So there is this movie coming out later this month, right? It's directed by Michael Bay and stars Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and Anthony Mackie as a trio of bodybuilding extortionists who stumble and bumble their way to another man's riches by torturing him and then running over him with a car to finish him off. The hella rich dude is played by
Monk star Tony Shalhoub.
It's called
Pain & Gain, it was shot in the Magic City, and it's all based on a series of
Miami New Times cover stories published between December 1999 and January 2000. Bay read the 30,000-word, three-part yarn, also titled "Pain & Gain," and fell in love with it. Written by Miami crime reporter Pete Collins, it told the gruesome tale of the Sun Gym Gang, a crew of bodybuilding, money-hungry sociopaths who viciously tortured and almost killed their first victim and then brutally murdered a Hungarian couple and dismembered their bodies.
This week's
Miami New Times cover story finds out what happened to the Sun Gym Gang and individuals who were part of the case against the crew's members. We also combed through our archival photos from the original story to put together this dummy's guide to the real-life story of mayhem.
See also:- Pain & Gain: Where the Real-Life Sun Gym Gang Characters Are Now- Pain & Gain: From New Times Story to Michael Bay Film
Meet Daniel Lugo, the Sun Gym Gang's mastermind (portrayed in the movie by Mark Wahlberg). In 1994, the New York City native was working as a personal trainer at the Sun Gym in Miami Lakes. There, he recruited accomplices in a diabolical scheme to steal every asset owned by Marc Schiller, an Argentine-born businessman who employed one of Lugo's buddies. After multiple failed attempts to kidnap their mark, Lugo and his crew finally succeeded in abducting Schiller in November 1994. They took him to a warehouse where they beat, pistol whipped, burned, and Tasered Schiller into signing over all his belongings from his $300,000 house on Old Cutler Road to his $1.4 million offshore bank account. Lugo is currently on death row for the murders of the Sun Gym Gang's second and third victims, Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton.
Adrian Noel Doorbal was Lugo's sycophantic right-hand man. A musclebound native of Trinidad, he worked with Lugo at Sun Gym. Like Lugo, Doorbal -- whose played in the movie by Anthony Mackie -- had a thing for exotic cars and exotic dancers. But he took a lot of steroids and had trouble keeping it up in bed. When it came to doing the Sun Gym's dirtiest deeds, Doorball stepped up to the plate. He relished singing the skin off Schiller's arms with a butane lighter during the month the Sun Gym gang held the Argentine captive. He's the one who convinced Lugo to go after Griga, a Hungarian living in Golden Beach who made a fortune operating phone sex lines. Doorbal killed Griga by bashing in his skull, choking him. and pumping him full of horse tranquilizer. He also finished off Griga's girlfriend. When it came time to dispose off the bodies, Doorbal accepted the grisly assignment of chopping off the couples' heads, hands, and feet with a chainsaw and a hatchet.
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