Freelance Journalist Shares Experience Covering Cunanan's Killing Spree

A San Diego journalist reveals details of Andrew Cunanan's spree killings.

In Dateline's investigative lens on Friday was one of San Diego's most notorious spree killers, Andrew Cunanan.

Cunanan is thought to be responsible for five murders--most notably, fashion icon Gianni Versace.

Just days before Cunanan's killing spree began, he had a farewell dinner with friends at a restaurant on University Avenue.

His final words to his friends, were perhaps a foreshadowing of the terror about to take place.

"Cunanan leaned back in his chair and looked over at his friends and said 'All of you think you know the real Andrew but none of you really knows the truth,'" freelance journalist Roman Jimenez told NBC 7.

Jimenez was a key interview in Friday night's Dateline show.

"The motives for each of these killings were different. Some of them we know, most of them we don't," Jimenez said.

He is the former editor a weekly paper, called "Update" at the time. 

"We uncovered a guy who was pathological but had this great aspiration to have wealth and privilege without ever having acquired any of it on his own," Jimenez said.

Cunanan beat one victim with a claw hammer, stabbed another with an ice pick, and gunned down others.

The impact of that bloody killing spree was devastating to San Diego's gay community.

It came at a time when acceptance and sensitivity toward same sex couples was gaining ground.

“Every news outlet in the country was showing the absolute worst of who we were and it was like, you had taken two steps forward and 10 steps back," Jimenez said.

He told NBC 7, Hillcrest residents and visitors were terrified and that the community felt like it was a target.

"You could guarantee there was a population of gay and lesbian people in one spot. That if you wanted to do harm you could probably easily do it,” Jimenez said.

For all the sensational details, mystery and intrigue, Jimenez said, fortunately, Cunanan is merely a footnote in the history of the local gay community.

"It's ironic that this person who craved attention, craved the limelight and craved fame is really nothing more than a cheap drink conversation," Jimenez said.

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