on the couch and his mother took the maid's room. Presumably this was after all of his other older siblings left home.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was treated special from the very beginning.
ED LARSON
That's crazy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's weird. They called the other two kids street kids, right. Because he had two older brothers and sisters and they just were more like latchkey kids, they were kind of just left to their own devices. And as soon as he popped out the fucking pussy, they were immediately like he's amazing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
How do you only have two bedrooms and one's for a maid?
MARCUS PARKS
It's a good point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good point!
MARCUS PARKS
Good point. The strangest thing between Andrew and his father was the fact that they had pet names for each other. Did you find out what the pet names were?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No but I remember it was like using cuckoo and poopoo or something. I think their names were cuckoo and poopoo.
ED LARSON
I fucking love this.
MARCUS PARKS
Hey cuckoo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey poopoo!
ED LARSON
This my boy poopoo, this is my daughter cuckoo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm cuckoo! I'm poopoo!
MARCUS PARKS
I just know, Eddie, that you like the noise 'cuckoo'. I know you just love going cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.
ED LARSON
Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I don't like baby talk within my relationship.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Well I like cuckoo as like this person's crazy like a cuckoo clock.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that should come back as an official diagnosis of somebody.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And poopoo, I mean I love poopoo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course, we all do.
ED LARSON
Yeah because my poopoos are gross.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
So I have to call it something cute in order to accept what happens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you gotta put some PR on that.
MARCUS PARKS
Well adding to Andrew's strange inner world were the dreams you'd have as a child. He said that he had weird images of death and destruction, often involving his father or some other demon-like figure. Despite that, Andrew said that these dreams were as pleasurable as they were scary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that doesn't sound like an affectation at all. It's not definitely completely real.
ED LARSON
Nightmares are cool, you know. They're free horror movies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is what I'm saying.
MARCUS PARKS
Not always.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What we're gonna see later on, what we're gonna see is this came from his brothers and sisters. He told this to them. I think a lot of the stuff that's gonna come out, especially in this episode, that he's talking about himself is because he kind of was obsessed very early on as portraying himself as mysterious-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like unknowable and a little bit like I also might do bad things. Because the bad things he viewed as sexy. And he's been setting it up since he was like 9. He was trying to be sexy since childhood.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I didn't start til like 12.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fucking fooled me. You're sexy?
ED LARSON
Yeah. Well you know, it's a matter of opinion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just thought that Julie was just fine with it. And you just finally decided that you were stable enough to be there.
ED LARSON
No, I can't keep her off me.
MARCUS PARKS
Now even though the Cunanans were not well to do people, Modesto insisted on enrolling Cunanan into a $7000 a year private school in San Diego called Bishop's. This was where Andrew got his first taste of the high life whilst hobnobbing with wealthy students.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well his father used to take him to the mall and he'd say like you see this suit, this is a good label. And he would tell him all about like Armani, the difference between Armani and, I don't know what was around at the time, but literally being like you wear this, people will think that you're extremely important. And so for a while his father was like literally funding this weird high rolling lifestyle for his own son. And they would match, they would buy matching suits. They got matching cars together.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he wanted his son to look cool next to him. But once he got to Bishop's, he started to connect this thing in his fucking head that like as long as you think I'm this thing-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I am that thing.
ED LARSON
Well fake it until you make it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But you gotta make it. If you keep faking it and faking it and faking it and faking it and faking it and faking it and faking it, at some point you end up under a bridge.
ED LARSON
Yeah. He was like a shitty Bernie Madoff, Molesto.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
In a way.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe.
ED LARSON
By the way, we have to start calling him Molesto.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, we gotta start calling him Molesto.
ED LARSON
I know he probably didn't do that but...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no.
MARCUS PARKS
But from what it seems, these interactions only made Andrew more insecure, angrier, and more flamboyant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
For example, he once showed up to a school function wearing a tight red leather jumpsuit, which I imagine, I think in my mind it's the Eddie Murphy wore during Delirious.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
ED LARSON
Oh you know.
MARCUS PARKS
Which is ironic considering how highly homophobic Delirious is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also how highly homophobic he was as a young man. There was a lot of weird other stuff that he would start to do that kind of stuff. But you mean walking around just being like hey, you know I'm half black? Yeah, it's true, yeah. It's the authenticity.
ED LARSON
You know it was all vinyl and not leather though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Because they were poor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(squeaking)
ED LARSON
So it was really shitty clothes, I bet ya.
MARCUS PARKS
Well we'll actually get into why they were real.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And what Modesto did to get that real shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Molesto.
MARCUS PARKS
Molesto, okay.
ED LARSON
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Molesto. I'm saying Modesto.
ED LARSON
You can say you're proper, you say Modesto and then we'll just correct you every time.
MARCUS PARKS
But in the more embarrassing realm, Cunanan would also try to entertain his classmates by aping lines and bits he'd memorized from episodes of Mork & Mindy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nanu Nanu. Do you fucking remember? Do you remember the show?
MARCUS PARKS
No, this was when Mork & Mindy was like on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jonathan Winters, man, is great in that show.
ED LARSON
Goddamn, he's the best ever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Another very sad man.
ED LARSON
Best ever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Extremely sad man.
ED LARSON
Was he sad?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes. Well he actually put himself in a mental hospital two or three times during his life.
ED LARSON
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Intense depression.
ED LARSON
He's one of the funniest people who've ever lived.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's almost like there's a current of sadness that runs through people that do comedy professionally. I wonder what that's all about?
MARCUS PARKS
Well when it came to telling wild stories though, Andrew quickly learned that the best way to get attention was to be openly gay. Although his way of being openly gay was describing sexual encounters in graphic detail, whether anyone wanted to hear about it or not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
And gay or straight, that's just a guaranteed way to make everyone uncomfortable. No one wants to hear it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey kids, did you guys do the English homework? Yeah? You guys ever have your asshole licked by a tugboat captain? More like a yank boat captain. Yeah, I got statutorily raped last night. I made him a criminal just by making him cum.
ED LARSON
You ever have testicles in your nostrils?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You wouldn't believe. Your smell does not go back to normal for like six hours.
MARCUS PARKS
He was also just straight up fucking vulgar. He'd say that his two favorite things in life was sex and defecation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This was his favorite line:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"There's nothing like a good crap."
ED LARSON
I mean we talk about our craps all the time.
MARCUS PARKS
We do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but he's a spree killer who killed Gianni Versace.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Andrew also claimed that he was having a sexual relationship with the father of one of his fellow classmates.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All of these are crimes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like again, he's a walking series of crimes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But while the classmate angle might not be true, Andrew almost certainly had an arrangement with a wealthy older man when he was a minor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's calling me an altar man in the house. I'm like his little buttler. With two T's, come on everybody. High kicks. High kicks! Funniest guy in the fucking room. Will somebody pick up the fucking slack?
MARCUS PARKS
Despite coming from a home with a modest income, Andrew began showing up with expensive watches and jewelry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine a child covered with an older man's jewelry?
ED LARSON
That was what I looked like.
MARCUS PARKS
He's about 15 at this time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's enough of a child, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He's a teenager, he's a teenager. But still, yeah, it's not an 8 year old showing up with a pinky ring.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was sucking dick back then, I guarantee.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I gay-rantee.
MARCUS PARKS
He said that he lost his virginity when he was 13 to an older boy in a San Diego public park.
ED LARSON
Oh okay. Good for him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay. Is there a Hallmark card for that?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That you could send?
ED LARSON
At least it wasn't SeaWorld.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why is that worse?
MARCUS PARKS
Well quite possibly, Andrew met his first of many sugar daddies at one of San Diego's gay bars which Andrew began frequenting at the age of 15. Thinking for some reason that being Latino was sexier or more accepted than being Filipino, Andrew started creating Hispanic characters for himself like David Morales or Andrew DeSilva.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Andrew DeSilva.
MARCUS PARKS
That was his favorite.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well the DeSilva came from... So during his time at Bishop's, I'm tracking in 'Vulgar Favors', there's an interesting arc here where there was a pair of twins that were at this school that he latched onto. And this family, they would kind of like... He'd portray at his home like his father was so busy, his parents were so busy that they were never around. And so they did that thing, which I don't know if you had, like my older sister, we had a friend, her friend like lived with us for like two years.
ED LARSON
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we had one of those too.
ED LARSON
I was the kid who lived with other families.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Nice. Yes, we had two of them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
We had three of them. Me and all my brothers all had a guy. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know why, it was something about the early 90s.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where that happened quite a bit.
ED LARSON
Well back then you were just allowed to go to someone's house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
ED LARSON
Not call ahead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Now if you show up to someone's house and don't call ahead, you get fucking killed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'm literally gonna call the police.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he kind of fit his way into these twins' life. And they had a lot of money. And DeSilva came from this family that he kind of got attached to. There was somebody else that was in there, I forgot who. But he learned that name and then he started using that name to sort of create this other character because they were rich and they did have access and they did travel the world and they did all these things. And he immediately started to understand this like okay, if I insinuate myself in a bunch of people and just act just like them as a mirror, they are looking at themselves in me.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's like you kind of watch slowly but surely this thing like grow inside of him.
MARCUS PARKS
Well with each new name came a new story and with each crowd came a new persona that was tailor made on the spot to fit right in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This however created a kind of identification crisis. Back at school, Andrew found that he'd lied so much that people actually didn't know who he was. You didn't know who Andrew Cunanan was. You knew Andrew DeSilva or you knew David Morales. All the other kids knew for sure was that that guy had a creepy laugh-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(giggling)
MARCUS PARKS
And delusions of grandeur that you would one day be rich and famous without ever being able to articulate how.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that is a common thread especially in our incredibly, incredibly wonderful business.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In showbusiness, that idea of faking it till you make it is honestly really important. I think that that's one of those things where you kind of have a lofty aspiration. But most people work really hard.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you either like get some version of your dream or you like find another avenue where like oh actually my skills are more in like casting or my skills are over here, my skills are in production, I'm doing these other things. And you find your place in it by again constructive actions, doing things that actually give something to the business. But somebody like him kind of just believes I'm just gonna sit here and everybody's gonna line fucking up to put me on a goddamn billboard.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep. Eventually though people must have put together the character of Andrew Cunanan because his superlative in his high school yearbook was "least likely to be forgotten".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You'll never fucking forget me! (cocking gun) Blam! Blam!
ED LARSON
Man, I bet Henry's was 'most likely to get his arm stuck in a candy machine'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I fought that in court. I had to. I was like this is fucking, you are smearing my name.
MARCUS PARKS
So after high school, Andrew enrolled at UC San Diego where he did very poorly. Instead of going to class, Andrew was either nursing hangovers from partying the night before or playing hooky so he could hang outside of construction sites to ogle the workers.
ED LARSON
Fuck yes. See now this is good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's so like-
ED LARSON
Throwing it back at them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine just an entire construction crew of pedophiles? They're all working with their oiled muscles, just watching all the teenage boys going hi! And they're like yeah, like letting their muscles jiggle around the jackhammers and shit.
ED LARSON
Yeah, swing that hammer you piece of shit.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't wanna anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where the head of the crew?
ED LARSON
Bring your mom back.
MARCUS PARKS
Well really the lesson that Andrew was learning above all during college was that life could be relatively easy for a good looking, charming, young gay man if you just found the right guy to take care of you.
ED LARSON
Amen.
MARCUS PARKS
But as Andrew focused on who else... Amen?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Amen, brother.
MARCUS PARKS
Amen, brother.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sign me up.
MARCUS PARKS
Say it again. But as Andrew focused on who else but older men who were usually closeted, he began to realize how he could survive completely on charm and bullshit. Rather than becoming an escort, which he could have very easily gotten into that world, Andrew positioned himself as a quote unquote "companion". Put another way, Andrew was learning how to be a kept boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And there's always a question about how purposeful actions are in anybody's life, right? I feel like something like this is like do you set out to be a kept boy? Because again, it doesn't sound really safe in there. You know what I mean, when you're kept all the time. But I feel like he might have just sort of moved that way.
MARCUS PARKS
Well there's different types of kept boys. Like there's certain kept boys who it is not encouraged that they leave the house.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They are encouraged to stay at home much of the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That sounds awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Kept boy can also mean someone who gets an allowance but you must know that you are my boy and nobody else's boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, all right.
MARCUS PARKS
And you must be there when I ask you to be there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can I get a balloon?
ED LARSON
It's when opportunity meets preparedness.
MARCUS PARKS
Seneca.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can I get a big lollipop?
MARCUS PARKS
But in order to stay in the high social circles into which these older men were welcoming him, Andrew found ways to blend in by knowing what forks to use at dinner.
ED LARSON
That's not that bad.
MARCUS PARKS
Or what political figures he could discuss to surprise people with his knowledge on foreign affairs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Phil, Philler Billmore. Have you heard of him? Yeah, he was the 47th president and he was the first gay man to ever fire a cannon. It's pretty on the fucking money. If you dare double check me, I'll fucking shoot you in the fucking head.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well by 1987, Andrew found himself in the circle of a fraternal organization called Gamma Mu, which is kind of like the gay version of the Elks Lodge.
ED LARSON
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think the Elks Lodge is the gay version of the Elks Lodge.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
That's Kiwanis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna get sued.
MARCUS PARKS
No, that's gay businessmen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
You're thinking of the Shriners.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You mean to tell me nobody, two men with fez's haven't had full on doggy-style on top of a pool table in most Elks Lodges across this country?
ED LARSON
Turns out those red hats are just filled with cum.
MARCUS PARKS
Well today Gamma Mu is an out and proud charity organization who gives scholarships to young LGBT kids in rural communities. It's a noble cause.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Their website has a distracting number of rainbows on it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yay, great.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But back in Andrew Cunanan's time, Gamma Mu did charity nonetheless but it was made up mostly of wealthy closeted men.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And Andrew became a popular boy to pass around when he entered in 1987. But he actually became a member in 1994.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
But like after college, you know, when he was starting to get much better at being like fancy boy into fancy man.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly I prefer if you were gonna pass me around, can you get that spiral tight? Because I am sick of hitting my head on the fucking fan. All right? And ask first please, if we could. I'm sick of kissing all these strangers.
ED LARSON
Put the 'ass' in 'pass'.
MARCUS PARKS
Well through this rotating cast of lovers, Andrew eventually got into BDSM.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh nasty.
ED LARSON
About time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's not nasty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nasty. According to 'Vulgar Favors,' nasty dark world of S&M.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh my god. 'VUlgar Favors' treats BDSM as like the worst thing, leads to violence, it's so filthy and dirty only the worst people in the world engage in BDSM.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's because they haven't cum ever. Like they just don't cum. You can get spanked, dog.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And we met the founders of kink.com.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're great.
MARCUS PARKS
Goddamn were they nice people.
ED LARSON
BDSM probably curbs violence.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know. You know what? I think it's completely separate.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just think you can put clamps on your nipples and as long as you're doing it to yourself or somebody who's going yeah buddy, yeah! Then like you know-
ED LARSON
Rock and roll.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Have at it. Just leave me alone at the farmer's market. I'm sick of these guys trying to hang these clothespins off of me. Fucking Impractical Jokers.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Andrew said in his own purposefully shocking way that BDSM reminded him of what his father had done to him when he was a young boy.
ED LARSON
Molesto?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mr. Molesto. And I told my father honestly while he was doing it, I was like listen, I know how to cover us here. I'll start smiling. Because then honestly, daddy, it's just bonding.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, now maybe I can go for Molesto. Sometimes. Every other time will be Molesto, how's about that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
ED LARSON
I appreciate you.
MARCUS PARKS
Of course, I appreciate you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's dead, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Molesto?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll find out. We'll find out soon.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Keep an eye on the mailbox. Not surprisingly, Andrew loved BDSM and he soon became a popular dom, although he could switch back and forth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, this is all allegedly.
MARCUS PARKS
Allegedly. Meanwhile Andrew's father Modesto was seeing that while lying about being successful is easy-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually being successful is pretty difficult in the stockbroker game.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
In fact, Modesto was like... Okay, Molesto-
ED LARSON
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Every other time. He was lucky he didn't land in jail for the shit he pulled. See Modesto wanted to indulge Andrew in all of his expensive tastes the best he could, even went as far as to buy him this fancy Mazda.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, he said the only one, the only one ever made in San Diego.
ED LARSON
The only Mazda?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
It's the only Mazda in San Diego?
MARCUS PARKS
it was a nice Mazda.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some form of like sports car Mazda.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
That's nice.
MARCUS PARKS
it's a real fancy Mazda. It's like how you know I love Subarus and I only drive like Subaru Outbacks.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But then there's like these like really expensive like Subaru sports cars that people supe up. It's like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who in the living fuck would buy a Subaru sports car? I guess when Elizabeth Warren turns 75.
ED LARSON
He has a lesbian haircut.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's been noted.
MARCUS PARKS
Hey man, I'm telling you, there's gonna be so many emails about Subaru sports cars, Subaru racing cars, it's a big thing.
ED LARSON
Subaru does, they do a good job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're fine.
MARCUS PARKS
They do racing cars. They do racing cars.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We just, yes, I have received the Subaru fam motions. I've received.
ED LARSON
Much better than a fucking Acura, I'll tell you that much.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure, we can agree on that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, fuck them!
MARCUS PARKS
But the cash for all this shit, for the Mazda, for all the clothes, for everything, came from embezzled funds. See Molesto had a scheme where he'd take money from his clients... I'm keeping it in my head.
ED LARSON
I appreciate. No, I'm following.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We gotta change it for next episode.
MARCUS PARKS
He would tell them that he was buying a stock but the stock didn't exist. He'd just make something up and then he keep the money for himself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's a dumb scam.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because eventually, eventually someone's going to say hey, where's my money?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I remember when I worked at Dairy Queen, there was this one kid who would just steal out of the fucking register and it's like there is a process to stealing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ED LARSON
You have to at least try to like do some kind of process to stealing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is a job.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To be a quote unquote "professional criminal". Like it's a job. It takes due diligence and you sit and think about it. But that guy's probably now in like the House of Representatives.
ED LARSON
Oh yeah. Or dead, it's Florida.
MARCUS PARKS
Far more likely. Now Mol- Goddamnit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't have to do it.
ED LARSON
You're on Modesto, by the way.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you. Now Modesto could usually keep these schemes going at various firms for a couple of years, but he'd always get caught and he'd always get fired. Because I don't think he took very much money at a time. Because if you've got a client that's investing like $500,000-$600,000 and you say like hey, there's this stock for like Babumpabump-
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And then you can give me $1000 and I'll put it in Babumpabump.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he just sneaks it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he just sneaks it in and they forget all about the stupid stock that he made up.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or he probably then would send back fake returns where he'd go and he's say oh look, this fake thing is going great.
MARCUS PARKS
Now that's like Bernie Madoff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's Bernie Madoff. But I don't know if he even went that far. It's also interesting within the world of stockbrokers, the scamming is so thick at this time especially-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's so prevalent that they just treat you like a Catholic priest, where they just kick you to another district.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They just go like all right, well you've done too many crimes to work here still but you can go work over at Mr. T's Fun Stock House or some garbage.
ED LARSON
But also when you're investing like 500 grand and you lose $1000, like you're not gonna care.
MARCUS PARKS
You don't notice.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unless you're a psycho. Unless you do care.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's how you get fired.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, some people do pay attention. And it was usually when someone would pay attention, they would see like oh shit, yeah, this guy's stealing money. And then if you're the guy who runs the company, you don't want the bad press of stockbroker from such and such firm-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just hanging out.
MARCUS PARKS
Arrested for misappropriating funds. Well pretty soon Molesto's wife Mary Anne realized that there must be some scam going on. But Modesto denied everything. He said that the securities business is the most regulated industry there is. And how could a man nominated in the 1986 California who's who of stockbrokers ever be considered a failure?
ED LARSON
I believe him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it turns out that wasn't real. It was more of a who's who of who's that? No, that was not real.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And also technically that was the same exact defense that our former president just gave.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He literally just said it, being like how could I possibly have cheated all these people? This is the most regulated industry, they should have stopped me. Great. This is a great fucking country, man. You just gotta figure out how to scam.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But a failure he was. And after losing his last stockbroker job for misappropriating over $100,000-
ED LARSON
Damn.
MARCUS PARKS
He sold his family home up from under his wife and moved back to the Philippines, didn't he even tell her he was doing it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He literally like kissed her goodbye, being like going to work. Never saw him again. Sold everything, sold the whole house, left them with $700.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now while his wife was shocked, Andrew as it turned out had been the mastermind behind this plan all along.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now this is according to one of the books.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In this one, in 'VUlgar Favors' it says that he didn't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So we don't know but it's one of those where the father was so up the ass of the son that they like... Who knows? I wouldn't put it past Andrew to have known. But we'll find out because it did end up ruining his life.
MARCUS PARKS
Contradictions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Contradictions.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Andrew figured that he and his dad could move to the Philippines and start a business that had not yet been determined.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's always a good way to go in.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Especially in the Philippines.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, think about this. Drive-thru chicken and bullets? All right. What if you could get gasoline in a bucket?
ED LARSON
Chains, we'll just sell chains.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Chain, chains. Everybody needs chains. People need chains.
MARCUS PARKS
What we do know is that Mary Anne was understandably irate about the double betrayal. And it's here that we get the first taste of Andrew's capacity for violence. When Mary Anne accused Andrew and Modesto of conspiring against her, which they were, Andrew slammed her against a wall so hard that he dislocated her shoulder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Say that again, bitch!
ED LARSON
Jesus fucking Christ.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. From what the neighbor who saw the whole thing said, it was a quick violent snap that just as quickly burned out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because real Andrew came out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Finally.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is one of those where you start to understand when the center is hollow, what the hollowness then becomes is something very bad. Like it never turns into a fun hollow. Phil Hartman. I think he's the closest to a fun hollow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I always said, that there was no Phil Hartman. You know what I mean? Like he was just this collection of characters and literally like he was a very interesting kind of solitary man but mostly when he wasn't on, he was just kind of quiet and he kind of just sat there.
MARCUS PARKS
He filled his hollowness with laughter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With laughter. That's what I try to do with the hollowness inside.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it is just filled with pure violence.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Violence, rage. Usually it is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
There's probably a lot of violent things this guy did that we will never know about.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who knows?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Soon after that altercation, Andrew joined his father in the Philippines where Andrew quickly discovered that he'd given up a relatively easy life in America to live in a shack much like the one that the nice Filipino lady in the most recent season of 'Before the 90 Days' lived in before her elderly mother fell and fatally broke her neck in the middle of filming because their shack was so dangerous.
ED LARSON
Jeez.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow, that's extremely sad. It's extremely sad for television.
MARCUS PARKS
They're the best couple on the season. They're probably the best couple that's been on 90 Day Fiancé in years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because there real trauma in there. And that gives it the juice.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's because they're sweet and they obviously love each other.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And they're both kind people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. I'm watching Love is Blind.
MARCUS PARKS
That's nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's stupid.
ED LARSON
I saw Naked Attraction, I fucking hated it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. But i like seeing all the dicks and all the pussies.
ED LARSON
Yes, that is the point of the show is there's dicks and pussies. But it's so hollow, the show.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh wow, they really do show the-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Dude, it starts with they're just like in a little box and then they raise the front door and it's just like six cocks. And she's like get rid of that cock.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow!
ED LARSON
And they turn around, they show the ass.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Just like get rid of that ass.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's awesome.
ED LARSON
And then it goes up and it shows their tits and their stomach, like oh that guy looks like shit, get rid of that. It's the most superficial fucking show that ever existed. And then when they finally talk, when they finally talk they ask them what their least favorite part of their body is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. My mind. I think I can tell if you're a good or bad person by your butt.
ED LARSON
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
ED LARSON
Well if it's filled with shit, that's probably a bad sign.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or you've got a lot going on.
ED LARSON
I'm too busy to wipe!
MARCUS PARKS
Well basically Andrew was living in third world conditions with no electricity or running water.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's like people travel by chicken here. I need out. Is there a Hilton?
MARCUS PARKS
No. He had to wash his clothes in a ditch and he bathed once a week in a public swimming pool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ew! Ew!
MARCUS PARKS
And he soon discovered that Modesto's business was selling castoff junk on street corners. Just shit.
ED LARSON
That's so crazy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly I can't burn the place we're all of the cleaning is wet. I'm gonna need some dry ass cleaning, all right. Because most of my stuff is silk. Once he saw that his father, this like popped a massive bubble.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right? Because again, his father that fed him and fueled him, his father fed and fueled him of all these fantasies, like this idea. And that was kind of the first time I think him sort of understanding like oh just because the fantasy is there and you're walking in the shoes and in the clothes of the fantasy, really doesn't mean that it's real.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
That's probably why he attacked his mother because he knew he was doing the wrong fucking thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he's starting to understand that all of these things that have been relatively harmless and these kind of little minor personal scams I've been running have really not like affected my life in any way. And now I'm kind of saying like oh, this might be like for cereal, like this might be pretty like a real one. And he didn't want to face it.
ED LARSON
It's definitely a wake up call when your Mazda gets switched out with a rickshaw.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's just like I am sick of this like 2 ft horse, I can't have this. All right? I smelled my driver's ass.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Andrew quickly realized that he'd made a huge mistake but had no money for a plane ticket back to America. He soon cooked up another scheme. See as opposed to America, the Philippines has a unique view on gender and homosexuality that's fascinating but far too complicated to go into here fully. It's a long, long history.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, let's not. We don't need to try to do it.
ED LARSON
I have a lot of experience with this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Please let Eddie explain the third gender in the Filipino community.
ED LARSON
Yes. I've gone from lady boy to woman man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Incredible.
MARCUS PARKS
But to put it in the context of our story, there's a third gender recognized in the Philippines called baklâ which is not transgender but rather involves men who adopt a gender expression that's feminine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Things are just more fluid there, they understand that more intrinsically.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. People who identify as baklâ are mostly gay but not always.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And people who identify as baklâ have been integrated into and accepted by Filipino culture long before the colonization of their land in the 16th century by the hated Spaniards.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hate you, Spaniards!
MARCUS PARKS
But Andrew Cunanan didn't care about any of that history. Instead he took advantage by shaving his entire body, styling his hair into a short bob, donning a skirt, slapping on tights, and climbing into some high pumps so he could present himself as a baklâ sex worker.
ED LARSON
I bet he looked great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bugs Bunny.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually they did say that he looked pretty fantastic. Some people did see some pictures and they were like wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He truly was a shapeshifter.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he understood what he needed to do. I mean again, this is conjecture. Cause that guy who wrote the other book is way more into the sexual history of Andrew Cunanan.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where like this doesn't cover any of that stuff, this is way more on the other side of the shapeshifting. When you see what he does, I wouldn't put it past him necessarily.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And so after three months earning cash as a fake baklâ, Andrew saved up enough money to pay for a one way ticket back to San Diego. By this time though, his father couldn't have cared less whether Andrew stayed or went and their relationship more or less ended there. Now after San Diego lost its charm, Cunanan moved to the center of American gay culture by relocating to the Castro District in San Francisco in 1989 when the AIDS crisis was at its absolute worst. As a simple fancy boy from San Diego however, Cunanan found that the tightly knit gay scene in San Francisco didn't have much interest. So Andrew created the first of his more attention grabbing characters.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God.
MARCUS PARKS
See Andrew Cunanan had learned street magic in Manila and inbetween clients, he'd refined and perfected those skills.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And watch, you'll see, pigeon in the hands, pigeon in the hands. You see what happens, right? There's a pigeon in my butt. Yeah, it's that easy. Well he seemed to have asphyxiated but it's because he was weak.
MARCUS PARKS
And so Cunanan posed as a naval officer on leave who casually performed magic tricks in bars.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, some people call me a naval officer but I prefer myself more of a belly button man.
MARCUS PARKS
This persona was not so subtly named Lieutenant Commander Cummings.
ED LARSON
Ah yes. It is a great catchphrase. (moaning)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(moaning)
MARCUS PARKS
(moaning)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See more of our NFS' our non fungible sounds.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(choking)
MARCUS PARKS
I like that one. (moaning)
ED LARSON
Ooh, that's a good one.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you. (moaning)
ED LARSON
(moaning)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fun noises with the boys. It's another episode.
MARCUS PARKS
The thing about Cunanan is that when he adopted a new persona, he went all in. When he became Lieutenant Commander Cummings, he wore a military crew cut, worked on his biceps-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yup.
MARCUS PARKS
And got a tan, just as a man who spent his days in the open sea might.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I spray salt on me. It's not just the cum. My name is Lieutenant Commander Penis Cummings. And I'm gonna stand to attention. Yep, at ease.
ED LARSON
Not that much ease.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not that much ease, you're fucking me. Are we still at the hot dog store?
MARCUS PARKS
Well to give it a veneer of reality, each character even had their own quirks. Cummings for example claimed to never drink and refused all offers to buy him a drink, saying that his worst vice was the occasional cigar. Which is of course another phallic reference.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nothing I like to get a nice long thick brown Cuban. I like to just snap the ends of it off. You know what I'm saying? Because you know what's nice about snapping the end of it is you just get all the hairs inside your mouth. Am I being too on the nose? I'll suck your dick. I mean in the end, but I also could use a cigar.
MARCUS PARKS
But what was incredible is that whether Andrew Cunanan was himself Lieutenant Commander Cummings or his Latino persona, Andrew DeSilva, nobody in the scene knew that these were all the same person.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's a really smart thing if you're trying to run a bunch of scams or you're trying to do a bunch of other fucked up shit. Because small communities cross reference.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right? People will ask have you met this fucking guy? Have you seen this thing? It's like if you're five different guys...
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
So do you think he met the same person in different characters and they didn't notice?
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely.
ED LARSON
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again because they're having too much fun to give a shit that you're running an arcane series of minor personal scams, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're more just like all right. You know what I mean? You meet these like weird kind of like... We've met these guys.
ED LARSON
Also it's dark bars and like shit like that, so you're not paying attention.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
ED LARSON
You're drunk, you don't know who you're meeting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you're half hammered.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And I mean that's what they always said about Ted Bundy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Is that that's why Bundy, like if you look at every sketch of Ted Bundy, every single one of them is wildly different.
ED LARSON
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And when people would describe him, they'd describe him in wildly different ways. And if you look at different pictures of him, like he looks different in almost every picture.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And they found him because of his teeth, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Nah. But they convicted him because of his teeth.
ED LARSON
Oh okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He had escaped from jail. By that point, once he had escaped from jail, that was when he went into full berserker mode. They had a lot on him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah, it was the matching the teeth to-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The bite marks.
MARCUS PARKS
One of the bite marks in the Tallahassee, in the Florida State murder.
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But what was clear was that Cunanan could instantly judge what cover story a stranger would accept from the moment he met them, which would have made him an incredible con man if he wasn't so erratic and shortsighted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or literally just a legit salesman.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now to make ends meet in San Francisco while he waited for the perfect older man to take care of him, Cunanan got a job in a restaurant kitchen but soon found he could make money on the side selling weed.
ED LARSON
What a monster. What a despicable person. Who would ever do such a thing?
MARCUS PARKS
That's what I was about to say.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What did you do, Ed?
MARCUS PARKS
I believe that was your life exactly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What did you do?
MARCUS PARKS
But soon Cunanan began to realize that if you wanted to attract the upper class in San Francisco, he had to appear more conservative and mature. He couldn't be a fucking dude working at a B-Dubs, hanging out with a bunch of sketch comedians.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey!
ED LARSON
Hell yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But sometimes it leads to more of that.
MARCUS PARKS
Using his fancy boy persona, Andrew weaseled his way into the San Francisco Opera House on a frequent basis, where he allegedly mingled with who else but Robin Williams.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Incredible.
ED LARSON
Very cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, let me see that scarf. I'm an old lady! Oh now I'm an Indian man, I can't do the voice anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
But the San Francisco Opera was also where Andrew Cunanan allegedly met Gianni Versace.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See this is where I think it's absolute horseshit.
ED LARSON
Really?
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe, maybe not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's entirely horseshit. I think that he did not meet Gianni Versace at all.
MARCUS PARKS
Well from what friends later said, Cunanan was obsessed with Versace and as the story goes, Cunanan met the fashion designer after the opening of a Strauss opera named Capriccio.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, whatever, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Which you read the fucking, you read the excerpt from it at the top of the episode!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I thought Capriccio was that thing with the flat meat.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Carpaccio.
ED LARSON
Carpaccio. It's carpaccio, yes. I like carpaccio.
MARCUS PARKS
No. This was the final opera that Strauss ever wrote and it begged the question which is the greater art, poetry or music?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who gives a fucking shit?
ED LARSON
Music.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Music.
ED LARSON
Yeah, no one likes poetry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But also poetry is in music.
ED LARSON
Yeah, that's a good point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So what does it fucking matter. It's the same shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Ah but does that not beg the question of another of questions?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Carpaccio.
MARCUS PARKS
But regardless of opera themes, Cunanan told his friends that he met Versace and that the meeting had gone great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Great!
MARCUS PARKS
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It went great!
MARCUS PARKS
Versace allegedly asked Cunanan if they'd met before, perhaps at a house party on Lake Como.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, Johnny Versace was absolutely interested in this man he just met. There's no way-
ED LARSON
He was very tight bodied.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was fine. Gianni Versace was around every single supermodel man that ever was. He was an extremely powerful person. He was also extremely like... They're like a mob family. Like they were all like... The idea of them even being within 5ft of Gianni Versace was probably extremely difficult.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Cunanan of course emphatically said yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
You do know me from that lake party at Lake Como.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you remember when we called it Lake Como? Do you remember? Sorry, that was my other guy. I painted him.
MARCUS PARKS
And a short conversation was had before Versace shook him off like every celebrity did after two minutes in Andrew's presence. He latched on and they're like get this fucking guy away from me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Have you ever seen the old Project Runway of Heidi Klum? So you know how like they used to have every contestant of every reality story always has some sort of like sob story?
MARCUS PARKS
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some kind of tragedy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so having somebody tell, like looking at Heidi Klum's face while someone's trying to be like and my brother, he lost his legs in a car accident. And she's just going hmm... I love Heidi.
MARCUS PARKS
As do I.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they don't care.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're very, they know what, they're like okay.
MARCUS PARKS
They've heard it all before.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They heard it all.
MARCUS PARKS
They've heard it all. That encounter however, if it did happen, it would be the last time that the two of them would see each other until Cunanan showed up at Versace's Miami home seven years later with a Taurus 40 caliber handgun.
ED LARSON
That's a big gun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish it was-
MARCUS PARKS
It's actually a very small gun.
ED LARSON
Really?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, really. I wish it was cupcakes.
MARCUS PARKS
We'll get into it. But yes, it's actually made for concealed carry.
ED LARSON
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now for a while, Cunanan was heavily involved in the San Francisco gay BDSM scene.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nasty.
MARCUS PARKS
Acting as a master at clubs like Hellbound-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
Sodom-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And my favorite, Bondage-a-Go-Go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So do you guys do like a wing night?
MARCUS PARKS
At Bondage-a-Go-Go they might.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey listen, is anybody playing the game in here? Cause the Pacers are on, I don't know if you... Oh goodness me, I'm getting whipped.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh lordy-loo, I thought that this was gonna be a nice... I honestly at first I saw Hellbound and by brain saw Bennigan's. I thought I was about to get a Monte Cristo.
ED LARSON
When you told me we were gonna play darts, I didn't know-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was the board! Come on. And he keeps hitting the 20. Man, he's good.
MARCUS PARKS
It was even rumored back in the day that there were two low budget Andrew Cunanan BDSM porn flicks circulating around San Francisco in which Cunanan adopted the slave position and got gang banged in staged rape scenes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a lot of people that honestly, some of this, I mean obviously it was pretty extreme, but in one I played a guy named Sean and honestly it was like that was just kind of a good exploration for me. It was nice to step outside of myself. And then the other one where I played, it was called Thunder Down Under and I played a guy called The Gork. And they gave me a line which was amazing, which was ow! Ow! Hey now! I thought I was pretty good.
ED LARSON
You could barely tell I wasn't getting railed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You could barely tell. That's how good I was. They were a bit heavy handed at times.
MARCUS PARKS
But even though people on various message boards have claimed to have seen at least one of these videos-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
No evidence of their existence has ever surfaced.
ED LARSON
Until now!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Here we go! Ow, ow, ow, hey now! Hey!
ED LARSON
Joel is such a great researcher.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ow! Yeah, no I'm The Gork.
MARCUS PARKS
He did actually look. He did. That was one of his notes, he was like yeah, there's a couple guys on message boards said they saw it, I couldn't find it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, man. I'm glad he looked.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean if there was an Andrew Cunanan gangbang staged rape scene-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'd see it at this point.
MARCUS PARKS
We would all know about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Boy George has a copy I'm sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If it is anywhere, it is on a reel to reel in his basement. I don't wanna go anywhere near that rumpus room.
MARCUS PARKS
Eventually though Cunanan moved back to San Diego in the summer of 1991 to live with his mother. Her life had not gotten any better since Modesto had sold the house from underneath her-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No way.
MARCUS PARKS
And she spent most of her time chain smoking while idly threatening to kill herself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh can you monetize that? I'm thinking about that.
MARCUS PARKS
Strangely though, when Cunanan took on his next persona, it was that of a poor history student at UC San Diego who wanted nothing more than to educate himself but did not have the means to do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow, he went humble.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean it could be one of two things. It could be that he was experimenting, it could also be that he did not-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I need money.
MARCUS PARKS
He did not have Modesto anymore there to give him cash.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He didn't have a sugar daddy set up yet. And so he had no choice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But he still could not be Andrew Cunanan. He still could not just be some guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He definitely could have got a job.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He got one of those once.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. You know what though? It sucks.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So I understand.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Especially kitchen work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No one's ever paid me to just be there.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Most of the time I have to be working or they ask me to leave.
MARCUS PARKS
You gotta do something.
ED LARSON
I was gonna say you guys are kind of paying me to do that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's different. It's a special set of circumstances.
MARCUS PARKS
But once Cunanan found another older man to support him, this time with an allowance of $2000 a month, the poor college student routine was dropped and Cunanan went wild with aliases.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because that's boring.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. On one night you might meet Kurt Matthews Damaris. On another, you'd meet Drew Cunningham. And every once in a while, Andrew would bring back Lieutenant Commander Cummings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(moaning)
ED LARSON
(grunting)
MARCUS PARKS
I don't always find ejaculation to be so horrible as the two of you make it out to be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well no, it's just because-
MARCUS PARKS
It can sometimes be a hmm.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, see, no, most of the time it's like god, just my poor wife.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I know. Usually it comes with a sorry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just seeing it on my face. Yeah, cause you know what it is is it's that moment, cause I'm not silent but it's not like, I don't do I'mma go! You know what I mean? I do that on the show but in real life it's mostly just like (groaning). Oh no!
ED LARSON
I love you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love you!
MARCUS PARKS
Well mostly Cunanan had settled into an aristocratic persona as a man who wore blazers and Ascots. He boasted a degree from Yale and talked endlessly about his interest in imported antiques. One of the strangest short chapters in this story though is Andrew's claim that in 1994 he met and secretly married a young Spanish woman as a part of a greencard scheme.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, her name was Hermanitalito and she was brown haired. And I just (gagging) loved it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well from what Andrew told his friend Henry Brunt, he did a favor by marrying this woman but somehow fell in love and got her pregnant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I honestly, especially having sex from 6 ft across the room, I don't know how it even happened. Must have been Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
Well and that's the other thing too is he said that they didn't get an abortion because they were both Catholic.
ED LARSON
Ah. Very nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Supposedly, Andrew tried giving it a go and got an honest job at a drugstore as a clerk. But that went south when people started recognizing Lieutenant Commander Cummings, Damaris, or Andrew DeSilva stocking the fucking shelves at the local drugstore.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That job only lasted a month. And as soon as the baby was born, supposedly Cunanan dropped that act and resumed his hunt for the perfect sugar daddy.
ED LARSON
So is there a baby?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
It's possible. It is possible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
There's some rumors that it really was this woman that he ended up hanging out with later, these people he ended up hanging out with later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he kind of formulated his story after the fact. Part of me wonders again, I just don't trust... I really do think in many ways he's sitting at night in a chair silently, like he goes home after playing nine different versions of himself and he sits and he's in amazement of all of his different plot lines.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he sits and he literally goes over them like he's doing dumb shit TV reenactments for Vulture or whatever, where he's just like sitting and like oh yeah and I did that, and I did that. And he's continuing storylines for himself at night. Because I don't think that there's anything but his own biography flying through his head at all times. And then just blank.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah. See I wanna know. So if you are Andrew Cunanan's bastard child, please write in at sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly, we're very interested.
MARCUS PARKS
Now for a while, that perfect sugar daddy was a millionaire in his late 60s named Norman Blachford It's a very strange name. Blachford.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I've never heard of it before.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He made Cunanan his kept boy on an allowance of $2500 a month.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's awesome.
ED LARSON
Get that raise!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's awesome!
MARCUS PARKS
He's moving up. See as far as Blachford knew, Cunanan was a half Portuguese Jewish, half Filipino who'd spent two years in the Israeli military but had been pushed out of his family after they discovered he was gay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wasn't just pushed out of the family, they actually pushed me out of a hot air balloon. It was a horrible Wednesday.
ED LARSON
I do love how his characters get more creative every time.
MARCUS PARKS
he's getting better at it.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He keeps blowing it up. Because it's the axiom which all of these stupid con artists believe which is the more ludicrous, the more real it sounds.
ED LARSON
Well it does!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm now understanding that no, most people have very simple lives. Because if they had that incredible life, they'd be on television.
ED LARSON
But you wanna believe it, you know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
You do.
ED LARSON
You're excited you just met such an interesting person.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure. It's an anecdote you wanna share with somebody else. You know what I mean? And that's what he's kind of keying into.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is this idea of oh, you're gonna wanna tell other people about me.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But what you wanna do is you wanna give yourself quirks but you don't necessarily need like interesting quirks. Like you need to know a lot about like the 1976 lineup of the Cleveland Browns.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I don't like onions. That guy, he doesn't like onions.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Did you know Ed O'Neill was probably on that team.
MARCUS PARKS
Really?
ED LARSON
Yeah, he played for one season as a Cleveland Brown.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is too straight for me.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow. You're a fucking fraud, man. I can see it. You're a conman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I know that's fake.
MARCUS PARKS
But Blachford wasn't closeted. He and Cunanan went to the symphony together and took frequent trips to Paris, all while Cunanan was supplied with a checkbook sized wallet filled with credit cards.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
That however wasn't enough for Cunanan. He was soon seeing another old wealthy man named Lincoln Aston. This was risky because if Norman Blachford discovered the affair, the allowance, trips, and fancy dinners would come to an abrupt halt. My god, these men have fucking old rich men names.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They really do. Lincoln Aston.
MARCUS PARKS
Norman Blachford.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Norman Blachford. But it's kind of interesting because there's still the need for the thrill.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You get the stuff that you want but then this is the problem with the never ending hole of having either some form of psychopathy or some form of antisocial personality disorder, where you can't get it up anymore once it gets too boring.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you can't just relax.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
ED LARSON
He probably could still be with Blachford if it was doing it right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Eventually it's just called a nice relationship.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Blachford I don't think survived the 90s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. Very old.
ED LARSON
Then he really should have stuck it out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, exactly. Because then you get to be... It's you and the bichon frisé get to live this incredible life together where you didn't do anything.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the relationship with Lincoln Aston ended quite abruptly in 1995 when Aston was found bludgeoned to death with a stone obelisk in his own home. Now according to author Wensley Clarkson, that murder was pinned on a mentally challenged drifter who confessed at a Colorado police station in 1996. But while you think that Cunanan might have killed Aston to prevent Blachford from discovering their affair, Aston was actually at the time trying to make Cunanan go away with a $30,000 bribe. Even more intriguing is that Cunanan would brag to people that he'd been with Lincoln on the night of his death. He said that he had been the one to find the body. So if Cunanan did kill Aston, it would have been more likely that he'd done so because he'd been rejected.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually push back. I don't think that he killed before he started his spree.
MARCUS PARKS
That's why I said-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If, I'm just saying-
MARCUS PARKS
If he killed him. I don't think he killed Aston either, I'm just saying if.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. I think that he did see that he got killed and-
ED LARSON
Was like I don't give a shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that he learned a little lesson in his own little fucked up head of being like if I have to just get rid of somebody, maybe they'll blame it on somebody else.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
That was like the first time I saw Murderfist. You guys were great, you did a good job, and I was like I could do that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as Blachford went, that relationship ended during a trip to Europe where Cunanan demanded Blachford buy him a Mercedes SL600 priced at $126,000.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was obsessed with Mercedes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Blachford refused, but since Cunanan had snared two big sugar daddies in a row, he most likely figured he could catch a third just as easily. So he left Blachford as soon as they returned to American soil. Now while it might seem that Andrew Cunanan only slept with wealthy old men, he did also have relationships and friendships with men his own age. One of those in the friendship realm was a sailor named Jeff Trail who'd known Cunanan since 1992.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the one he was gonna do for love.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So this happened during... We know that he met him while he was in this kind of like long, very whatever you'd call their relationship, right. And there was like a thing in him where like maybe I too could settle down.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I mean? In his head, like I've never been me but maybe somebody else can see me.
ED LARSON
Do you think that he knew him as Cummings because he was also in the Navy?
MARCUS PARKS
No, he knew him as Andrew Cunanan.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
He always knew him as Andrew Cunanan. Like it was sort of a casual, I think they like casually met each other at a gay bar. But Jeff, he was deeply in the closet. He was in the Navy and this was in the days before even like Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
ED LARSON
Yeah. But he was still in the Navy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ah! I can just feel the letters.
MARCUS PARKS
And the freedom that Cunanan enjoyed concerning his sexuality made Trail more comfortable with his own sexuality. In other words, being around Andrew was fun and it made Jeff feel good about himself. Because Jeff, he was your all American boy. Quarterback in high school, military man, his main ambition was to be a cop. He wanted to be a CHiP.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And especially in like 1992... Today that's cool, that's okay.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But in 1992, that's impossible for a guy like that to come out as gay.
ED LARSON
Oh absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. And it's interesting because one of the big fantasies that Andrew Cunanan grew up with was that he kind of wanted to be white. Like he kind of had this kind of fascination about like being blonde haired, blue eyed, like that style of-
MARCUS PARKS
He wanted to be the all American boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All American boy. So I feel like there's like something in that where it's like maybe this is my way to have my good old fashioned like, you know... He's a strong man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But Jeff also loved guns. More than a few times, Jeff would take Andrew out shooting, oftentimes with a Taurus 40 caliber that was made specifically to be a concealed carry handgun. With its streamlined, ergonomic design and rugged compact polymer frame, you'll find the Taurus G2 series strikes the perfect balance between comfort and confidence in any situation.
ED LARSON
All right, Texas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We didn't even get that. That's not an ad. That is not a roll through.
MARCUS PARKS
That is straight from the Taurus website.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
They're still selling the G2 series today.
ED LARSON
But all right, so it's a small gun but is it a big bullet? A 40 caliber is big, right? Am I crazy?
MARCUS PARKS
it's big, yeah, but it's a small gun. Man, okay, gun people, go get mad right now and send some letters.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know. But all I know is that I looked at the 40 caliber, the Taurus 40 caliber on the website, it looked very small, they said they marketed it as a compact handgun. I don't know, maybe the G2 is a different kind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who fucking knows?
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe the G2 is a compact one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm not getting in the middle of any of this gun shit, these gun nerds-
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe there's another one, maybe it was a really big fucking gun back then. I don't know.
ED LARSON
If you wanna send us the Taurus 40 caliber-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, send it right in the mail.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Send it right in the mail.
ED LARSON
PO Box 470-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can actually just leave it in the mailbox with a single rose tied around it, that'd be great.
MARCUS PARKS
Even though Cunanan constantly tried to push Trail into a sexual relationship, Trail kept it platonic because he had a steady boyfriend when he met Andrew. And even after Trail and the boyfriend broke up, Cunanan had already been thoroughly friendzoned. Even so, when Trail decided to move to Minnesota, Cunanan was as shocked, angered, and heartbroken as if they were lovers and that rage would come around with full force less than a year later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really interesting because I think that when these types of guys feel like they finally revealed themselves and they were some form of what they consider to be vulnerable, right? So on some level, he believes, Andrew Cunanan thinks that his real self is so precious and so wonderful that if he shows anyone... But he hates all people, right? He believes he's above everyone in a way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he doesn't wanna grant you this real personality. So when he does and then you reject it, he then is kind of set loose in a way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now since Cunanan was between sugar daddies, he started selling downers in bars. But by this point he'd been a pretty steady meth user for years. According to Cunanan's meth dealer, who for some reason went on the record with the author of 'Vulgar Favors'-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He just loves it.
MARCUS PARKS
Cunanan would buy up to $4000 of meth a month to either use or sell.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well again, I'm gonna put a pound of salt in that too. It's more like if you got drugs... The way they put it in 'Vulgar Favors' was kind of interesting where it's like there's something about being a guy that will connect other guys.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like you know a guy and you don't have to go through all this other stuff, I'll just show you my guy. And then you kinda get more societal favors because you're a guy who makes easy connections and you don't have to go through all this trouble to find a legit dealer of anything.
ED LARSON
I love giving drugs to my friends.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was a thing.
MARCUS PARKS
It's really nice to give drugs to your friends. Hey, I got some extra mushrooms, here, have a few.
ED LARSON
It's like oh my god, you have some. I would love to get that for you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Andrew also started getting a little slimier by this time, trading knowledge and drugs for access and travel. It was rumored that Cunanan would drug men with ketamine and secretly record them having sex while the victim was in a K-hole. And that video would then be used for blackmail. Incredibly though, during all this casual sex when the AIDS crisis was at its height, Cunanan never contracted HIV, although he somehow convinced himself that he had. And this is sort of the crux of this story.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
See in January of 1997, about four months before his killing spree, Andrew Cunanan very quickly began to unravel. He was suffering from a myriad of minor illnesses that just wouldn't go away, which is sometimes an early sign of an HIV infection. Now all this is a little muddy but according to an AIDS counselor named Mike Dudley, Cunanan came into his office just to talk. Dudley had no access to Cunanan's records, so he asked Cunanan if he was HIV positive. But from what it seems like, Cunanan took this as Dudley telling him he was HIV positive. At the mere question about his infection status, Cunanan subsequently lost his shit, kicking walls and screaming that if he ever found out who did this to him, he was gonna get him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he was freaking out. And again, he was obsessed with it. And there was something about it, because I think it's because it wasn't under his control and he felt that he'd let somebody in under his control or whatever.
ED LARSON
Isn't that kind of a natural reaction though?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, I'd freak the fuck out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Like I would lose my mind if someone's like you've got AIDS. I'm like fucking Jerry! Jerry did it!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jerry! Loose lips sink ships, Jerry!
MARCUS PARKS
No, the riskiest thing I ever did was like I seriously thought I had HIV when I first moved to college. Because I was living a risky life.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And I was having some of those-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You doing intravenous?
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no, just having a lot of like... It was a risky life. Not intravenous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You getting pegged?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
What are you talking about?
MARCUS PARKS
You can't get AIDS from getting pegged.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That depends on where the peg was.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I suppose so. But let's just say my lymph nodes were swollen and I was quite nervous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I think we're all very lucky.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was fine.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And I actually got my HIV test results like at work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow, great.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, called me up. But thankfully it was negative.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let me look through, is this Mr. Parks? Let me just look through the paper. (shuffling) You just hear like, let me just see these test results. Ah! Oh my god. Oh no, sorry, this is Marcus Sharks' paperwork. Let me look again.
ED LARSON
Yeah. He's dead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh my fucking god! No, this is Marcus Starks' paperwork.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm sitting there in the fucking office, I'm in the Onion offices on the fucking phone with all the other interns.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just fucking tell me!
ED LARSON
You know if it's positive they're just gonna write an article about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can I use that?
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the thing is that Dudley finally calmed Andrew down. But after Cunanan left, Dudley got the clear impression that Andrew was HIV positive. Andrew wasn't HIV positive. Autopsy reports later showed that he definitely wasn't HIV positive. But somehow he got it in his head, he convinced himself that he was HIV positive. And I think this was just sort of an excuse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well and then everything's running out, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Everything's done.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Things are starting to fall, truly, quickly fall apart for him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you remember he also had that couple that he kind of broke up with. There was a couple, they put it in the book-
MARCUS PARKS
That was a whole fucking side quest that we didn't get into.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There was a whole side quest that he had a whole family, like he was the godfather to these two kids and he was raising them, that fell apart too. All of these other things just kind of fell apart and fell apart. And it got to the point where we're just breaking down to the nothingness that is Andrew.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
So do you think he was actually sick all the time or is he just kind of making it up in his head?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who knows?
MARCUS PARKS
He probably did have... I mean he fucking did meth all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he was probably fucking sick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's probably hungover. And then what do you know, as we get older is it gets less fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like each time we're getting less fun. But it's not the same anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
It's true. Yeah. But according to Andrew Cunanan's friends, his personality changed as 1997 began. He became angry, bitter, and irresponsible, even more so than usual, because he believed that someone had purposefully infected him with HIV. Using this as an excuse to garner some sympathy, Cunanan traveled to Minnesota to visit his friend Jeff Trail, the one that rebuffed Andrew's advances and had a taste for handguns. It was here in Minnesota during the dead of winter that Cunanan would coincidentally bump into an old boyfriend from San Diego named David Madson. And soon Cunanan, Madson, and Trail, they were all hanging out. They formed a quick little circle of friends.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And also before he did this, he had like a big goodbye party that he called the last supper, that was like he invited all the last like party heads out that he had been with a long time. And they were all sort of like this kind of feels like a funeral.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like it kind of feels like he's doing something really like fucked up. Because he was just like I'm just going to Minnesota, I'm just gonna go hang out for a little while, you know how it is, you know how it is going to the dead center of Minnesota, really enjoying myself.
ED LARSON
In the middle of winter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well whilst out on the town one night in Minneapolis though, Cunanan had his third encounter with a celebrity. This one we know is true.
ED LARSON
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is real?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, this one's real, like this one is absolutely real. It was like witnessed by multiple people. For some reason, Lisa Kudrow was out and about at a Minneapolis club at the height of her fame as Phoebe Buffay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She got in this story.
ED LARSON
Hell yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This is 1997 Friends.
ED LARSON
Yeah, oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, it happens. Honestly that's where you can party.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can party in Minneapolis, you can party in St. Paul.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
You know she loves this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh she loves this. It was like the guy, the cosplayer named Fluke Skywalker who hung out with Mark Hamill a bunch and then got busted for being a massive pedophile. And there's all these pictures of him and fucking Liam Neeson and all these other people hanging out. God, they must love this photo album.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. Andrew Cunanan also claimed that like while he was selling meth, he once ran into like David Geffen and hung out with David Geffen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh sure, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The guy who fucking founded Asylum Records and Geffen Records and all that.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Definitely.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He actually came straight out, he was like I did not hang out with that guy.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You got to.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Probably.
MARCUS PARKS
Cunanan of course cornered Kudrow and clung to her desperately.
ED LARSON
I would have done the same thing. I love her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did you write Smelly Cat or was it the writers? Did you make that up? Is your real name Phoebe?
MARCUS PARKS
But it ruined Kudrow's night. You would have been a great companion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How you doing? How you doing? Remember from the show? How you doing? Lisa Kudrow, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Is that monkey real?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that monkey real?
MARCUS PARKS
Is that a real monkey?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is it Ku-DROW or KU-drow?
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the thing is that, as you do when you get the dud at a party, Kudrow kept looking around while Cunanan went on and on, just desperately hoping that someone would come rescue her. No one would.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he would be talking about neoclassical antiques and talking about all his fucking garbage and opera. He was just always doing all that shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Who's story is this? Like she's not telling people.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it was a writer who was there.
ED LARSON
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Who saw the whole thing. They said that she tried to sort of talk to somebody else or get away and Cunanan would like tap on her shoulder, like hey, we're not done with our conversation yet.
ED LARSON
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
You need to keep talking to me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just radiating bad vibes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And the more Kudrow tried getting away, the more irritated and persistent Cunanan became. Finally after dealing with him for like an hour, Kudrow told him that she was going to the bathroom, old trick, and just fucking went home.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Ah, the old Kudrow goodbye.
MARCUS PARKS
According to people who were there though, after Cunanan realized he'd been snubbed by Lisa Kudrow, his face was full of rage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I fucking hate Friends! Seinfeld was better! Seinfeld was better!
ED LARSON
Phoebe! Phoebe, stop me!
MARCUS PARKS
And one person described the look on his face as thunderous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
In other words, Cunanan's fury was beginning to boil over. He would soon after return to San Diego for a few months but he wasn't done with Minneapolis just yet. He returned in April of that year and by the time he left, David Madson and Jeff Trail were both dead at Cunanan's hands. And that will be where we pick back up for part two.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is a long ass story, man. Like we just got into it. We're just kind of setting up who this guy is. Next week we're gonna watch these dominoes fall all the way down to South Beach. It's kind of crazy just how it was a massive across the country crime spree that this guy did. Legitimately very frightening. I find Andrew Cunanan very frightening.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's because you meet so many of these types in our industry and like a lot of them end up being kind of fine, most of them are fine, hangers on that kind of like develop into other stuff. But like there's just something about that.
ED LARSON
It's The Fan. The Wesley Snipes, Robert De Niro movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He just decided to become a human tornado and there's really not much you can do about that.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's the thing, these days I guess it's a lot harder to do. But especially back then, like America is so fucking big. The reason why people get caught when they murder someone is because they stay in one place.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hard to leave, especially if you're broke.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But if you're someone like Andrew Cunanan who's extremely resourceful, like you murder someone, you can leave and you can be three states away in a day.
ED LARSON
Two different people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you're somebody else now, you're Lieutenant Cummings.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. You can be somebody else and you can just keep going and keep going until you decide it's over.
ED LARSON
Now I know that it's bad to kill people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
ED LARSON
But I-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you.
ED LARSON
Do miss a time when you could get away with crimes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure. Hey.
ED LARSON
And I feel like that's over.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's really hard to get away with crimes these days.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I will say, the only thing that's true is that the bus is still the last truly anonymous way to travel.
ED LARSON
Oh my god, dude, it really is. I remember one time I was riding fucking Greyhounds and it was just like is this one going north? And you just throw your bag in there and you fucking get it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. You could still go buy it with cash. Now you might need to put your name on the ticket, I don't remember.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't... It's been a while since I got on a bus but-
ED LARSON
it's been a while too.
MARCUS PARKS
yeah but I do know that when I was taking a lot of Greyhounds between Rochester and Texarkana when I was doing Journeymen Construction-
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I definitely met the most criminals I've ever met in my life.
ED LARSON
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
And those bulk buses, I mean you just need a fake email address, you can get on anything.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean this was like 1999 so those were the days when you truly did just hop on. And that bus from Texarkana to Abilene, the first stop was the prison in Texarkana.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yay!
ED LARSON
That's fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So every time you go to Abilene, there's gonna be a guy that's taking that bus from Texarkana to Dallas.
ED LARSON
Getting out, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah and he might sit right next to you. And he might ask you to help him steal a car in Dallas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, hey man, again. It's called making friends. You gotta open your heart to people. You never know who you're gonna meet out on that open road.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Do you remember when Rikers would just like unload buses of people at Port Authority?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, I remember that.
ED LARSON
That shit was crazy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, here's fingers crossed they do it again. Guys, you're gonna wanna check us out. Go to veeps.com/lpotl. If you can't make it to the LPN Beach Blanket Bingo, you can watch it from your fucking house, October 20th. You can watch it. So go to veeps.com/lpotl and you'll be able to buy those at home streaming tickets, it's gonna be a fun fucking show. We're encouraging people to wear costumes because it's Halloween time.
ED LARSON
It's Halloween time. Please wear costumes!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we're gonna do a big thing there. Also we got Atlanta. I'm gonna be there October 11th, next Tuesday. See me there. It's at atldonnerparty.com. I'm going to be hosting a dinner party where it's cannibal-themed, we're not eating human meat, legally I have to say that. It is going to just look like human meat. But come out to Ammazza in Atlanta. It's gonna be really fun.
ED LARSON
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I don't know what I'm doing, I know I'm gonna be yelling at people while they eat.
MARCUS PARKS
Cool.
ED LARSON
Hell yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's what I'm best at.
ED LARSON
Nice. I'm doing the New York Comedy Festival.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh fuck yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Nice.
ED LARSON
I'm opening for 'Take A Banana For The Ride', Jeff's one man show. So come check that out, I can't wait. It's gonna be a lot of fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh that's awesome, you're going this weekend?
ED LARSON
No, the first weekend of November I'll be there. It's gonna be unbelievable. We just did it in Boston at the Wilbur Theater, it's honestly the best show we've ever done together.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it sounds great. Honestly I can't wait to see it.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, hail sweet Satan.
ED LARSON
Hail you guys.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
ED LARSON
Be good to yourself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Be good to yourself. And be good to me.