Episode 4: Buried Alive - 83 Hours of Darkness: Barbara Mackle
Barbara Mackle lay in the dark, damp cramped box. It had been her temporary home for almost 83 hours. There was no room to move or stretch out. There was only her in the darkness, alone with her own thoughts. She had lost track of time. Was it night or day? She was sleepy and cold. The two ventilation pipes connected to her man-made coffin helped, but her breaths were slow and shallow. Suddenly, she heard movement from above the ground. Footsteps, crunching of twigs and foliage and faint voices. She began to pound her fists on the wooden lid above her. She started to shout and call out, to make as much noise as possible. Eventually, the footsteps drew closer, and she heard activity above ground.
Barbara Mackle Background
Barbara Jane Mackle was born in 1948, the only daughter of Jane and Robert Mackle, a wealthy property developer, and one of the owners of the Deltona Corporation. Her father, Robert Mackle was born in 1912, and along with his two brothers, Elliot and Frank Jr. built one of the largest real estate development empires in the United States.
On Tuesday the 17th of December 1968, 20-year-old Barbara Mackle was attending Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She had been struck down with a severe illness earlier in the month. In early December, Barbara had begun to feel unwell, with chills, a fever and muscle pain leaving her in a weakened condition. She confined herself to her dorm room.
In December 1968, the Emory University campus was impacted by a severe Hong Kong flu pandemic, with countless staff and students succumbing to the virus. H3N2 was an avian-type flu that was first reported on 13th July 1968 in Hong Kong. Barbara’s mother Jane had travelled to Atlanta sometime around the 3rd of December to care for her sick daughter. Jane had persuaded Barbara to stay with her at a local hotel, the Rodeway Inn, near the college campus. The plan was to transport Barbara back to their home in Coral Gables, Florida for an early Christmas break.
The Day of the Abduction
On Monday the 16th of December, Barbara bid farewell to her boyfriend Stewart Hunt Woodward and settled in for the night. At approximately 3 a.m., Barbara and Jane were woken by a loud knock on the door. Jane was greeted at the hotel room door by two police officers. They informed her that there had been a road traffic accident involving a white Ford. This was the same type of vehicle driven by Barbara’s boyfriend, Stewart Hunt Woodward, who had spent time with them earlier the previous evening. As Jane removed the safety chain on the door, the duo pointed a gun at her and pushed their way inside, locking the door behind them.
At gunpoint, the taller man forced Barbara to leave the hotel room and get into his running car, a blue Volvo station wagon. The two kidnappers then drove their captive almost 52 Km away to a remote pine forest in Gwinnett County. There, Barbara was taken to a pre-dug hole in the ground. She saw a reinforced fibreglass box at the bottom of the hole and was ordered to climb inside. She was told that this was a kidnap for ransom and that they would release her as soon as her father had paid the ransom. Barbara was forced to pose for polaroid photographs, as she lay in her makeshift coffin, holding a sign that read ‘kidnapped’.
Police Investigation & Ransom Demand
Meanwhile, back at the Rodeway Inn, Jane had regained consciousness, freed herself and alerted the police. She then called Barbara’s boyfriend Stewart Hunt Woodward, who in turn called Robert Mackle to inform him of the abduction. Robert instructed Stewart to hang up and call the FBI, who promptly took over the investigation. At 9 a.m. the next morning, after Mackle had returned to his Coral Gable home, he received a phone call from his daughter’s kidnappers.
Ransom Drops
A male kidnapper gave Robert directions to find a ransom note they had hidden on his property. He was told to go to a specific tree, remove a small rock and dig. He found a glass jar buried in the soil, containing a three-page typewritten ransom note. The note gave details relating to Barbara’s abduction and said that she was being held 6 feet or 1.8 metres underground. They added that it would be impossible for authorities to locate her without the help of her abductors. They demanded a ransom of USD $500,000, which in 2023, would be the equivalent of USD $4.28 million, to be paid within seven days.
After these ads appeared, they said that they would contact Robert with details of the ransom drop point. Before long, an envelope arrived at the Mackle home. It contained a piece of Barbara’s jewellery, along with a Polaroid photograph of Barbara lying in the box. She was holding a makeshift sign that read ‘kidnapped’. This served as proof of life.
By Wednesday 18th December 1968, the ransom was assembled, as per the instructions of the kidnappers. Finally, Robert was instructed to drive alone in the early hours of the morning to a bridge approximately 4 miles from his home. At 4am, Robert arrived at the bridge. As per the instructions, he followed the bridge and placed the suitcase containing the money on a nearby seawall, as instructed, and drove away.
A little after 6 a.m., Robert returned to the ransom drop-off point. He needed to know if the exchange had been successful. He was relieved to see that the suitcase was gone, presumably collected by the kidnappers. But this relief was short-lived, as the FBI informed him that something had gone terribly wrong, and the ransom drop had failed.
Botched Ransom Drop
Authorities had been tracking the ransom operation from afar and had observed two suspects collecting the suitcase from where Robert had left it on the seawall. The suspects escaped the island, with the ransom money in a motorboat. From here, the pair travelled north along Biscayne Bay, before crashing to shore in a loud and violent collision.
The noise of the motorboat hitting the shore was so loud that it woke up local residents, and police were called. Local police had not been alerted that a ransom drop was scheduled to take place. Upon seeing the police, the suspects fled on foot. There was a brief shootout between suspects and the police and both suspects escaped. The kidnappers were forced to abandon the suitcase containing the ransom money that they had schemed so hard to get.
When the FBI updated Robert of this development, he openly cried, convinced that the abductors would certainly kill Barbara in retaliation, just as they had promised. Robert begged the FBI to allow him to communicate with his daughter’s abductors once again. They agreed and Robert placed another classified ad in the personal ads section of all of the major Miami newspapers, as he had done just days earlier.
This tactic worked and the kidnappers once again made contact and gave new instructions for the ransom drop. At 1 a.m. on Friday 20th December, Robert made the ransom drop off for a second time and waited for news of Barbara’s fate. Almost 12 hours later, a switchboard operator at the Atlanta office of the FBI received a call from the kidnappers. The caller had indicated that Barbara was buried near an intersection in the city of Norcross, Georgia. The details were vague, but it gave investigators an indication of where to begin the search.
Rescue
That same day, the FBI made their way to Gwinnett County in Georgia, and set up their base in Lawrenceville, close to where the caller had directed them to. Here, a task force of more than 100 agents began the meticulous ground search, not quite knowing what they were looking for, or if the information they had been given was even correct.
At approximately 4:15 pm, as two FBI agents searched a quadrant of pine forest on the side of a hill, they heard faint knocking sounds coming from the woods surrounding them. They saw something protruding from the ground – a ventilation tube. They knew that they were in the right spot but didn’t know if they had arrived too late to save Barbara.
The two FBI agents grabbed whatever was around them and started digging with their hands and crude makeshift tools to remove the earth from around the tubing. They used a tyre iron to pry open the heavy lid. When they found her, she was alive, but suffering from severe dehydration. She had lost 10 lbs or 4.5 Kg in weight and was too weak to walk unassisted. She was cold and wet. Rainwater had seeped into the fibreglass box she was lying in and had pooled around her. She had been in that box for a total of 83 hours.
Suspects
The failed drop-off actually provided authorities with some of the best leads about the suspects. They found an abandoned blue Volvo station wagon and traced it to a man called George Deakin, a research assistant at the University of Miami. They also found fingerprints, photographs of Deakin with an unidentified woman, and Polaroid photographs of Barbara Mackle lying in the fibreglass coffin.
When authorities checked with the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Miami, they discovered that they were missing a motorboat from their boat shop. It had been stolen the night before the first ransom drop. Deakin was confirmed to have taken annual leave on 16th December, the day before the abduction.
The woman in the photographs was identified as 26-year-old graduate student Ruth Eisemann-Schier. She was born in Honduras of Austrian descent and was studying at the University of Miami on a marine biology scholarship. The investigation suggested that Eisemann-Schier and Deakin had begun a relationship the previous September, while on a scientific cruise to Bermuda. The FBI were able to identify the suspect known as George Deakin as 23-year-old Gary Steven Grist.
Krist was born in 1945 in Aberdeen, Washington, and grew up between Pelican, Alaska and Utah. He is described as having a high level of intelligence but fell into a life of petty crime. His first recorded crime, or the first time he was caught, was in 1959, when he was 14. He was arrested after a string of robberies. It would be the first of a litany of charges he would face in his lifetime, each one more outrageous than the other.
In November 1966, while serving a sentence for car theft, Krist, along with another prisoner, escaped from Deuel Vocational Institute, a California state prison. The other prisoner was killed during the prison break, and Krist went on the run. While on the run from authorities, he married and moved to Massachusetts, getting a job at a Magnet Lab at MIT for a few months, before ultimately moving to Miami and securing his current job at the University of Miami.
Apprehension & Trial
On the same day that Barbara was rescued, authorities also made a significant breakthrough in apprehending her abductor. They received a tip from the owner of a marine supply business in West Palm Beach that a suspicious customer had purchased a 16-foot/4.9 metre boat for USD $2300 cash.
Later, authorities received reports of a suspicious man fitting Krist’s description passing through the Okeechobee Waterway. They were closing in on their suspect. They would eventually apprehend him in the early hours of the morning on 22nd December. He had been trying to evade authorities by hiding in the swamps around Hog Island, in murky water populated by alligators and poisonous snakes. They found a briefcase on his person containing USD $18,000, and a further USD $480,000 in a suitcase, concealed in the hull of a rotting boat that had been abandoned on the island.
Ruth Eisemann-Schier was harder to find. She and Krist had been separated in the days after the ransom had been collected. She spent most of the next three months penniless and destitute. Authorities searched for the fugitive, and Eisemann-Schier was the first woman to be placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List.
In March 1969, she was apprehended in Norman, Oklahoma. She had applied for a position as a nurses’ aide at a psychiatric institution. As part of the application process, she agreed to be fingerprinted. Authorities quickly traced the fingerprints to those found on Krist’s abandoned Volvo. Eisemann-Schier was openly remorseful and pleaded guilty straight away. She was sentenced to seven years in prison, and served a little less than three, before being deported back to Honduras. She later married and disappeared into relative obscurity.
In contrast, Krist was described as arrogant and unrepentant. He pleaded not guilty to all charges and went to trial. Portrayed as a highly intelligent man with a preoccupation with money and perceived power. Krist hated that he wasn’t financially successful.
In May 1969, Krist was sentenced to life imprisonment for his kidnap-for-ransom scheme. He served only ten years before being released on parole. He later obtained a medical licence from a Caribbean medical school and was approved to practice in Indiana in 2001. By 2003, his medical licence had been revoked, as he failed to report a disciplinary action against him. In 2006, he was arrested again off the coast of Alabama in a chartered boat. He was carrying 31 lbs or 14 Kg of cocaine along with several people who had paid to be illegally smuggled into the United States. He only served 4 years for these crimes.
Barbara Mackle’s Life
Barbara Mackle went on to live a long and fulfilled life. She married her college boyfriend Stewart, and they went on to have two children together. The couple remained married until Stewart’s death in 2013. In 1972, Barbara, along with Miami Herald reporter Gene Miller, released a book detailing her experiences during the kidnapping called 83 Hours ‘Til Dawn. Several film and television projects were adapted from this book, and her experience inspired countless other stories. Once the book was released in 1972, Barbara declined to speak publicly about her ordeal.
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