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At its core, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is a pointedly sad show. Gianni Versace‘s murder was a needless and hurtful crime, but the show’s last two episodes — “A Random Killing” and “House by the Lake” — have taken the show’s sad tone a step further, recreating the imagined final moments of Lee Miglin and David Madson. However, there’s another side to the story about Andrew Cunanan‘s murders that makes this moment in history so much more powerful and devastating. For all of the excellent work The Assassination of Gianni Versace has done to transform Cunanan’s victims from merely names into people who were sadly taken before their times, the FX series glosses over the police fumbles that ultimately led to Vesace’s death as well as the callous media circus this story became.

Whereas the first season of American Crime Story, The People v. O.J. Simpson, felt like a modern recreation of a well-known story, The Assassination of Gianni Versace feels far more character focused. Between detailed plot points taken directly from real life, the series spends most of its time imagining the emotions and relationships between everyone connected to Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) and Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez). It’s a touching approach, one which makes the deaths of these murdered men feel far more painful and humanizing than the more scandalous news cycle from this time ever did. However, in between examining the shocking similarities between Versace and the life Cunanan imagined for himself, it’s sometimes difficult to remember one of the main reasons why this story is being told in the first place. Versace’s murder was an almost completely preventable crime.

“I think it’s more than why he was killed. It was sort of why it was allowed to happen,” show creator Ryan Murphy said during FX’s panel for The Assassination of Gianni Versace during TCA’s summer tour in 2017. “Part of the thing that we talk about in the show is one of the reasons Andrew Cunanan was able to make his way across the country and pick off these victims, many of whom were gay, was because of homophobia at the time. Homophobia, particularly within the various police organizations that refused in Miami to put up ‘wanted’ posters, even though they knew that Andrew Cunanan had probably committed many of these murders and was probably headed that way, all of which we deal with in the show. So I thought that that was a really interesting thing to examine, to look at again, particularly with the president we have and the world that we live in.”

There are instances of this overwhelming police incompetence in American Crime Story, but the most compelling moments in Versace often don’t point them out. However, they are absolutely worth exploring because they are largely what transform this story from a serial killer’s spree to a crime of cultural significance. One of the most glaring examples of incompetence from law enforcement happened early in Cunanan’s killing spree. Following the murders of Jeff Trail and David Madson, who were believed to have been murdered in Minnesota, Cunanan traveled to Lee Miglin’s home in Chicago, Illinois. Shortly after Miglin’s murder, there was a stalemate between Minnesota and Illinois authorities as both law enforcement agencies wanted to bring the serial killer to justice. Things only got more complicated with the murders of William Reese in New Jersey and Gianni Versace in Florida.

That is nothing to say of the subtle homophobia that characterized the case. In Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, Maureen Orth writes at length about how Cunanan’s sexuality affected how he was pursued. The most clear example of this is lack of flyers in Miami. The Assassination of Gianni Versace covers this oversight in its first two episodes. By the time Cunanan made it to Miami, he had already murdered four people and was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives List. Instead of alerting all of the gay bars in the Miami area, authorities chose to target a few, believing that Cunanan’s status as a male escort would mean he would only visit certain nightclubs. This spoke to a misunderstanding of Cunanan’s character and the South Florida LBGT community that would come to haunt authorities. Cunanan visited several nightclubs while in Miami and even allegedly admitted he was a serial killer to one customer.

More than perhaps anything else, the failures of the Cunanan case boil down to homophobia. The fact that Versace’s murder happened highlights how little authorities understood and wanted to understand the LGBT community as well as how that same community mistrusted them. One one hand, Vulgar Favors takes care to note that the Miami Police Department is one of the busiest in the country, as it largely has to deal with cartel and drug-related crimes. But on the other hand, it’s hard to argue that Cunanan was anything resembling a criminal mastermind. Authorities suspected him of these murders almost immediately, and most of his murders were equally brutal and sloppy. Two of the only reasons he got away with so many deaths for so long are because he happened to cross state lines and because he targeted a population that needed protection from authorities the most but was overwhelmingly unprotected. That’s the real crime of Gianni Versace’s death. It could have been avoided at so many points if people would have paid attention.

During a recent interview with Decider, executive producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson revealed that the original scripts for The Assassination of Gianni Versace did focus more on missteps from authorities. However, that element was edited because of the lack of overarching narrative and to make more room to tell the victims’ stories. “Part of it was the difficulty that, because it was this national manhunt with different states involved, there wasn’t necessarily one person or one character story that you could tell of somebody who was on the hunt, putting the clues together,” Jacobson said. “So we didn’t feel as though we had as much character drama coming from the police investigation side.”

However, there’s a third party at least partially responsible for Versace’s murder — the mainstream media. The way Orth presents it, the media climate surrounding Andrew Cunanan’s crimes was initially nonexistent and then overwhelming. There was very little coverage around the murders of Jeff Trail and David Madson in publications not catered to LBGT audiences, but Lee Miglin’s status as a fairly well-known member of Chicago society changed that. After his murder, Cunanan started to be discussed more by the mainstream outlets, which took advantage of Chicago law enforcement’s many leaks. Specific details about the brutal way Miglin was murdered were published, but the leak that changed the course of history was the one connected to Lee Miglin’s car phone. After murdering the esteemed real estate developer, Cunanan stole his car, which authorities tried to track through the car phone’s GPS. It was later found that Cunanan had ripped out the phone’s antennae, an action he presumably took after learning about the tracking from the news.

Whatever interest there was in the case transformed into a media frenzy during the eight days between Versace’s murder and Cunanan’s suicide. In Vulgar Favors, Orth dedicates an entire chapter to the absurd amount of money that was thrown around by tabloids, the appropriately titled “Show Me the Money.” Enquire allegedly paid one of Cunanan’s old roommates $85,000 for a dubious story about Cunanan’s sexual fantasies about Tom Cruise. An old friend of the serial killer’s was allegedly offered anywhere from $15,000 to $25,000 for an exclusive story and received 175 requests from press and television (he eventually turned them all down). One of Cunanan’s old acquaintances was paid $4,000 from Hard Copy to talk about Cunanan on TV. In the course of researching Vulgar Favors, Orth even reveals she was turned down for a few interviews from Cunanan’s more affluent friends because she didn’t pay.

Together, this is what makes the Cunanan case so truly horrific. Very early in the investigation, authorities knew that Andrew Cunanan was responsible for these murders. The killer even used his real name on at least one form that was supposed to be processed by the Miami PD (a pawn shop form) and used his real name during his daily life. Despite this transparency and despite the fact that Cunanan left a shocking trail of evidence in his wake, his killing spree lasted from April 27, 1997 until he killed himself on July 23, 1997. He was largely ignored when he was the most dangerous to the LGBT community, but after he claimed his most famous victim, he became, if only for a brief period of time, a must-watch spectacle. That’s the real tragedy buried at the center of The Assassination of Gianni Versace. It’s a story about how America failed a minority community when they needed it most, and it may be the saddest one Ryan Murphy has ever tackled.

Before writing Vulgar Favors, Orth covered the Cunanan case for Vanity Fair in the article “The Killer’s Trail.” You can read that piece in full here.

New episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story premiere on FX Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET.

Stream The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story on FXNOW and FX+