True Crime Campfire - When Jocks Attack: The Sun Gym Gang, Pt 2

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

When we left you at the end of part 1, the brawny-yet-dimwitted Sun Gym gang, led by smooth-talker Danny Lugo and his bestie Adrian Doorbal were trying to figure out whether to kill their captive, Marc Schiller. They’d already drained most of his assets, set up shop in his house, stolen his cars, and sent his family fleeing in terror to Colombia. So now it was time to wrap up the plan and ride off into the sunset. But as you can probably anticipate, based on the general incompetence of these guys, that it might not go according to plan. Join us now for part 2 of this bizarre true story. Sources:Miami New Times, Pete Collins: https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/pain-and-gain-6396870CBS' "48 Hours," episode "Pain and Gain"Various articles, Murderpedia: https://murderpedia.org/male.L/l/lugo-daniel.htmFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. When we left you at the end of part one, the brawny yet dim-witted Sun Jim gang led by smooth talker Danny Lugo and his bestie Adrian Dorbill were trying to figure out whether to kill their captive Mark Schiller. They'd already drained most of his assets, set up shop in his house, stolen his cars, and sent his family fleeing in terror to Columbia. So now it was time to wrap up the plan

and right off into the sunset. But you can probably anticipate based on the general incompetence of these guys that it might not go according to plan. Join us now for part two of when Jock's attack, the story of the Sun Jim Gang. So finally, the last transfer came in from one of Schiller's offshore bank accounts. In about four weeks, the Sun Jim gang had managed to strip Schiller of pretty much everything he owned by forcing him to sign everything over to them. Millions of dollars, plus the house and cars. They'd been living in Schiller's house ever since his wife and kids had fled to Columbia,

having a grand old time. They were tooling around town in his Mercedes and his Dodge Viper. They were wearing his jewelry, taking pieces of his furniture to their own apartments, and Schillard heard them talking about all that. He could feel that the end, his end, was close at hand. He'd pretty much abandoned any hope that one of his captors would grow a conscience. There may have been one small glimmer of hope when one morning Danny Batman Lugo's wife had suddenly arrived at the warehouse. Lucretia, who was carrying Danny's baby at the time, had been getting super suspicious about how much time he was spending away from home.

She thought he was probably cheating on her. So Danny invited her to come around and see what he was really up to, which just absolutely floors me that he's like, no, I'm torturing a guy, come, you'll see. And she did it. And despite the fact that this woman was allegedly a dedicated Buddhist, she didn't do shit about it. No anonymous calls to the Miami PD or the FBI no nothing. She was just like, oh, okay, and she left. I mean, I guess to be fair, maybe she was too scared to say anything,

but you don't have to give your name to report a crime. And imagine the shape Mark Schiller must have been in by that time. He'd been Danny and Company's prisoner for a month. They'd barely fed him. He hadn't been allowed a bath or a shower. He was covered in his own blood. You'd think a practicing Buddhist would have a problem with all that. We're like, you know, a practicing human being.

Your faith in humanity is inspiring and adorable. I know. It's like, humanity, I wish I could quit you. But I just, I don't know, I have hope. Anyway, after that last money transfer went through Batman and Robin, aka Danny and his right-hand idiot Adrian Dorval, made their decision. Mark Schiller had to die. And they wouldn't budge on it, no matter how much Weeks and cousin Pierre tried to argue them around.

Their plan was to force Schiller to drink enough booze to get him blackout drunk, then put him behind the wheel of his own car and let him go. He'd crash. The cops would think he'd just been drinking and driving, and their scheme would be done and dusted. Lugo hoped everybody would think this hot new girlfriend they'd invented for him and made him tell his business colleagues about had dumped him and run off with his money, and he was despondent and drunk.

So, on December 10th, they showed up at the warehouse with a bag full of booze, tequila, collua, vodka, and forced it all down Schiller's throat. which was awful for him. He kept gagging and feeling like he was going to throw up, but if he refused to swallow the stuff, he knew they'd beat him up until he complied, so he drank it. Weeks tried to convince him they were doing this so they could drop him off with their shady contact at the Miami airport

and get him on a plane to Columbia, and he wouldn't be able to ID the guy later, but Schiller knew it was a lie. I can't even imagine the complete despair he must have been in by this point. I don't think anybody can unless you've been through something like this. they put him through this alcoholic torture for almost four days now why they felt like they needed him to down four days worth of vodka for this plan to work i don't understand but that's what they did again we're not dealing with menza this time campers as one of our patrons emailed us it's densa i was so pissed i didn't come up with that on my own it's so good i'm so mad that i didn't think of it i know we texted about like ah ha ha dang it that was so good and in the wee hours of the morning on December 15th, Danny Lugo was ready to pull the trigger on the murder.

He forced Chiller to take a few sleeping pills on top of all that booze, and Schiller was so hammered and sedated, he just fell down in a heap on the floor. The last thing he remembered before he completely blacked out was Danny Lugo laughing at him. Which is probably good, because the next thing that happened was, Danny undid his binds, picked him up and threw him against the wall, I don't know, just for shits and giggles, I guess. And then they put him in his car. And as doorball and weeks followed in another car, Lugo drove Schiller to a spot a few blocks away from his Schlotsky's deli. They dragged Schiller into the driver's seat then, and from the passenger seat, Lugo steered the car right into the path of a telephone pole. And just as they were about to

slam into it, Danny Lugo threw himself out of the car. The car hit the pole pretty hard, but when they ran over to check on Schiller, he was still breathing. Unconscious, but alive. So, okay, no problem. Danny had a plan for this. He'd put a little propane tank in the trunk of Schiller's car and had doorable in weeks bring a gas can. And now he took it and poured gasoline all over the unconscious Schiller and his car. And as casually as he might light a cigarette, flicked open a nice lighter he'd stolen from Schiller and whoosh, the car went up in flames. They figured Schiller's car would explode in a few minutes with him still inside it, and that would be that. But just as they were driving away from the scene in Weeks' car, Danny yelled for them to stop.

They couldn't believe what they were seeing. Schiller was crawling out of the car, still alive. Danny and Adrian Dorble found this hilarious. Danny kept wheezing. Get him, get him, laughing himself silly as Weeks tried to hit him with the car. Just let the hate wash over, you campers, these dumb motherfuckers. But he couldn't seem to do it, probably because Schiller was staggering around, still drunk and doped up. But after a couple minutes, he finally managed to slam into him, Schiller rolling across the hood of the car and collapsing on the pavement. Weeks started to drive off, but Twatman and Robin wanted to make sure they killed him. Run over him, Danny ordered, and Weeks did as he was told. And then, just as Danny was demanding

he turned around and run Schiller over again, they spotted a car heading toward them. Time to bounce. And it was fine. Schiller was lying motionless on the ground. not far from his car, which by now is pretty much just a giant ball of fire. It's orange glow dancing across the dark sheen of blood on the pavement. When they told Jorge Delgado all about it later that night, by the way, he was pissed. You ran him over? For God's sake, how is that going to look like a drunk driving accident? And are you sure he's even dead?

Delgado hadn't been a fan of that plan from the get-go. He felt like they should have just strangled Schiller and dumped him in his car somewhere out in the swamp. But of course, Batman Danny Lugo's plan won out. Danny's plan always did. See, he wanted to make sure Schiller's body was found right away so they'd get their life insurance money toot sweet. Despite apparently smelling like a burning fucking gas station with a month's worth of injuries on him. I know. It's so tough. Insurance companies won't suspect a thing. Nah. But now, Delgado was getting into Danny's head about it. He didn't think it sounded like they'd made sure Schiller was dead. And that made Danny nervous. So the next day, team jackass frantically searched every

newspaper they could find, looking for anything whatsoever about a fire in a crashed car, the driver dead in the street nearby. Seems like the kind of thing that would end up in the paper. But nothing. Goose egg. Bupkiss. Fuck. Shit. So they called the local morgue, but nobody there matched Schiller's name or description. As much as he was, he was, wanted to believe otherwise, it was starting to dawn on Danny Lugo that Mark Schiller might have made it out alive. That could be very, very bad for the Sun Jim boys. Sweating bullets, Danny ordered the gang to start calling hospitals. If they could find the bastard, they could go in, wait till Schiller was unattended, and finish the job. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with that plan?

So, after passing out from sleeping pills and booze, the next thing Mark Schiller remembered with any real clarity was waking up in the intensive care unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital, the best trauma center in Miami at the time. A driver had found him lying in his own blood, not far from his flaming car, and called him an ambulance. When he got to the hospital, he was in a coma. His pelvis was broken. He was burned and bruised on almost every inch of his body, and emaciated from the four weeks of torture and near starvation. And as soon as he regained consciousness, he started telling his story. I was kidnapped and tortured. And infuriatingly, the doctor and nurses kept saying, no, no, you were in a really bad car crash. Schiller tried to argue with

him over and over again. No, I'm telling you, I was kidnapped. I need you to get me a phone. But nobody seemed to want to listen to him. They just kept insisting, no, Mr. Schiller, you were driving drunk and you hit a telephone pole. You almost died. I guess they just figured dudes had some serious trauma. He's doped up on meds. He's just confused. And eventually, bless his heart, Schiller just got so frustrated he gave up trying to convince him. Guys, like something out of a France Kafka story, this poor dude. Usually I'm a huge fan of medical teams and the good work they do,

but what the shit. I know. A dude tells you that he was kidnapped and you treat him with the same condescension that you use when a kid tells you that his imaginary friend eats only cotton candy and sprinkles. Oh, I'm sure you were

kidnapped, Mark. Okay, time for a nap. Time for nappies. Finally, finally, Schiller managed get a nurse to bring him a phone, and the first person he called was his attorney. And at last, somebody started listening to him. Before long, his attorney was relaying his bizarre story to private investigator Ed Dubois, a powerhouse of a PI with 50 years' experience. Half a century, and Dubois still hadn't heard anything as weird as this before.

He went to see Schiller in the hospital, and he was like, dude, get the hell out of here, now, you're totally vulnerable in here, and chances are those idiots are going to come back and try to finish what they started. And of course, that's exactly what the the son Jim Gang was in the process of trying to do. So, with the help of his sister, Schiller literally tore out his IVs very much against medical advice. He was still in critical condition, but if he stayed where he was, he was afraid he'd be dead before the night was over. His doctors were frantic to try and get him to stay, but finally they reached a compromise, and by the next morning, Schiller was on an air ambulance flight

to New York. And not a minute too soon. He left the hospital at around 8 in the morning. By 10, Danny Lugo and Jorge Delgado were prowling the place, looking for Schiller's room, with the hazy idea of smothering him with the pillow when they found him. Their panicky strategy of calling every hospital in town had finally paid off. But fortunately, they were too late. Say it with me now. Ha ha! Suck it, you twat! Safe with his siblings in New York, Mark Schiller was finally able to start to process what had just happened to him and how close he came to being murdered.

When he'd healed up enough to do it, he took a little bit of. a flight to Columbia and was finally able to put his arms around his wife and kids. Now, you might be asking at this point, why didn't he go to the police? Well, initially, according to private investigator Dubois, they didn't feel like they could wait. They felt like there was a real urgency to getting Schiller away from Miami where he'd be safe from the men who wanted him dead, and of course they were right about that. From that point onward, the stories conflict. Mark Schiller claims he did call the police soon after getting the hell out of Florida, but balked at their request to come back to Miami to give a statement out of fear that he was still in danger, which he was, let's remember.

But the authorities say Schiller didn't contact them at all until April of 1995, four months after his escape from Miami. Prosecutor Gail Levine leader told the show 48 hours, Mark Schiller was asked to come and give testimony under oath four times, and he stood up not only the prosecutor, but the police, to give that testimony four times. Judge Alex Ferrer, who would later preside over some of the legal proceedings in this case, later said to 48 hours, what person gets kidnapped, held for a month, and when he finally gets free, leaves the country and doesn't tell the police for four months. I'll tell you, it's somebody who's scared shitless. Well, according to Prosecutor Levine, somebody who has, quote, credibility issues

because of his own alleged crimes, specifically Medicare fraud. This is part of the story we've held off on until now, because to be honest, it doesn't matter a damn in terms of what the son Jim assholes did to him. But according to the Miami authorities, Schiller waited to call the police because he'd been running a Medicare scam of his own. What's the truth? There's no way to know for sure. What we do know is that Schiller did eventually go to the cops about the kidnapping torture

he endured. And to quote, Judge Ferrer again, they just didn't believe him. By this point, months had gone by since Schiller's escape. The BOD squad had blazed through all his money like a bunch of unsurricular. supervised toddlers in a candy store, and they'd left his house, which they'd been living in, by the way. They left it a total wreck. The son Jim gang had taken Mark Schiller for everything he had, but according to private

investigator Du Bois, that Miami PD never even brought the gang in for questioning. I'm sure they couldn't believe their luck. Oh, yeah. When they realized Schiller was still alive and they couldn't get to him, they probably figured they'd be arrested within days. But nope. They were still free and clear, and eagerly strategizing about how to do the same thing again to a brand new target.

And this time, they'd make sure nobody got out alive. For whatever reason, the Miami PD had made a critical mistake, and because of that mistake, a whole new nightmare was about to unfold. Frank Griga got on the gang's radar when Adrian Dorbill started dating one of the exotic dancers at the strip club where they'd spent an obscene amount of Schiller's fortune. The woman used to date Frank, and she had a picture of the two of them standing next to a gorgeous yellow Lamborghini Diablo, a $250,000 car. Good gravy, ooh. A Hungarian immigrant who'd worked his way from the lowest paid employee at a car wash to the king of a phone sex empire, Frank Griga was loaded, a millionaire many times over, and he liked to spend his money.

His sister Susanna told 48 hours, quote, Money was there for him to make other people happy and to play, to buy toys. He was a man with a generous spirit, enjoying having the means to spoil the people he loved, and spoil himself too, after a childhood in poverty. He'd made every dime of it, and he was going to enjoy it. In fact, Dorbill's new girlfriend described Frank as one of the most generous men she'd ever dated. A good guy. somebody she still had a lot of affection for.

All Dourble heard, of course, was blah, blah, blah, blah, Lambo. Lambo. Lambo. He couldn't wait to run and tell Danny. They'd already had one potential target to go bust, a son-jim regular, who the guys knew was a drug dealer. Danny Lugo figured he'd have plenty of cash they could steal.

Plus, the boys were mad at the guy because they'd overheard him making fun of Dorble. calling him stupid Perish the thought So Danny came up with a plan TM He and Jorge Delgado Who I guess by now was a full-fledged member of the crew

Would borrow a UPS truck from a friend And pose as delivery men Then when the guy opened the door They'd push their way in, tase him, tie him up And take him out to the warehouse Second verse, same as the first I guess by now they'd gotten a taste for torture But the plan never came to fruition

The guy they were targeting was always traveling to and from his home country of Jamaica, and they could never seem to pin down a definite time when they'd catch him at home. But now, thanks to his best bro, Adrian Dorbill, Danny had a better target in mind, Frank Griga. And his plan to get him involved a woman named Sabina Petrescu, a former penthouse model in Danny's new main squeeze. Oh, he was still married and all. He just had himself a smoking hot mistress now. Met her at a strip club called Solid Gold, set her up in her own apartment with an home. allowance, and told her he worked for the CIA. It needed but this, didn't it?

The final square on the classic true crime campfire dipshit bingo card. The whole thing started, of course, because Danny was still very much married when he met her. In fact, his wife was pregnant at the time, but Danny told her he was divorced, and soon Sabina started getting suspicious about all the weird hours he kept and why he couldn't stay overnight with her very often. So she gave him an ultimatum. Tell me the truth, or I'm out. And this was the truth he came up with.

He told her he'd been on missions that were straight out of Hollywood. One time he'd had to live in a tree for a week in Hong Kong. Sabina loved James Bond movies, so she ate this shit up. Bless her heart. He even gave her a special pager code, 007, so she'd know it was him when he beeped her. Good God, this is such a 90th case. Sabina was a sweet girl, and as an immigrant from Romania,

she loved her new chosen country, and she felt, well, she felt gosh darn patriotic date in a real-life CIA operative. So when Danny asked her if she could help him serve her country on a mission of utmost importance, Sabina was all over it. Yeah, I think that's legit, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's right here. Bylaw 6, lines 13 through 60, says if a CIA agent needs help real, real bad, Two real bads.

They can ask their civilian partner. Okay, see? So it all checks out. There was this guy, Danny told Sabina, this businessman named Frank Griga. He was a scumbag, Danny said. A tax cheat on an epic scale. Plus, he was using women for sex, especially immigrant women. He was a baddie, and the FBI wanted Danny to bring him in.

And this was the FBI, not the CIA this time, but that little discrepancy didn't seem to bother Sabina. Same diff. Exactly. He told her he and Adrian Dorbal were going to go grab Griga at his spectacular house in Golden Beach. Her job would be to drive Danny's gold Mercedes to the house, wait until she saw Dorble pull a yellow Lamborghini out of the garage,

then back the Mercedes-in. And then Danny and company would load Griga and his girlfriend, bound, gagged, and blindfolded into the trunk. Now, don't worry, he told her it's going to look really scary, but they'll be all right. It's just to keep them compliant. Sabina did have one question. Why did they need to grab Griga's girlfriend, too?

The FBI didn't want her for any crime, did they? Well, no, Danny admitted, but she's the girlfriend. She'd spill the beans about the whole operation if they let her go. But don't worry, he assured her. We're not going to hurt her. Heaven forbid, right? The gang's real plan, of course, was to torture Frank Griga's banking information out of him,

just like they had with Mark Schiller, then kill him. And his girlfriend, Christina, so she couldn't report him missing, and then dump their bodies in the swamp. But Danny didn't let his girlfriend in on that little part of the plan. She thought she was doing her patriotic duty, helping out her adopted country. Poor kid. So Danny and Adrian arranged to meet Frank Griga through Dorbill's girlfriend,

and the rest is pretty much history. They got all gussied up in expensive suits and Mark Schiller's Rolex watches and pitched him a fake business investment opportunity, something about call centers in India. And Griega seemed interested. The plan, as we told you a minute ago, was to grab Frank and Christina at their house. Sabina was waiting out in the car so she could pull Danny's gold Mercedes into the garage and pop the trunk. But after a while, Danny and Dorwell came out

and told her there was a new plan. There's too much heat, too much activity around the neighborhood to grab him tonight. What is with these two fucking activity? I don't. I really don't know. It's just going to be like an empty, like Hollywood lot. No one's going to be around. And part of that is maybe like that's maybe like half of a good thought because you see these like tree trunk sized dudes that are walking around like people are going to see them but also people live there dude what do you mean okay so they'd arrange to take griga and christina out to dinner a few days later to talk it all over the night before danny's girlfriend sabina sat on the couch and watched the boys pack up their gear. Handcuffs, syringes, vials of animal tranquilizer, rope, and of course

guns. The new plan was that after Danny and Dorbel wind and dine the targets at a nice steakhouse for a couple hours, they'd all come back to Sabina's place for cocktails. Her job would be to make nice with Griga's girlfriend Christina and distract her so Danny could lure Griga into another room and quote, take him down. So, okay, Sabina kissed Danny goodbye and told him, him to be careful and said she'd be waiting for them when they were done with dinner. Danny and Doorbell headed over to Frank and Christina's big, beautiful house for a pre-dinner drink and a tour of the place. Now, as you might remember from the beginning of part one, Frank and Christina's friend Judy stopped by the house that night to see if they wanted to go out

to dinner with her and her husband. And she saw Frank and Christina there with two muscle-bound dudes and fancy suits, a guy she didn't know, and one she recognized as Danny Lugo. And you'd think they'd scrap the plan once somebody Danny knew showed up and saw him adorable in the living room, but nope, it was bombs away. They wanted to get their grubby little mitts on all Frank Grigas money. When they got to the steakhouse, they realized the place had closed early that night for some reason. So Danny had to improvise. Why he didn't stick with the original plan and take them all over to Sabina's place, I don't know, other than the fact that Danny never seems to stick with one plan for longer than 15 minutes.

Right. He has the memory of a goldfish on a soap opera. For some reason, they all headed over to Adrian Dorbill's place instead. Danny kept Christina busy showing her the huge TV in the living room, while Dorble took Frank Griega into the other room to talk a little more about the business deal. But within a few minutes, the sounds of a violent struggle sent Christina. rushing into the room with Danny at her heels. This poor girl, she walked in on a horror scene.

Frank was struggling against the much bigger, much stronger Door Bowl. He was covered in blood, and there was spatter all over the ceiling and walls. Christina screamed, and as she watched Adrian Dorball put the love of her life in a chokehole, Danny Lugo covered her mouth with his big gorilla hand. She saw Frank slump to the floor, and then the two killers handcuffed and blindfolded her and bound her ankles together. They put a black hood over her head. And then she felt the sting of a needle

and spiraled down into unconsciousness. This sweet girl, who loved animals and was hoping to go pro as a diver, who just wanted to go out for a nice dinner with the man she loved. This is what they did to her. It's hard to imagine many things worse. Now, as I'm sure y'all remember,

the plan was to knock the two victims out and then take them to the warehouse for the full Mark Schiller treatment. But as we know, we're not dealing with the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, and Doorbell and Kujo were enormous, roided-out monsters who didn't always know their own strength. And it only took him a second to realize that Dorbel had gone too far. Frank Grigo was dead.

Before they could get one single digit of a bank account number out of him, or one single signature on a power of attorney, they'd choked him to death. I imagine this was not a fun moment for our boys, and the amount of angst they must have gone through is the only tiny little sliver of light in this awful, awful story. They lennied up their plan and a man was fucking dead because of greed. The final scene in Fargo is playing on repeat in my head. Yeah, it's very Fargo, actually, except much like hotter and steamier. Miami.

But after a few minutes of weeping and gnashing of teeth, they realized, hey, you know, we might be able to salvage this. We still have the girlfriend. Maybe she'll know the bank account numbers and the alarm code for the house and all that stuff. So they rushed over to where they dropped her, and she was out cold, breathing really laboriously. She did not look good. Dorble tried shaking her to wake her up, but there was no point. She was out like a light. So seems like the big plan had gone rather a skew, and now Lugo and Dorbel had a problem on their hands.

Two problems, actually, one dead, one possibly dying. They stuffed Grieg's body into a couch, which how they accomplished that, I don't know, and poor Christina, still alive at this point, into a big cardboard box. We'll move them tomorrow morning, Danny said. It'll just look like we're moving furniture. Then Danny went home for the night, by which I mean Sabina's place, where she'd finally gone to bed, confused about why he and Dorbill hadn't shown up with the two CIA targets.

She woke up in the middle of the night and found Danny sitting on her couch, his head in his hands, getting drunk, and crying. Pissed off about his plan going tits up, no doubt. But to Sabina, he said, it all went wrong. Dorbal went nuts. he did something crazy. Later, our boy would come to deeply regret bringing Sabina into this mess,

but for now he allowed her to comfort him the way only a gullible mistress with a body like Jane Mansfield can. The next morning, he gave Delgado a ring and filled him in on the shit show of the night before. Delgado rushed over, figuring, hey, we've still got the girl, maybe we can get something out of her.

But when he got there and they started to move her, Christina came too. Remember, the last thing she saw was Adrian Dorball murdering her boyfriend. so she immediately started freaking out, begging to see Frank. Poor, thank God, this is so awful. So Danny, Prince that he is, injected her with another dose of the tranquilizer to calm her down. But it didn't work.

I mean, she was calmer, I guess, but the drug made her loopy, and she just kept kind of mumbling in Hungarian and asking what happened to Frank. When they tried to get the alarm code for Grigga's house out of her, she gave them a number and then went back to asking for Frank. When Danny sped over to Grigua's mansion to try the door code, it turned out to be wrong. He was furious. And he called Dorball and said,

the fucking number's wrong. Get her to give you the right one. Now. So, of course, Dorble, ever the loyal minion, was like, yes, boss, right away, boss. But a few seconds later,

he came back to the phone. Ah, man, Danny, he said, The bitch is cold. Oh, I hate him so much. Charming. Poor Christina Furtain was dead. shot full of enough horse tranquilizer to kill an elephant.

And now they had two bodies on their hands, and not one penny to show for it. Man, I hope she gave him the wrong alarm code on purpose. That would be so satisfying. Just one final, fuck you to these monsters. Oh, and by the way, we said this in part one, but our main source for this episode was Pete Collins' terrific Miami New Times article, pain, and gain. So that's where a lot of these details came from. All right.

So after panicking for a couple days and rejecting a couple body disposal plans, the boys finally realized that Frank Griga's body was beginning to decompose, and they needed to move fast. So while Delgado went out and rented a van at a U-Haul place, Lugo and Dorble took a little trip to Home Depot. This, by the way, was right around the time people were starting to get worried about Frank and Christina. At Home Depot, they bought a shit ton of stuff, trash bags, goggles, gloves, a fire extinguisher, cleaning supplies, road repair stuff, a big powerful fans,

shop towels, a security grate that fits over a window, and a chainsaw. The total damage for all this stuff, $6666.66. Oh, that's fun. Man, if the combination of stuff they were buying didn't tip off the cashier that something fucky was going on, you'd think that would. That Home Depot cashier must have been real bored Not to notice something was up It's like, yes, hi, hello, we'd like to buy two carts worth Of exactly the kind of shit you see on every episode of Forensic Files What kind of project are we doing?

Oh, you know, just stuff. Just stuff. I mean, you're telling me that Clippy, the crime-solving paper clip, didn't pop up on the cash register as he was ringing them up. I see you're ringing up a couple of dipshits who are obviously trying to clean up a crime scene. Do you need help sending their payment info to the fucking cops?

I love Clippy. I love Clippy. He's so helpful. And this is all because of fucking course, they put the stuff on Dorbill's credit card. So, you know, continuing to be the crack team as always. Real A-team shit.

Lord of my mercy. And then they packed the victims in the van. Man, Griga stuffed inside the leather couch that used to belong to Mark Schiller, Christina in a big cardboard box full of cyrofoam peanuts, and then it was back to the warehouse. And from there, things got much darker, as if it wasn't dark enough. They stripped the bodies, douched them with cleaning fluid, and dried them off. And then, after struggling for over an hour to figure out how to put the chainsaw together,

passing around the instructions with their mouth hanging, opening, they finally got it assembled. Except they forgot to put oil in it. So when they started it up, it immediately froze up like a bad car engine and spluttered to a halt. They'd fucked the thing up beyond repair, so Danny, I swear, this is true, packed it up and took it back to Home Depot to exchange it for a better one. But this one didn't work either. Yeah, it didn't work because this is so sad. It kept getting caught up in Christina's hair. She had this beautiful, long, thick, dark hair.

So they finally decided to scrap the chainsaw idea and instead spent hours dismembering their victim's bodies with a much blunter tool, a hatchet, and cutting out their teeth, too, to prevent them from being identified. Jesus. And here's why we're telling you this awful, awful stuff, campers. the Michael Bay movie. Pain and Gain makes these guys look like funny bumblers. And they were. But it also makes them seem almost likable at times. Yeah. And they weren't. They were evil. Stupid, but evil. Anybody who can torture somebody for four weeks and laugh about it who can inject an innocent young woman with animal tranquilizer, who can choke a man to death just to get a hold of his money and then cut him and his girlfriend up with a hatchet, Those people are evil.

Yeah, and their incompetence is funny sometimes because of how arrogant they were. I mean, how could it not be, Danny Lugo, especially? But this shit, not fucking funny. I watched part of that movie, and I couldn't even finish it. I was so appalled at how they were telling this story and then calling it true. They made Schiller and Frank Griega into one character. Okay, they were both just one guy. And they made him seem like a rich prick who kind of deserved it.

Like, he was just presented as like a ridiculous figure. and nothing could be further from the truth. Schiller was a devoted husband and father. Griga was one of the most generous people you'd ever meet. And Christina, literally just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's atrocious. And I think it's a damn shame to present it as anything else. And I know it really bothered Mark Schiller, too, to the point where he actually sued Michael

Bay and Mark Wahlberg. We don't know how the lawsuit turned out, by the way. We tried to find out, but we couldn't. It's possible it's still going on, or maybe there's a gag order or something like that to, you know, because of the settlement requiring that. Right, right. That's pretty common with lawsuits, but I don't know. Anyway, he sued them. Good for him. So after all this bloody work was done, they burned the hands and feet and parts of the skulls in a barrel to try and make sure the finger and toe prints were totally destroyed and anything that might make dental ID

possible. And then they scattered the remains in various places and various containers way out in the Everglades. They still had a lot of cleanup work to do back at Dorball's apartment and the warehouse, of course, but this didn't stop Dorbal from taking a little time out to go marry his girlfriend at the courthouse. She thought he was a CIA operative two, by the way, bless her, and at some point in this mess, actually went to Home Depot to buy some paint to cover up the bloodstains in Dorball's apartment, because she thought she was helping out with a covert op. Good googly-moogly. She also bought cookies, by the way, while she was buying the paint. But, you know, you know, Doorball needed that courthouse wedding. He needed something to cheer him up. About the fact that

they couldn't let him keep Griga's yellow Lamborghini, which is the main thing he was in this for. It was just way too recognizable, so they had to dump it in the swamp. Where, as I'm sure you'll remember from Part 1, an off-duty cop soon found it. And then the detectives working on the missing person's case started on Frank and Christina got wind of it, and heard the name Danny Lugo from the friend who'd seen him at Frank's house on the night of the murder, and yeah. This was not an especially tough case to solve. These numnuts had left evidence all over creation, and they'd involved about a dozen other people in their crime, including Danny Squeeze Sabina, who broke down when investigators brought her in for questioning

and finally convinced her that Danny wasn't a CIA agent. He was just a common killer. Read Pete Collins' three-part article, or his book for that matter, for all the details on how they managed to make the case stick. This is an enormous story, and we'd have had to make it like probably a four-parter to include it all. But suffice it to say, it didn't take detectives long, to amass enough evidence to convince Danny Lugo that it was in his best interest to cooperate. And this is telling. Danny tried to evade capture by haul and ass to Nassau. And when they tracked him down and brought him outside to put him in a squad car, he looked around at all the cop cars in the hotel parking lot and said, is that all for me?

He was getting arrested for double murder, but he couldn't help being impressed with himself. Back in Miami, he led investigators to the oil drums containing the remains of Frank and Christina. in exchange, he thought he hoped anyway for some consideration at sentencing. They had to identify Christina through the serial numbers on her breast implants. In early 1998, Danny Lugo and Adrian Dorable went on trial for murder. The prosecutors had contacted Mark Schiller and asked for his help, so he'd come back to Miami to testify about his own nightmare run-in with the Sun Jim gang. They also offered Lugo's mistress, Sabina, full immunity, to testify against.

the gang, and she took it. The poor thing had literally believed they were CIA agents, and she knew a ton about the murders. The case was enormous, with 100 witnesses testifying. It went on for two and a half months, and Mark Schiller was center stage. By now, the Miami PD were realizing the gravity of the fuck-up they'd made and not taking this case seriously. And as infuriating as it was, for Schiller, it was really vindicating to get up on the stand and tell his story. As for the defense, well, their goal was mainly just to spare their clients the death penalty. There was such a mountain of evidence against these twat bags that there was nothing else they could do. They didn't even try to put on a case. It was all about the penalty

phase. And of course, Lugo and Dorbel were both convicted. And despite the defense's efforts, they were sentenced to death. Judge Alex Ferrer told 48 hours he'll never forget that sentencing. Lugo was feeling it, getting a little teary-eyed as he listened to the sentence. But Dorable was acting like he was at a Christmas party. To quote Judge Ferrer, he was joking. He was turning around to his girlfriend and making faces like a goofball. For Frank's sister, Susanna, it wasn't what you'd called justice. I mean, she was glad they were going away, but it wasn't going to bring her brother back? Mark Schiller was disappointed. He was glad they got convicted, of course, but he'd rather see them serve life without parole. Yeah, agreed. Prison sucks.

Mm-hmm. And he was about to be disappointed again. As he left the courtroom after the sentencing, Schiller found himself in federal custody. The FBI arrested him on charges of Medicare fraud. Was he guilty of it? We don't know. I think there's an argument to be that this may have been a way for the government to save face for refusing to take his kidnapping and torture case seriously. Yeah, I could not agree more with that. I think it's highly suspicious because you know we've seen people get out of trouble for stuff way more serious than Medicare fraud in exchange for helping put murderers away. And even if he did it, honestly, look, fraud is scummy and gross and shame on him. But this man went through literal hell on earth.

And then he had the courage to get up on that witness stand and face the monsters who did it to him. And this is the thanks he gets, seriously? It's bullshit, if you asked me. They should have called it even. Yeah, his private investigator agrees. He called the arrest a sham and said Schiller was innocent. And this may surprise you, actually. Judge Alex Ferrer thought so, too.

He tried to stand up for him. And the grossest thing about this, that the prosecutors in this Medicare fraud case actually used Jorge Delgado to help make their case. Fucking Jorge Delgado. like one of the ones who was responsible for the kidnapping and torture in the first place. It's just unbelievable. It's like, man, file this one under Chapter 1 of prosecutors behaving badly. Ugh.

Schiller ended up taking a plea deal, serving two years, two years in prison, and paying over $100,000 in restitution. This man lost everything he had to the Sun Jim Gang, and of course, he didn't see a penny from that stupid movie about the case. He told 48 hours, it's a comment. which is unfortunate, because there was nothing funny about what happened to me, he said. These were inept, incompetent people, but they were at the same time malicious and cold-blooded murderers. Damn right. Now, in case you were worried, the rest of the gang got nailed too.

Delgado ended up sentenced to 15 years. John Meese, the owner of son Jim, was offered a plea deal for his role in the caper, nine years, but he turned it down and boy did he regret it. Now, we haven't shared anything about Meese's role in the whole thing? Because again, we were pressed for time. The story is enormous. Like, there's whole people we haven't been able to mention. Yeah. But he, um, he ended up convicted on charges of money laundering, forgery, and fraudulent notary. So suffice it to say, he was ended up to his neck as a co-conspirator. He was sentenced after Jay turning that plea deal down to 56 years in prison and died of a stroke in 2004. Now, you can read more about all of this in Pete Collins article, and I highly suggest you do,

because there's really interesting stuff we had to leave out. Weeks and his cousin Pierre, remember them, Sparrow and Napoleon? They were sentenced to 10 years each for their role in the Schiller kidnapping and torture, which in my opinion is not enough. And a hodgepodge of other small-time assholes got short sentences for all the little things they did to aid in a bet, like the dude who drove Griega's car out into the swamp and dumped it there, stuff like that. Our guys were not subtle about the number of people they involved in their crimes.

Basically, if you were a gym rat in Miami in the mid-90s and you had to, even the slightest hint of skis about you, you got invited to help with at least some of this shit. Mark Schiller eventually wrote a memoir about what he went through. It's called Pain and Gain, the Untold True Story. Go buy it. He deserves to be heard. Frank Grigga's sister and mom inherited his millions and had been trying ever since to honor

his memory. As for Danny Lugo and Adrian Dorball, head goon in charge and his waterheaded right-hand man, air quotes, they're still in prison and still appealing their convictions. They've been unsuccessful so far, as unsuccessful as they were in pretty much everything they tried to do in their lives. Let's hope that street continues. So that was a wild one, right campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire.

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