We go further back in time with the fourth episode in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” “House by the Lake,” written by Tom Rob Smith and directed by Dan Minahan. Specifically, a week before Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) murdered Chicago real estate mogul Lee Milgin in last week’s fantastic episode.

The episode focuses on Andrew’s first two murders – his friend Jeff Trail, a former U.S. naval officer and propane salesman, and David Madson, Andrew’s friend and former lover. This is also the second episode in a row not to feature the show’s main crew Edgar Ramirez, who plays the titular Versace, Ricky Martin, as the designer’s partner Antonio D’Amico, and Penelope Cruz, as Versace’s sister Donatella.

“House by the Lake” opens with Andrew staying with David, a rising architect, (played by Australian actor Cody Fern) at his Minneapolis loft. In the tense opening scene, Andrew invites their mutual friend Jeff (Ryan Murphy regular, Finn Wittrock) over unbeknownst to David. “It’ll give you two a chance to talk about me,” Andrew says.

When David goes to the apartment lobby to let Jeff in, he tells Jeff Andrew proposed to him, saying he was “His last chance at happiness.”

“How did you get out of it?” Jeff asks.

“I told him it was illegal for us to get married,” David replies, adding Andrew believes he’s in love with Jeff.

“He knows about us,” David tells Jeff. “He has this feline intuition.”

As the men enter David’s loft, Andrew is waiting by the door and strikes Jeff, his first victim in what would become a murdering spree, in the head several times with a hammer in front of David.

After the murder, Andrew uses it as leverage to convince David they should be together. Understandably David is freaking out, and though Andrew isn’t locking him in the apartment, a sort of Stockholm syndrome takes over David and he rationalizes the murder.

Andrew cleans up the body and the two men talk about running away together – exactly what Andrew wants. As they’re packing up, David’s coworker Linda stops by his home to check in on him since he didn’t show up to work. As the apartment manager gets the keys to his home, David and Andrew escape and his coworker and the manager discover Jeff’s body, rolled up in a rug – except they believe it’s David’s body.

Once Minneapolis police are involved, the episode highlights the authorities’ views on the LGBTQ community in the 90s.

“Does he have a girlfriend, a wife?” a detective asks Linda.

“No, he’s gay,” she says. He response sparks the two detectives to give each other a disconcerting look.

As the detective search David’s home, they come across some porn left on the bed.

“It’s a gay thing,” one of them says and then starts to put together a scenario that couldn’t be further away from the events that took place.

“A guy shows up. They did what they do…all this "extreme” stuff. It goes wrong. David ends up in a rug; the other guy runs – doesn’t steal a thing,“ he says.

Linda later tells one of the detectives about Andrew staying with David, saying something seemed off about him as he described himself as a "Jewish millionaire New Yorker” and that he was building sets for the “Titanic” in Mexico. She also tells the authorities David has blond hair – different from the body in the rug. Now they believe the body is Andrew and since they believe David is still alive, they realized they’ve entered his home without a search warrant and illegally.

The authorities pack up and tell Linda David is the killer.

The episode later cuts to David and Andrew on the run – Andrew couldn’t be happier as David is sick to his stomach.

“I’m so glad you decided to come with me,” Andrew tells David, who can’t stop thinking about his situation. He’s also concerned about the world finding out he’s gay, especially those in his small hometown in the midwest.

“Did you hear? That boy is a suspect – there was always something about him – that boy!” David says, later adding that he’s worried about his parents and how the small community will treat them. “No one will buy from my dad’s shop.”

“Am I afraid of the disgrace? The shame of it all? Is that what I’m running from?” David asks himself.

David also tells Andrew he thought Andrew was going to kill him.

“I told you, I could never hurt you,” Andrew says. “Know that.”

Back with the cops, they finally learn the victim is Jeff Trail. They visit David’s parents and tell them David is the killer.

“We’re telling you, he didn’t do this,” David’s father tells the authorities. The detectives tell them “there’s a lot you don’t know about your son.”

Andrew and David stop by a hole in the wall bar, where a woman is playing an acoustic cover of The Cars’ “Drive,” causing Andrew to burst into tears. Meantime, David attempts to escape by breaking a window in the bathroom but ultimately decides against it, returning to Andrew’s side, where Andrew embraces him. The scene shows Andrew’s loneliness – his misguided perception of love and relationship – he’s willing to kill to get what he wants; it’s a twisted view that “The Assassination of Versace” later digs into.

After that scene, the episode shows David’s flashback where he comes out to his father. He tells his dad he’s graduated college at the top of his class and then blurts out that he’s gay.

“You mind if I take a moment? I don’t want to say the wrong thing,” his father replies. “I won’t lie, saying it won’t make a difference. You know what I believe.”

His father remains honest, saying he doesn’t have a problem with his son’s sexuality but adds, “What I can say is that I love you more than I love my own life.”

Later, at breakfast, Andrew and David reminisce the first time they met – Andrew wined and dined David, pretending to be an affluent socialite.

“It was all a lie,” David tells Andrew, his demeanor souring. “You’ve never worked for anything. It was an act.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Andrew asks.

“Is that why you killed Jeff. You loved him. It was so obvious but he figured you out in the end…he finally saw the real you,” David says.

Andrew completely ignores David, tell him he’s going to have a fabulous life when they go to Mexico.

“You can’t do it can you?” David asks.

“Do what?” Andrew asks back.

“Stop,” David replies.

Back on the run, David questions Andrew about the murder – how Andrew planned Jeff’s murder and wanted David to see the killing.

“I don’t want to talk about it, David!” Andrew yells.

“I’m nothing like you,” David says, before taking the wheel from Andrew.

A delusional Andrew then pulls his gun out and, yelling at David they “had a future” together over and over. He pulls the car over by a lake house, drags David out and points the gun at him, execution style.

“We still have a plan!” David pleads. Andrew demands he convinces him.

“We’ll visit Lee Miglin in Chicago and he’ll give us some money, then we’ll drive across the country; it’ll be an adventure!… We’ll find a place to live!” David says while he’s kneeling on the ground, gun pointed to his head.

“You don’t believe that,” Andrew says.

As David is nervously planning their life together, but Andrew isn’t buying it.

“Why couldn’t you run away with me? If it was Jeff you would have run away with him. You would have gone to prison,” Andrew says.

“It’s not real,” David says.

“It could have been,” Andrew says.

“No, it couldn’t,” David says as Andrew turns his back away from him.

David attempts to run away, hiding in an abandoned lake house. There, he sees a vision of his father who hands him a cup of coffee and the two sit in a warm silence. The episode flashes back to show that David never really made it inside the lake house, and Andrew shot and killed him as he ran away.

The final eerie moments of the episode show Andrew cuddling with David’s body, who has a large bullet wound in his head. Andrew then gets up, calmly walks back to the car and drives away.

Recapping ‘Versace’: Episode 4, ‘House by the Lake’