Former cricket star Stuart MacGill reveals shocking new details about his kidnapping

Ex-Australian cricket star Stuart MacGill reveals how he still bears mental scars after being kidnapped over a year ago.

The 51-year-old was kidnapped in April 2021 by three masked assailants in Sydney‘s lower North Shore on April 14 last year, bundled into a car and driven 60km to a two hectare property in Bringelly in the city’s south-west. 

He was stripped naked and beaten until he blacked out in a decrepit shack by captors who threatened to cut off his fingers if he didn’t hand over $150,000. 

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Former Australian Test cricket bowler Stuart MacGill was kidnapped in April last year

MacGill was eventually bundled back into a car and dropped off in Belmore, where he found a ‘sympathetic’ cab driver, who agreed to drive him back home.

‘I didn’t know where we were, I didn’t know where we were going and I was scared. From that point, they stripped me naked, beat me up, threatened me and then just dumped me,’ he told SEN WA Breakfast on Friday.

Following his ordeal, the former Test bowler and father of two was so terrified that he even resorted to traveling in the boot of his girlfriend’s car before eventually leaving Sydney for several weeks.

‘I’ve felt a huge amount of pressure. I basically ran away for a month afterward. [His girlfriend] Maria [O’Meagher] 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].

MacGill said he was ‘physically and mentally intimidated’ during the four-hour ordeal in April

MacGill (pictured with his partner Maria O’Meagher) was allegedly confronted by three men in Cremorne, in Sydney’s lower North Shore on April 14 of this year

‘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 MacGill returned to Sydney, detectives had arrested four people as part of their investigation. 

In June, two other men were charged over the alleged kidnapping of the cricket legend, who police allege were at Bringelly when MacGill was taken to the site. 

The pair – aged 19 and 22 – allegedly helped assault the cricketer and were escorted from Silverwater jail to Parramatta Police Station and arrested.

MacGill was allegedly kidnapped near his Cremorne home and driven about 60km to Bringelly before being released in Burwood Road, Belmore after a four-hour ordeal

Walls and floors inside the vacant two-hectare property (pictured) in Bringelly in the city’s southwest were covered in filth and grime

A seventh man was arrested Sydney in December last year after detectives allegedly found and seized illicit drugs following a search of his vehicle and escorted him to Newtown Police Station.

The man has not been charged over MacGill’s alleged kidnapping but is understood to have been the target of a nationwide manhunt since April with police to allege he was a central player in a drug deal gone wrong. 

He is alleged to be the ‘missing link’ in the case due to his involvement in the collapsed deal with another man charged in relation to the alleged kidnapping.  

MacGill (right) took 208 wickets in 44 Tests for Australia between 1998 and 2008

MacGill, who took 208 wickets in 44 Tests for Australia, said his life has been ‘paused’ as the case will not go before court until 2023.

‘That [court date] is the biggest problem for me because I sort of feel like it’s pretty much put everything on hold for me,’ he explained.

‘I don’t like going outside, to be honest. I try to put a brave face on it, I’m not a big fan of crowds anymore. I sort of feel as though there’s been so much media coverage that everybody is talking about me.

‘I’m wrong, I’m just paranoid, I know that, but paranoia is a very real thing, but I am nervous, I don’t like it.’