Tobia Handke uncovers the true story behind director Michael Bay’s latest film Pain and Gain.
If Michael Bay’s latest celluloid extravaganza weren’t based on true events, it would be laugh-out-loud funny. Pain and Gain stars Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the two members of Miami’s Sun Gym Gang, an odd assortment of steroid-abusing, stripper-loving gym junkies whose shocking crimes included kidnapping, extortion, and murder.
The mastermind of the gang was Sun Gym manager Daniel Lugo, a fast-talking ex-con obsessed with wealth. He planned to kidnap local businessman Marc Schiller and force him to sign over everything he owned, but he needed help, enlisting best friend and fellow gym rat Adrian Doorbal, New Yorker Carl Weekes and a number of other associates.
While Lugo was smart, his application wasn’t, and the gang’s incompetence led to numerous failed kidnappings. One time they disguised themselves as ninjas and tried grabbing Schiller, only for their car to stall. Another time, they hid under blankets on his front lawn waiting for him to emerge, but were spooked by oncoming traffic and fled the scene.
When they finally captured Schiller on November 15, 1994, he was blindfolded and bound to a chair in a deserted warehouse. There, he was tortured for almost a month, regularly beaten and tasered, before finally giving up and signing over $1.26 million in cash and assets.
With Schiller no longer needed, they plied him with booze and pills for three days, placed him in his RV and staged a car accident, before setting it on fire. But they forgot to strap Schiller in. The fumes roused Schiller and he escaped the burning vehicle, forcing Weekes to chase him down and run him over not once, but twice, before driving off.
Miraculously, Schiller survived and was taken to hospital, where he asked staff for the phone to call the police to tell them of his kidnapping, but nobody believed his story, thinking he had crashed drink-driving. After a couple of days, he managed to contact local private detective Ed Du Bois who advised him to flee, and did so, eventually reuniting with his family in Colombia, a mere two hours before the Sun Gym Gang found out he was alive and arrived at the hospital to “finish the job”.
By this time, the gang had moved into Schiller’s house, which they now owned, and used his money to fuel their hedonistic lifestyle. Lugo hooked up with Penthouse Pet Sabina Petrescu, convincing her and his fellow neighbours the gang were government agents to cover their nefarious activities.
Meanwhile, Schiller and Du Bois tried to get the FBI involved, but nobody would believe their story, and as Schiller’s fortune drained away, it also left the Sun Gym Gang to focus on their next target: phone-sex-line millionaire Frank Griga and his girlfriend, Krisztina Furton.
Posing as a businessman, Lugo invited the couple to Doorbal’s apartment to discuss an investment opportunity. He subdued Furton with a horse tranquilizer while Doorbal and Griga got into a fistfight, resulting in Griga’s accidental death. They interrogated Furton for the couple’s security code, but she gave them the wrong number and soon died, leaving the pair with nothing.
Their plan in disarray, Lugo and Doorbal needed to dispose of the bodies. They purchased a chainsaw to dismember the bodies, but the chainsaw seized in Furton’s hair, so they did what any good crims would do – they returned to the store to exchange it for another one. After cutting the bodies into pieces, they placed them in metal drums – one containing torsos and limbs, the other containing heads, hands and feet – and dumped near the Everglades.
Investigating the missing couple, police quickly discovered multiple witnesses and links to the Schiller kidnapping. Arrest warrants were issued and a virtual treasure trove of evidence was found at Petrescu’s apartment, including the bloody clothing of Griga, handcuffs, tasers and more. Doorbal was taken into custody soon after while Lugo had seemingly disappeared, finally tracked down in the Bahamas, thanks to testimony from his girlfriend Petrescu.
It took almost three years for the case to go to trail, with hundreds of witnesses and thousands of pieces of evidence used in the 1o-week trail. With Schiller and Petrescu as the main witnesses, the jury took only a few hours to find both Lugo and Doorbal guilty, the two sentenced to death on June 2, 1998. Five other members of the Sun Gym gang received prison sentences for their involvement.
Pain and Gain is in Australian cinemas on August 8.
