Customer Reviews

Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

If ever there was a case that calls for an adept and lengthy analysis, this is it. Andrew Cunanan is one of the most bizarre and elusive criminals of the modern era, and this is a marvelous study of his personal history and his crimes. Maureen Orth is an experienced jouralist who began investigating Cunanan in the midst of his crime spree. Her account benefits from having actually experienced all the false leads and baseless conjecture that tainted the criminal investigation as it was happening. She does a thorough job of digging through Cunanan's childhood and the exclusive gay world he deliberately sought to infiltrate. You can't help but conclude that there never was a "real" Andrew Cunanan; he was never anything more than a series of self-invented masks. Orth does an equally comprehensive study of the first two victims, Jeff Trail and David Madson. Frustratingly, both she and the professionals are unable to come to any conclusions as to what really happened with the two murders. Lee Miglin's murder is even more mysterious. Orth largely avoids sensationalistic theorizing as to why Miglin was selected as a victim. In constrast, Cunanan's reasons for selecting the next two victims, Bill Reese and Giovani Versace, are readily apparent but no less disturbing. The absolute conclusion one can draw from the book is that Cunanan was a conscienceless sociopath and egomaniac. A truly sad and shocking story.

I'm somewhat baffled by the number of reviewers who read specific cultural and political agendas into this book. I am not saying that they're wrong, just that I didn't perceive Orth as being particularly anti-gay or pro-gay. I actually thought her depiction of gay communities in San Diego, San Francisco and South Miami Beach was sympathetic. Gays and lesbians in this country still, in most instances, endure lives constricted by homophobia, familial indifference and the potential for victimization by intolerant heterosexuals. Any book that can put a human face on homosexuality for a mass American audience should be welcome as a step toward enlightenment and tolerance.

As for Andrew Cunanan, the demons that drove him to serial murder arose from the values imposed on him by his parents at an early age, not his sexual orientation. Cunanan was a quintessential narcissist and a sociopath, always a dangerous combination no matter what social milieu. Cunanan's pathology is a great deal clearer than most heterosexual serial killers with the same personality traits because his extroversion put his materialistic cravings on public display. Had Cunanan been more circumspect in his behavior, he might have killed many more men before being run to ground.

What speaks to me most in this book is Orth's depiction of a smart man who sacrificed his own personality in order to fulfill his fantasies of wealth and celebrity. When his aging body and drug habit finally caught up with him, Andrew Cunanan was a man filled with a deadly despair. Weak and inconsequential, he took up a gun to make himself a man of means, counting his riches in infamy. It must have been a cold, unfulfilling dish.

Orth's primary targets for criticism aren't the gay residents of the communities named above. Instead, she reserves her barbs for the various police departments and the FBI who bungled the search for Andrew Cunanan. Had a truly coordinated effort been launched to capture him, Cunanan would never have gotten close enough to Gianni Versace (...). Instead, agencies seemed content to expend the least possible effort in finding Cunanan. If nothing else, Orth's book is a damning indictment of how law enforcement doesn't ensure public safety in the gay community with the zeal it normally reserves for the larger heterosexual community.

In the end, Cunanan's perverse inversion of values would taint the lives of everyone he knew, save his younger sister Gina, the only Cunanan who refused to sell her story to the tabloid media. Ironically, Cunanan would have been delighted to know that his infamy was earning him column inches in <i>Vanity Fair</i> and top billing on tabloid television. His name in lights -- that simple vision drove Andrew Cunanan to murder five people.

Sheesh! Andrew's story is fairly absorbing as far as those of serial killers go, and Orth has collected an impressive mountain of facts about it. However, this book's shortcomings far outweigh any of its strong points:

1. The text is fairly clogged with spelling errors and illiteracies of every kind. I mean, I'M embarrassed to read them, and I had nothing to do with the book!

2. Why couldn't we have pictures? Because Orth didn't want to stoop to sensationalism? Then how to explain the completely inaccurate and misleading title? At no point is it ever alleged that Cunanan performed "vulgar favors" for Versace, hence I must conclude that that title was chosen only for the basest of reasons.

3. There was no reason the book needed to be this long; it could have been much shorter and still effective. The author seemed unable to weed out uninteresting aspects of her story, instead dumping EVERY damn fact in her possession on us (e.g., do we really need two entire chapters on the history of the FBI's fliers?!?)

4. Orth just can't seem to make the characters come alive, although she evidently suffered from no lack of rich material.

5. Her prose style is mediocre and over-stylized at the same time.

6. I suppose this is inevitable when writing the life of a serial killer, but here I must accuse Orth of "playing the ending" too much. What I mean is that she goes back into his life in high school (and before) reading all these sinister meanings into the most innocuous teenageisms (what high-school boy, for example, isn't a barefaced liar?). As if he'd spent his entire life preparing to go berserk and kill Versace. Brother! Only somebody with a ludicrous and gratingly shallow understanding of human nature would have slanted her facts thus.

Avoid this one: A weak and forgettable effort.

As an interviewee of Maureen Orth's, I awaited the publication of this book with great anticipation and reluctance that she might not "get it right". I am left with great insight to a situation for which I previously had little understanding and I am finally able to start putting the events of a nightmarish summer to rest. I knew Andrew Cunanan over a period of approximately 3 years. At some point, I realized that he was an incredible liar who would buy his way into people's good graces. However, I was unable to figure him out or to discern where his lies ended and where the truthful stories began regarding his own life. When he started his murder spree by killing a good friend of mine, I was at a total loss to understand any of the events surrounding the murder.

Maureen Orth's book explains Andrew Cunanan in a way that makes sense to me. The detail from her thorough investigation and the interviews with members of Andrew's family paint a hauntingly accurate picture of a most disturbed person. I liked Andrew at one time. I grew to dislike him during our fairly intimate acquaintanceship. I ended up hating him for killing someone that I cared about. Now, as a result of Maureen Orth's book, I finally have an understanding of him and pity the person he was. This book is an excellent read for anyone who is interested in understanding the surreal events surrounding these murders. It is far superior to the fictional book by Gary Indiana on this subject.

Facts, if you can find them, first: the crimes of Andrew Cunanan are terrible. Amid these terrible deeds we find no logic and, above all, no relief from this incomprehensible devastation. If I pick up a book like this, it's because I want to know what happened and, as much as is possible, why. Especially, I want to know if justice is somehow served and that the families of the victims are comforted and even vindicated.

This book is difficult to get through. Maureen Orth has compiled the massive list of facts and circumstances and in some cases reworked them so that there are contradictions and inconsistencies from one page to the next. The book itself is therefore a mess and I couldn't get beyond being irritated. The editing, or writing - I don't know who is to blame - is poor: some dates, times, people, places and relationships are represented differently, admittedly small details but still it jolts to read them.

Being from San Diego, I was surprised how little press the initial manhunt got in the local newspaper. So the book brought out details of the case many people were never aware of--some of it was quite interesting. The press portrayed the killer as some kind of genius that kept the cops at bay due to his superior intelligence. In reality that really wasn't the case and the author's explanation sounds more realistic. No one had any recent photos of Cunanan and his appearance had drastically changed. No wonder he could blend in so well with his surroundings. Although filled with much detail which kept the reader engrossed for the first part of the book, the answers to the compelling questions are missing from this book. Whether Cunanan ever met Versace prior to the day the designer was shot was never verified. No one really knows the reason why Cunanan snapped and decided to target and kill some of the victims such as the real estate executive in Chicago and the fashion icon in Miami.

I only have personal knowledge as to what the facts are in the Pennsville Case where William Reese was slain buy this heartless animal. There are numerous points made by Ms. Orth in her book which are simply not true. Ms. Orth did not research very well her ( facts? ) when it came to Pennsville's case. The Miglin vehicle was not damaged as she states. There were no photographs and other intentional clues left in the vehicle. There was never a time consuming dispute between the FBI and the local agencies. Teletype messages were sent up and down the East Coast to all Highway patrols within the first hour of the discovery. It is sad to see a reporter trash police efforts when she only has a handfull of questionable information to go on. You want facts ? Why didn't you try and talk with the officials that were directly involved in the case and not those that stood from a distance and hid. This book is a fine example of poor journalism.

this was a fascinating book. the author seems to have a knack for understanding what readers would want to know and herself at times seemed to have been asking the kinds of questions i would have asked!

the book's high point comes when the author reaches the miglin murder. it's the stuff that epic crime dramas are made of! orth reaches a narrative pitch that is sustained throughout the end of the book once she dives into the circumstances and evidence surrounding the miglin case. i felt it was more staggering in its implications than the versace murder not only because there's speculation about the miglins (duke and lee) and andrew but because it seemed to catapult andrew even further into the dark recesses of psychosis. perhaps after acting out the sadistic fantasy that he'd wanted he also found that beyond that fantasy there lie little more than a crushing dread and a mass of unrequited affections.

all his life andrew had wanted the high life, esteem, and wanted to be the center of attention if not near it. no different from a lot of people! but what set him apart is that there was a misplaced sense of entitlement that took hold early in his life that led him to put as little effort as possible into getting the most out of life but especially out of the hedonistic gay subculture (i.e. not ALL of gay culture!) which the author does her best to understand and explain.

this book draws a tremendous amount of attention to andrew's environs, from the time he was a kid to his final moments of flight and the people whose lives he changed forever. the book ultimately paints a portrait of a lonely, misguided, and abandoned person resigned to acting out of sheer desperation in a world he felt increasingly dissociated from. the deluge that his crimes precipitated drowned a lot of people in its wake and it's perhaps the chilling silence of the survivors and the persistence of stigmas and fear attached to homosexuality in america that will forever be the legacy of andrew cunanan.

The only thing that baffled me about this otherwise commendable book was that Orth spent as much time as she did (which wasn't much, but why spend ANY?) contemplating conspiracy theories at the end of the book. She herself convincingly (& tastefully, based on clear evidence, without overstating) demonstrated the links between Cunanan & all his victims (with the exception of the unfortunate owner of the red pickup), including Miglin & Versace ... so why does she give any time at all to the idea that Versace was killed out of anything other than Cunanan's pathology? Isn't it enough that the two knew each other & Cunanan was a bitter hustler who'd fallen over the edge into a sociopathic bloodlust? It seems naive, actually, to want this to be more than the product of Cunanan's twisted mind, as though that weren't enough or as though his psyche was so twisted & dark that Orth just can't comprehend it & must look for more rational explanations, reaching for a Mafia hit or whatever. I think this, the only major weakness of the book, is a case of getting perhaps too close to the story, staring at it too long & starting to see what isn't there. It's a really strange mis-reading of things in such an otherwise strong, well-researched, well told book. The book has been criticized as a negative portrayal of the gay community, but I don't think that's fair--it's not that Orth has a disgust towards gay life, it's that the aspect she necessarily portrays in the book (because it's a huge part of the story & the motivations) IS pretty disgusting. It's not that Orth is disgusted in some judgmental way, I think--it's US that are disgusted by what she shows us & want to attack the messenger for telling us. A very readable & compelling book that sometimes feels a bit gossipy, but under the circumstances that tone fits. Also contains a few annoying grammatical & spelling errors in an otherwise fine manuscript.

Like most, I thought I had gleaned all the major facts of the Cunanan killings through press reports. However, Orth's book, like the case itself, went so much deeper that I was stunned. I spent hours riveted to this incredibly detailed account of what really went on in San Diego, Chicago, Florida... all the stuff about Versace that was buried or ommitted in mainstream press, the revelations concerning the cops' utter failure, and the still unanswered questions about exactly who wanted Versace dead. Brilliantly researched, objectively written, and not in the least condescending to the homosexual community.