Serial Killers Joe Ball The Butcher Of Elmendorf Documentary
Joseph D. (Joe) Ball (January 7, 1896[2] – September 24, 1938)[1] was an American serial killer, sometimes referred to as "The Alligator Man",[3] the "Butcher of Elmendorf"[4] and the "Bluebeard[3] of South Texas". He is known to have killed two and is said to have killed as many as 20 women in the 1930s. His existence was long believed to be apocryphal, but he is a familiar figure in Texas folklore.
Background[edit]
After serving on the front lines in Europe during World War I, Ball started his career as a bootlegger, providing illegal liquor to those who could pay. After the end of Prohibition, he opened a saloon called the Sociable Inn in Elmendorf, Texas. He built a pond that contained six alligators because he misunderstood the term corpus delicti, believing that a murder conviction without a body would be impossible.[citation needed] He charged people to view them, especially during feeding time; the food consisted mostly of live cats and dogs.[4]
Murders[edit]
After a while, women in the area were reported missing, including barmaids, former girlfriends and his wife. When two Bexar County sheriff's deputies went to question him in 1938, Ball pulled a handgun from his cash register and killed himself[3] with a bullet through the heart (some sources report that he shot himself in the head).
A handyman who conspired with Ball, Clifford Wheeler, admitted to helping Ball dispose of the bodies of two of the women he had killed.[3] Wheeler led them to the remains of Hazel Brown and Minnie Gotthard. Wheeler told authorities that Ball murdered at least 20 other women, but the alligators had disposed of any evidence. There has never been any concrete evidence that the alligators actually ate any of his victims.
There were few written sources from the era which could verify Ball's crimes. Newspaper editor Michael Hall investigated the story in depth in 2002, and wrote on his findings for Texas Monthly.[4]
Serial Killers Johann Unterweger The Vienna Strangler Documentary
Johann "Jack" Unterweger(16 August 1950 – 29 June 1994) was an Austrian serial killer who murdered prostitutes in several countries. First convicted of a 1974 murder, he was released in 1990 as an example of rehabilitation. He became a journalist and minor celebrity, but within months started killing again. He committed suicide following a conviction for several murders. Austrian psychiatrist Dr. Reinhard Haller diagnosed him with narcissistic personality disorder in 1994.[1]
Early life[edit]
Unterweger was born in 1950 to Theresia Unterweger, a Viennese barmaid and waitress, and an unknown American soldier whom she met in Trieste.[2] Some sources describe his mother as a prostitute.[3] His mother was jailed for fraud while pregnant but was released and travelled to Graz where he was born. In 1953, his mother was again arrested and he was sent to Carinthia in southern Austria to live with his grandfather, whom he described as a violent alcoholic.[citation needed]
He was in and out of prison during his youth for petty crimes, and for assaulting a local prostitute. Between 1966 and 1975 he was convicted 16 times, mostly for sexual assault and spent most of those nine years in jail.[4] In 1974, Unterweger murdered 18-year-old German Margaret Schäfer by strangling her with her own bra, and in 1976 was arrested and sentenced to life in prison with no parole option for 15 years. While in prison, Unterweger became an author of short stories, poems, plays, and an autobiography, Fegefeuer oder die Reise ins Zuchthaus (Purgatory or the trip to prison), which was adapted into a motion picture.
In 1985, a campaign to pardon and release Unterweger from prison was undertaken. President Rudolf Kirchschläger refused the petition when presented to him, stating that Unterweger must spend the court-mandated minimum of 15 years in prison.[2] The campaign gathered momentum among the Viennese cafe intellectuals,[5] Vienna’s radical-chic set, writers, artists, journalists and politicians who agitated for a pardon,[6] including the author and 2004 Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, Günter Grass,[5] Peter Huemer[7] and the editor of the magazine Manuskripte, Alfred Kolleritsch.[6] He was released on 23 May 1990, after the required minimum 15 years of his life term. Upon his release, Unterweger's autobiography Fegefeuer oder die Reise ins Zuchthaus was taught in schools and his stories for children were performed on the radio. Unterweger himself hosted television programs which discussed criminal rehabilitation, and he reported as a journalist for the state broadcaster ORF (Austria's equivalent of the BBC), including reporting stories concerning the very murders for which he was later found guilty.[5][6]
Murders[edit]
Law enforcement later found that Unterweger killed prostitute in Czechoslovakia[8] and six more in Austria in 1990, the first year after his release. In 1991, Unterweger was hired by an Austrian magazine to write about crime in Los Angeles, California, and the differences between U.S. and European attitudes to prostitution. Unterweger met with local police, even going so far as to participate in a ride-along of the city's red light districts. During Unterweger's time in Los Angeles, three prostitutes — Shannon Exley, Irene Rodriguez, and Sherri Ann Long — were beaten, sexually assaulted with tree branches, and strangled with their own brassieres.
In Austria, Unterweger was suggested as a suspect for the prostitute murders. In the absence of other suspects, the police took a serious look at Unterweger and kept him under surveillance until he went to the U.S. — ostensibly as a reporter — observing nothing to connect him with the murders.
Arrest[edit]
Law enforcement eventually had enough evidence for his arrest, but Unterweger was gone by the time they entered his home. After law enforcement chased him through Europe, Canada and the U.S., he was finally arrested by the FBI in Miami, Florida, on 27 February 1992. While a fugitive, he had called the Austrian media to try to convince them of his innocence. Back in Austria, Unterweger was charged with 11 homicides, one of which had occurred in Prague.
That night, he committed suicide at Graz-Karlau Prison by hanging himself with a rope made from shoelaces and a cord from the trousers of a track suit.[9] He is reported to have used an intricate knot identical to that used on the murdered prostitutes. Because he died before he could appeal the verdict, under a technicality of Austrian law, Unterweger is officially to be considered as innocent, despite the original guilty verdict; Unterweger's case was one of those considered in a review of this Austrian legal principle.
Dramatizations[edit]
In a 2008 performance, actor John Malkovich portrayed Unterweger's life in a performance for one actor, two sopranos, and period orchestra entitled Seduction and Despair, which premiered at Barnum Hall in Santa Monica, CA.[10] A fully staged version of the production, entitled The Infernal Comedy premiered in Vienna in July 2009. The show has since been performed throughout Europe, North America and South America.[11] In 2015 Elisabeth Scharang directed a film called Jack about Unterweger.[12]
Television[edit]
The story of the police investigation, pursuit and prosecution of Unterweger is the subject of an episode of The FBI Files entitled "Killer Abroad" (Season 2, Episode 14). He is also the subject of an episode of Biography entitled "Poet of Death."
Allan Legere (born February 13, 1948) is a Canadian serial killer and arsonist, also known as the Monster of the Miramichi, in reference to a reign of terror he inflicted upon residents of the Miramichi River valley of New Brunswick in 1989.
Legere was convicted in the murder of shopkeeper John Glendenning, of Black River Bridge, New Brunswick, which occurred on the evening of June 21, 1986.[1] After cutting the power, Legere and his accomplices Todd Matchett and Scott Curtis, broke into the elderly couple's store. After repeatedly beating John and his wife Mary, the trio fled the scene. Mary then discovered her husband (who had been beaten to death); she crawled up the stairs to the phone and dialed 911. The dispatcher spoke with Mary on the phone until the emergency forces arrived. Police tracked down the three and arrested them. Matchett pleaded guilty to murdering John Glendenning and brutally beating his wife Mary; Curtis and Legere were convicted at trial.[2]
Trial and escape[edit]
Legere was serving his murder sentence at the Atlantic Institution maximum security penitentiary in Renous-Quarryville, under the responsibility of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC). On May 3, 1989, Legere was transported by CSC personnel from the penitentiary to the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre[3] in Moncton, New Brunswick, for the treatment of an ear infection. Legere managed to convince the CSC personnel to let him use a washroom at the hospital alone, and there he picked the lock on his handcuffs with a homemade key he had hidden in a cigar. He then used a piece of television antenna that he had concealed on his body as a weapon, and held the officers at bay before fleeing the building. Legere escaped the hospital property and through a combination of carjacking and motor vehicle theft, was able to evade recapture.
More murders and eventual capture[edit]
Legere was at large for a period of seven months and during this time committed four additional murders in and around the towns of Chatham, New Brunswick, and Newcastle, New Brunswick, and adjoining communities (now part of the city of Miramichi). The individuals he murdered were Annie Flam (May 29, 1989; during this incident, Flam's sister was also assaulted); sisters Linda and Donna Daughney (October 13, 1989; Legere set fire to the Daughney home before leaving), and Father James Smith (November 24, 1989).[4] Legere was recaptured on November 24, 1989 following a failed carjacking that began in Saint John, New Brunswick, and ended outside Rogersville, New Brunswick; rewards of $50,000 were collected for the information that led to his arrest.
Conviction[edit]
In August 1990, Legere was convicted on charges pertaining to his escape, and sentenced to an additional nine years.[4] His trial for the murders began with an indictment in November of that year. Legere's trial featured the first Canadian uses of DNA fingerprinting to convict rather than exonerate;[5] in November 1991, Legere was convicted of the murders committed while he had been at large.[4]
Present[edit]
As of 2011, Legere was held in Canada's only Super-Maximum security penitentiary, nicknamed the "SHU", in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec.[6]
In 1996, the city of Fredericton shut down its old jail, and in 1999 the building was repurposed into a science museum; the cell in which Legere was held during his 1991 trial is now used for an exhibit on DNA fingerprinting.[7]
John Edward Robinson (born December 27, 1943) is a convicted serial killer, con man, embezzler, kidnapper, and forger who was found guilty in 2003 of three murders and received the death sentence for two of them. He subsequently admitted responsibility for five additional homicides, and investigators fear that there might be other, undiscovered victims as well.[1]
Because he made contact with most of his post-1993 victims via on-line chat rooms, he is sometimes referred to as "the Internet's first serial killer".[2]
Early life
Robinson was born in Cicero, Illinois, the third of five children of an alcoholic father and a disciplinarian mother.[2]:4 In 1957 he became an Eagle Scout, and reportedly traveled to London with a group of Scouts who performed before Queen Elizabeth II. Later that year he enrolled at Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago, a private boys' school for aspiring priests, but dropped out after one year due to disciplinary issues.[3]
In 1961 he enrolled at Morton Junior College in Cicero to become a medical X-ray technician, but dropped out after two years. In 1964 he moved to Kansas City and married Nancy Jo Lynch, who bore their first child, John Jr., in 1965, followed by a daughter, Kimberly, in 1967, and twins Christopher and Christine in 1971.
Early crimes
Robinson was arrested for the first time in Kansas City in 1969, after embezzling $33,000 from the medical practice of Dr. Wallace Graham, where he worked as an X-ray technician, a job he obtained using forged credentials. He was sentenced to three years' probation.[3]
In 1970 Robinson violated probation by moving back to Chicago without his probation officer's permission, and took a job as an insurance salesman at the R.B. Jones Company. In 1971 he was arrested once again for embezzling firm funds and ordered back to Kansas City, where his probation was extended. In 1975 it was extended again after another arrest, this time on charges of securities fraud and mail fraud in connection with a phony "medical consulting" company he had formed in Kansas City.
During this period, Robinson cultivated and maintained the outward appearance of a community-minded citizen and family man; he became a Scoutmaster, a baseball coach and a Sunday school teacher. In 1977 he talked his way onto the board of directors of a local charitable organization and forged a series of letters from its executive director to the mayor of Kansas City, and from the mayor to other civic leaders, commending his generous volunteer efforts and generally singing his praises. Eventually he had himself named the organization's Man of the Year, and threw a festive awards luncheon in his own honor.[3]
In 1979 Robinson finally completed probation; but in 1980 he was arrested again on multiple charges, including embezzlement and check forgery, for which he served 60 days in jail in 1982. After his release he formed a bogus hydroponics business and swindled $25,000 from a friend whom he promised a fast investment return to pay for his dying wife's health care.[2]:4 At this time he reportedly began sexually propositioning his neighbors’ wives, triggering a fistfight with one of the husbands. He also claimed to have joined a secret sadomasochism cult called the International Council of Masters, and to have become its “Slavemaster”, whose duties included luring victims to gatherings to be tortured and raped by cult members.[3]
Murders begin[edit]
In 1984, having started two more fraudulent shell companies (Equi-Plus and Equi-2), Robinson hired Paula Godfrey, 19, ostensibly to work as a sales representative. Godfrey told friends and family that Robinson was sending her away for training. After hearing nothing further from her, Godfrey's parents filed a missing persons report. Police questioned Robinson, who denied any knowledge of her whereabouts. Several days later her parents received a typewritten letter, with Godfrey's signature at the bottom, thanking Robinson for his help and asserting that she was "OK" and did not want to see her family. The investigation was terminated, as Godfrey was of legal age and there was no evidence of wrongdoing. No trace of Paula Godfrey has ever been found.[2]
In 1985, using the name John Osborne, he met Lisa Stasi and her four-month-old daughter, Tiffany, at a battered women’s shelter in Kansas City. He promised Lisa a job in Chicago, an apartment, and daycare for her baby, and asked her to sign several sheets of blank stationery. A few days later Robinson contacted his brother and sister-in-law, who had been unable to adopt a baby through traditional channels, and informed them that he knew of a baby whose mother had committed suicide. For $5,500 in "legal fees", Don and Helen Robinson received Tiffany Stasi (whose identity was confirmed by DNA testing in 2000[4]) and a set of authentic-appearing adoption papers with the forged signatures of two lawyers and a judge. Lisa Stasi was never heard from again.[2]:4
In 1987 Catherine Clampitt, 27, left her child with her parents in Wichita Falls, Texas and moved to Kansas City to find employment. She was hired by Robinson, who reportedly promised her extensive travel and a new wardrobe. She vanished in June of that year. Her missing persons case remains open.[4]
From 1987 to 1993 Robinson was incarcerated, first in Kansas (1987–91) on multiple fraud convictions and thereafter in Missouri for another fraud conviction and parole violations. At Western Missouri Correctional Facility he met 49-year-old Beverly Bonner, the prison librarian, who upon his release left her husband and moved to Kansas to work for him. After Robinson arranged for Bonner's alimony checks to be forwarded to a Kansas post office box, her family never heard from her again. For several years Bonner's mother continued forwarding her alimony checks, and Robinson continued cashing them.[3]
By now Robinson had discovered the Internet and roamed various social networking sites using the name "Slavemaster", looking for women who enjoyed playing the submissive partner role during sex. The first victim he met online was Sheila Faith, 45, whose 15-year-old daughter Debbie was wheelchair-bound due to spina bifida. He portrayed himself as a wealthy man who would support them, pay for Debbie's therapy, and give Sheila a job. In 1994 the mother and daughter moved from Fullerton, California to Kansas City and immediately disappeared. Robinson cashed Faith's pension checks for the next seven years.[2]:6
Gradually, Robinson became well known in the increasingly popular BDSM online chat rooms. In 1999 he offered a job and a bondage relationship to Izabela Lewicka, a 21-year-old Polish immigrant living in Indiana. When she moved to Kansas City, the still-married Robinson gave her an engagement ring and brought her to the county registrar where they paid for a marriage license that was never picked up. It is unclear whether Lewicka believed she and Robinson were married; she told her parents she had married, but never told them her husband's name. She did sign a 115-item slave contract that gave Robinson almost total control over every aspect of her life, including her bank accounts. Sometime during the summer of 1999 she disappeared. Robinson told a Web designer he employed that she had been caught smoking marijuana and deported.[2]:8
Around the time of Lewicka's disappearance Robinson convinced Suzette Trouten, a lonely licensed practical nurse, to move from Michigan to Kansas so they could travel the world together while she became his submissive sex slave. Trouten's mother received several typed letters, purportedly mailed while the couple was abroad, although the envelopes were stamped with Kansas City postmarks. The letters were, her mother said, uncharacteristically mistake-free. Later, Robinson told Trouten's mother that she had run off with an acquaintance after stealing money from him.[2]:9
Arrest
Robinson became increasingly careless over time and did a progressively poorer job of covering his tracks. By 1999 he had attracted the attention of authorities in both Kansas and Missouri as his name cropped up in more and more missing persons investigations.
Robinson was arrested in June 2000 at his farm near La Cygne, Kansas after a woman filed a sexual battery complaint against him and another charged him with stealing her sex toys.[1] The theft charge, in particular, finally gave investigators the probable cause they needed to obtain search warrants. On the farm a task force found the decaying bodies of two women, later identified as Izabela Lewicka and Suzette Trouten, in two 85-pound chemical drums.[2]:9
Across the state line in Missouri, other members of the task force, searching a storage facility where Robinson rented two garages, found three similar chemical drums containing corpses subsequently identified as Beverly Bonner, Sheila Faith, and her daughter Debbie Faith. All five women were killed in the same way, by one or more blows to the head with a hammer or other blunt instrument.[2]:9
Conviction
In 2002 Robinson stood trial in Kansas for the murders of Suzette Trouten, Isabella Lewicka and Lisa Stasi, along with multiple lesser charges. After his conviction on all counts, he received the death sentence for the murders of Trouten and Lewicka, and life imprisonment for Stasi's (because she was killed before Kansas reinstated the death penalty). He also received a five-to-20-year prison sentence for "interfering with the parental custody" of Stasi's baby, 20½ years for kidnapping Trouten, and seven months for theft.[2]:9
After his Kansas convictions Robinson faced additional murder charges in Missouri, based on the evidence discovered in that state. Missouri is far more aggressive in its pursuit of capital punishment convictions, and Robinson's attorneys were anxious to avoid a trial there. (Kansas has not executed anyone since reinstating its death penalty statute in 1986.) Chris Koster, the Missouri prosecutor, insisted as a condition of any plea bargain that Robinson lead authorities to the bodies of Lisa Stasi, Paula Godfrey and Catherine Clampitt. Robinson, who has never cooperated in any way with investigators, refused; but Koster still faced pressure to make a deal because his case was not technically airtight. (Among other issues, there was no unequivocal evidence that any of the murders had actually been committed within his jurisdiction.) Robinson, on the other hand, faced pressure to plead guilty to avoid an almost certain death sentence in Missouri, and failing that, yet another capital murder trial back in Kansas.
When it became clear that the women's remains would never be found without Robinson's cooperation, a compromise of sorts was reached: In a carefully scripted plea in October, 2003, Robinson acknowledged only that Koster had enough evidence to convict him of capital murder for the deaths of Godfrey, Clampitt, Bonner and the Faiths. Though his statement was technically a guilty plea, and was accepted as such by the Missouri court, observers remarked that it was notably devoid of any contrition, or specific acceptance of responsibility.[2]:15 He received a life sentence without possibility of parole for each of the five murders.[5]
Robinson currently remains on death row at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas, and could become the first convict executed by lethal injection in that state.
Aftermath
In 2005 Nancy Robinson filed for divorce after 41 years of marriage, citing incompatibility and irreconcilable differences.[5]
In 2006 Lisa Stasi's daughter—known since her "adoption" as Heather Robinson—filed a civil suit against Truman Medical Center in Kansas City and social worker Karen Gaddis. The suit accused Gaddis of putting John Robinson in contact with Stasi and her newborn daughter in 1984, after he told Gaddis that he ran a charitable organization providing assistance to "unwed mothers of white babies." In 2007 Heather Robinson and the hospital reached a settlement for an undisclosed sum, which Robinson said she would split with her biological grandmother, Patricia Sylvester.[5] Heather Robinson won a second judgment, in 2007, preventing John Robinson from profiting from any future potential book sales or film rights.[6]
In 2006 the body of a young woman was found in a barrel in an area of rural Iowa where Robinson reportedly had a business partner. The identity of the victim—whose remains, forensics experts say, could have been in the barrel for 20 years or more—and Robinson's possible involvement, remain open questions.[7] Kansas and Missouri police note that long stretches of Robinson's time remain unaccounted for, and they fear that there are additional undiscovered victims. "He's maintained the secrets about what he's done with the women, he won't ever tell, it's the last control that he's got," said one investigator. "There are [probably] other barrels waiting to be opened, other bodies waiting to be found."[1]
Victims
Robinson is known to be responsible for eight homicides, but his total victim tally remains unknown. The following is a chronological summary of the eight victims identified thus far:
1984: Paula Godfrey (age 19); remains never recovered
1985: Lisa Stasi (19); remains never recovered
1987: Catherine Clampitt (27); remains never recovered
1993: Beverly Bonner (49): remains discovered at storage facility in Raymore, Missouri
1994: Sheila Faith (45) and Debbie Faith (15): remains of both discovered at storage facility in Raymore, Missouri
1999: Izabela Lewicka (21): remains discovered at Robinson's ranch near La Cygne, Kansas
2000: Suzette Trouten (28): remains discovered at Robinson's ranch near La Cygne, Kansas
Serial Killer Alexander Pichushkin Russian Worst Serial Killer Documentary
Alexander Yuryevich"Sasha" Pichushkin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ю́рьевич Пичу́шкин, born 9 April 1974), also known as The Chessboard Killer and The Bitsa Park Maniac, is a Russian serial killer. He is believed to have killed at least 49 people, and possibly as many as 60, in southwest Moscow's Bitsa Park, where a number of the victims' bodies were found.
.
Early life
Pichushkin is remembered to have been an initially sociable child. However, this changed following an incident in which Pichushkin fell backwards off a swing and was then struck in the forehead as it swung back. Experts have speculated that this event damaged the frontal cortex of Pichushkin's brain; such damage is known to produce poor impulse regulation and a tendency towards aggression. That this event happened when Pichushkin was still a child is also significant, as a child's forehead provides only 1/8 the protection for the brain of an adult's. Indeed, following this accident Pichushkin frequently became hostile and impulsive, and his mother decided to transfer him from a mainstream school to one for children with learning disabilities. Following this transfer, children from the mainstream school began to physically and verbally bully Pichushkin, referring to him as "that retard". This abuse served to intensify Pichushkin's rage and hostility. Upon his reaching early adolescence, Pichushkin's maternal grandfather recognized that Pichushkin was highly intelligent, and felt that his innate talents were being wasted, as he wasn't involved in any activities at home, and the school he was enrolled in focused more on overcoming disability than on promoting achievement.
The grandfather took Pichushkin to live in his home and encouraged him to pursue intellectual pursuits outside of school. The deepest of these interests was chess, with Pichushkin being taught how to play and, after demonstrating his ability, being introduced to the exhibition games played publicly in Bitsa Park. It turned out that Pichushkin was an outstanding chess player, and in these games against generally elderly men, Pichushkin first found a channel for his aggression by dominating the chessboard in all of his games. Unfortunately, Pichushkin was still bullied by mainstream school children throughout his adolescence and, as perhaps the cruelest emotional blow, toward the end of this period Pichushkin's grandfather died. Pichushkin was left to return to his mother's home, at which time he enrolled as a student. The death of his grandfather reportedly greatly affected Pichushkin, and, possibly in an effort to dull the pain of the loss and to calm his severe aggressive tendencies, he began to consume large quantities of vodka. He continued to play chess both at home and in the exhibition games in Bitsa Park, now joining the other men in drinking vodka, though unlike them he could play without being greatly affected by the alcohol. It was at this time that Pichushkin began to develop a more sinister hobby that at the time remained unknown to anyone: whenever he knew he was going to come into contact with children, he would take a video camera along and proceed to threaten them. On one disturbing, and alarmingly prophetic, occasion that has since been made public, he held a young child by one leg, upside down, and said to the camera: "You are in my power now... I am going to drop you from the window... and you will fall 15 meters to your death..." He then watched these videos repeatedly to reaffirm his power. However, by 1992, this practice had become insufficient to satisfy his urges.[citation needed]
Murders
Pichushkin committed his first known murder as a student in 1992 and stepped up his crimes in 2001.[1] Russian media have speculated that Pichushkin was motivated, in part, by a macabre competition with another notorious Russian serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo, the 'Rostov Ripper', who was convicted in 1992 of killing 53 children and young women over a 12 year period.[2] Pichushkin has said his aim was to kill 64 people, the number of squares on a chessboard.[3][4] He later recanted this statement, saying that he would have continued killing indefinitely if he had not been stopped.[5]
Pichushkin targeted primarily elderly homeless men by luring them with the offer of free vodka. After drinking with them, he would kill them with repeated blows to the head with a hammer. In what became his trademark, or signature, he would then push a vodka bottle into the gaping wound in their skulls. He also targeted younger men, children and women. He would always attack from behind in order to take the victim by surprise and to avoid spilling blood on his clothes.[6] He claimed that while killing people he felt like God as he decided whether his victims should live or die. "In all cases I killed for only one reason. I killed in order to live, because when you kill, you want to live," he once said. "For me, life without murder is like life without food for you. I felt like the father of all these people, since it was I who opened the door for them to another world."[7] Experts at the Serbsky Institute, Russia's main psychiatric clinic, have found Pichushkin sane, but suffering from antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder, making him a psychopath.
According to the documentary, "Serial Killers",[8] Pichushkin, once apprehended, led police officers to the scenes of many of his crimes in Bitsa Park, and demonstrated a keen recollection of how the murders were committed. He was filmed reenacting them in great detail, a process which is a regular part of Russian criminal investigation. He also revealed that some of the murders he committed were not done in his preferred method (hammer blows to the back of the head), but by throwing his victims down into the network of sewers running underneath Bitsa Park (although one of his victims did survive this ordeal).
The murder of Marina Moskalyova, 36, in the spring of 2006, was his last. When her body was found in Bitsa Park, complete with Pichushkin's trademark injuries, a metro ticket found in her possession led authorities to review surveillance tape footage from the Moscow metro system, where she was filmed, just hours before her death, walking on the platform accompanied by Pichushkin.[9]
Trial and imprisonment
He was arrested on 16 June 2006, and convicted on 24 October 2007 of 49 murders and 3 attempted murders.[10] He asked a Russian court to add an additional 11 victims to his body count, bringing his claimed death toll to 60, and 3 surviving victims.[11] During his trial, as with Andrei Chikatilo, Pichushkin was housed in a glass cage for his own protection.[12] It took Judge Vladimir Usov an hour to read the verdict: life in prison with the first 15 years to be spent in solitary confinement.[10]
Serial Killer Paul Durousseau The Jacksonville Serial Killer Documentary
Paul Durousseau (born August 11, 1970) is a serial killer from the United States who murdered seven young women (including two who were pregnant) in the southeast United States between 1997 and 2003. German authorities suspect he may have killed several local women when he was stationed there with the Army during the early 1990s. Typically, Durousseau would gain the victim’s trust, enter the victim’s home, tie their hands, rape, then strangle them to death.[2] All of his known victims were young, single African-American women.
Personal life
Paul Durousseau was born in Beaumont, Texas. Little is known publicly about Paul Durousseau's childhood. His first offenses with the law as an adult took place on December 18, 1991 and on January 21, 1992 for carrying a concealed firearm in California.[3] In November 1992, he enlisted in the US Army[3] and was stationed in Germany, where he met Natoca, who would later become his wife.
The two married in 1995 in Las Vegas. In 1996, they were transferred to Fort Benning, Georgia. On March 13, 1997, he was arrested for kidnapping and raping a young woman. However, in August of that year he was cleared of those charges. Soon after, he was found in possession of stolen goods. He was court-martialed in January 1999, found guilty and dishonorably discharged from the Army.[4]:3
The two moved to Durousseau's hometown of Jacksonville, Florida where they had two daughters. It was during that period that he committed most of the murders. He struggled to keep jobs and make ends meet, and the couple would often have fights over the issue of finances. In 1999, the police advised Durousseau's wife on how to file for a restraining order after he allegedly slapped her in the face and grabbed her by the neck. Later, she testified he got violently angry when she talked about getting a divorce. In September and October 2001, Durousseau spent 48 days in jail for domestic battery.[4]
Durousseau still managed to hold various legitimate jobs. In 2001, he was hired as a school bus driver and an animal control worker despite being a convicted felon. In 2003, he worked as a taxi driver in Jacksonville. It was erroneously reported that Gator City Taxi Company failed to run a background check on Durousseau[5] and it is now accepted that this is how he first came into contact with some of his victims. The City Of Jacksonville Department of Motor Vehicle/Taxicab Inspection office is responsible for background investigations of all persons applying for taxicab driver permits. Durousseau was issued a Taxicab Driver Permit from the City of Jacksonville.[6]
Neighbors and friends described him as a "lewd womanizer". He often asked young women when they planned to "make flicks" with him. A witness recalled Durousseau hitting on a girl that appeared to be 13 or 14 years old.[7]
Chronology of the murders
Less than one month after the acquittal over the rape charges, the nude body of 26-year-old Tracy Habersham was found on September 7, 1997 in Fort Benning.[8] She had been missing for 48 hours and was last seen leaving a party. She had been raped and strangled to death with a cord. Paul Durousseau was not a suspect in the murder but DNA would later tie him to the crime. He also would confess in Habersham's killing after his arrest.[3][9]
In 1999, he raped and killed 24-year-old Tyresa Mack in her apartment. Witnesses saw him leave her place with a television.[10] In 2001, he was arrested for raping a young woman in Jacksonville. He spent 30 days in jail and received two years' probation. On December 19, 2002, 18-year-old Nicole L. Williams' body was found wrapped in a blue blanket at the bottom of a ditch in Jacksonville. She had been reported missing two days earlier.[8]
On January 1, 2003, family members of 19-year-old Nikia Kilpatrick went to check on her. They had not had any news from her for several days. They found her body in the bedroom of her apartment. She had been raped then killed by strangulation with a cord two days before. Her two sons, an eleven-month-old and a two-year-old, were alive but malnourished. Kilpatrick was approximately six months pregnant at the time of her death.[4]
On January 9 of the same year, 20-year-old nurse assistant Shawanda Denise McCalister, who was also pregnant at the time of her death, was raped and strangled to death in her Jacksonville apartment. The murder scene was almost identical to that of Nikia Kilpatrick. She was killed on Durousseau's first day of driving a cab for Gator City Taxi. Her body was found the following day.
The next two victims were 17-year-old Jovanna Jefferson, and 19-year-old Surita Cohen. Their bodies were found close to each other in a ditch next to a construction site on New Kings Road in Jacksonville on February 5. Police estimated that Jefferson was murdered around January 20 and Cohen was killed 10 days later. Witnesses recount having seen the two last victims with a taxi driver fitting Paul Durousseau's description on the night they disappeared.
He was arrested and charged with five counts of murder on June 17, 2003. On December 13, 2007 he was sentenced to die by lethal injection for the murder of Tyresa Mack. As of August 18, 2013, he was still a resident on Florida's death row at Union Correctional Institution. No execution date has been set.
MUSCLE AND MAYHEM: THE REAL-LIFE STORY BEHIND MIAMI'S MURDEROUS SUN GYM GANG
Group of bodybuilders at center of one of Miami's most notorious crimes: a complicated and deadly plot that involved kidnapping, money and murder
Produced by Chuck Stevenson, Jamie Stolz, Tamara Weitzman and Alicia Tejada
(CBS News) MIAMI -- Zsuzsanna Griga will never forget the kidnapping of her brother, Frank, and his girlfriend, Krisztina Furton in 1995.
"...he loved fast cars, beautiful girls and life," Griga said. "She was very beautiful. She was only 23 years old. My heart breaks when I think of what she went through."
Felix Jimenez, now retired from the Metro-Dade Police homicide department, was the lead detective on the case.
"Very handsome couple, they looked like they were made for each other," Jimenez explained. "Frank was the American success story -- an immigrant, came to this country with $10 dollars in his pocket and made millions."
He came from Budapest, Hungary, and found a minimum wage job in New York City.
Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton
Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton
"It was like a service station ... he was changing the oil, washing cars," Zsuzsanna Griga explained. "What he accomplished ... should make everyone proud because he went from nowhere to a millionaire on his own just by using his own resources."
In fewer than 10 years, Frank was living in an upscale Miami enclave called "Golden Beach" and running a phone sex line empire. He was on top of the world until May 24, 1995.
"I started calling him and he wouldn't pick up the phone," Zsuzsanna Griga said. "I kind of knew that something really bad happened then..."
The disappearance of Frank and Krisztina would become one of Miami's most notorious crimes. But who would want to kidnap them?
"How did this all go down?" Roberts asked Jimenez.
"So we got a call that there was a missing -- a wealthy couple that was missing out of Golden Beach," he explained. "That was a little strange because in homicide we need a crime scene. We need a dead body to respond to. They're few and far between when there's actually a missing person that we would respond. It has to be highly suspicious circumstances. And it so happened in this case there was."
At first, the detectives hoped they could find Frank and Krisztina alive.
"...the missing Hungarian couple had said that they were going to the Bahamas the -- the-- following day. So all their friends assumed that the reason they weren't home was because they were in the Bahamas," said Jimenez.
All that changed, though, when a police made a stunning discovery.
"Their Lamborghini was found in an abandoned, wooded area far outside of Miami," said Jimenez.
"At this point, we realized that something bad -- something bad had happened to this couple," said Sam Garafalo.
Garafalo, also retired, worked the case for his boss, Felix Jimenez. They are now both CBS News consultants.
"We got information and -- as soon as we got it, we ended up going to Golden Beach," he said.
"So you have a missing Hungarian couple and a Lamborghini," Roberts noted.
"We had more than that. We had a next door neighbor ... that had actually been to the house the last time they were seen alive and they invited her in and introduced her to two muscle-bound men that were driving a gold Mercedes and told them they were going out to dinner to discuss a business deal," said Jimenez.
The neighbor would tell police she'd met the driver of the gold Mercedes and knew his name: Danny Lugo.
"Danny was a big muscular guy," said Jimenez.
Police would soon learn that Lugo was a burley ex-convict who had served time for running a phony loan scam operation. After his release, he became the manager of a suburban Miami health club called Sun Gym.
"This is where the Sun Gym was located. This is what we would call the gang headquarters," said Jimenez.
"Danny Lugo was a Puerto Rican-Cuban kid from the Bronx," added Garafalo.
"He thought he was smarter than anybody else," Jimenez added. "He had a way of convincing people to do things they didn't want to do."
The investigation into Frank and Krisztina's disappearance continued. Detectives learned Lugo was the leader of a group made up of drifters and petty thieves who hung out at the Sun Gym. His main partner in crime was another muscle head, Adrian Doorbal.
"Adrian Doorbal was Danny Lugo's protege," said Jimenez.
"Doorbal was just an evil, he reminded me of just an evil guy," said Garafalo.
"He was a steroid freak. ... He's like 5 foot 7 tall and 5 foot 7 wide," Jimenez continued. "He'd do anything and everything that Danny Lugo told him to do."
In May 1995, Danny Lugo and Adrian Doorbal would be at the center of one of the most notorious crimes in Miami history: a complicated and deadly plot that involved kidnapping, money and murder.
Eighteen years later, the story was too much for Hollywood to resist. In the new movie "Pain and Gain", Lugo is portrayed by Mark Wahlberg.
The film, released by Paramount Pictures, is part of Viacom, a company affiliated with CBS.
The movie captures what Lugo was about in real life: his infatuation with getting rich, says Patty Barrientos, who worked alongside him at a gym.
"He'd say... 'I'm gonna have a lot of money... I wanna grow, I wanna be somebody very big...'" said Barrientos.
Asked if he was money hungry, Barrientos told Roberts, "Yes."
With the little money he had, he spent a lot of it at the Solid Gold Strip Club. It was here he began an affair with a one-time Penthouse model-turned exotic dancer named Sabina Petrescu.
"She was a very, very attractive woman," Jimenez said. "She fell for Danny and believed everything he told her."
Petrescu was another recent immigrant who made a splash in Miami. She was a finalist in the Miss Romania contest in 1990, then came to the United States to begin a modeling career. She made it onto the pages of Penthouse magazine, but filled the rest of her time as an exotic dancer.
"Danny treated her well ... he gave her a BMW," said Jimenez.
Petrescu would play a crucial role as police continued gathering more evidence connecting Lugo and Doorbal to the disappearance of Frank and Krisztina.
"We have the housekeeper who was also at the home when the -- the musclemen were there. We have the next door neighbor. We show them photographs. They make identification. So we have a lot to go on," said Jimenez.
Search warrants were executed for the homes of Lugo and Doorbal and their associates.
"I mean we had so many cops it wasn't even funny," said Garafalo.
"... in fact we mobilized right in this park," Jimenez pointed out.
Police quickly hit pay dirt in the apartment of Danny Lugo's girlfriend.
"There was some damning evidence there ... bloody clothing belonging to Frank and Krisztina, there was the kidnap kit -- a case with duct tape ...guns, [stun guns], handcuffs -- there was so much evidence in that apartment," said Jimenez.
Soon Adrian Doorbal was in custody and refused to talk to police.
"The main guy that we're after, Danny Lugo, is nowhere to be found," said Jimenez.
Danny Lugo had given them the slip.
"This case was all over the news," retired homicide detective Felix Jimenez told Troy Roberts. "Miami was riveted as to this attractive Hungarian couple ... you know, this yellow Lamborghini found in the Everglades and that they're missing and they continue to be missing."
But detectives had lost their lead suspect, Danny Lugo.
"Lugo's gone, we have a warrant for his arrest," Jimenez said. "He's just vanished. We don't know where he is."
They did have one good lead.
"We had his girlfriend, Sabina Petrescu," said Jimenez.
Sabina Petrescu, the magazine model-turned stripper, had quite a story to tell. She said her boyfriend wasn't a criminal. He told her he was a CIA agent.
"Number one, she was smitten with Danny Lugo, and number two, I think she believed what he was saying -- that he was a CIA operative -- that he was working for the U.S. government in kidnapping people that were dangerous to this country," said Jimenez.
Danny Lugo had convinced her he was a spy on a secret mission. So for now, she wouldn't tell detectives where Lugo was. But it would be just a matter of time.
In an incredible twist of fate, detectives in another department at Metro-Dade police had also been looking at Danny Lugo and Adrian Doorbal. Their case was the bizarre kidnapping of another Miami millionaire. Now, Lugo and Doorbal were front and center of two cases.
The Miami millionaire was Marc Schiller, an accountant.
"He was Argentinean born, grew up in the U.S., went to school, got his CPA license, he had a medical billing business that did very well," Jimenez explained.
The two crimes would become one huge case -- a case that Judge Alex Ferrer, now TV's "Judge Alex", and Miami-Dade prosecutor Gail Levine would never forget.
"This case was what made me who I am today, a career prosecutor," said Levine.
"Of all the cases I've tried this is by far the most fascinating case," said Ferrer.
Schiller would eventually tell police a wild story -- that five months before the murders of Frank and Krisztina, Schiller himself had been grabbed by a gang. Bound and gagged, he'd be dumped at a warehouse and held for more than a month.
"This is a warehouse that was rented by one of the members of the Sun Gym Gang," Jimenez told Roberts as they stood outside the building.
"They drove the van with Schiller inside into the warehouse."
"Mark Schiller was the perfect victim because he was involved in something that was illegal," said Levine.
"I think he got greedy and started to get involved in Medicare fraud," said Jimenez.
Danny Lugo learned about Schiller from Jorge Delgado, who also worked out at Sun Gym. Schiller and Delgado had been in business.
"Him and Jorge Delgado started a mortgage business together," said Jimenez.
But business went badly, and later Schiller and Delgado had a falling out over a deal. Delgado wanted revenge and told Lugo that Schiller would be an easy mark.
"They basically go 'He's not goin' to the cops ... he's involved in Medicare fraud. We'll shake him down...'" said Ferrer.
So what was the plan?" Roberts asked Levine.
"The plan was actually very simple: kidnap Marc Schiller, have him write his own ransom and then kill him," she replied.
"Simple as that?" Roberts asked.
"Simple as that," said Levine.
But catching Schiller to shake him down was tougher than it looked.
"It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic ... because they made these stupid attempts," Ferrer explained. "They would hide in his yard under blankets like they were some kind of ninja ... waiting for him to come out and get the paper at five in the morning and they were gonna kidnap him ... only to be surprised that cars were coming down the street and lighting them up with their headlights...
"So then they're running through yards, screaming 'abort, abort like they're on some secret mission for the government," he continued.
Hollywood could not resist this crazy scene. The gang used costumes and comic book code names like Batman and Robin and tried to stage an accident to kidnap Schiller.
"They're waiting for him to drive by to stage this accident," Ferrer explained. "They turned the car off and as he's driving by they're cranking it and the car won't start and he goes driving by. So it's like the Keystone Cops gone bad."
Finally, after multiple attempts, the "gang that couldn't shoot straight" enlisted some serious muscle and planned to take Schiller down outside a restaurant he owned.
"They waited in a van and they had their biggest gym rats come out," said Levine.
A co-conspirator, who "48 Hours" agreed to keep anonymous, worked with the Sun Gym gang to kidnap Schiller.
"I'm a good hearted person. I just made a mistake," he told Roberts.
"I was pretty hardcore..." he said of his weightlifting.
"At your peak you could bench 475 pounds?" Roberts asked.
"505," he replied.
"505? How big were you?"
"I was like a lean 270 pounds," he said.
"Big guy... intimidating," Roberts commented.
"Yeah."
He was desperate for money and sometimes worked at the Sun Gym. In 1994, Lugo and his gang were offering cash for a little help.
"He told me, 'Look, I gotta talk to you about something,'" the co-conspirator continued. "'... he owes me money'... and 'I need you to come with me and help me collect.'"
He agreed, and in November of 1994, brought his gun.
"So you had your .45 with you?" Roberts asked.
"I always carry my firearm," he said.
"We were parked right there," the man said, standing with Roberts in the parking lot, "... and as soon as he came out of his restaurant, they saw him so they said... 'There he is, there he is...'"
"It was one of those days in Miami where a storm was coming in," Schiller recalled.
Schiller is a man who cheated death and whose harrowing ordeal is now dramatized by actor Tony Shalhoub in the new movie.
"Why are you alive?" Roberts asked Schiller.
"I guess its divine intervention. I can't explain it," he replied.
Schiller's nightmare started just as he was about to head for home after work.
"I walked out to my car ... as soon as I opened my door ... I'm grabbed from behind by three guys," said Schiller.
"... and as soon as they grabbed him the guy grabbed the steering wheel... he was screaming the co-conspirator told Roberts.
"They just kept punching me ... and they had a Taser... and they kept Tasering [sic] me," said Schiller.
"They were Tasing him," the co-conspirator continued. "He was screaming ... 'What do you want, what do you want with me, what are you doin?"
"At that point, they dragged me to the van -- a white van," Schiller said. "They handcuffed my hands behind my back."
"You must have been terrified," Roberts commented.
"I thought they were gonna take me and kill me," he said.
"They duct taped him... they put tape on his mouth ... and we took off right out of here," said the co-conspirator.
"When we got to the warehouse," said Schiller, "they called the boss."
The boss was Danny Lugo, the same man at the center of the Krisztina Furton-Frank Griga murder case.
"... told him, 'The eagle has landed.' I guess I was the eagle," said Schiller.
"When I left ... Schiller was sitting in the chair ... he was taped up -- hands and legs ... and they were beating on him," the co-conspirator told Roberts.
Schiller was tortured endlessly. Sometimes, it was with fire.
"Doorbal would yell, 'Fire! Fire!' but real sick," Schiller said. "And he would burn me, you know, burn my skin ... and then he'd do this again ... and he was laughing so hard he was crying."
Other times, they played Russian roulette.
"They would place a gun to his head, they would take a revolver and spin it and pull the trigger," Jimenez explained. "For the first couple weeks, he wasn't even allowed to use the bathroom. He would have to urinate and defecate on himself."
But the worst was yet to come.
"At this point they told me, 'Well if you don't give us a list of everything you have ... we're gonna bring your wife down here and rape her in front of you," said Schiller.
Schiller says he was allowed to make one phone call. He called his family, telling his wife to take their two young children and flee to Colombia. She chose not to call the police.
Asked why she didn't she call police, Schiller told Roberts, "I don't know. I think at that point, it was prudent not to."
And for some inexplicable reason, none of Schiller's employees, friends or extended family raised the alarm. With his family safely out of the country, Schiller was still suffering. Finally, the daily torture was too much. He gave up, giving the gang everything.
"I signed. They told me my death sentence," said Schiller.
"He was signing over everything, including his life," Levine said. "It was $1.2 million in cash and assets and a $2 million life insurance policy."
"And pretty soon they had everything the man owned. They moved into his house, they changed the pool contract to their name. They were living there ... and partying in his home," Ferrer explained. "And they were taking some of the furniture they liked and putting it into their own apartments, wearing his jewelry, driving his Dodge Viper, and his Mercedes ... and just basically living off his money. ... Well, at that point, you can't let the guy live ... so they decide he's gotta go."
Having forced him to sign over his assets, the Sun Gym gang, led by Danny Lugo, was partying in Marc Schiller's house. In the Hollywood feature, "Pain and Gain", Mark Wahlberg's character depicts the depravity.
"They were living in the house. In my house," Schiller told Troy Roberts.
Despite his cooperation, Schiller still remained chained like an animal in the Miami warehouse.
"Schiller was tied to a pipe in a very small bathroom. That's where he spent the next 30 days, was handcuffed to that pipe," former homicide Felix Jimenez explained.
The businessman and father was living in kind of a hell associated with a Third World dungeon -- complete with racial slurs.
"They just told me, 'We got a matzo ball' ..." said Schiller.
"What does that mean?" Roberts asked.
"I guess they were referring to the fact I was Jewish," he replied.
Schiller can't forget the sick soundtrack that came with his daily beatings.
"They, I mean this whole time they were laughing uncontrollably. To them it was just a fun game," he said.
"While they were beating you?" Roberts asked.
"Yeah."
"Did any of your captors show you any kindness?"
"Yeah, the guy that was at night there, because they stopped feeding me," Schiller explained. "I was starved. I hadn't eaten for like three days. He brought me a can of a - canned ravioli, which I had to eat with my hands."
That would be one of the last meals the Sun Gym gang intended for Schiller to have as Lugo put his final plan into action.
"They give him alcohol to drink. Get him all drunk," said Judge Alex Ferrer.
"They plied you with alcohol for three straight days" Roberts noted to Schiller.
"It was probably more than that, it was probably like five days," he said.
"And then what did they do?"
"The last day? ... They set me in a chair, and they give me this concoction, a drink," said Schiller.
"Liquor, tequila, vodka and gave him sleeping pills. And eventually he passed out," said Jimenez.
Schiller was unconscious.
"They put him in his Toyota 4Runner, his SUV," said Ferrer.
"And they drove the car into a light pole. Doorbal was driving," Jimenez explained. "... and then douse the car with gasoline and set it on fire. And that was their attempt to kill him. They backed out about a block away to watch the car as it was engulfed in flames."
"The problem is, they don't buckle him in," Ferrer explained. "The flames revive him enough that he stumbles out of the car and towards the road."
The surprised Sun Gym gang moved in to finish off Marc Schiller.
"... and they see this guy that they just lit on fire standing by the side of the road and they yell, 'Run him over, run him over,'" said Ferrer.
"They drive forward and they try to run him over, they missed. But then they were able to back over him and then run over him again," said Jimenez.
"And they get back to their place, and they go, 'You think we killed him?' They're looking at the dent of the car, and they say, 'I don't know it's not a big dent, yeah but we ran him over, and we backed over him, I mean he must be dead,'" Ferrer continued.
Asked what he remembered next, Schiller told Roberts, "Waking up in a hospital."
It would be months before Schiller could grasp the full horror of how he ended up half dead at Jackson Memorial, Miami's top trauma center.
"I was in a coma when they picked me up," he told Roberts.
In the frenetic haze of the intensive care unit -- burned and bruised, his pelvis broken -- Marc Schiller tried to tell his story of abduction and torture to nurses, doctors -- anyone who might listen.
"Yeah, I told 'em I was kidnapped, and they go, 'No no, you were in a bad accident,'" he said. "And I go, 'No, no, no, no. I was kidnapped. And they just blew it off."
"How many times did you insist you had been kidnapped?" Roberts asked.
"About three and then I gave up," said Schiller.
"He's trying to convince the nurse to give him a phone, because he says he was kidnapped. And she just keeps going, 'No you weren't kidnapped, you were drunk, you hit a pole," said Ferrer.
"I knew they weren't gonna do anything,"said Schiller.
"Finally, she gives him the phone. He calls his lawyer," said Ferrer.
From there, it took just moments to figure out Marc Schiller needed a lot more than just a lawyer.
But even Ed Du Bois, with 50 years of experience as a private investigator, had never heard anything quite like Schiller's story.
"The call was unusual because the story was so bizarre," said Du Bois.
Du Bois met Schiller and believed his story. Soon, both men realized
Schiller had an even bigger problem: Lugo and Delgado were intent on finishing the job.
"I was a sitting duck," said Schiller.
"Did you fear that Delgado and Lugo were going to come to hospital to finish the job?" Roberts asked.
"Yeah. And my sister was there and my brother. And we were all in a panic," he said.
"And I said, 'The easy answer is for you to get out of the hospital," said Du Bois.
"Why didn't either of you go to the police at that point?" Roberts asked.
"Well ... we couldn't wait for the police," Du Bois replied.
Schiller's sister ripped the medical tubes from his arms.
"And the doctor said, 'You can't move him. He's in critical condition,'" said Schiller.
Schiller's brother and sister booked an air ambulance, grabbed their brother and bolted out of Miami, heading north -- not a minute too soon.
"We left at 8 o'clock in the morning. I guess they came at 10 to look for me, to kill us all, all three of us," said Schiller.
"Delgado and Lugo?" Roberts asked.
"Yeah, to the hospital," he replied.
The now desperate Sun Gym gang had tracked down their former captive.
"As they're walking the halls of Jackson Memorial Hospital looking for him, he's on an air ambulance flight to New York," said Ferrer.
A thousand miles from Miami, Marc Schiller, now supported by his family, began to heal; his body and bones fractured.
"First, I can't walk and second of all, who knows how many of these people are out there," he said.
Schiller would reunite with his family in Colombia. Weeks would pass, and, strangely, despite his ordeal, Schiller did not report it to police.
"What person gets kidnapped, held for a month, and when he finally gets free, leaves the country and doesn't call the police for four months?" Ferrer wondered.
"I think what's difficult to understand is why you did not go to the police sooner," Roberts commented to Schiller.
"I did," he said.
But according to authorities, it wasn't until April 1995, four months after his escape, that Schiller contacted police.
"'They want you to come to Miami to report it,'" Schiller said. "And I'm like, 'That's not happening.' ... who knows how many of these people are out there. ... I run into them by accident, I'm dead."
"Marc Schiller was asked to come and give testimony under oath four times ... and he stood up not only the prosecutor, but the police, to give that testimony four times," said prosecutor Gail Levine.
Prosecutor Levine would eventually lead the investigation and try the case. She says Schiller didn't come forward, because he had his own credibility issues due to his alleged involvement in Medicare fraud.
"The victim comes from Colombia. He has a lot of money, more money than
I would imagine most CPAs in Miami have," she explained.
"So after a while, you and Marc decided to go to the police?" Roberts asked Du Bois.
"Yeah," he replied.
But according to Du Bois and Schiller, when they finally did sit down with the cops...
"They've never listened at all," said Schiller.
"They never went out, never read them their rights, they never asked them a question, they never even said, 'Hello, here I am. We're breathin' down your neck,'" said Du Bois.
"They went to Metro-Dade's top unit that handles just crimes of this nature --just the biggest crimes. And they just didn't believe him," Ferrer explained.
It had been five months since Marc Schiller's ordeal. The muscle-headed gang had trashed his home and burned through his money. They were now hungry for another score.
"If the police had listened to him and investigated, Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton would probably be alive today," said Ferrer.
By May of 1995, five months after his harrowing escape, the Sun Gym gang had burned through all of Marc Schiller's money.
"They'd been partying and going to strip clubs, and dropping thousands of dollars on strippers and it was all his money," said Judge Alex Ferrer.
With Schiller's fortune spent, the gang targeted their next victims: Frank Griga and his beautiful girlfriend, Krisztina Furton.
"There was never any pretense. They knew they were gonna kill them from the outset," said Ferrer.
The millionaire had it all.
"Lugo and Doorbal, on the other hand, they wanted to live that life," Ferrer continued.
The life Frank Griga had built on those dial tones of his sex phone empire.
"It made me very proud that my kid brother made it so big," Zsuzsanna Griga said.
"You know we were very poor when we were young..." she continued.
"It's a true rags-to-riches story," said Roberts.
"Yes it is," Griga replied.
Zsuzsanna had seen her brother's love for the glittery side of the American dream.
"Money was there for him to make other people happy and to play, to buy toys," she said.
"His wealth did afford him certain luxury items," Roberts noted.
"Oh he loved cars, yes, he loved cars," Griga said.
Frank Griga's yellow Lamborghini was legendary. It was that car that caught the eye of Adrian Doorbal. He'd been told about it by a woman who once dated Frank Griga.
"And Doorbal's face lights up and says, 'Who has the yellow Lambo?' And she says, 'Oh, don't you know? That's my friend Frank. He's my old boyfriend," Levine explained. "And he says, 'How would I know him?' 'Oh, he comes into this dance club Solid Gold all the time. Don't you know him?' Doorbal wasn't that stupid. Bingo. We got our next victim."
Doorbal and Lugo approached Frank Griga with a phony, made-up business scheme and a meeting was set at the Solid Gold strip club.
"And they told him that they were investors and that they had a way to make 20-percent return on the dollar," said Levine.
But the real plan mirrored the violent abduction of Marc Schiller: kidnap and torture Frank Griga until he signed over every nickel he had and revealed to the gang where his assets were kept.
"They also needed Krisztina," said Levine.
Asked why, she told Roberts, "They needed Krisztina because if Frank was missing, Krisztina was going to go to the police, 'cause why wouldn't she go to the police? Frank was completely legal."
Lugo and Doorbal, posing as businessmen, lured Frank and Krisztina back to Doorbal's apartment. Within minutes, Doorbal was strangling Frank in the bedroom.
"Doorbal, not knowing his own steroid strength, either broke his neck or suffocated him," said Levine.
And she screams, and Danny tackles her and injects her with horse tranquilizer, which they had basically bought to tranquilize the two of them," said Ferrer.
"And it killed her?" Roberts asked Levine.
"Not initially," she replied.
"They had a dead person and another one, another person near death," said Garafalo.
Krisztina Furton, 23, who loved animals, swimming and had dreams of being a professional diver, was now shot full of horse tranquilizer. Then, Lugo demanded she give up the access code numbers to Frank Griga's house.
"And Doorbal goes and speaks to her and he comes back and says, his exact words were, 'The bitch is cold.' They had injected her with enough horse tranquiller to kill four 1,000-pound horses. And now they're both dead -- Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton. And these two guys don't have a dime," Ferrer explained.
Asked what did they do with the bodies, Levine told Roberts, "Well, they got creative."
With the help of Jorge Delgado, Doorbal and Lugo stuffed the bodies of Frank Griga into a couch and Krisztina Furton into a large cardboard box.
"So here you have these two muscular guys, and on a Saturday morning, during the middle of the day, it looks like they're moving. And they're moving boxes and they're moving a couch. And what they contain are two bodies," said Jimenez.
They took the bodies to an empty warehouse. The horror was just beginning.
"So they went to Home Depot and bought a chain saw. They come back and they're gonna use this to dismember the bodies. But the chain saw doesn't have enough power. So these geniuses take this chainsaw back to Home Depot and return it," said Ferrer.
"You're kidding me," said Roberts.
"... and they brought that back and they end up buying an electric chainsaw," said Garafalo.
"It boggles the mind that they would return a chain saw that they were going to use to dismember these people," Roberts told the detectives.
"There's a lot of things about this case that boggle the mind," said Jimenez.
But the second chain saw jammed in Krisztina Furton's beautiful, thick hair. That's when Doorbal and Lugo reached for an ax.
"And they started chopping the body parts. For hours," said Levine.
"And they disposed of the torsos in one part of the county in oil drums," said Ferrer.
"And they left those hands, heads and feet in buckets at the 31 mile marker," Levine continued.
"... in the Everglades, on the Alligator Alley that goes from Ft. Lauderdale to Naples," said Ferrer.
"I have never passed that mile marker without saying a little prayer for Frank and Krisztina," said Levine.
Another gang member would dump Frank Griga's yellow Lamborghini on the side of the road, in the swampy Florida Everglades.
Police didn't need a GPS. The map was clear and it led straight to the Sun Gym gang.
"And I remember saying, 'We don't have a missing persons, we have a very major homicide,'" said Levine.
Soon, Frank's big sister was on a flight to Miami.
"The bodies were found that day," Zsuzsanna Griga told Roberts of the day she arrived. "Sergeant Jimenez and Sgt. Garafalo ... came and picked me up at the airport and they explained that they just had, you know, they had the bodies. Yes." Griga paused before continuing. "Sorry. It's still very hard after 17 years."
As investigators put the pieces together, Marc Schiller's kidnap story echoed like thunder.
"And they said, 'I think we got another case just like yours ... could you come down to Miami?' I said, 'Yeah, yeah. I'll come to Miami,'" said Schiller.
The Sun Gym gang left a massive, bloody trail of evidence. The last of the muscle heads would be busted when Danny Lugo's girlfriend, Sabina Petrescu, told police that Lugo was hiding out in the Bahamas.
The crimes and the trial would captivate and horrify all of south Florida.
"It was disturbing on every level. And I've tried serial killers," Ferrer said. "But this case really got to me."
Almost four years after he was left for dead, Marc Schiller faced off again against the Sun Gym gang.
In February 1998, almost three years after the gruesome murders of Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton, Danny Lugo and Adrian Doorbal were set to go on trial.
The case would be career defining for prosecutor Gail Levine.
"It was so encompassing ... from the day I got the call, from the day I started investigating it, from the day I met the victim's family, from the day I met everybody involved, from the relationship that I developed with police in investigating the case," she explained.
Lugo's girlfriend, Sabina Petrescu, was granted immunity in exchange for her testimony. She knew all the gang's secrets and details of their plots, though she believed they were undercover CIA agents.
"Sabina Petrescu's probably one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life," Levine said, "but she was also one of the most naive women I have ever met in my life. She was in love with Danny Lugo and she thought he was her CIA agent."
With 100 witnesses and thousands of pieces of evidence, the case would drag on for 10 weeks, overseen by Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the State Attorney for Miami-Dade County.
"... when you have a case that's that grotesque and you know people suffered ... what do we do to bring justice to the victims of this case, either in their name or for their surviving members ," said Rundle.
Justice was what Marc Schiller got this time. He was in control as the prosecution's star witness.
"Walking in and seeing Lugo and Doorbal ... I realized that -- I was in the driver's seat ... because they never imagined that I'd be sitting there accusing them," said Schiller.
The prosecution rested. Lugo and Doorbal's attorneys chose not to put on a case.
"There's sometimes when, as a defense lawyer, you don't have anything to go on. You just don't. You can't claim misidentification. You can't claim anything," said Ferrer.
"What was the defense strategy?" Roberts asked Levine.
"Save their lives," she replied.
Jurors wasted little time making their decision. Within hours, they reached their verdict: Daniel Lugo was found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of Krisztina Furton and Frank Griga.
Doorbal was also found guilty and both men were sentenced to death.
It's a moment Judge Ferrer will never forget.
"As I was sentencing him, Danny Lugo was standin' there lookin' at me, and his eyes were ... watery. Noel [Adrian] Doorbal, on the other hand, he was joking. He was turning around to his girlfriend, and making faces like a goofball," said Ferrer.
"You believe the jury got it right?" Roberts asked Levine.
"One-hundred percent," she replied.
"Think my final words were, probably, 'May God have mercy on your soul,'" said Ferrer.
Asked is she's gotten justice, Zsuzsanna Griga told Roberts, "What sort of justice can be done, OK? Short of bringing him back?
... he was reaching for the skies, " Griga continued. "And the message that he -- he had out there was ... you can do whatever you want. And this is what these guys -- broke short.
"Were you satisfied with the verdict? Roberts asked Schiller.
"Well, guilty, yeah, but -- I don't believe in the -- death penalty," he replied. "I think being in a jail cell for the rest of their life is worse punishment."
The ordeal wasn't over for Marc Schiller. As he left the court after the trial, he was surrounded by armed FBI agents who arrested him on charges relating to an extensive Medicare scam.
The Medicare fraud that made Schiller such an easy target for the gang had come back to haunt him.
"It was a sham," Ed Du Bois said. "They never returned the money to Marc Schiller. Marc Schiller did not commit that $14 million worth of Medicare fraud."
In a highly unusual twist, Judge Alex Ferrer stood up for Schiller during the federal fraud investigation. He described how important Schiller's testimony was in bringing down the Sun Gym gang.
"He was treated like a prisoner of war or actually worse. The torture and the beatings and the -- the attempts to kill him and all of that. For some reason, it just felt to me that that should be taken into consideration," said Ferrer.
Incredibly, one of Schiller's torturers, Jorge Delgado - the Sun Gym member who had first told Lugo about Schiller and his millions - ended up helping the federal government make their case.
In a plea deal, Schiller ended up serving two years in federal prison and paying $137,000 in restitution.
"He felt betrayed," Roberts noted to Levine.
"His jail sentence is what he did, but the pain and suffering that he endured, that -- nobody deserves that," she said. "Did Marc Schiller deserve to go to prison? I leave that to the federal government. I wasn't involved in that at all."
Today, while Schiller refuses to talk about the charges, he does say he lost everything -- his health, his home, his millions. Even now, with a big Hollywood movie, he won't get a dime.
"It's a comedy, which is unfortunate, because there was nothing funny that happened to me," he said. "These were inept, incompetent people, but they were at the same time malicious and cold-blooded murderers."
Ultimately, the rest of the gang went to prison, too. The co-conspirator was sentenced to two years imprisonment for his involvement in Schiller's kidnapping and Jorge Delgado got 15. In all, seven members of the gang would do time.
It's been 18 long years since the gang tortured and killed their way through Miami.
Gail Levine has continued her career at the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office. She's tried more than 80 cases.
Judge Alex Ferrer left the bench in 2005, and continues to enjoy success with his syndicated television show.
Video: Ferrer on his early life, career in Miami
Marc Schiller has just released his tell-all tale, "Pain and Gain - The Untold True Story".
Lugo and Doorbal remain on death row.
Lugo and Doorbal have appealed their convictions multiple times over the past 15 years.
Once their appeals have been exhausted, Florida's governor will sign a death warrant and they will be executed by lethal injection.
