Inside Gamma Mu.

What's behind a seemingly harmless gay social club's desire for secrecy?

As the news media dissected the Andrew Cunanan story, trying desperately to peer inside the suspected killer's world, the secrecy surrounding a so-called gay fraternity with which Cunanan had been involved only further piqued the media's curiosity. News correspondents from San Diego to Minneapolis picked up the phone and called The Advocate, hoping to find answers to the question "What is Gamma Mu?"

A videotape that records the experiences of Gamma Mu, members while on two trips together, obtained exclusively by The Advocate, reveals the surprising answers: Gamma Mu is about dapper men donning big hats and acting silly at a party. It's about riding a train from Houston to Galveston, Tex., sipping cocktails and listening to a banjoist play "Dixie." In short, it's anything but edgy.

"The atmosphere [at Gamma Mu events] was like a 1950s cocktail party, with people in the closet who wouldn't come out," says former member Jeremy Poole of Winchelsea, England. "It was like a bad gay movie. It certainly wasn't what I expected it to be--a dynamic group of movers and shakers who happened to be gay."

Perhaps the "closet factor" is what makes information about Gamma Mu--and its members--difficult to come by. Aside from issuing short prepared statements regarding the organization's association with Cunanan, Gamma Mu executive director Cliff Pettit and the organization's attorney, Anthony M. Livoti Jr., would not talk to The Advocate. One man at Gamma Mu headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.--who would describe himself only as an officer of the group--said simply, "We don't want publicity," adding, "I guess I'm not out totally--or whatever you want to call it.

Still, by way of video footage of Gamma Mu events in Houston and New Orleans, interviews with former members, and a copy of the group's newsletter, a picture has emerged of a clubby, sedate clique of gay professionals whose love of a good party is exceeded only by their need to keep everything under wraps. For now, however, Gamma Mu's association with Cunanan makes that impossible.

Cunanan had a relationship with Gamma Mu member Norman Blachford of La Jolla, Calif., a tony suburb of San Diego. It has been widely reported that Blachford lavished Cunanan with money, clothes, vacations, and a car before kicking him out and cutting him off last fall--only months before the first of five men, including fashion king Gianni Versace, was brutally killed, allegedly at the hands of Cunanan. In the tense days following Versace's slaying July 16 in Miami Beach, Fla., the mood among Gamma Mu members was tense. The FBI had been in touch with the group's principals for weeks as word spread that the suspect appeared to be targeting wealthy gay men.

"We do not wish to alarm you, but we must pass along this information," an attachment to the May issue of the Gamma Mu newsletter warned members. "The authorities in connection with 3 brutal murders are seeking a former member. Andrew Cunanan (a.k.a. Andrew DeSilva) lived in San Diego and was a roommate to several influential members in that area." The newsletter told members that when contacted by NBC News, Gamma Mu responded that it had "only known [Cunanan] at social functions in various cities." A statement released to The Advocate by the group described Cunanan as a "brief guest at one of our functions while he was in the employ of one of our current members."

Former member Michael Grace, a Los Angeles television and film writer who stopped attending Gamma Mu events two years ago, met Cunanan at the home of fellow member Lincoln Aston, a San Diego man found bludgeoned to death in 1995. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported May 11 that Cunanan and Aston "had been intimate." However, a mentally disabled drifter pleaded guilty last year to slaying Aston, and authorities do not believe Cunanan was linked to the crime.

Grace says many Gamma Mu members are closeted and recalls steps being taken at the group's events to hide members' homosexuality. "On a trip to San Jose, Costa Rica, Pettit was constantly warning everyone not to be too `out there' so that we could pass as straight," Grace says, adding, "The only person who would think we were straight was Helen Keller."

Gamma Mu was created in 1967 by Pettit, a retired travel agent living in Fort Lauderdale, after a weekend of parties with gay friends in Washington, D.C. Started with 17 members, the group has congregated around an increasingly elaborate and pricey list of socials, cruises, excursions, and fly-away trips around the world. Honolulu; Acapulco, Mexico; Vancouver, Canada; and Costa Rica have all been sites for events, as have such exclusive locations as Antoine's restaurant in New Orleans and Houston's members-only Petroleum Club. Gamma Mu has also chartered trips aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner; taken ski trips to Aspen, Colo.; celebrated Oktoberfest in Germany; and gone ballooning in the south of France.

Over the years membership has expanded to a "diverse" and "well-rounded" 600, according to Gamma Mu literature, with lawyers, doctors, financiers, caterers, college deans, TV producers, and even a blackjack dealer among its brotherhood. "Some outsiders have mistakenly voiced the opinion that a person had to be rich to be in Gamma Mu," reads an information sheet provided to new Gamma Mu members. "All of us who are members simply know that is not true." But some inside the organization dispute that. "To be blunt about it, the common denominator for the members is that they all have money," said one member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Gamma Mu membership application outlines 1997 fees as being $185, although "junior executive" dues for those "34 and younger" are just $125, reflecting the premium the organization has placed on attracting a younger crowd in recent years. In fact, a handful of members at any given Gamma Mu function are in the company of "pretty, obviously kept boys," says Grace.

He believes Cunanan was just that.