Britt Jones
The story of how a woman was buried alive and left for dead is shocking, but her survival tale is inspiring.
This type of situation is something that many would never imagine could ever happen to them, but it was a sobering reality for Barbara Jane Mackle, a 20-year-old heiress.
Mackle was in line to inherit her family’s Florida housing development company when she was taken in 1968.
The Emory University student had fallen ill in class and her mother had picked her up early before the Christmas break so that she could be with her family, according to Time.
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Mackle and her mother, Jane, went on to book a room at a motel where they planned to stay before making the trip home.
But at 4 am, a knock at the door would change their lives forever.
Outside stood two people, one of who claimed to be a detective who shared that Mackle’s boyfriend, Stewart Woodward, had been in a car accident.
According to Coastal Breeze News, it was only when Jane opened the door, that they realized it was a masked man with a shotgun and a woman in a ski mask who was outside, and they burst into the room.
Jane was knocked with chloroform and bound by her hands and feet.
Mackle was then bundled into a car, where she was able to free herself and call the police when she was 30 miles north of Atlanta.
As it turned out, she had been kidnapped by the escaped convict Gary Steven Krist and Ruth Eisemann-Schier, who were transporting her to her grave to bury her alive.
20 years after the event, Krist’s former parole officer, Tommy Morris told UPI that they didn’t bury her alive for the $500,000 ransom they went on to demand from the Mackle family, but it was actually for the challenge of keeping her alive while she was underground.
The ransom to the heirs of Deltona Corp, which was reportedly worth $65 million at the time, was posted, and they carried on with their plan.
It was in Gwinnett County, that the kidnappers put her inside a ‘coffin-like box’ with two air tubes, food, water and sedatives.
They then buried the heiress a foot-and-a-half under the soil, where she remained for three days until the FBI located her.
“He was looking for a rich, tough-minded female,” Morris told UPI.
“Someone who could stand up to the trauma of being buried alive. Barbara Jane Mackle fit that profile.”
But they wouldn’t break her spirit.
Mackle wrote in her journal which was reported by UPI and ABC News: “The sound of the dirt got farther and farther away. Finally, I couldn't hear anything above. I screamed for a long time after that.”
To focus on staying alive, she would think about Christmas morning with her family.
While the kidnappers managed to get the $500,000 ransom from her family, this ultimately led them to disclose her whereabouts to the FBI, which allowed them to find her.
The FBI were then able to apprehend the pair, and then Krist was on a speedboat off the coast of Florida after using some of the ransom money to buy the boat.
Eisemann-Schief was arrested months later after giving her fingerprints to a new employer after applying to an Oklahoma hospital.
According to reports, she was then deported back to Honduras, and Krist was sentenced to life in prison.