Two separate incidents brought the nationwide manhunt for alledged serial killer Andrew Cunanan to the Upper Valley and right to one Dartmouth student's door yesterday.
Local authorities began investigating a reported sighting of Cunanan in Lebanon, N.H. and also questioned a Dartmouth student who owns a car similar to the one Cunanan was alledgedly seen driving.
An employee of a West Lebanon store called Lebanon police yesterday to report seeing Cunanan, the only suspect in the July 15 murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace, said Jean Corsetti, Lebanon Police supervisor of communications.
Cunanan, who is at the top of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Most Wanted list, is also a suspect in four other murders committed in the last four months.
Corsetti said the clerk reported that a male fitting Cunanan's description entered the store at approximately 12:15 yesterday afternoon.
The man made a purchase, got into a dark gray Mercedes Benz with a Florida license plate and headed north on Route 12A, the employee told the Lebanon Police.
Police searched for any sign of Cunanan or the vehicle for more than two hours yesterday, but their efforts turned up nothing, Lebanon Police Detective Lt. Robert Jason told the Associated Press.
"We will take this very seriously," Lebanon Police Captain Jim Dutille told the AP.
Local and federal authorities are investigating the sighting, and a statewide alert remains in effect.
FBI spokeswoman Mary Jean Fryer told the AP that agents have been sent to Lebanon to try to confirm the sighting.
According to the AP, Cunanan has alledgedly been sighted hundreds of times since Versace's murder, but none of the sightings have been confirmed.
In a tangentially related event, Daniel Rygorsky '99, who drives a black Mercedes with a Florida license plate, was also questioned by police yesterday.
Rygorsky had lunch at the Pizza Hut in West Lebanon yesterday afternoon from approximately 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. He returned to campus at 2:15 and parked his Mercedes in the parking lot of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, of which he is a member.
Rygorsky said when he walked around to the front of the Sig Ep house, a police car was parked out front.
Brothers of the house who had been sitting on the roof of the building told Rygorsky that the police car had been following him and that an officer waiting inside had asked to speak to Rygorsky by name.
Rygorsky said the officer asked him if he drove a black Mercedes with Florida tags. Rygorsky told the officer he did.
The officer also asked where Rygorsky had been that afternoon. After learning that Rygorsky had been in West Lebanon, the officer asked whether he had been to the Triple-Play sports store in the North Country Plaza.
Rygorsky said the officer told him the owner of Triple-Play had told police that Cunanan "had been in the store and was driving a black Mercedes."
The officer also told Rygorsky that the police department had run a records check on all vehicles registered with the College and found out that Rygorsky had the only car on campus fitting the description of the alledged Cunanan car.
Rygorsky said it was unclear whether the policeman had arrived at Sig Ep as a result of the records check or whether he had spotted the vehicle in West Lebanon and had followed the car to Hanover.
"I don't know if they thought I was driving the car Cunanan was in or if they thought he had stolen my car from on campus," he said.
"I don't think the guy could have identified me as Cunanan," Rygorsky said.
Detective Jason said that while he had no personal knowledge of Lebanon Police running records checks on vehicles from the College, he was not surprised to hear that an owner of a dark Mercedes was questioned.
"To limit the search area, you have to stop all [similar cars] on road," he said.
