"It looks like his story is pretty credible," said the beleaguered Chief. Meanwhile, hero Carreira has flown to his native Portugal where, it is said, he is being treated with appreciative acclaim. The FBI has also reversed its stance on Carreira's reward and is slated to present him with $10,000, according to Coleen Rowley, a Minneapolis FBI spokeswoman.

Public police and FBI speculations about possibilities that Cunanan might be in drag, or that Cunanan had been stricken with AIDS, have been laid to rest as nonsense while a self-generated blizzard of a more embarrassing nature continues to rage out of control in the lawmen's own backyards.

Monday the nonchalance of police about gay and lesbian murders in other locales was highlighted by the Associated Press's coverage of Donna Smith, the mother of an 18-year old male who was one of 12 strangled in a spate of serial murders of gays in the Chesapeake, Virginia area. (See GayToday's archives, Top Stories, August 5)

Also, adding to further embarrassing revelations, Monday's New York Times headlined a story: "Police Dept. Struggles With Fallout From Cunanan Case." At noon on that same day, Miami news on Channel 7 WSVN-TV found Chief Barreto saying that the Miami Herald had "no ethics" in releasing Cunanan's post-mortem HIV-negative status. Baretto said that he'd launched an investigation in his own department to determine who had released this information.

Previously Baretto had admitted that the FBI had failed to notify his department of Cunanan's suspected whereabouts until after Versace's murder. This admission squares with the denials of any FBI help by the gay publications in the South Florida area, including Hotspots, Scoop and TWN. The FBI's public boast of expansive notification work in the gay community prior to the murder becomes, therefore, torturously empty.

Activist Bob Kunst, in spite of his other disagreements with police, agreed with Barreto on one point. "No question but that they (the Herald) have no ethics, I learned that 20 years ago when they supported Anita Bryant and have been against me ever since."

In any case, the Herald's August 1 front page headlined, "Sources: Cunanan Didn't Have HIV" The article said, "The AIDS test information had been held in confidence by the Medical Examiner's Office." The FBI's spokeswoman, Anne Figueiras, declined to comment on the AIDS test information.

Mireya Navarro of The New York Times says of the Miami area police that they "bristle at the underlying, nagging question raised after Mr. Versace's killing: Could his death have been prevented?"

The president of the Fraternal Order of Police said that at the time "our officers didn't even know who Cunanan was," as the Metro swat team stepped into place.

"My guys are more interested in our ten most wanted," said Chief Barreto, explaining that the FBI's most wanted suspects are given almost no attention. Trying to explain their inept responses, he said, "Officers don't function under a heightened level of awareness all the time." Activist Kunst praised the police chief for having the guts to make clear the obvious.

Because the police fiasco seemed to require a face-saving sacrificial lamb, the position of Miami Beach Police Information Officer, formerly occupied by Al Boza, (who announced that no body had been found upon the first search of the houseboat) was summarily vacated. Metro police now say they found the body 2 minutes after they entered the houseboat.

Kunst, attempting to continue his collection of signatures on behalf of Fernando Carreira, has been stonewalled by Miami Beach police who now insist he must have a permit but, says Kunst, will not release such a permit to him.

While controversies continue to swirl around police incompetence, Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. writes with disgust about the media's speculations, hearsay and rumors, echoing Kunst's continuing criticisms. Pitts says, "Consider two weeks ago, we all 'knew' Andrew Cunanan was some kind of HIV-avenger, killing people right and left in his fury at having tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS. Great story except Cunanan was never infected. Truth is like that sometimes. Slow in arriving and inconvenient, it has a way of torpedoing our favorite tales."

Police continue to release Cunanan-related information, the latest publicity blurbs telling of "blood gauze", the indication of a body wound or abscess that Cunanan had been nursing. Other items found in the houseboat have been made public.

Wednesday evening's Prime Time featured Cunanan's family and their reactions to his last months alive, including references to his high IQ, his non-violent nature, and the fact that he had been his dad's pride and joy. The fact that he'd become a killer seemed to Cunanan kin to be incomprehensible. The felled fugitive's mother denied calling him a "high class male prostitute."

"Funny thing," speculated Bob Kunst after police descriptions of Cunanan's wound, "if Cunanan was nursing himself, he was definitely taking care of himself, and this fact makes his suicide somewhat suspect."

Other skeptical voices repeated Kunst's suspicions in their own ways. Said one: "That two hour discrepancy period when they didn't find Cunanan's body is really odd. I wouldn't put it past them to have blown him away themselves just to save the city a long expensive trial and a lot of bad tourist publicity."