SAN DIEGO, July 25: In the three months since he left his home town of San Diego, Andrew Cunanan left a trail of bodies across the United States (US), but little trace of himself.

No one may ever know what made him tick. By all accounts, he was a brilliant, complex man driven by envy, greed and a deep desire for notoriety.

If attention was what he was looking for, he got what he wanted. His moment in the spotlight ended Wednesday when he killed himself on a houseboat in Miami beach, 2.5 miles (4 kms) from the spot where he allegedly shot his fifth victim, fashion designer Gianni Versace.

``I feel sorry for the person holed up in a house boat, knowing he killed five people and holding the gun of the first person he killed, a person he considered to be his best friend,'' said Daniel O'Toole, an acquaintance who last saw Cunanan in April in San Francisco.

``It must have been a difficult final hour for him. I don't know why this had to happen. It's a total tragedy,'' he said.

His time as a fugitive was foreshadowed by elaborately fabricated tales he told to friends from San Diego to San Francisco: his surname was De Silva. He had a wife and child in the San Francisco area. Friends and acquaintances said he was alternately a bookish intellect who could talk politics and world affairs and a ``party boy'' who danced bare-chested in bars.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.