The Miami Herald, Inc.; Thursday, July 31, 1997
Amy Driscoll, Gail Epstein, Lisa Getter and Rick Jervis; Herald Staff Writers

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said tests performed on Cunanan's body at the Dade County Medical Examiner's Office after his death July 23 showed the alleged five-time murderer was not HIV positive.

Efforts to reach Cunanan's family were unsuccessful.

The information torpedoes the much-debated retaliation theory, the notion that the 27-year-old San Diego man had launched a cross-country murder spree upon learning that he had contracted the AIDS virus. The killings ended with the July 15 murder of Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace in Miami Beach.

Now that the test has come up negative, behavioral experts will have to look for other causes.

"If that's true, then it certainly would eliminate the speculation as to his motivation on those grounds," said Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle.

She said she is not privy to the results of the AIDS test on Cunanan and is uncertain how the information might affect the still-open investigation into Cunanan's life and death in South Florida.

Police believe Cunanan responsible for murders from Minneapolis to Miami, five men in all, three of them gay, spanning a three-month period. Cunanan eluded police and federal agents for another nine days before killing himself aboard a houseboat on July 23.

The AIDS test information had been held in confidence by the Medical Examiner's Office because Florida law prohibits its disclosure in most cases. Rundle had been considering going to court for an order allowing the AIDS test information to be released.

The judge, she noted, would have to weigh the right to privacy against the public interest in learning the truth about Cunanan's HIV status and possibly illuminating his motive.

The negative AIDS test also casts further doubt on the validity of an alleged suicide note sent to The Herald last week, purporting to be from Cunanan. The typed letter makes mention of AIDS and seems to indicate that Cunanan had discovered he was HIV-positive.

FBI spokeswoman Anne Figueiras declined to comment on the AIDS test information.

"That's not within the purview of the FBI. Our job was to find Mr. Cunanan and capture him."

She said the FBI investigation will continue for another week or two, as agents plow through all remaining leads on Cunanan.

"If we can determine where Mr. Cunanan was and what he was doing during his time in Florida, then we can learn from that," she said. "Then we'll know that much more for the next time we have someone like Mr. Cunanan to track down."

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