Their dark schemes, hatched amid steroids and dumbbells, strip clubs and exotic women, ended in spasms of shocking violence.
A millionaire businessman stripped of his fortune, tortured for weeks and left for dead in a burning car wreck. And a wealthy Hungarian couple murdered, their bodies hacked up and scattered in drums and buckets across South Florida.
The bizarre and bloody saga of the Miami Lakes Sun Gym crew was always stuff of Hollywood drama — and 15 years after Daniel Lugo and Adrian Noel Doorbal were sent to Death Row, their story will be rekindled in the upcoming film Pain & Gain.
Prosecutors, former detectives and the sister of one of the victims, however, are concerned that the movie — the tagline: “Their American Dream is Bigger than Yours” — will portray the killers in a sympathetic light, and play down the brutality of Griga murders.
“I think its ridiculous. It’s horrible what happened to them,” said Zsuzsanna Griga, the sister of Frank Griga, murdered along with his wife, Krisztina Furton. “I don’t want the American public to be sympathetic to the killers.”
Said Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle: “What Hollywood is going to do Hollywood is doing do. My thoughts are with the victims. To trivialize this horrible tale of torture and death makes a mockery out of their lives and the justice system.”
Billed as an action comedy, Pain & Gain opens in April and stars Mark Wahlberg as Lugo, Anthony Mackie as Doorbal and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Paul Doyle, an apparent fictional composite character based on several members of the murderous crew. The director: Michael Bay, of Transformers and Armageddon fame.
The “true story” trailer certainly strikes a dark comedic tone. It features a fiery explosion, barreling cars, SWAT police jumping out of an armored vehicle and Wahlberg’s Lugo character agonizing about his dead-end life as a fitness trainer.
There was nothing light-hearted about the crimes they committed.
Over a series of meetings in 1994, Lugo, Doorbal and Jorge Delgado, who pounded weights together at the Sun Gym and frequented strip clubs, hatched a plan to kidnap and extort Marc Schiller, owner of West Miami-Dade Schlotzsky’s deli.
Schiller had once employed Delgado as a business assistant. Also in on the plan: John Carl Mese, the gym’s owner, a former body builder and Miami Shores accountant.
Their attempts to kidnap Schiller were certainly bumbling — once, they laid across blankets on Schiller’s lawn, waiting to whisk him away, but got spooked by a barking dog.
Finally, they kidnapped Schiller outside his deli.
Over a month in captivity at a warehouse, they tortured him, sometimes with lighters, until he signed over his posh South Miami house, a $2 million life insurance policy and $1.2 million in investments.
Forced by his kidnappers, Schiller also ordered his wife and children to go to Colombia.
The gang moved into Schiller’s house, drained his bank accounts and finally plied him with liquor and staged a 3 a.m. crash into a tree, also running him over.
But Schiller survived.
He did not notify police right away, however. He called his lawyer, who recommended private investigator Ed Du Bois III (played by Ed Harris in the movie). They went to work trying to negotiate the return of $1.26 million.
‘Pain & Gain,’ a movie based on South Florida murders, is a painful reminder to victims’ families
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‘Pain & Gain,’ a movie based on South Florida murders, is a painful reminder to victims’ families
