The trial began on February 24, 1998, and for nearly ten weeks the prosecution laid out its case. It was the longest, most expensive criminal trial in Dade County history, and featured more than 1200 pieces of physical evidence and 98 witnesses, including Marc Schiller, who'd been flown up numerous times to help in preparations. His courtroom testimony was crucial. When the prosecution rested, Lugo's and Doorbal's attorneys chose not to present a defense. John Mese's public defender called just one witness. None of the defendants took the stand.
On May 4 of that year, Lugo's jury convicted him of the two murders, as well as sixteen other charges, including racketeering, kidnapping, attempted extortion, theft, attempted murder, armed robbery, burglary, money laundering, and forgery. Doorbal also was found guilty of the two murders, plus thirteen additional charges. On June 1 Doorbal's jury deliberated just fourteen minutes before recommending death. A week later Lugo's panel voted for the death penalty, too. It took them all of eighteen minutes to decide.
... but he mentioned nothing about missing appendages
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John Mese was convicted on 39 felony counts, including two counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder, racketeering, and multiple counts of money laundering, fraudulent notary, and forgery. On the eve of the trial, the prosecution had offered him a plea bargain: nine years in state prison (he'd already served two and a half years in the county jail since his arrest). Mese rejected the deal and on July 21, Judge Ferrer, who overturned the racketeering and murder convictions citing insufficient evidence, sentenced the accountant to 56 years.
When the juries' death-penalty votes came in, prosecutor Gail Levine invited Schiller back to Miami for the final round of arguments before Judge Ferrer, whose duty it would be to make a final determination on the recommendations. Schiller's own attorney advised him that the trip was unnecessary; he'd flown to Miami nearly a dozen times already since June 1995. He'd met with police and prosecutors, provided depositions, sat in on hearings, and offered his testimony at trial. The death sentence was as good as delivered. But Schiller looked at his roundtrip ticket and saw the final step in his long journey of betrayal, humiliation, pain, and survival. He was going to put Lugo and Doorbal on death row.
The death-penalty hearing took place July 8. First on Judge Ferrer's docket was a petition by Adrian Doorbal to marry the secretary he'd been seeing throughout his incarceration. Denied. Doorbal still had $700,000 of Schiller's money in a Smith Barney account, and the judge didn't want any marital claims to impede the transfer of funds.
And at long last it was Schiller's time to stand before his kidnappers, who sat shackled and handcuffed. He spoke eloquently and in agonizing detail of the weeks he'd spent in captivity, handcuffed and blindfolded. He spoke of his family's suffering, and the scars he still held. The kidnapping and torture had ruined him in every way imaginable. He could no longer visit clients. He could no longer trust a soul in this world. His wife, a frail woman to begin with, was now in failing health, a mere 84 pounds. How could human beings commit such heinous crimes? He would never understand, but he knew one thing: Neither man -- not Jorge Delgado either -- deserved to live in society again.
Schiller finished his statement and said quiet farewells to his attorney and the prosecutors with whom he'd worked for the past three years. With one quick glance back at the defendants, he walked out of the courtroom. A victim, a survivor, he had done his duty.
Outside again in the sultry air, Schiller paused on the courthouse steps. In that brief instant he heard the voices. Men were shouting. Commanding him to stop! Puzzled he turned just as they closed in around him. The old panic surged. And for the second time in his life, Schiller was grabbed and taken away.
The news broke over Miami later that day: Marc Schiller was a wanted man. He'd been a target all along, ever since the arrest of the Sun Gym gang, but the feds had patiently waited until he'd done his business in the courthouse, two birds with one stone, as the saying went.
FBI agents arrested Schiller on charges of orchestrating a fraudulent Medicare billing scheme that generated somewhere around $14 million. He now faced up to 25 years in prison, ten years more than his nemesis Delgado had received for kidnapping and murder.
Yet Schiller's thoughts were not with Delgado in the blurred hours that followed. He was thinking about Assistant State Attorney Gail Levine, and all he could think was that she had sold him out. For three years she had used him, forced him to relive every excruciating detail of his confinement: the starvation, the burns and electric shocks, the beatings, the abject terror, the absolute physical and psychological mortification. She had extracted everything she could, and then she had disposed of him. From his perspective her tactics were not so different or any less brutal than those the Sun Gym gang had employed against him. His attorney had been right. He shouldn't have returned to Miami. The death sentences came in, just as predicted. Schiller got the news while he sat in jail.
