`None Of You Really Know Who I Am'

CRIMINOLOGISTS SAY THAT suspect Andrew Cunanan does not fit the standard profile of a serial killer. Rather, they say, he is allegedly something more rare and unpredictable: a "spree killer." If this is true, law-enforcement authorities may have a much tougher time apprehending him, because the murders he allegedly committed don't fit a pattern.

Andrew Phillip Cunanan, suspected murderer of Gianni Versace and four other men, appears to change his killing technique in the same way that he has changed his name, his hairstyle, his life history.

Cunanan, the object of a furious manhunt since Versace's broad-daylight slaying Tuesday in Miami Beach, does not fit the standard profile of a serial killer. Rather, say criminologists, he is allegedly something far more rare, a "spree killer." A spree killer tends to be unpredictable, perhaps not knowing what his next move will be.

`There's no pattern'

"There's no pattern to his killings. That's what makes everybody so nervous," said Jack Levin, a serial-murder researcher at Northeastern University in Boston.

If Cunanan is in fact the killer authorities say he is, he has shown no standard modus operandi other than leaving a car near his crime scenes. Police say he will sometimes kill savagely, monstrously, like a standard psychopathic serial killer - bludgeoning one victim with a claw hammer, apparently torturing another with garden clippers - and yet he has also killed like a common thief, just to steal a truck. Tuesday, authorities have said, he killed like an assassin, shooting Versace twice in the head at close range.

In all this, the motive is a mystery.

"He's just a horrible monster," said Philip Horne, a San Francisco civil-rights lawyer who said he had planned to become roommates with Cunanan this spring.

Serial-murder experts have taken to the airwaves since the Versace murder, but there is little consensus about what might be driving Cunanan. Personal revenge? Thirst for publicity? Hatred of his own homosexuality?

"This guy's different," said former FBI serial-killer profiler Clint Van Zandt. "We've had homosexual serial killers before, but he's a particular breed."

How it typically works

The typical serial killer works in stealth, often over many years, almost invariably driven by sexual sadism, the murder being part of an elaborate ritualized fantasy that the killer keeps trying to perfect. Serial killers, preferring a more intimate form of violence, rarely use a gun the way Cunanan allegedly has. Some experts have compared Cunanan to Ted Bundy, because both were charming and intelligent and able to elude capture, but Bundy took few risks, left few clues, and killed as a way of satisfying a violent sexual compulsion.

Robert Ressler, a former FBI serial-killer profiler, compared Cunanan to Christopher Wilder, a South Florida serial killer in the 1980s who, when identified, turned into a spree killer, leading authorities on a cross-country chase. Wilder remained on the lam, opportunistically taking lives, for three months, before finally dying in a shootout in New Hampshire. Ressler said Cunanan also brings to mind Charles Starkweather, who killed the family of his 13-year-old girlfriend - including her baby brother - when he wasn't allowed to marry her, and then drove across the high plains, stealing cars and shooting people.

But none of these killers ever did anything as bold, as so certain to attract international attention, as Tuesday's murder of Versace. The closest parallel might be the Manson family's grisly murder of actress Sharon Tate.

"He's not in a singular pattern. He is able and willing to kill either if he has to, or if he wants to," says James Fox, author of several books on mass murder. "We sometimes eat because we're hungry, and we sometimes eat because we like the smell, and we sometimes eat because it's dinnertime. Why can't that be true of killers, too?"

Friends say he lied

According to friends and acquaintances, he made up stories about himself that made him seem glamorous. He claimed to be a millionaire's son. He claimed to be a rich traveling businessman. This spring he told San Francisco friends he had purchased a factory in Mexico with 70 employees, and that it made prefabricated movie sets for Hollywood.

"He lied to us all along, because he was trying to make himself into something better than what he really believed himself to be," Horne said.

Where he grew up

The youngest of four children, Cunanan grew up in San Diego County, attended Bonita Vista Middle School in Chula Vista, then went to the prestigious, private Bishop's School in La Jolla. He was a good student, ran track and cross-country, and was openly gay.

He would later tell friends he went to Yale or the Naval Academy, but in fact he enrolled at the University of Calfornia at San Diego. He dropped out in 1988 just as his father, Modesto Cunanan, became a fugitive. The elder Cunanan reportedly was indicted for fraud after skimming more than $100,000 from a business deal. Philippine investigators have located him in Plaridel, a town north of Manila. Modesto Cunanan told investigators he doesn't believe his son killed Versace.

In the early 1990s Andrew Cunanan lived in San Francisco, becoming a fixture on the nightlife circuit. Jesse Cappachione, one of the managers of Midnight Sun, a gay bar, said, "He was gregarious, loud and always wanting to be the center of attention. He threw a lot of money around. Some people thought he bordered on the obnoxious. He was constantly laughing."

Later he moved back to the San Diego area, re-enrolled at UCSD but still didn't graduate. He worked off and on at a Thrifty drugstore in his hometown suburb of Rancho Bernardo. A cashier's job was not to his liking, and so he found a new calling: gigolo. He was not a male prostitute - as his mother once told reporters - but a kept man, a more or less full-time boyfriend to older, wealthy gay clients.

What he didn't have were close, intimate friends, a lover his own age, according to those who know him. He became estranged from his mother; she lives in National City but now refuses to talk to the media.

Cunanan's friends in the trendy Hillcrest district of San Diego didn't know much about his other life with the wealthy, closeted businessmen of La Jolla.

No one knows what caused Cunanan allegedly to turn homicidal. Friends said something obviously had changed in him. He didn't look as good. He had broken up with his latest patron. He ran up $25,000 on his credit cards.

He said he was heading to San Francisco to live after "taking care of some business" in Minnesota.

So Cunanan's friends threw a farewell party for him at California Cuisine on April 24, bringing flowers and candles to the restaurant. The friends, for once, picked up the tab. Cunanan gave away a lot of his personal belongings, expensive shoes and sweaters he had bought on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles.

At one point, Cunanan reportedly looked around the table and said, "None of you really know who I am."

Information from Associated Press is included in this report.