By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
First Catriona Gray (a Bicolana Australian) was crowned Miss Universe whose longtime boyfriend is a German Igorot (his mom was from Bauko or Sabangan, Mountain Province) and then another international fame for a half Filipino. We are talking of Darren Criss. In his acceptance speech in the Golden Globes Awards for having won as best actor for his role in a movie made for TV, he said that his success was mostly because of his Filipina mom who is from Cebu.
The role played by Darren Criss was as the serial killer, Andrew Philip Cunanan, who killed internationally acclaimed fashion designer Gianni Versace. He killed four others before that and then he shot himself a few days after.
Andrew Philip Cunanan had an IQ of a genius and according to his brother he memorized the encyclopedia at the age of 10. He was gay and was good looking. Darren Criss looked like him.
His father was a Filipino who joined the US Navy in 1961. Presumably, he became a US citizen and he married an Italian American, the mother of Andrew, the serial killer.
When I was in high school in Baguio City in the late 60s and in the early 70s, when my idea of heaven was still just an unstrapped bra (to borrow from Catch 22), I vividly remember a store at the public market just across Malcolm Square (now People’s Park) that went by the name Cunanan’s. I thought it was Cunanan’s Drug Store but a sheriff at the Baguio City Justice Hall corrected me that it was a school supply. Whatever.
I was asking then if Gianni Versace’s killer was somehow related to the owners of that store. The sheriff said that he was. But when I asked for more details to ensure the truthfulness of the statement, he could not place his source. He just said that he heard it from someone. In short, hearsay.
From the articles on Google regarding Andrew Philip Cunanan’s father, Modesto Cunanan, it was said that he originally hailed from Baliuag, Bulacan. After he retired from the US Navy, he went to school at night to become a stockbroker. He became such and he and his wife doted on Andrew Philip, spoiling him to the core, and even sent him to an exclusive private school.
Perhaps Modesto was not American enough so he started calling himself Pete. His success as a stock broker must have made him unable to resist the temptation of making big money the crooked way. So the FBI was hunting him down for allegedly embezzling about a 100,000 US dollars. He then fled to the Philippines.
His son, Andrew Philip Cunanan, traced him in the Philippines and was shocked to find out that he was living in squalor. Andrew, to continue his being a big liar about the supposed wealth of his family, started saying that his father was running a family pineapple plantation in the Philippines. Did he say they owned Del Monte or Dole? We don’t know.
At any rate, after Andrew killed himself, his father started saying that his son was set up by the FBI and that he would cause the making of a movie about the whole affair. He dreamed of making bigabucks from the film and even said that the best person to portray his son would be John F. Kennedy Jr.
Why not? It was, and it still is, free to dream.
Though it is sordid, without that half Filipino serial killer, a half Filipino actor would not have shined in the recent Golden Globes Awards.**
