Illustration by Anthony Ventura
The next morning at the Dade County Medical Examiner's Office, the metal drums were opened and the torsos extracted from the tar-and-acid mixture. But the hands, feet, and heads of Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton were missing. Detectives were not amused by Lugo's semantics. In their negotiations he had never mentioned the significant facts about the amputations, which denied police positive identification of the victims, short of DNA testing. The prisoner declined to cooperate further.
During the autopsy of the female torso, however, medical examiners discovered breast implants. They recorded manufacturer's information from them and were able to trace the implants to the doctor who'd performed Krisztina's breast-augmentation surgery. (It would be the first time in Dade County that primary identification of a murder victim was developed through breast implants.) It took another month, though, for information to surface about the missing body parts. On July 7 an anonymous male caller said the victims' hands, feet, and heads had been put into buckets, sprinkled with acid, and placed alongside Alligator Alley between the Sawgrass Expressway and the Seminole Indian Reservation. The caller also claimed to know who had transported them there: Adrian Doorbal and a Dade County corrections officer.
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Lugo led police to the barrels ...
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During the summer and fall of 1995, police made more arrests. Carl Weekes and Stevenson Pierre, who'd participated in the Schiller abduction, were hauled in. Sun Gym owner John Mese, who'd been released after his initial interrogation, now found himself in police custody. So did Lugo's mistress, Sabina Petrescu. Cindy Eldridge faced charges, too.
The cops went after minor players as well: "Little Mario" Gray, who'd helped dump the barrels in the channel. A Sun Gym member who'd altered the VIN number on Diana Schiller's BMW. A former trainer at the gym who'd been paid to be an "intimidator" during the Schiller kidnapping. These individuals quickly cooperated with prosecutors and received relatively light sentences. Gray hadn't known what was in the barrels, after all, and was an unwitting accessory after the fact. He received a year's probation. Illegal alteration of the VIN number merited the same. The "intimidator" pleaded guilty to armed kidnapping and received a two-year sentence. For her cooperation Sabina, who no longer had any illusions about her lover's CIA employment, faced just one charge: theft of a motor vehicle. Moving up the food chain, prosecutors also struck deals with Weekes and Pierre, who told all they knew about the Schiller affair and were let off with ten-year sentences.
On March 27, 1996, a Dade County grand jury returned a 46-count indictment against the leaders of the Sun Gym gang for conspiracy to commit the murders of Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton, and the kidnapping, extortion, and attempted murder of Schiller. "It was all planned, organized, deadly, and mean," said State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle after the indictment became public. The indictment also included RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) charges. The Schiller kidnapping-attempted murder and the double murder were deemed part of a continuing criminal enterprise: "The defendants did the same thing to Schiller as they did to the couple -- except he lived," explained Rundle. "We will use [RICO] to show a pattern of violence conducted by the defendants, who collectively had become a criminal enterprise that targeted unsuspecting wealthy victims."
That day corrections officer and disposal "expert" John Raimondo was placed under arrest. Police suspected it was he who'd taken Griga's Lamborghini out to its final resting place in the Everglades. He later pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Jorge Delgado was the first of the major defendants to crack. He gave a confession to Assistant State Attorney Gail Levine and, in turn, received just fifteen years for the Schiller crimes, and a concurrent five-year sentence for his role in the Griga-Furton case. It was a sweetheart deal for the state's star witness. Prosecutors were unable to link him to the plot and violence against Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton, only to accessory activities after the fact. But he could testify about what had happened to the couple in Doorbal's townhouse and at the warehouse.
Cindy Eldridge, whose honeymoon had come to such an abrupt end, was the last defendant to enter the prosecutorial fold. She'd been charged as an accessory after the fact for her removal of the bloodstains from her husband's townhouse wall. By November 1997, Doorbal had become romantically involved with a secretary who worked in his lawyer's office, even though he was incarcerated. Cindy filed for divorce. The four-day marriage to Doorbal had never been consummated, she said. Worse, she now realized it had been a complete farce, with the sole purpose of inhibiting her from being able to testify against him. She pleaded guilty to criminal mischief, a misdemeanor, and agreed to reveal all she'd seen and heard.
By now the state had whittled the case down to four defendants: Lugo, Doorbal, Mese, and Raimondo. Because the jail guard wasn't involved in the RICO sequence of crimes, he was severed from the main case.
Jury selection for the trial of Lugo, Doorbal, and Mese began in late January 1998. Two juries eventually were picked, one to listen to the case against Lugo, the second to hear the evidence against Doorbal and Mese. Both trials would take place simultaneously and in the same courtroom before the two juries. It was a complicated situation, Judge Alex Ferrer explained. Lugo and Doorbal had made separate statements at the time of their arrests that implicated both men. But their admissibility was an issue; Lugo's jury might have to leave the room at certain points. Likewise with Doorbal's.
