THERE ARE wanted posters all over the Castro, the heart of SanFrancisco's gay community. The television news has talked of littleelse. One man has already encountered the assailant and considershimself lucky to be alive.
The fear rippling through the city is that a gay serial killer ison the loose. According to the police and the FBI, he is a clean-cut 19-year- old called Adam Ezerski who is already wanted for thekillings of two gay men in Florida.
Earlier this week, a 43-year-old man, whose identity has beenwithheld, believes he met Ezerski in a gay bar in the roughTenderloin district and had a two-night tryst with him before beingattacked. According to the police, Ezerski smashed a statue againsthis head while he was asleep in bed and tried to strangle him.
Now the whole city is on high alert, with flyers and posters onjust about every doorway in the Castro and other gay neighbourhoods.
'It's like Cunanan all over again,' one Castro resident, DavidDalrymple, told the San Francisco Chronicle. Andrew Cunanan,suspected of killing five gay men including the fashion designerGianni Versace, became the object of a nationwide manhunt in 1997and was found shot to death in a houseboat in Florida. He was alsodescribed as clean-cut.
Ezerski's alleged killing spree began last month, when a 76-year-old man was found bludgeoned to death in his beachside residencenear Miami. The next day, Ezerski checked into a hotel in FortLauderdale with a man called Anthony Martilotto. Mr Martilotto wasfound strangled in his room in the morning.
According to the FBI, Ezerski then drove Martilotto's rented redMustang cross-country. The car's number plate showed up on therecords of a car park near the home of the Tenderloin man assaultedthis week.
San Francisco police say Ezerski's fingerprint was also found ona video in the man's apartment. After fighting off his attacker, theman went to hospital where he needed six stitches in his head. Hetold a local television station he later got a phone called from'Adam' apologising for the attack.
Ezerski is still believed to be driving the red sports car.Sightings over the past week have been recorded both in SanFrancisco and further south in California.
