That's the picture that's slowly developing, Polaroid-style, today as members of the San Francisco club scene from that era place both Versace and Cunanan at the now-defunct Colossus in the fall of that year--months before another reported encounter between the two men at the San Francisco Opera in 1991.
According to Gus Bean, who owned Colossus, the glamorous Italian clothier visited his club three times during its run from late 1989 to August 1992. In September 1990 alone, Versace, a "very cool, very, very polite" man in the words of Bean, did the Saturday night scene at Colossus two consecutive weekends. That's around the same time an acquaintance of Cunanan says he met the man now on the FBI's most-wanted list--at the club.
And Eric Gruenwald, now 28 and a lawyer in Los Angeles, has a distinct memory of his encounter with Cunanan at Colossus: Cunanan was bragging that he had just met Versace.
"He was really excited," Gruenwald says of Cunanan. "[He told me] 'I just met Gianni Versace. I can't believe it.' "
Cunanan told Gruenwald that he was so nonplussed upon first meeting the fashion maven that he didn't believe it was really him. "When he met him, he [Cunanan] said, 'Yeah, right, Gianni Versace, and I'm Coco Chanel. Nice to meet you.' "
Cunanan didn't elaborate further, Gruenwald says. He was just "name dropping."
That's in keeping with Cunanan's M.O.--a young man who has been portrayed in media reports this week as a charming liar enamored by celebrity.
"He was really vivacious, had a very captivating behavior about him, although he was extremely arrogant and boastful," Gruenwald says.
Gruenwald grew up in Cunanan's hometown, the wealthy Southern California community of La Jolla, but only met him once, that night at Colossus. He knew him by reputation, however: in La Jolla, Cunanan was seen as "histrionic...theatrical."
So, did Cunanan really meet Versace at Colossus that night in 1990? Gruenwald had the impression he did. But he adds that Cunanan apparently lied about at least two other things during their hour-long conversation that night--that he was an heir to the Scripps newspaper fortune and that he attended Yale University.