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Former Australian spinner Stuart MacGill lifted the lid on his kidnapping incident after 15 months in a recent interview on Saturday. The sports fraternity was certainly shocked by the horrific story of MacGill being dumped out of the car in April 2021. The kidnapping is said to have been linked with the cocaine supply deal.
The incident resulted in the arrests of four men, with one of them being Marino Sotiropoulos, the brother of his partner, Maria O’Meagher. As the case will not be going ahead to the court until October next year, the 51-year-old could share only some of the information, which itself is frightening.
“It was not something you’d even like to happen to your worst enemy,” MacGill told SEN WA Breakfast.
MacGill reckoned that he refused to enter the cars of the kidnappers, but the armed men convinced him and they were together for around 90 minutes.
“Later in the day, it was getting quite dark, I was bundled into a car. I didn’t want to get into the car, I said to them twice, ‘I’m not getting in the car,’ but then it became obvious they were armed, and they said, ‘We know you’re not involved, we just want to have a chat,’ then they put me in the car, and I was in the car for an hour and a half,” he added.
Furthermore, the former cricketer said that he didn’t know which direction, where they were headed and was scared. He revealed that the kidnappers stripped him naked, beaten him up, and then dumped him in an unknown place. But they returned after three hours to drop MacGill at Belmore.
“I didn’t know where we were, I didn’t know where we were going and I was scared,” MacGill said.
“From that point, they stripped me naked, beat me up, threatened me, and then just dumped me. That was over the course of maybe three hours out in the middle of nowhere in a little shed.
“I was scared, I was humiliated, and I really didn’t know what was going to happen. Then they chucked me back in the car and dropped me in Belmore, and I didn’t really know where I was then either, to be honest,” he stated.
Then MacGill revealed that he stayed in hotels for the next two-three weeks in Sydney. He then drove with a friend to reach Fraser Island and spend a couple of weeks at the location, before arriving at his home. In the end, he seemed happy after the arrest of the four men involved in his kidnapping.
“I basically ran away for a month afterward,” MacGill said.
“Maria chucked me in the back of her car, I was in the boot, I got out of my unit, then I had a couple of mates who very generously put me up in hotels around Sydney for two or three weeks, and then I went away with (a friend). We ended up driving up the coast of New South Wales and through Queensland and ended up on Fraser Island, so all up I was probably away for six weeks or so.”
“By the time I got home most of the guys had been arrested, which was good,” he concluded.
