HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just also, why do they always say boy?
MARCUS PARKS
They do always say boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's all boys.
MARCUS PARKS
It's always boy.
ED LARSON
They could be 30 and call them a boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh what a boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause you just have to be tight. I think 'boy' in certain places in South Beach is just about waist size.
ED LARSON
Yeah, it's a compliment.
MARCUS PARKS
28-30 is my waist size. I'm 40 and I believe I could still pass off as being called boy.
ED LARSON
You're a little tall. And you're serious.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you're getting untwinked right now.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that is true. Well I still maintain that I'm a thinner otter.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're becoming the untwinked. It is slowly happening to you. I think it's called twink death, I think is the term.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't even know if I'm allowed to say that. Can I say the word twink?
MARCUS PARKS
Twink death? Yeah, you can.
ED LARSON
I think so, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Twink is a-
ED LARSON
It's like bear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Twink death, countable and uncountable, according to Wikipedia it means the loss of a twink's youthful appearance as a result of aging.
MARCUS PARKS
Ah yes, yes, yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. And we're not really speaking as true authorities here because I've only been told I'm a bear by very naughty men on the internet.
MARCUS PARKS
And I've been told I'm an otter by gay men that I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if any of you want to maybe explain some of this stuff that we're talking about right now to us-
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because then we could talk back to everyone else about it, email sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com.
MARCUS PARKS
We love to learn!
ED LARSON
So a twink death is basically when you go from Sparky to Spunky.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Uh oh, we just added the U.
MARCUS PARKS
But welcome to Last Podcast on the Left, ladies and gentlemen. My name's Marcus Parks, I'm here with Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hi hi.
MARCUS PARKS
And Ed Larson.
ED LARSON
Miami! Tell me what you know about cocaine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! We are going to Miami, bienvenido a Miami! It's actually really sad.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a sad trip to Miami.
ED LARSON
Half of them are.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They really are. Most of the time it's bye, grandma! Have fun, grandma! Look, it's shuffleboard, look, there's a tree!
ED LARSON
Well those are trips to Boca.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's true. I will say that I think the saddest show we've ever had was in Miami.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Why would you go? You're in Miami, Florida.
ED LARSON
Oh my god. It's the worst town for comedy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're gonna go to a live podcast recording?
ED LARSON
Everyone's on their phones. I've done standup down there, no one's paying attention, everyone's fucking 40 minutes late.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's too sexy.
ED LARSON
There's like literally a nightclub, DJ Laz was playing and every time the doors opened you just heard a better party. And it was just like-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People are laughing more, loving life, being like fuck that fat guy! You hear that from the outside.
MARCUS PARKS
I remember we were onstage and I was sick and like we're in Miami and I'm like drinking DayQuil straight from the bottle to make it through the fucking show.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Sad, sad place. For me at least.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
For you.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But honestly I felt the heat. As soon as you walk out that hotel room, you feel like your hips kind of swivel. It's like I felt the Polish creak, you know what I mean?
ED LARSON
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it was like (creaking) as my knees started swiveling back and forth.
MARCUS PARKS
Well let's get to Andrew Cunanan part three, let's wrap this fucker up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Let's see what Mr. Cunany does now.
MARCUS PARKS
I've been trying to think of where Cunany comes from. Is that a Shaggy thing? It feels like something Shaggy would say.
ED LARSON
I just think Henry made it up and like half stole it from something else.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's my whole career.
ED LARSON
I think it's punany.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well yeah, someone said maybe it's because of the Steven Seagal song where he sings all about loving the punany in the song because he thinks he's half like Jamaican for some reason.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
ED LARSON
Marked For Death, in that movie he's half Jamaican.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I will say, because again, he's a good actor. But I just put it as Cunany cause it's fun for me.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay. So when we last left Andrew Cunanan, he'd just murdered a civil war cemetery caretaker named William Reese simply so he could steal Reese's truck for the next leg of his journey. This was Cunanan's fourth victim and soon after he was officially linked to Reese, Cunanan became a national true crime sensation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, he was excited about it.
MARCUS PARKS
He was so fucking... He kept all his newspaper clippings.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He'd watch all the news reports. Now as we said last episode, two of Cunanan's friends had called the FBI to tell them that he was likely headed for Miami and that he had a grudge against Gianni Versace. And as it was, Cunanan arrived in Miami not too long after the murder of William Reese.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ah South Beach. I got some select quotes from the 'Vulgar Favors' book that is disgusting.
ED LARSON
Let's hear them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Here we go. "With forbidden, seething Havana waiting to open up nearby, South Beach is a riot of loose luxe and easy sleaze, where dancing the night away amid hundreds of tanned, undulating bodies is a standard prelude to hot, anonymous sex."
ED LARSON
I mean it's always been that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I guess so. It seems like the first like Native Americans found it, they were like man, this place makes us horny as fuck.
ED LARSON
I think Miami was actually founded by an alligator in a thong.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, being like (chomping) trying to suck dick. And here's another quote. "South Beach is about being Venezuelan, 21, and having designer pubic hair."
ED LARSON
Whoa! 21 is generous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey there, hey. Is it cool if I get in here? Yeah? The name's Winston McGonagall. Yeah. Is it weird? I know my pubic hair is just in a diamond shape, it was hard to get the LV in there.
MARCUS PARKS
Well using another one of his fake IDs, Cunanan set himself up on Miami Beach in a room at the Normandy Plaza Hotel under the alias of Andrew DeSilva. And Normandy Plaza Hotel sounds fancy, it's $35.75 a night.
ED LARSON
Yeah, no. In South Beach that's not good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. No, no, no, no. But it was only a block from the beach.
MARCUS PARKS
This was easily affordable at least at first, because if you'll remember, Cunanan had left Lee Miglin's home with $10,000 in cash after that third murder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which he quickly blew.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Now as far as Andrew Cunanan's movements around Miami went for the next five weeks or so-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually that's what I actually didn't realize is how long he was in Miami.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was there for a while.
ED LARSON
Chilling.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Five or six weeks, somewhere around there. I think it ended up being almost a month by the end of it. I think it was seven weeks that he was just fucking around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You could see how he thought he was getting away with it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Well after all that time in Minneapolis, he had to get his tan back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean of course, but he couldn't go outside. He was on America's Most Wanted.
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the thing is that America's Most Wanted wasn't that... Like it was a big show but it took a fucking, I'm about to get into it, but it took a month for him to be recognized the first time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. The problem is that what they said is that I know that he didn't have a tan because multiple times he tried to go places, the word that people use to describe him was 'pasty'.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Really? And America's Most Wanted was a big show in Florida.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh Yeah.
ED LARSON
Because of Walsh. Walsh is a Florida guy.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right. And I would imagine a lot of the people hailed from Florida.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Or end up there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, exactly. It's great. It's called pulling as Bundy for a reason.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as Andrew Cunanan's movements around Miami went for the next five weeks or so, they had to be put together by people who came out of the woodwork after Gianni Versace's assassination became the biggest news story in America. But when Andrew first arrived in Miami, the average person might not have known anything about the case if they didn't read Time Magazine or, as we said, if they didn't watch America's Most Wanted. Therefore plenty of local men had stories of Andrew dancing in gay clubs, swigging vodka crans, and trying to pick up dudes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He definitely, the word was is that he had a hustler vibe.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I feel like this is one of those things that was like we can't really speak towards the hustling gay community.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We have no fucking clue.
ED LARSON
But you can speak towards the hustler community as a whole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
ED LARSON
Especially in South Florida, they're everywhere.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that's what everybody says like he stood out like a sore thumb as a guy that pulls fucking tricks for a living.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And I think he was a little bit more obvious. Like he could get away with that in California but for some reason in Miami, just nobody was having any of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he's lost his edge.
MARCUS PARKS
And he's also paunchy at this point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But he paid weekly at the Normandy Plaza Hotel and cleaned his own room so the maids had little reason to enter. I think one of them said she cleaned the room three times in the entire time that Andrew stayed there. In further proof that Cunanan was cognizant of the fact that he was still on the run, he ate at cheap restaurants and shopped at a nearby Walgreens. But he still made time for runs to the adult bookstore. According to an employee at one store called The Pleasure Emporium, Andrew was always well dressed, well spoken, and very nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But they said any attempt at further conversation, he shut down. How often are we engaging with the clientele at the sex shop?
ED LARSON
You either talk too much or not at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I'd say loose lips sink ships, friend.
ED LARSON
I feel like if you talk a lot at the sex shop, then there's something wrong with you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think eventually you do become an employee.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as I've said before, like I had a very short run at The Pleasure Chest in New York City.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
And in that place you're actually encouraged to talk to the people because it's very classy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh actually I didn't know.
MARCUS PARKS
It's very high class.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That makes total sense. But they said his favorite magazines were Jocks and Inches, which also could be a football magazine.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've seen Any Given Sunday.
ED LARSON
Yeah, fourth and inches, baby.
MARCUS PARKS
But just because most people didn't recognize Andrew, that didn't mean that nobody recognized him. On June 11th, after Andrew had been in Miami for almost a month, an employee at a sandwich shop called Miami Subs-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Miami Subs!
ED LARSON
Oh love Miami Subs!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Miami Subs!
ED LARSON
Miami Subs is amazing, they always had a Street Fighter II. The cheesesteaks were great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, cheesesteaks!
ED LARSON
The curly fries, it was wonderful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Didn't they have fruit punch? They had like a proprietary drink.
ED LARSON
Oh yeah. They definitely had their own fruit punch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And then slowly but surely Nathan's bought them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And then they started to turn into Miami Grill and serve salads and shit like a bunch of fucking pussies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, what is this shit? I'm here to get sick.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I remember. It was a great place for my mom to bring me to forget my dad wasn't around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It didn't work.
MARCUS PARKS
How was the tuna sub? Did you have the tuna sub?
ED LARSON
Of course I had the tuna sub! Yeah, my mom got the tuna sub a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's called The Cunany now.
MARCUS PARKS
That is what Andrew Cunanan got.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Here's a tip for you tuna sub fans, put a little mustard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, sure, sure, sure.
ED LARSON
A little, like one strip of mustard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I also like crunching up barbecue chips on top of a tuna sub.
ED LARSON
You're fucking genius.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm fat for a reason.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this guy at Miami Subs, he recognized Cunanan and he called 911 before taking his time making Andrew's tuna sub.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hurry it up, get that meat slurry on there. Yeah, tuna sub being your favorite is a thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a choice.
MARCUS PARKS
It is very much a choice. But the cops still weren't fast enough because by the time they arrived, Andrew was already gone. Unbeknownst to them, Andrew's hideout at the Normandy Plaza Hotel was less than three blocks away,
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Teflon, baby.
MARCUS PARKS
But it could be that Andrew noticed all the police activity in the vicinity of the hotel because he soon began spending more time in his brunette woman persona. In fact, Cunanan was so natural in his portrayal that the staff at the Normandy thought that he'd simply stopped leaving his room.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See that's funny because again that's another difference between the one book and the other book. Because this book really puts more on this sort of like full shapeshifting thing that Cunany would do, where like the other book is way more just like he probably was like... It was the constant, was it Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was the same thing where it's like where was his money coming from? We did not know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like he blew through a lot of money very, very quickly.
ED LARSON
I imagine he was having sex for money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They think that but also at the same time, you're in South Beach, there's a lot of people at this time period that are at a much higher level that are doing this on a regular. Like the standard is much higher than the rest of the country.
ED LARSON
That's right. And he's kind of fat now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, everybody's beautiful in South Beach. They're all just saying it's the hottest of every group is there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
To this day.
MARCUS PARKS
But still, $10,000 in 1997 goes a lot longer than $10,000 in 2023. Remember that was almost 30 years ago.
ED LARSON
Yeah but it's still a nightclub in South Beach every night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're still paying a lot of money.
ED LARSON
That's like $400 a night probably, the way this guy lives.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then all the rock, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he was spending about $100 on crack on the regular.
ED LARSON
That's a lot of crack.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a lot of crack.
MARCUS PARKS
And that was known by a guy named Ronnie who also, because this place was like a half flop house, it wasn't a full flop house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They said that he would purchase rocks at the price of like $20, $60, $100. There's a lot of different sizes of crack rock that you can buy apparently.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, cool.
ED LARSON
Who knows?
MARCUS PARKS
At the same time though, Andrew-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wonder how they figure it out, with like little measuring cups? Right, they must.
ED LARSON
It might be loosey goosey. It depends on the guy, I imagine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's his style.
ED LARSON
I accidentally bought crack in Florida once.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Was I not with you?
ED LARSON
No, no, it was before we knew each other.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
But it was in Tallahassee, I went out and I was trying to get a dime bag and I gave the guy, he's like how much you want? And I was like $10. And then he handed it to me and it was crack and I was like ah fuck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What am I supposed to do?
ED LARSON
I'm out of my last $10 and now all I got is crack?
MARCUS PARKS
Now at the same time, Andrew may have also fooled himself at one point into thinking that maybe he could start over in Miami. Because it's rumored that he tried getting quote unquote "modeling work" which almost certainly means porn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
As far as the authorities went, they later claimed that they distributed thousands of leaflets with information and photos of Cunanan throughout the Miami Beach area once it was known with a fair amount of certainty that he was there. But according to the people that actually live there, they never saw a single leaflet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they were like no, we got them! We we got him right here, there's a whole pile of them! You should see the xerox machine, it's smoking. But there was not a single leaflet when people arrived there. But my theory is that not a single fucking person believed that he knew who Versace was, that he ever met Versace.
MARCUS PARKS
Well at this point it wasn't a thing of like he's here for Versace or anything like that, they're just like we know this murderer is here. But that's the thing is that they lie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They lie, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Like they totally lied. They came out after the murder of Versace and they just hoped that nobody would call them out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That nobody would remember that there was no fucking flyers left behind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I do think it was because it was not common knowledge that Gianni Versace would just walk around and that he lived fairly openly in this community that they all viewed as a very protected place for themselves.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
But everyone knew where his place was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes but at the same time this is one of those where like whenever I go to a small town, like when when I go to see Natalie's family in upstate Michigan and stuff, it's disgusting. But I look around and be like this place is like a sitting duck for a maniac. You know what I mean? Like somebody coming through here could rip through this fucking... They could kill the mayor! You know what I mean? They could do whatever. You could go find the mayor and shoot the mayor in head. Where like something like this is that it actually was fairly like while it was still Miami, it was this kind of like beautiful enclave. It was a very tight knit community-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That were looking out for each other and kind of knew everybody who was around.
ED LARSON
There's that hotel that's right behind Versace's house that like literally would look into his backyard. He knew. It's a W now I think.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ED LARSON
But back in the day it was like a shitty little hotel and it just looks into his backyard. They used it like promo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But obviously there was a lot of transient activity, like people coming in and out, tourism and stuff. But for the most part you knew who belonged there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that's the thing is the cops, they did very little proactive work when it came to catching Andrew Cunanan before he killed again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They just lied afterwards because they got suddenly hit with a fucking red ball.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And not to mention, people are getting murdered by the second Miami in the 90s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Just outside of this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now when Andrew Cunanan went down to Miami Beach, it's pretty certain from the evidence he left behind that he was planning to kill not just one but possibly a whole host of celebrities in addition to socialites and well-known community figures. Just like he killed Lee Miglin because he was a famous architect in Chicago.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
See Andrew Cunanan had written a list of targets and left it behind in William Reese's truck. And while Gianni Versace was at the top of the list, right behind him was Madonna and Julio Iglesias.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No! Not Julio! Leave Julio alone!
ED LARSON
Also both very Miami people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Madonna owned an apartment building, a giant skyrise with De Niro.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh wow.
ED LARSON
Yeah, in South Beach.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I mean that's the thing is that everyone knew that these people had 2nd, 3rd or fucking 4th homes in Miami Beach.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And I think that's part of the reason why Andrew Cunanan went there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Because he knew that like okay, he had spent his time in Hollywood, he spent his time in Los Angeles. And it's very like... I mean you guys know from living here, like seeing a celebrity is very catch-as-catch-can.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And this is where they are the most protected.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I mean? This is the heart of the celebrity machine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So there are a lot of times if you see a celebrity out who's a high-level celebrity, they're coming out with, they'll have a security guy in plainclothes, they're normally walking around surrounded by people. Like this is their stronghold.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where you go to a place like South Beach, like that's where Gianni Versace in particular went to relax, they went there because I'm not as watched here.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that's the thing, I've been living in LA for like a year now and maybe it's just because I never leave the valley, but the only thing close to a celebrity I saw was like Stephen Root.
ED LARSON
Hell yeah. That's a good one.
MARCUS PARKS
That's a really good one.
ED LARSON
I saw Luis Guzmán at Vivian's, that was cool, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's cool.
ED LARSON
Both of us were waiting. I gave him the old tip of the hat, I'm like I don't want to pull up your spot but I fucking love you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Love your fucking shit, bro! Let me see your eggs! What eggs did you get? Big fan! Big fan!
MARCUS PARKS
Well in addition to Madonna and Julio Iglesias, he also had on his list an oil heir named Gordon Getty, a socialite named Harry DeWitt, and a fair number of prominent doctors and lawyers in the Miami area. But perhaps tellingly and fucking dramatically-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What a fucking, again, fucking theater child.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yes. Cunanan had also written his own name in blood inside William Reese's truck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sic semper tyrannis. Fun to do! Mr. Cunany rides again! Yeah, he's a fucking piece of shit. I also think he lived everything because he knew, now he knows the big X was that they're gonna write books about me, they're gonna come looking for me, they're gonna find out, they're gonna search for any bit of information about me because his own hotel room was staged with books of like the high elite. He wanted you to know that the things he knew, only the most tasteful people would know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like his taste level was extremely high. And so he put those things on and be like so all the things I know? Because it's not just like Pat Sajak.
MARCUS PARKS
Mad Magazine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Although I would have liked him a lot better if he did have a stack of Mad Magazines in his hotel room.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I think that honestly he might have not have turned out the way he did.
ED LARSON
It's an outlet.
MARCUS PARKS
But as far as Cunanan's first target went, he would sit for hours at a restaurant called the 11th Street Diner, which just happened to be right across the street from the mansion that belonged to Gianni Versace.
ED LARSON
Staking it out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now to give you a bit of history on the fascinating figure that was Gianni Versace-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is fascinating.
MARCUS PARKS
He is. He was a man who came from nothing and his childhood experiences were later reflected in his designs. He said that during his childhood in Italy, his mother would take him to communion near a brothel that was run by the mafia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian accent) I have never seen so many a-nipple next to the cross.
ED LARSON
The brothel was called The Church.
MARCUS PARKS
Versace remembered that he would see these women day after day hanging out of the window or sitting on the steps. But even though his mother told him to avert his eyes-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gianni, no! Gianni, no see, no! I don't think he was looking for the reasons she thought he was looking.
MARCUS PARKS
No. Not at all. He still looked and the sex workers' upfront, forbidden, flashy styles shaped his concept of female beauty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There are some people that will pop this bubble, right, because where he was from was the very tip of the boot of Italy. And someone said like yeah, sure, I mean like that's a really sexy fashionable story.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But if you were to gaze upon the sex worker community of this small Italian town, you might not notice a heck of a lot of differences between the Nonnas and the sucky Nonnas. Like you might not. Aprons were still plentiful, a babushka was a democratic item. Everyone had one. So it wasn't like, they weren't hanging out, like it wasn't a music video.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now later Versace would get a lot of shit for this because people would criticize his clothing designs for being vulgar and demeaning to women.
ED LARSON
That just made them sell better.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the idea.
MARCUS PARKS
It really did. But according to Versace, he loved women and he only wanted to celebrate their bodies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Italian accent) I said the first thing I do, I see a vagina, first thing I think, I play a trombone. I light a little birthday candle, aw, look at the Happy Birthday to you, vulva.
ED LARSON
That works for Miami cause everyone's fucking naked in Miami.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's hot as fuck.
ED LARSON
Just like in the street, everyone. I don't even know how the strip clubs stay open.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you go to Walmart.
MARCUS PARKS
And apparently many women and men agreed with Versace's vision. By the mid 90s, Versace was raking in tens of millions of dollars in profits from a sprawling fashion empire that also produced accessories, jeans, sportswear, children's clothes, and home furnishings. And that's in addition to all the high fashion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you know that he made a child's cologne?
ED LARSON
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's incredible. I saw that like yeah, cologne for kids.
ED LARSON
When I was a kid I had a cologne collection. Didn't you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, I had JOOP and Tommy Hilfiger. Yeah, yeah.
ED LARSON
I had JOOP, I had Drakkar, Polo Sport.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I loved all that shit.
MARCUS PARKS
I had this stuff called Animale that I bought for $15 and it was wonderful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. But dude, again, those were colognes for men that we put on our child bodies. He made marketed children's colognes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Versace dressed Tina Turner, George Michael, Prince, Sylvester Stallone, Mike Tyson wore Versace, Faye Dunaway, and Princess Diana to name just a few.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
That's good work.
MARCUS PARKS
It's very good work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was his whole thing. He revolutionized the idea of harnessing vulgarity as an attribute, being like no, we're celebrating this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And in that he became a PR machine where he understood, he would just throw millions of dollars worth of free stuff at celebrities and all of a sudden they're hanging out, they're loving it, and then they're hanging out with him.
MARCUS PARKS
Well what Andrew Cunanan figured out was that Gianni Versace was not just a celebrity but a celebrity amongst the celebrity community itself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
As far as Gianni Versace's demeanor went, he was said to be an open, simple man who kept no secrets. And he was also the first internationally famous fashion designer to talk openly about being gay. One of the first famous people ever in fact to talk openly about being gay.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But as it is with many successful Italians, and I'm not gonna say that this is a fair assumption, it's not a fair assumption-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We are a subjective experience at Last Podcast.
MARCUS PARKS
It was always rumored that Versace's business had been backed by the Italian mafia from the beginning. And we're talking Italy Italian mafia here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Those are the people who killed Jesus!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
From the delta. The truth is that I do think it's discounting him because he did like-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know. Because they did a lot of research again, whatever fucking this trash rag, 'Vulgar Favors', you want to talk about it, they put a lot of work into trying to dig deep to find this type of dirt and they could not find it. They could not find the real mafia ties. Because in Italy, oh god, it's just the government's also... Because it's supposed to be transparent, you know? But then also you find out like half the government's on the table. There's a lot of mirrors in there, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Hasn't Italy had something like 43 different types of government since WWII?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude. And they don't give a fuck. They just relax, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Well some would later refer to Versace's storefronts as quote "the prettiest launderettes in the world".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh, catty.
MARCUS PARKS
Which was a statement somewhat supportive by the fact that Versace's boutiques were mostly empty, yet stayed in business nonetheless.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well because during this time period, right before his murder, they were trying to go public, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So the company, there was a lot more eyeballs in the center of what used to be very like family-based private company, very private.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the other thing too is that having those storefronts is like it's not about selling the items in the storefront, it's about having the storefront on like Fifth Avenue.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the idea.
MARCUS PARKS
It's an advertisement.
ED LARSON
And a pair of shorts a grand.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It costs a lot of money. But the stuff that would sell, it was never the big high end crazy items. He basically said that was for publicity.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that the things that sold were the cologne and the jeans and the t-shirts, like the stuff that's like the lower end stuff, but that's what kept the lights on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well adding to the speculation that the mob might be involved was the fact that Versace's business history was extremely vague, as you said.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And in May of 1997, Santo Versace, current president of the company by the way, was charged along with three other Italian fashion houses for bribing Italian tax officials.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cut to the tax officials just being like we have no idea what you're talking about. They've all got fancy scarves on and like big pirate hats and rings. Being like I have never once ever seen a bribe.
ED LARSON
And then he's holding a glass of champagne and takes off in a boat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like on the street.
MARCUS PARKS
Well further muddying the waters was the fact that when Versace went to Italy, he did so surrounded by bodyguards and he traveled in a bulletproof car. It was said that Versace did this because he was terrified of being kidnapped and/or killed by a branch of the mafia from his Calabrian homeland called the Ndrangheta. Mostly unknown in America, the Ndrangheta were so pervasive and powerful in Italy that their profits account for 3.5% of Italy's GDP.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How is that measured with them? Why are they allowed to be a part of the GDP?
ED LARSON
Because they actually were so evil that they just submitted their taxes and they were like this is how much money we stole this year.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly we just want to thank you for your honesty.
MARCUS PARKS
And they're still one of Europe's largest drug traffickers. Made up of 100 families, each with their own territory, the Ndrangheta has about 5000 members in the Calabria region alone, which is where Gianni Versace is from. They were also no strangers to kidnapping high profile people for money. In 1973, the Ndrangheta kidnapped the 17 year old grandson of an oil tycoon named J. Paul Getty who was once the richest man in the world.
ED LARSON
That story!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
That Kevin Spacey got kicked out of.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh, that's that movie?
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I didn't watch it.
MARCUS PARKS
Now at first Getty refused to even entertain the idea of paying the ransom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck my grandson. That's incredible, I love that. What are you gonna do with him? How much? Nah.
MARCUS PARKS
Nah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you guys just make another grandson for me?
MARCUS PARKS
But after Getty received his grandson's ear in the mail, he finally negotiated with the Ndrangheta for a ransom of $2.2 million. Now they had originally asked for $17 million but Getty refused to budge past $2.2 because that was apparently the maximum tax deductible amount.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a real businessman.
ED LARSON
Have you seen the Getty Museum on the 405?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's beautiful.
ED LARSON
It's gigantic!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
He easily could have paid $3 million.
MARCUS PARKS
Is that the same Getty?
ED LARSON
Yes! It's all Getty Images, it's all the same fucker.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
ED LARSON
No, no, they're huge.
MARCUS PARKS
Now nine of the Getty kidnappers were arrested and convicted, including a couple of high ranking members of the Ndrangheta. But most of the ransom money was never recovered and the authorities didn't even come close to convicting any of the bosses. In an incredible coincidence though, one of J. Paul Getty's Children, Gordon Getty, had actually been on Andrew Cunanan's list of people to possibly kill in Miami.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. And I guess I think that it came from his research. He put a very curated list together for the police. I think he knew this shit.
MARCUS PARKS
He might have.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think he really looked it up and he tried to see, probably had heard the rumors about Versace being in the mob.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh that's very much like an Andrew Cunanan, like him in a cocktail party conversation. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh of course. Because that's what he used to do. If you look back in the first episode, that that was his thing. That's what that one guy said being like you're not smart, you just memorize trivia and then just say it in a bunch of places. And it kind of feels like he did that. Because again, everything is about there is no Andrew Cunanan on the inside.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And he would have been easy to sneak up on because he only has one ear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You talking about the grandson?
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
You can still hear without the ear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's after the fact. And also there's heat. You can feel heat.
MARCUS PARKS
But when you consider the history of the Ndrangheta mob, you can see where Versace's fear came from.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well sure.
MARCUS PARKS
It's possible that Versace either didn't want anything to do with them and took precautions when he went to Italy or he was forced to work with them because he had the bad luck to hail from their main territory.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or it was just cool for him to drive in a bulletproof limo and it made him look very, very important.
MARCUS PARKS
Could be.
ED LARSON
I think it's just good to be safe.
MARCUS PARKS
In Italy, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, especially then in the 90s. The crime was way up in the 90s than it is now.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Like murder numbers were fucking through the roof compared to what they are now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But there was an incident, unproven, that hints that Versace might have been at least lightly involved with the mob. Versace supposedly told a friend named Frank Monte about an associate named Guglielmo Gatto who kept ledgers for the mob.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just because they used the word 'associate'.
ED LARSON
Yeah. You name your child Guglielmo, they're only gonna be good for one job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What could they do besides being a bookie? Guglielmo. And he's just like born with a garotte instead of an umbilical cord.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it was allegedly-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Guglielmo Gatto's job to clean up the books and keep legitimate businesses legitimate in the eyes of the authorities.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You see here, this is legitimate business. And again he's been talking like that since he was 4. This is legitimate.
MARCUS PARKS
But something happened between Guglielmo Gatto and Gianni Versace, something that caused Gatto to steal ledgers that he could use to blackmail Versace for millions of dollars. But shortly after that blackmail attempt, Guglielmo Gatto was hit by a bus in Milan. Strangely though, his autopsy showed that unless the bus had hands, Gatto had already been strangled to death before someone just threw the body into the street.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't believe how articulate the headlights on that bus were. Yeah, that bus certainly made short work of that strangled man.
MARCUS PARKS
And I just want to say one more time, Guglielmo Gatto, because it's just very fun to say.
ED LARSON
It is a great name.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tell me you were gonna give me my blocks back or we are gonna have to have a talk about a certain situation. Yes, this may be the mob but it is also pre-K.
MARCUS PARKS
But when it came to Versace's way of life on Miami Beach, it couldn't have been more different from how he conducted himself in Italy. See he'd fallen in love with Miami after designing outfits for Don Johnson during Don's run on Miami Vice.
ED LARSON
He looked great.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, he looked fucking fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, he was awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
And soon Gianni Versace bought a mansion on Ocean Drive, the same mansion where he would one day be murdered.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's wild because when he found... I thought it was interesting the rise of South Beach because it was like Claudia Schiffer lived there and used to just like hang out. And that was like the first thing that brought everybody there was that it was like Claudia loves it.
MARCUS PARKS
But where most celebrities who had mansions on Miami Beach like Madonna hid their mansions away, Versace had a single gate protecting his home. It was very out in the open and very gaudy. And Versace's address was so well known that it became somewhat of a tourist attraction.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well there was a little bit of controversy because he tore down a historical landmark to build his mansion and then tore the historical landmark that was next door to build his pool and studio. But at the same time, he was just like Versace. And they were all like yep. Versace just really helped grease a lot of wheels, the name itself.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And he had a lot of money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I think his-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he brought a lot of money and attention to the neighborhood.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I think his mansion cost like $4 million to build. And $4 million 90s money.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Additionally, there were a lot of gay bars and clubs around Versace's mansion and he could be seen hanging out at the clubs before picking up a pizza pie on the way home. All of this of course was well-known information to Andrew Cunanan. Now after Cunanan had been on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List for a month, he sold one of the gold coins he'd stolen from Lee Miglin at a Miami Beach pawn shop called Cash on the Beach, got $200. And this is a bit of a reckless move for Andrew Cunanan because he used his real ID, used his real passport, and he even gave the manager his thumbprint, and all that information was then mailed to the Miami Police Department which was standard procedure for Florida pawn shops as required by law.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got two takes on that, which is either number one, just straight up wheels are falling off, right, doesn't care, needs it to get done. He's desperate for money. And so he's like whatever, because he knows that they'll look too hard until there's other fake shit or the IDs he's stolen. And then there's number two of the hey, hello!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey! Make me do something.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
That's what I feel like ,I feel like he just got bored in that apartment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's just running out of money, he knows his time is running out. He is not ready to do his final deed that I think he'd planned this whole time. And I think that now he's gonna be like please make me go do my last stuff now.
MARCUS PARKS
But while we might think of this as the first step towards Andrew's capture or at least an increase in pressure, the paperwork that said that Andrew Cunanan is in town and is selling shit at pawn shops, that was tossed on a clerk's desk and it wasn't seen until after Cunanan's spree was over. And that's the funny thing is that like the police tried keeping it under wraps but afterwards the FBI was like no, these stupid motherfuckers, they had proof that he was here like weeks before the murder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They basically said South Beach Police were like 10 years behind the rest of the country in terms of nothing was technologically advanced inside their offices. Everything was still old school because again, like they had murders but in the South Beach area it was different. It was again, had kind of weird kind of a small town vibe even though it was not.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And remember, realize I said mailed, like this is 1997. Fax machines.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You could fax it.
MARCUS PARKS
You could fax something and they're still going by like everything's paper, everything's getting mailed. But the zero hour for Andrew Cunanan's last murder was fast approaching. See Andrew was running out of money and he could test his luck selling coins at pawn shops only so much. In other words, he knew that the game was almost over. So he shaved the sides of his head into what Maureen Orth called a "modest mohawk" to evade authorities a bit longer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, a sudden shift in hairstyles means your friend might be getting dangerous.
ED LARSON
It's very Taxi Driver.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Like he could have watched Taxi Driver.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He might have.
ED LARSON
And he was like you know what? I'm gonna go fucking do a mohawk and I'm gonna kill this guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It was also around this time the people in the Miami gay community began recognizing Andrew, but they didn't recognize him as Andrew Cunanan. They recognized him as a guy hanging out in the gay clubs looking for Gianni Versace. See Versace was recovering from a surgery so he wasn't out and about as much as he usually was. Cunanan therefore had become known as the guy who kept asking-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where's Versace? I wanna meet Versace. When is Versace gonna come around? I wanna see his hats. I wanna see what his jeans are like in person. Versace. You like Versace. Versace.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But at some point, Cunanan presumably decided that he was just gonna stake out Versace's mansion until the famous designer decided to come out, whether it be day or night. As it happened, they'd meet for the last and possibly first time on the morning of July 15, 1997. That morning, Versace walked through the gates of his mansion to a nearby news cafe and bought $15 worth of magazines. Coincidentally, one of those magazines was an issue of People that featured a profile on Cunanan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They also found a Vanity Fair magazine in Andrew Cunanan's apartment that had an article on the Versaces. So they wonder whether or not, like literally these are two steam trains heading towards each other.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I miss the days when you go buy a bunch of magazines.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can still do it.
MARCUS PARKS
You can still do it.
ED LARSON
But no one has them anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
No, there's a magazine stand over on Laurel Canyon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you can go to like, is Books-A-Million still around? I know that Barnes & Noble still has magazine stuff.
ED LARSON
Do they?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We need to set ourselves in the decade we want to live in.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's time for us to make the choice. You want to buy magazines? You want to fucking get a brick phone? Let's do it.
MARCUS PARKS
I have been thinking about going out and picking up a couple of porno mags.
ED LARSON
Yeah, just for old time's sake.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm surprised, honestly I was surprised but yeah, sure.
ED LARSON
Someone's gotta buy them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No one, honestly no. Because there's so much on the internet, there's so much pornography.
MARCUS PARKS
I did get a little bit inspired when I went to that place in Pittsburgh where they had all those vintage Penthouses for sale and I bought a few of those because I was looking for that Patti Smith interview. But I thought like let's get a couple more in here because one of them had a John Hinckley interview in it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See again, but then now you're fucking really wasting our time. You were literally buying it for the articles.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I came for the articles but I stayed-
ED LARSON
Came again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
For the cum.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I've been thinking about having a vintage Penthouse collection for a while now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just be careful because you never know what's in some of these magazines before a certain age.
MARCUS PARKS
Stay tuned. I'll keep you updated. But according to the cafe host, Versace might have known something was going on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm so glad he's gonna keep us updated, thank god.
ED LARSON
Yeah. He got mad at us two weeks ago for talking about Kathy Ireland. You know this is your jerk off minute.
MARCUS PARKS
But according to the cafe host, Versace might have known something was going on. The host said that that morning Versace was agitated and kept walking around the area in a sort of loop like he knew someone was following him. But by 9 AM, Versace was back at the mansion gates about to walk through. It's at that moment that Versace was approached by Andrew Cunanan who was carrying a backpack and was dressed in a nondescript muscle tee, black shorts, and a black baseball cap. It's like he put on his assassin outfit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Witnesses said they exchanged words, then began to curse at each other in Italian.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See again, that is debated.
MARCUS PARKS
Them cursing each other in Italian?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. It's debated because I do believe that... I actually believe that there were no words exchanged at all.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That he just walked up and shot him. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that the one breakdown of the crime I saw I believe was that he was just struggling to open his gate. Because it was just a bullet to the back of his head execution style. And then he hit him again.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So I believe yeah, that they exchanged no words.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is people blowing out the circumstances.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, sure. But according to the blown out version of the story, Cunanan reached into his backpack, pulled out Jeff Trail's pistol, and shot Gianni Versace in the head. Versace crumbled to the ground where Cunanan shot him again. The crowd around them of course erupted into chaos. But Versace's longtime lover, Antonio D'Amico, ran out of the mansion upon hearing the shots and started running towards Cunanan. Cunanan then pointed the gun at D'Amico but D'Amico ducked and retreated back to Versace's body. Apparently satisfied with just Versace's death, Cunanan took off running. And while a couple of people did give chase, they quickly gave up when Cunanan pointed the gun at them as well. Now there's still a contingent of people who believe that the assassination of Gianni Versace was actually a mob hit and that Andrew Cunanan was a convenient scapegoat for the Miami police because they desperately needed to close a red ball murder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Also I honestly think it's a lot of like no one wanted Versace to be associated with this fucking nobody.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And not just that, the mob wouldn't take him out, he's making too much money. If he is involved with them-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a big money maker.
ED LARSON
They're not gonna kill him for that reason alone.
MARCUS PARKS
Unless he decided to cut ties with them because they were about to go public. See besides all the mob rumors, the first bullet that struck Gianni Versace did something interesting as it exited his body. It hit the gate's metal railing and broke apart. And one of those bullet fragments hit a dove and killed it instantly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, this is one of those like the twisted hands of fate shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Doves however are easily confused with pigeons. A dove's like a skinny pigeon.
ED LARSON
Yeah, and white.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
And many believe that a dead pigeon on the scene of Gianni Versace's murder was highly suggestive of a mob calling card, like the ham at Lee Miglin's place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unbelievable. It's still just like you think then they used a tiny, tiny gun to whack the dove?
MARCUS PARKS
No, you can kill a dove with a very large gun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I'm just saying you just you saw a little pinpoint assassin bullet through its eye just like Gianni Versace and you think that it's been taken out by another bird?
ED LARSON
If you kill someone on their front doorstep, you're not sticking around to like put a dead bird there too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Oh no, you could also have the dead bird in your pocket and you just fucking as you're running away, you just pull it out and throw it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe honestly if you thought it was going to be fun magician-like reveal and then he was like fuck, the bird's dead. Oh I smothered it.
MARCUS PARKS
But while that might make for a compelling narrative if you're into mob stories, the forensics prove that the bullet came from the 40 caliber pistol that Andrew Cunanan and he used to kill his four previous victims. Incredibly though, soon after Versace's body was taken away, hundreds of mourners began laying flowers on the steps of his mansion. In that crowd was supposedly Andrew Cunanan himself, who wanted to see the aftermath of his big celebrity murder up close and personal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wouldn't put it past him.
MARCUS PARKS
I wouldn't put it past him but I also question how we know this detail.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, it's another one of those, it's what Cunany would have wanted.
MARCUS PARKS
It's what he would have wanted. It's what he would have done. It's possible that like after Cunanan was caught, some person was like oh yeah, that guy, I was standing next to him at Versace's place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
But they might be fucking lying, who knows?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're seeing everything-
ED LARSON
There's a bunch of liars down there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean still, they have a flair for the dramatic.
ED LARSON
Also it was everywhere. South Florida, like on the cover of the Miami Herald the next day was the gate and his blood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
ED LARSON
Like it was fucking intimidating and scary and everyone was like fuck, serial killer running around South Florida. Everyone was terrified.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well of course, they feel like if he could kill, if he could walk up and shoot Gianni Versace in the head, we're all like he can get to anybody.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Cunanan was not seen as a suspect at all in the very beginning of the investigation. Because of the dove, some of the cops jumped on the mob angle and of course the rumors as well. But because Versace was openly gay, other cops went with their standard 'probably a gay thing' theory and they started questioning Miami Beach's gay community. Within a few hours of the murder however, people noticed a conspicuous red truck with a lot of parking tickets and New Jersey plates while they were canvassing the neighborhood. Inside they found more fake Andrew Cunanan passports, Lee Miglin's wallet, more newspaper clippings about Cunanan's crimes, and the aforementioned list than included Gianni Versace. From that point forward, Andrew Cunanan was the number one suspect.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You see, it's act three! Yes, I'm the ultimate villain.
MARCUS PARKS
Now unfortunately Andrew Cunanan got exactly what he wanted from the murder of Gianni Versace. Some of the most famous people in the world like Elton John and Princess Diana issued statements of grief while tabloids from as far away as England printed homophobic headlines. Gay assassin shot Versace! And Versace executed by Gay Slayer!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know why he was so happy.
MARCUS PARKS
That was cute.
ED LARSON
I wanna go see Gay Slayer by the way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, that would be sweet. I'm down for it.
ED LARSON
It's Judas Priest.
MARCUS PARKS
By this point though, the FBI had very much caught on to the fact that Andrew Cunanan was a slippery frog to peg. So they issued a new-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh. God, ugh. I hate that term.
ED LARSON
Have you ever pegged a slippery frog?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's like pegging me.
MARCUS PARKS
Man, I've written like three live shows in the last week. My turns of phrase is just getting so bizarre and weird. Like I wrote 'slippery frog to peg' and I was like what the fuck is that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What does it mean?
MARCUS PARKS
But then I had like two other shows to write so I'm like fuck it, I'm going with 'slippery frog to peg', I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As you do, I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's hard to peg a slippery frog.
ED LARSON
You gotta get your sandpaper gloves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta get some napkins.
MARCUS PARKS
So they issued a new warrant poster with three photos of Cunanan featuring three of his most used looks. One picture was Andrew Cunanan himself or at least like the regular and everyday Andrew Cunanan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's with the Tom Cruise smile.
MARCUS PARKS
Classic Andrew Cunanan, the fresh faced preppy. Another was a picture of him with closely cropped hair and a serious look, that was Lieutenant Commander Cummings. The last was what the woman from 'Vulgar Favors' called a darkly handsome model, which I'd assume was Andrew DeSilva.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he had a couple of other fake names too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Regardless of his highly increased profile though, Cunanan was spotted at a steakhouse in Boca Raton, a place with a fucking awful name of Choices.
ED LARSON
Okay now Choices, I know Choices.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You do?
ED LARSON
Are you ready for this? It was a gay steakhouse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's incredible.
ED LARSON
And it was called Choices and it stayed open late and it became a nightclub. And I remember always wanting to go to Choices and my dad's like no, we don't go to Choices.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come on!
MARCUS PARKS
Come on, dad.
ED LARSON
Yeah. I think he went once and he was like there's just a lot of men in there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know the choices they're making.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Choices is a great name for like a gay club.
ED LARSON
Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it's a great name for a gay club.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But for a restaurant it's confusing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
But it was weird, it always blew my mind even as a kid that there was a gay steakhouse.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly I think it's a great idea.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it turns into a club.
MARCUS PARKS
But Andrew split before the FBI was able to put together a raid. Meanwhile the press had caught up to Modesto Cunanan in the Philippines. beginning a long streak of denial in the face of insurmountable evidence, Modesto insisted that his son couldn't have killed anyone because he'd been an altar boy. He was a Catholic for Christ's sake.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, altar boys are all fine.
ED LARSON
Yeah, Catholics are-
MARCUS PARKS
And also there was no way he was gay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No way!
MARCUS PARKS
His son was not gay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Catholic? No way!
MARCUS PARKS
Now just because Cunanan was the top suspect didn't mean that cops didn't turn the Versace mansion upside down looking for clues that might point towards a jealous lover. They're not letting go of that angle just yet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
And likewise they questioned thousands of people, mostly gay men in Miami Beach and all around South Florida. APBs were also issued across the country but out of the 600 tips called in, none were helpful. But then it looked to the cops as if Andrew Cunanan had struck again. And this began a long string of attempts on the part of the authorities to pin every murder in Florida involving a gay guy on Andrew Cunanan. A few days after Versace-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, that just never fails.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cops always do this. They really do.
MARCUS PARKS
It's almost like they're lazy and don't really care about catching the actual person and only care about getting the fucking, turning the red name into black.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe. You maybe so.
MARCUS PARKS
yeah. Well a few days after Versace was killed, a burglar alarm was tripped at a house out by the airport. And when police arrived, they found a Cuban exile named Dr. Silvio Alfonso with his pants around his ankles, killed execution style. Now since the house was less than 10 minutes from Versace's mansion and a neighbor saw a guy who looked like Cunanan running from the house, authorities believe that Alfonso may have picked up Cunanan at a bar and Cunanan had been using the home as a hideout. But it was soon discovered that the murderer was a guy named Yosvany Hernandez. This story is full of great names.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, I love Yosvany Hernandez.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And he did actually look like Cunanan. But he'd killed Dr. Silvio Alfonso over a simple matter of money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I'll say killing someone over money, that goes across all genders, what you love, what you like.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Why did he take his pants down?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a humiliation.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's a mob hit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause honestly with the mob, if they want to embarrass you, the real thing is they cut off your dick and balls and put it in your mouth.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That's pretty standard across all the criminal syndicates.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They cut you and they pull your tongue out through the thing, the Colombian Necktie.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting.
ED LARSON
A lot of free time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Slit your mouth in a Joker-like smile. That's also real too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
This is why they actually do need legitimate businesses.
MARCUS PARKS
They really do. Something to keep them busy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Idle hands are the devil's playthings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a lot of creative energy that needs to be spent somewhere.
MARCUS PARKS
But from there, cops started going back through their files to look at the murders of other gay men. And they found a case involving a guy named Casey Sigler who'd lived on Miami Beach. Sigler was found beaten to death in his home on May 12th after he was seen at a cruising spot in Flamingo Park. And authorities believed that Cunanan was the killer because that was the day he'd arrived in Miami. Authorities even as far away as the Philippines were trying to close cases using Cunanan because they had their own murdered gay fashion designer, a guy named Carlos Badidoy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know if that's the right pronunciation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I don't know. Tagalog is a difficult language.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. In other words, if a gay guy had been murdered in Manila or Miami and the case was still open, cops tried pinning it on Andrew Cunanan to clear the case just like they'd done years earlier with Henry Lee Lucas. Anytime there's a serial killer that they can just fucking go from red to black, they're gonna fucking do it. Meanwhile the gay community at large were trying their best to help get Andrew Cunanan off the streets themselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh sure. Because you're fucking poisoning the punch bowl, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Photos of Cunanan were downloaded, printed, and distributed to hundreds of gay bars and clubs all across the country. But that was still a long shot because according to one criminologist, Andrew Cunanan was basically Mr. America-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
He looked like everybody and nobody all at the same time. He could be so many different races, so many different nationalities. He could just blend in anywhere. In a pointed jab, this criminologist, it's almost like he knew what would piss off Andrew Cunanan-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He tried to see. Because also maybe you could make him pop his head up.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He said that Cunanan was able to stay undetected because he was extraordinarily ordinary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he wasn't particularly handsome, especially at this point. He wasn't particularly anything.
MARCUS PARKS
No. Now considering how Andrew had a kill list that included a fair amount of celebrities, cops also issued warnings to Calvin Klein, John Paul Gaultier, Giorgio Armani, Elton John, poor Lisa Kudrow-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's like why am I in this fucking shit? I just did Smelly Cat. I don't need this shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Interestingly they also issued a warning to John Travolta who had not at any point been mentioned.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like there's a little spice of maybe some Hollywood homophobia there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
He was in Miami at the time.
MARCUS PARKS
Was he in Miami at the time?
ED LARSON
Yeah because he was shooting that movie, the sequel to Get Shorty was shooting down there around the same time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that real?
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get Real. Get Real, yeah, that was the name of the movie.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
ED LARSON
Or Be Cool. Be Cool, that's what it was.
MARCUS PARKS
Be Cool. Be Cool. Wow.
ED LARSON
Yeah, that was shooting down there. Yeah, with Dennis Farina and all.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh I love Dennis Farina.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. It's incredible how much knowledge you have on every single thing that was happening in Miami at the time period. Because this was the height of your life.
ED LARSON
Yeah. No, this is when I finally started to read the news a little bit and understand that there was more things other than Dan Marino and Miami.
MARCUS PARKS
So you were like 14-15 when all this was going on?
ED LARSON
I was 15-16, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
yeah.
ED LARSON
No, I was 15, '97. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But from witness reports, Cunanan was not coming anywhere near a location where a celebrity might be seen. You may have actually run into him at one point.
ED LARSON
Especially because he was in fucking Boca. The Melting Pot was right next to Choices. We loved going to The Melting Pot. I fucking loved that shit.
MARCUS PARKS
No, someone saw him at a Publix in Fort Lauderdale.
ED LARSON
I could have been there! I fucking love Publix, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh my god, that's incredible.
ED LARSON
Get me a sandwich! He'd probably get some fried chicken.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no, Be Cool was shot in 2005.
ED LARSON
Oh was it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was much later. Be Cool was much, much later unfortunately. I didn't mean to double fact check you.
ED LARSON
No, I appreciate you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I was looking at this because Get Shorty was shot-
ED LARSON
In '94 or something like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was in Welcome to Hollywood, there's Primary Colors came out.
ED LARSON
But he was around Florida a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It might have been a long time before it came out. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to grind this to a halt.
ED LARSON
No, I like that. Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
They also saw Cunanan at a Dade County, well they said they saw Cunanan at a Dade County strip club called The Gator Kick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a nice strong kick, little legs.
ED LARSON
They can jump high.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, really?
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know anymore.
ED LARSON
Well they use their tails.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh cool, cool, cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh that makes sense. Well one report even said that Andrew Cunanan was seen hanging around an okra field in Arkansas. I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hi! Hey!
ED LARSON
You know this vegetable sucks?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know it sucks, right? It's mostly slime!
MARCUS PARKS
You fry it and it's delicious, you fuckers.
ED LARSON
I mean I like okra.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know, Natalie likes it, she likes it fried.
MARCUS PARKS
But rightly so, the FBI guessed that Andrew Cunanan had stayed in Florida because he was enjoying the attention.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And being in Florida and especially Miami meant that he could bask in the juiciest grief and the starkest fear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he gets to really see, I think he's headed towards his final act on purpose. I think that this whole thing is him basking and this is his victory lap.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
He wrote his name in blood.
MARCUS PARKS
He did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Andrew however was still making calls to friends to chat about his situation. One friend claimed that Andrew called him and said quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Hey, it's Andy. The FBI will never catch me. I'm just too damn clever." Which is why I keep using my real name! And I love making phone calls!
MARCUS PARKS
And for a while it seemed like Cunanan might have been right about being too clever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just think it's hard to find somebody that has no motive. What we always talk about this, it's why they search for the lover, it's why they say it's the husband or the wife or something. Because to find a motiveless murderer is extremely difficult.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you don't know where this person is, Miami is a huge fucking city.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he has now spent enough time to know where to go where no one is going to go look for him. He's specifically using the criminal element as a way to hide.
MARCUS PARKS
Even after Versace's remembrance mass on July 22nd, which was attended by no less than Princess Diana herself, police still didn't have a beat on Cunanan a week after the crime.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They put his ashes in a 14 carat Versace box.
ED LARSON
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like this giant box of gold. I mean it sounds awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
It is pretty cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But again, you're gonna spend how much money on an urn?
ED LARSON
I mean it's him, he has it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
But in the end it wasn't the police who found Andrew Cunanan. Instead it was a man named Fernando Carreira who stumbled upon Andrew Cunanan completely by chance. On the afternoon of July 23rd, over a week after the murder of Versace, Carreira stopped by one of the vacant boat houses he guarded for the owner, a guy called Torsten Reineck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I live on boats! That's definitely a guy who's not been on solid land for a long time. He smells of smelted fish.
MARCUS PARKS
He sounds like an L. Ron Hubbard character.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is. Yeah, he is.
MARCUS PARKS
I am Torsten Reineck, I have leverage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Leverage, the most powerful force in the world.
MARCUS PARKS
But when Fernando Carreira poked his head into the houseboat, he came face to face with Andrew Cunanan. Since Carreira was a security guard, he was armed and he got the draw on Andrew. Cunanan fled into a room on the houseboat and locked the door while Carreira called the police. At this point, there was no way out for Andrew Cunanan. And we'll never know why he did what he did next for sure. Perhaps he felt that prison wouldn't be worth the increased notoriety a trial would bring him, perhaps he felt like he had nothing else to do, or perhaps he just panicked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think there's an element of a homicidal maniac committing suicide, I think partially it is because you get to end your story your way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And no one gets to find out all your little secrets.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the only thing that exists are the myths about you, the things that you have set up for other people to know, all of the various smoke and mirrors that you have fed to every single person that has ever known you. In this way he believes he's become a legend.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And he's gonna go as far as he can.
ED LARSON
Or it was an accident and he was just sucking on the gun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just was like oh man, let me show him how good at sucking I am. Maybe then he'll release me.
MARCUS PARKS
But either way, before the police even arrived, Cunanan pulled out Jeff Trail's pistol, put it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. The FBI meanwhile had no idea that Cunanan had taken himself out. So they called in over 100 agents and brought in their best negotiators to take Andrew alive. But by 7:30, after 3.5 hours of just yelling at this boat with a megaphone, FBI agents decided that Cunanan had either escaped or was already dead by his own hand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Could someone dress as a sailor and enter from the other side? Can you appear as if you're... Could someone dress as a magical merman and look over the side of the boat?! Let's confuse him! What's his name? Triton! He's handsome, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Just after 8 PM, they tear gassed the houseboat and stormed it to find that the case was definitely the latter. As far as Fernando Carreira went, he expected the $65,000 reward that had been promised for information leading to the capture of Andrew Cunanan. But Miami Beach officials welched on the deal by saying that the information he provided was not specific enough to qualify for the full reward.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know how it can be more specific as he's in this houseboat.
ED LARSON
Well they technically didn't capture him because he killed himself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause he killed himself.
MARCUS PARKS
That is the fucking loophole.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Fernando subsequently and unsuccessfully sued the city of Miami. But in the end, he was given $10,000 by the Gay and Lesbian Anti Violence Project in New York City and the FBI kicked in another $10,000 as well. So I mean $20,000 is better than nothing. In the aftermath of the murders though, almost the entire Cunanan family went whole hog on selling their stories and giving interviews to whoever wanted to talk to them, just so long as those interviews paid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Both of his parents did separate Larry King interviews and Modesto was bold enough to flat out say that he hoped to earn half a million from book and movie deals.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he had a full extended universe.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh he did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He had a completely different story. He said that his son was not gay at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But was in fact trapped in an evil conspiracy involving a high-powered syndicate of rich old gays who tricked Andrew into dealing drugs while Andrew was working a legitimate job at an advertising firm in San Francisco.
ED LARSON
It is a good story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wanna see this movie.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Meanwhile it was revealed that most of Modesto's time in the Philippines, he spent most of it, he was a treasure hunter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude. He went full scam. He went full, full grift mode.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He tried finding that $55 million worth of gold that had been lost during WWII.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's gold in the waters! I don't know, man. I feel like we've been looking for that for a long time.
MARCUS PARKS
I think it was, wasn't it like the like subplot of 'Cryptonomicon'?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it might have been.
MARCUS PARKS
I think it was, yeah. It was also discovered that Modesto belonged to a small time cult called the Church Universal and Triumphant that was partly inspired by none other than Madame Helena Blavatsky herself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She did a lot of work.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah. Many, many cults sprung out from Theosophy. The Church Universal and Triumphant believed that the goal of human life was to spiritually ascend, whatever that may mean.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it means-
ED LARSON
Go to heaven?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Getting hard on cue. You just go woop!
MARCUS PARKS
But the plans of their ascended masters were constantly being thwarted by a cabal made up of communists, left wing agitators, the government, and aliens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love a good cabal.
MARCUS PARKS
I love a good cabal. And that's a pretty good cabal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, that's a fun group. That's a diverse group.
MARCUS PARKS
I've never heard communists and aliens being put together.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think there should be more of that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Why not?
MARCUS PARKS
The Church of Universal and Triumphant were also a millennial apocalyptic cult. But the cult mostly fell apart in 1990 after their leader hauled everyone into underground bunkers in Montana 10 years too soon because he said nuclear war was coming.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, you had 10 more years of juice, dog.
MARCUS PARKS
Nah. But that's the thing, right after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it turns out, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It turns out it turns out his mind had been deteriorating for a very long time. But because he was the leader, they listened to everything that he said.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We always talk about with the cults, you're in the head of the leader. And then if the head of the leader has Alzheimer's, you now have spiritual Alzheimer's.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And it was after like nothing happened, they're like maybe we should take him to the doctor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like we should take his license away. Get the keys.
MARCUS PARKS
But to give you an idea of Modesto's judgment, he joined the cult six or seven years after that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, he's just like there's always second chances.
MARCUS PARKS
But as far as Andrew Cunanan went, it was discovered as we said in the first episode that he was not HIV positive, despite Cunanan's belief that he was. The whole idea was this spree started because he lost control after discovering that he had HIV, but he didn't. Interestingly, no drugs were found in his system, meaning that he'd been sober in at least the last few days of his life.
ED LARSON
He ran out of money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
He ran out of money, he ran out of crack.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he didn't know where to go.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like at that point you are really then too famous to go anywhere.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And most drug dealers, they're also rats.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
ED LARSON
So if he shows up and he's trying to, they'll go get the money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're gonna end up calling the police. They're still like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I sell crack cocaine but I don't kill people. There's that shit too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but how is the crack dealer gonna tell the cops how he knows Andrew Cunanan?
ED LARSON
They don't care.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They don't care.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you're trying to catch this guy, they won't care about the crack cocaine.
MARCUS PARKS
But while Cunanan did get the infamy he sought through murdering a person who actually accomplished something with his life, Cunanan is still a pathetic creep who had nothing to add to the world save pain and annoyance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, learn a skill, learn to play the guitar.
MARCUS PARKS
Do something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do something with your life. If you have this idea in my head, I'm gonna be famous, I'm gonna be famous, just like work on it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. You gotta do work, yeah. The destructive route, don't take the destructive route.
ED LARSON
And stay in shape.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, at leat. And also being famous is not what it's cracked up to be. Get the money. Tupac said that. Get the fucking money. Invent something.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well if any of you out there are in the San Diego area, well actually when this episode comes out I'm sure it will be-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll be on stage.
MARCUS PARKS
We'll be on stage at Beach Blanket Bingo. But the big thing this week, or actually it was last week but we sort of kind of forgot a little bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look at this.
MARCUS PARKS
Look at this. The first issue of Operation Sunshine is out in stores right now. You can go to your local comic book store, it's the new comic book that Henry and I wrote together.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's good!
MARCUS PARKS
This is so fucking cool to have this out there. My comic book store here in Los Angeles is Earth- 2 and I know for example that Heather and the gang, they got extra copies of Operation Sunshine. If you're in the valley, if you're in the Los Angeles area and your local comic book store is sold out. Cause I know the one that Eddie goes to, that one was sold out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's awesome.
ED LARSON
I got the last one and it was sitting like presented on the counter next to the register.
MARCUS PARKS
Which is so fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. We worked so hard on it and I really hope you guys like this book.
ED LARSON
I got a different cover than these. There's a whole bunch of covers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's called variants.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Oh no, there's tons of variants and we got some incredible variants in the future. We got a fucking variant from Glenn Fabry who did all the covers from Preacher. We got a fucking cover from Evan Dorkin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's pretty fucking cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Which he did Milk and Cheese and I mean he's Evan Dorkin, he's fucking incredible. That's a dream come true. is I did, you know, milk and cheese and you know, all you know, he's Evan Dorkin. I mean, he's fucking incredible. I mean, that's a dream come true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But we always love, thank you guys so much for supporting us.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It means so much.
MARCUS PARKS
So, so, so great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So please check out the book. And also next week, I know we got some people talking, it's Halloween season.
MARCUS PARKS
It is.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so next week it's full on, straight before, we're about to get spooky as fuck.
MARCUS PARKS
Really spooky.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is like I'm very excited because we have not covered this subject, we've been wanting to cover this subject for a long time and I think it's gonna fuck you up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which I'm looking forward to.
ED LARSON
I hope so. I really do. It's Halloween time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's time.
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because you're of the Halloween mind that you like Halloween to fuck you up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want Halloween, I like to be scared for Halloween.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Not like a fun time like dressing up like Batman or something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I like scary Halloween.
ED LARSON
Yeah. I don't really dress up anymore but I like staying home and scaring the shit out of myself with scary movies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, that's my favorite. But I'm really excited for this story because it's finally we're getting into it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Good ghost story. All right. Well thanks everyone. Thank you for listening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
ED LARSON
Be good to yourselves, folks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, and again, get a hobby.
ED LARSON
Go Dolphins! We covered all this Miami stuff but the Dolphins are great!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're allowed. You're allowed.
ED LARSON
They're fucking wonderful! (singing) Go Miami Dolphins, the greatest football team!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's allowed this. He can celebrate.
ED LARSON
(singing) They kick the ball from goal to goal like no one's ever seen! You can cut this out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nope.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
(singing) We're in the air or on the ground, we're always in control!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Always in control!
ED LARSON
(singing) And when you say Miami, you're talking SuperBowl.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Cause you're the Miami Dolphins, Miami Dolphins!
ED LARSON
(singing) Miami Dolphins #1!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Woohoo!
ED LARSON
Yeehaw! (singing) Miami Dolphins! Miami Dolphins!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I only know this from Roundtable.
ED LARSON
(singing) Miami Dolphins #1!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) #1!
ED LARSON
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. You shoot the guns. Bang-bang-bang-bang.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what happened to Gianni Versace, you fucking insensitive piece of shit.
ED LARSON
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you did it.