One challenge I’ve found while watching this show is separating fact from fiction. Much of the series is based on the heavily researched book “Vulgar Favors” by Maureen Orth, but as that book supplies facts, many of the private conversations shown on television must have been invented for the plot. As many of the key players are dead, we may never know the truth about what really happened between Andrew Cunanan and his victims.
In episode four, we see Cunanan murder his first victim (that we know of), Jeffrey Trail (Finn Wittrock), and second victim, David Madson (Cody Fern). It was unclear during this episode how the three are related – friends, lovers, exes? For now, we mostly focus on Cunanan and Madson on the run after the murder of Trail. The episode paints Madson as an innocent bystander and possible kidnapping victim, but what if none of that were true?
After Trail’s murder, Madson seems afraid for his life and possibly shell shocked. But as time goes on, he stays silent, helping Cunanan make his getaway. Madson appears to have many opportunities to escape from Cunanan – when the two walk the dog, during several stops for food, a night out in a bar (shout out to the totally random guest star of the week, Aimee Mann, as a bar singer). So why didn’t Madson run? They were on the road together for five days, surely during that time he could have bolted, asked for help or simply overpowered Cunanan. What if he wasn’t so much a hostage…but more of an accomplice?
Personally, I don’t know which way I think it went (in reality, Madson was initially blamed more for the murder, since it was his apartment), but the show definitely takes a stance that Madson was innocent, seemingly based on his stable, middle-class upbringing. He is painted as a sympathetic victim in comparison to Cunanan’s cold monster. Could Cunanan, master of lies and manipulation, have talked Madson into being more than a bystander? Did he brainwash Madson into helping him kill Trail?
All of this remains a huge question mark, and we STILL don’t have a clear motive for any of these murders (aside from the fourth, William Reese, who was carjacked by Cunanan). Maybe Trail’s and Madson’s backstories with Cunanan will help with that a little, but I’m starting to feel like no one really knows why Andrew Cunanan murdered these people. Here’s to hoping (for my sake and for that of the victims) that isn’t the case.
Do you think David Madson was more of an accomplice than the show let on?
Dailybreak.com
Published
ACS news 