He was staying at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, where rooms start at $300 a night. At the end of the evening I went to the hotel with him in his rented red convertible Mustang, but I didn’t want to sleep with him. I just wanted to hang out; I wasn’t sexually attracted to him. I was trying to be his friend. He fixed me a Cape Cod, which is cranberry juice and vodka. He ordered chicken soup for us, but he didn’t eat much of it. He ate the free oatmeal and chocolate-chip cookies in the hotel room. Maybe that’s why he put on weight. He started coming on to me, but I said no. I took off my shoes and shorts and went to bed. When I woke up, I had no clothes on and Andrew was lying next to me wearing boxer shorts. I never black out, but I don’t remember what happened that night. Weeks later I started having flashbacks of him trying to get on top of me and me pushing him off.
He was a hard guy to read. He didn’t talk about his family, but he did mention something about being involved in the sugar business in the Philippines. He told me he did coke, methamphetamines and acid, but didn’t like mushrooms. Ecstasy was one of his favorites. He didn’t like pot. He said he sold drugs for a while because he needed money.
He really liked to drop names, telling me that he had met Madonna. He said she was cool but had a little attitude. He claimed to have been on the set of ““Nine Months,’’ where he met Elizabeth Hurley. He had been to the Viper Room and seen Johnny Depp. His biggest celebrity obsession was Lisa Kudrow. He said: ““You know, the one who plays Phoebe in “Friends.’ She’s a good friend. I had lunch with her last week.’’ At the time I had no reason not to believe him. I had told him I wanted to be a soap-opera actor, and he offered to introduce me to Kudrow the next weekend. It never happened.
When we parted that March morning, Andrew said he was going to call me, but he never did. When I saw him again in a bar talking to someone else, I said: ““I think I’m starting to figure you out. You’re a player. I don’t think I want to have anything to do with you.’’ He called me twice the next week, but I told him that maybe he hadn’t called because I didn’t sleep with him. The last thing he said to me on the phone was ““It’s not going to end this way.’’ Then he hung up. Two weeks later he started his spree.
The FBI called after he made the Most Wanted list because they found my name in Andrew’s address book. They warned me that I should be careful, but I didn’t think he was any real threat to me. Still, there was a rough side to him - he would put his arm around you and squeeze. And I had also sensed that part of him in the room at the Mandarin. I guess he could have killed me.
Though this is hard to say, given the terrible grief of the victims’ families, the man I knew wasn’t a complete monster. He was a charming guy who snapped and turned deadly - a really nice person who in the end couldn’t get enough attention.
