Three and a half days after being buried alive, she emerged from her fiberglass tomb

In 2006, Gary Steven Krist was arrested again in Alabama for attempting to traffic cocaine and transport illegal immigrants. Krist was the mastermind behind the 1968 kidnapping of 20-year-old college student and heiress, Barbara Jane Mackle.

On December 17, 1968, Barbara was kidnapped and buried alive in a coffin in Georgia. Despite enduring three and a half days underground, she survived. At the time of her kidnapping, Barbara was a student at Emory University in Atlanta. She was staying at a small motel in Decatur, Georgia, with her mother, Jane Mackle, before returning home for the Christmas holidays.

Feeling ill in class a week before Christmas, Barbara called her mother to come pick her up early for the holiday break. At 4 a.m., a man knocked on their motel room door, identified himself as a detective, and said he had information about a car accident involving a man, which Barbara and Jane thought referred to Robert Mackle, Barbara's father. In an act of trust, Jane opened the door, but was confronted by a masked man with a shotgun and another person wearing a balaclava.

The intruders were Gary Steven Krist, a fugitive ex-convict, and his accomplice, Ruth Eisemann-Schier, a graduate student in marine biology. Krist attacked Jane immediately, knocking her out with chloroform and tying her hands and feet. He grabbed Barbara by the arm and dragged her out of the room, ordering her, "Don't make a noise," while pointing a gun at her.

Barbara was forced into a dark car waiting in the parking lot and was transported 30 miles north of Atlanta by her kidnappers. In a remote area of Gwinnett County, Georgia, Krist and Eisemann-Schier placed her inside a fiberglass coffin-like box with two flexible air tubes, a food ration, water, and sedatives. They ordered her to enter in silence. Inside the box, Krist took a camera and took a last photograph of her, in which she held a sign with the word "KIDNAPPED." This photograph was the proof Krist would send to her family to demand a $500,000 ransom from her father, Robert Mackle.

The Mackle family, heads of the Deltona Corp., a Florida-based development company reportedly worth $65 million in 1968, moved in silence, following every instruction from the captors. The FBI mobilized agents in Georgia and Florida almost immediately to find Barbara, intensifying their efforts as they unraveled the kidnappers' meticulous plan.

During her time underground, Barbara screamed desperately for a long time but then tried to stay calm, replaying visions of the upcoming Christmas morning with her family to remain focused on surviving. She repeated to herself, "If someone finds me, I will be free," trying to cling to any thought that mitigated the fear. With the dim flashlight they left her, she occasionally guided herself by the hands of the watch, measuring the passage of hours. Her only comfort was the slight flow of air that penetrated through the ventilation tubes. This fragile relief kept her conscious but on the edge of despair.

After three days, Barbara's location was discovered after Krist and Eisemann-Schier successfully received the $500,000 ransom and called the FBI, giving approximate coordinates to find her. In a race against time, agents headed to the forest in Gwinnett County, a dense and lonely area where time seemed to have stopped. In the early hours of December 20, 1968, rescue teams began to dig with bare hands and improvised tools at the indicated point. Eighty-three hours after the kidnapping, the lid of the box was finally uncovered.

Barbara emerged from her fiberglass tomb with her face covered in dirt; her eyes could barely adjust to the light. She murmured, "I'm fine," in an attempt to calm the rescuers who watched her, incredulous at her resilience. She was found alive and without visible injuries, though she was exhausted and had a vacant look. She had survived thanks to an unbreakable mental strength and the hope of reuniting with her family at Christmas.

Gary Steven Krist was captured off the coast of Florida in a speedboat he purchased with part of the ransom money, carrying $480,000 of the ransom. Krist was sentenced to life in prison but was released on parole after serving only ten years. After his release, he studied medicine and practiced as a general practitioner in Indiana until 2003, when he lost his medical license for omitting his kidnapping history from his record. In 2006, Krist was arrested again in Alabama for attempting to traffic cocaine and transport illegal immigrants.

Ruth Eisemann-Schier was arrested months later after her fingerprints were found in a hospital in Oklahoma, where she applied for a job while trying to start a new life with a false identity. She was deported back to Honduras, where she was originally from, after serving her sentence.

In her book "83 Hours Till Dawn," published in 1971, Barbara recounted her experience. She wrote, "The sound of the earth kept getting farther away. Finally, I couldn't hear anything above. I screamed for a long time after that." She rarely made public appearances in the decades after the kidnapping, choosing a life away from the public eye and distancing herself from media attention.

Today, Barbara lives discreetly, away from the media and the prominence that the crime involuntarily granted her.

Sources: Infobae, BioBioChile

This article was written in collaboration with generative AI company Alchemiq