25 Years Ago, Andrew Cunanan’s Murder Spree Began In Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Twenty-five years in the past Wednesday, a serial killer started his cross-country homicide spree within the coronary heart of Minneapolis. In the long run, the string of killings claimed 5 lives, together with famend designer Gianni Versace.

The primary two of Andrew Cunanan’s victims had been killed in Minnesota. WCCO’s Esme Murphy traveled the nation to cowl the case 25 years in the past, and has continued to comply with it ever since. Now, for the primary time, she shares newly uncovered questions surrounding the deaths of Jeffrey Path and David Madson.

READ MORE: 20 Years In the past, Andrew Cunanan’s Killing Spree Started In Minneapolis

Chisago County Sheriff Chris Henricks remembers the decision to an unlikely murder scene. The physique would transform Madson’s. He was a profitable 30-year-old architect from Minneapolis.

David Madson’s physique was discovered on personal property in a wooded space by East Rush Lake. It’s an obscure spot that’s troublesome to seek out, a location that has baffled investigators for 25 years.

“[Madson] had a defensive wound the place, you possibly can see the place he really most likely put his hand up and a bullet had went by it, as a result of he was really struck like within the eye space,” Henricks stated. “There was some connection to Rush Lake. I imply, it’s not a deal the place you simply, I’m going to drive an hour from the cities and I’m going to homicide this particular person.”

Madson turned out to be the second of Cunanan’s victims. The primary, Naval Academy graduate Jeffrey Path, was crushed to dying with a claw hammer and rolled right into a carpet in Madson’s loft within the Minneapolis Warehouse District.

In a interval of 12 weeks, 5 males had been murdered. The final, Gianni Versace, was gunned down on the steps of his Miami Seaside mansion. By then, investigators knew they had been on the lookout for Cunanan, a 27-year-old man from San Diego.

READ MORE: BCA Particular Agent Recollects 1997 Hunt For Andrew Cunanan

Investigators went again to the start and decided each Madson and Path had dated Cunanan. Posters went up in homosexual nightclubs across the nation.

However WCCO has discovered that investigators by no means went to a hub of the Minneapolis homosexual nightclub scene, the Homosexual 90s. Witnesses would later say that they had seen Cunanan on the membership. Mike Bloom, then the membership’s proprietor, says he’s satisfied he talked to Cunanan, who was having espresso within the bar’s early morning hours.

“It was like about 8:45 within the morning, and we weren’t that busy on the time. And he was siting like in a again sales space, so we went to begin speaking to him, me and the bartender,” Bloom stated. “It’s bizarre that I can image who he was then. He stated, ‘I’ve obtained some stuff I obtained to go do, , down within the loft.’”

Bloom’s account is per quite a few sightings of Cunanan within the downtown space, all earlier than Cunanan was named because the killer.

“I talked to him for about quarter-hour,” Bloom stated. “Very good man.”

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However may a extra aggressive investigation of the primary two murders in Minneapolis have prevented the subsequent three killings? Eight days after Versace’s homicide, Cunanan died by suicide in a Miami houseboat, additionally virtually definitely killing any possibilities for solutions to so many of those questions.