Later that night in the townhouse, Cindy couldn't sleep. She was haunted by the bloodstains and by the violence that had transpired in her new home. Lying beside her, Doorbal slept like a baby.
The next morning at 7:00, Metro-Dade police gathered in a park next to the Miami Lakes police station. The 75 officers included homicide squads, SWAT teams, and hostage negotiators. They were ready to serve search warrants at the homes of Daniel Lugo, Jorge Delgado, and Adrian Doorbal. John Mese, the accountant who owned Sun Gym, was on the list as well. He'd witnessed Marc Schiller's coerced signatures on the transfers of his house and business properties, and the two-million-dollar life-insurance policy that would have gone to Lugo's ex-wife. Ed Du Bois had turned over incriminating documents he'd found in Mese's office, documents that linked Mese financially with the Sun Gym gang's new holdings. That morning Mese was in downtown Miami; his National Physique Committee's Florida Men's State Championship competition was scheduled to take place at the Knight Center.
The Sun Gym brain trust enters eternal infamy: Delgado
Doorbal
Details
Related Content
More About
The house warrants were all served at 8:30. Jorge Delgado and his wife, Linda, who had worked as Schiller's secretary when he first offered her husband a job, laughed aloud as the arrest warrant was read to them. Marc Schiller? His old partner, who'd stolen 200 grand from him in the first place? The Delgados couldn't believe the police were taking his accusations seriously. But under interrogation at police headquarters, Delgado began to talk. Yes, he'd hired Lugo to collect the money Schiller owed him, "but Lugo got carried away." When his lawyer showed up, Delgado declined to speak further.
Cindy awoke that Saturday prepared to end her honeymoon. She had no idea that within minutes it would come screeching to a halt anyway. She was still in her nightgown and sipping coffee when the knock came, and she opened the door to a throng of officers. They moved quickly inside, read her the warrant, then waited at the foot of the stairs as she called for her husband. Adrian Doorbal walked to the landing, his magnificent physique on display. He went to police headquarters voluntarily. Just some questions, he assured his bride.
As he was being driven downtown, officers searched the townhouse for evidence. The items they collected -- furniture, jewelry, electronics, computer equipment and software, bric-a-brac, even subscription magazines -- had come from the Schiller house. One find seemed particularly odd, given his own recent nuptials: Doorbal had kept a photo album of Marc and Diana Schiller on their honeymoon.
At his interrogation Doorbal admitted his participation in the Schiller abduction, then stopped talking. His last comment to detectives: "I'll never see daylight again."
Over at the Knight Center, the contestants already were flexing their oiled muscles onstage. John Mese quietly left the auditorium under police escort and also was taken in for questioning.
No one was home at Sabina's place across the street from Doorbal's. Metro-Dade officers discovered that Lugo already had fled to the Bahamas with Sabina and his parents. But Sabina had left Diana Schiller's BMW in the apartment's assigned parking space. Five days later a multiagency task force flew to the Bahamas. They found Lugo at the Hotel Montague in Nassau and brought him back in handcuffs to Miami on a commercial flight. As the plane rolled to a stop at MIA, Lugo gazed out the window and saw the row of squad cars, police lights flashing, arrayed on the tarmac.
"Is that all for me?" he asked.
"I told you, Lugo," said the detective who sat beside him, "you're in a little bit of trouble in Miami."
Adrian Doorbal sat in his jail cell along with 50 other high-risk inmates and watched Daniel Lugo on television news as he was led, handcuffed, through Metro-Dade police headquarters. The reporter announced that Lugo was prepared to take police to the bodies of Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton. "You motherfucker!" he growled to Lugo's image on the screen. "You're the one who started this shit!" If Lugo had kept his mouth shut, he maintained, they could have pulled off the perfect crime.
As the lurid tale played out in the local media, Ed Du Bois became a mere spectator to the grisly findings. He felt some relief that Lugo, Delgado, and Doorbal were in custody, but the institutional cynicism that thwarted a true investigation into Schiller's kidnapping filled him with ire. Why did Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton have to pay such a terrible price? Why hadn't the police taken him seriously? "How does it feel," he scornfully quizzed one investigator, "to have blood on your hands?"
During the evening of June 10, Lugo's second night in jail, his attorney contacted Sergeant Jimenez at the homicide bureau. Lugo was prepared to reveal the hiding place of the bodies if the police would mention his helpfulness to a jury during any potential criminal proceedings. An agreement was drawn up and signed by Lugo, his lawyers, the police, and the State Attorney's Office. It was after midnight when the prisoner took the detectives to southwest Miami and the drainage ditch, where they found three submerged 55-gallon barrels.