Last night’s episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, titled “House by the Lake,” is a turning point in the season. If last week’s episode, “A Random Killing,” took a break from the Versace narrative to tell a contained story about the murder of wealthy, closeted Lee Miglin in Chicago, this episode sets the series even further down the dark and ultimately shattering path of Andrew Cunanan’s murder victims. Beginning with the most brutally horrific scene of the season and ending with the most heartbreaking, it’s an hour that holds the audience fully in its thrall. It’s also the hour that most clearly depicts Ryan Murphy’s big-picture vision for the season. This isn’t about Versace. It’s not even fully about Cunanan. It’s about the cold grip of societal homophobia that keeps these characters locked into the tragic paths they’re on: killer and victims, none willing or able to divert from the path.

Continuing the season’s backwards chronology, episode 4 backs up to show Cunanan’s first killing, the Minneapolis murder of his acquaintance, Jeff Trail. The nature of that acquaintance will get fleshed out in a further episode, as you might have guessed from the fact that Trail is played by Murphy repertory player Finn Wittrock. Leaving the reasons for the Trail murder almost entirely undefined in this episode gives the actual killing — which takes place in the film’s opening ten minutes — an even more terrifying edge. It also opens the rest of the episode up for the character of David Madson.

For anyone with a familiarity with the Cunanan case, Madson is the biggest question mark. The Trail murder occurred in his apartment, which is where Trail was found by police, wrapped up in a rug. By that point, both Cunanan and Madson had gone on the run. The finger of suspicion pointed to Madson as a possible accomplice (at least), and between that point and the time six days later that Madson’s body was found near a lake 60 miles north of Minneapolis, no one really knows what transpired. It’s a gap in the narrative, and Murphy — along with writer Tom Rob Smith and director Daniel Minahan — takes that blank canvass and fills it in with something altogether devastating. Does it take liberties? Sure. It would have to. But David Madson’s story, as depicted here, tells a bigger story than just his own.

After witnessing Cunanan murder Trail, Madson is in a state of shock, yes, but he still knows a murder when he’s seen it. His and Trail’s relationships with Cunanan — from the fragments we get of it — appear to have soured after initial closeness. Cunanan fancied himself in love with David, had asked him to get married, and was visibly jealous of Madson and Trail together. Madson was altogether over it with Andrew in the moments leading up to the murder. And then after the murder, with a gun-toting Andrew calling the shots, David accompanied Andrew on the run. There was a gun, yes, but we see Andrew using much more than just a weapon to coerce David’s cooperation. David wants to call the police, but Andrew convinces him that the cops — who hate people like them, a pair of fags — will throw him in jail. David wants to call his father, but Andrew also preys upon his insecurities there too. Does he really want to bring his father into this sordid gay murder he’s gotten himself into?

The first three episodes of Versace have done such a deft job of seeding the rest of the story with a pervasive, but low-key, hostility and fear of gay people. From the police questioning Versace’s lover about their trysts with other men to the incredulous looks on the faces of the detectives investigating Lee Miglin’s death, even to the way that Donatella Versace — fashionable icon of the gays, future Maya Rudolph character herself — bristles (maybe even sneers) at her brother’s lifestyle. The cops who show up to investigate the Trail killing are at best pitiless as they poke around David’s apartment (“a gay thing”). Here’s where those deep-rooted attitudes begin to bear their rancid fruit. Here’s where they start claiming lives.

Murphy and Smith sketch out Madson’s backstory: a smart, handsome, kind young architect who so sought his conservative father’s approval. We see David come out to his dad under the pretext of announcing an academic achievement. It’s an achingly recognizable portrait of the hidden tolls of a homophobic society. David’s father’s reaction to his coming out was far from the nightmare scenario, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a maelstrom of conflict and doubt and fear inside David that at any point it might be. His relationship with his father, clearly so important with him, rested upon a thin ice of tolerance.

So Cunanan takes David on the run with him and continues to spin out these fantasies of a life together, David growing increasingly horrified, then disgusted, finally arriving at a kind of scornful pity at the empty shell that Andrew is and has always been. Then we get to the moment that should devastate audiences (it sure devastated me). Andrew and David pit-stopping for the evening at some podunk bar, Andrew temporarily distracted by his own dark thoughts as a bar singer (Aimee Mann in a cameo that feels tacky at first but ultimately deeply affecting) covers The Cars’ “Drive.” This is David’s moment, as he excuses himself for the bathroom and spots a window. All he needs is to make a break for it; but all he can think about is his dad finding out what’s happened. With escape at hand, he freezes, with Aimee Mann darkly intoning “Who’s gonna drive you home tonight?” on the soundtrack. On paper, it’s classic Too Much Ryan Murphy. The song, the cameo, the overly perfect lyrics giving the audience the message on a platter. But in its execution, with the heft of Mann’s vocal paired with the delicacy of the editing, and most especially Cody Fern’s revelatory performance in the role of David Madson, it’s nothing short of gutting.

Given the over-the-topness of pretty much every single episode of Ryan Murphy shows like American Horror Story, not to mention the frequent clumsiness of shows like Glee and The New Normal, it’s a surprise to see an episode like “House by the Lake” manage to hit so hard but with such precision. Murphy’s shows generally have a big impact but they almost always leave a bunch of collateral damage as well. With Versace, it’s been stunning to watch him bypass the temptation to wallow in the gaudy, the sordid, the Miami, the fashion of it all and instead to zero in on this particular story. The story of a world so hostile that it kept David Madson frozen in place inside that bathroom, wondering who would drive him home if he ever got out.

ACS: Versace: “House By the Lake” Is The Greatest Episode of TV Ryan Murphy Has Ever Produced

At its core, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is a pointedly sad show. Gianni Versace‘s murder was a needless and hurtful crime, but the show’s last two episodes — “A Random Killing” and “House by the Lake” — have taken the show’s sad tone a step further, recreating the imagined final moments of Lee Miglin and David Madson. However, there’s another side to the story about Andrew Cunanan‘s murders that makes this moment in history so much more powerful and devastating. For all of the excellent work The Assassination of Gianni Versace has done to transform Cunanan’s victims from merely names into people who were sadly taken before their times, the FX series glosses over the police fumbles that ultimately led to Vesace’s death as well as the callous media circus this story became.

Whereas the first season of American Crime Story, The People v. O.J. Simpson, felt like a modern recreation of a well-known story, The Assassination of Gianni Versace feels far more character focused. Between detailed plot points taken directly from real life, the series spends most of its time imagining the emotions and relationships between everyone connected to Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) and Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez). It’s a touching approach, one which makes the deaths of these murdered men feel far more painful and humanizing than the more scandalous news cycle from this time ever did. However, in between examining the shocking similarities between Versace and the life Cunanan imagined for himself, it’s sometimes difficult to remember one of the main reasons why this story is being told in the first place. Versace’s murder was an almost completely preventable crime.

“I think it’s more than why he was killed. It was sort of why it was allowed to happen,” show creator Ryan Murphy said during FX’s panel for The Assassination of Gianni Versace during TCA’s summer tour in 2017. “Part of the thing that we talk about in the show is one of the reasons Andrew Cunanan was able to make his way across the country and pick off these victims, many of whom were gay, was because of homophobia at the time. Homophobia, particularly within the various police organizations that refused in Miami to put up ‘wanted’ posters, even though they knew that Andrew Cunanan had probably committed many of these murders and was probably headed that way, all of which we deal with in the show. So I thought that that was a really interesting thing to examine, to look at again, particularly with the president we have and the world that we live in.”

There are instances of this overwhelming police incompetence in American Crime Story, but the most compelling moments in Versace often don’t point them out. However, they are absolutely worth exploring because they are largely what transform this story from a serial killer’s spree to a crime of cultural significance. One of the most glaring examples of incompetence from law enforcement happened early in Cunanan’s killing spree. Following the murders of Jeff Trail and David Madson, who were believed to have been murdered in Minnesota, Cunanan traveled to Lee Miglin’s home in Chicago, Illinois. Shortly after Miglin’s murder, there was a stalemate between Minnesota and Illinois authorities as both law enforcement agencies wanted to bring the serial killer to justice. Things only got more complicated with the murders of William Reesein New Jersey and Gianni Versace in Florida.

That is nothing to say of the subtle homophobia that characterized the case. In Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, Maureen Orth writes at length about how Cunanan’s sexuality affected how he was pursued. The most clear example of this is lack of flyers in Miami. The Assassination of Gianni Versace covers this oversight in its first two episodes. By the time Cunanan made it to Miami, he had already murdered four people and was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives List. Instead of alerting all of the gay bars in the Miami area, authorities chose to target a few, believing that Cunanan’s status as a male escort would mean he would only visit certain nightclubs. This spoke to a misunderstanding of Cunanan’s character and the South Florida LBGT community that would come to haunt authorities. Cunanan visited several nightclubs while in Miami and even allegedly admitted he was a serial killer to one customer.

More than perhaps anything else, the failures of the Cunanan case boil down to homophobia. The fact that Versace’s murder happened highlights how little authorities understood and wanted to understand the LGBT community as well as how that same community mistrusted them. One one hand, Vulgar Favors takes care to note that the Miami Police Department is one of the busiest in the country, as it largely has to deal with cartel and drug-related crimes. But on the other hand, it’s hard to argue that Cunanan was anything resembling a criminal mastermind. Authorities suspected him of these murders almost immediately, and most of his murders were equally brutal and sloppy. Two of the only reasons he got away with so many deaths for so long are because he happened to cross state lines and because he targeted a population that needed protection from authorities the most but was overwhelmingly unprotected. That’s the real crime of Gianni Versace’s death. It could have been avoided at so many points if people would have paid attention.

During a recent interview with Decider, executive producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson revealed that the original scripts for The Assassination of Gianni Versace did focus more on missteps from authorities. However, that element was edited because of the lack of overarching narrative and to make more room to tell the victims’ stories. “Part of it was the difficulty that, because it was this national manhunt with different states involved, there wasn’t necessarily one person or one character story that you could tell of somebody who was on the hunt, putting the clues together,” Jacobson said. “So we didn’t feel as though we had as much character drama coming from the police investigation side.”

However, there’s a third party at least partially responsible for Versace’s murder — the mainstream media. The way Orth presents it, the media climate surrounding Andrew Cunanan’s crimes was initially nonexistent and then overwhelming. There was very little coverage around the murders of Jeff Trail and David Madson in publications not catered to LBGT audiences, but Lee Miglin’s status as a fairly well-known member of Chicago society changed that. After his murder, Cunanan started to be discussed more by the mainstream outlets, which took advantage of Chicago law enforcement’s many leaks. Specific details about the brutal way Miglin was murdered were published, but the leak that changed the course of history was the one connected to Lee Miglin’s car phone. After murdering the esteemed real estate developer, Cunanan stole his car, which authorities tried to track through the car phone’s GPS. It was later found that Cunanan had ripped out the phone’s antennae, an action he presumably took after learning about the tracking from the news.

Whatever interest there was in the case transformed into a media frenzy during the eight days between Versace’s murder and Cunanan’s suicide. In Vulgar Favors, Orth dedicates an entire chapter to the absurd amount of money that was thrown around by tabloids, the appropriately titled “Show Me the Money.” Enquire allegedly paid one of Cunanan’s old roommates $85,000 for a dubious story about Cunanan’s sexual fantasies about Tom Cruise. An old friend of the serial killer’s was allegedly offered anywhere from $15,000 to $25,000 for an exclusive story and received 175 requests from press and television (he eventually turned them all down). One of Cunanan’s old acquaintances was paid $4,000 from Hard Copy to talk about Cunanan on TV. In the course of researching Vulgar Favors, Orth even reveals she was turned down for a few interviews from Cunanan’s more affluent friends because she didn’t pay.

Together, this is what makes the Cunanan case so truly horrific. Very early in the investigation, authorities knew that Andrew Cunanan was responsible for these murders. The killer even used his real name on at least one form that was supposed to be processed by the Miami PD (a pawn shop form) and used his real name during his daily life. Despite this transparency and despite the fact that Cunanan left a shocking trail of evidence in his wake, his killing spree lasted from April 27, 1997 until he killed himself on July 23, 1997. He was largely ignored when he was the most dangerous to the LGBT community, but after he claimed his most famous victim, he became, if only for a brief period of time, a must-watch spectacle. That’s the real tragedy buried at the center of The Assassination of Gianni Versace. It’s a story about how America failed a minority community when they needed it most, and it may be the saddest one Ryan Murphy has ever tackled.

Before writing Vulgar Favors, Orth covered the Cunanan case for Vanity Fair in the article “The Killer’s Trail.” You can read that piece in full here.

There’s Another Sordid Scandal Behind ‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’