For most people, the thought of being buried alive is the ultimate nightmare. For 20-year-old Barbara Jane Mackle, that nightmare became a chilling reality in December 1968.
Barbara, a student at Emory University and heiress to her family’s Florida real estate fortune, was kidnapped just before Christmas by two strangers posing as police officers. What followed was a three-and-a-half-day ordeal that gripped the nation and ended with an FBI rescue that felt more like a miracle than a mission.
The Abduction
On December 17, Barbara and her mother, Jane, were staying at a Georgia motel before traveling home for the holidays. At 4 a.m., a knock at their door changed everything. A man claiming to be a detective said Barbara’s boyfriend had been in an accident. When Jane opened the door, a masked man and a woman stormed in. Jane was chloroformed and tied up while Barbara was dragged away by gunpoint.
Her kidnappers were later identified as Gary Steven Krist, an escaped convict, and Ruth Eisemann-Schier, a graduate student. Their plan: to bury Barbara alive and demand ransom.
Buried Beneath the Earth
Krist and Eisemann-Schier transported Barbara to a remote area north of Atlanta, where they forced her into a fiberglass box outfitted with air tubes, water laced with sedatives, food, and a small lamp. They then buried her beneath the soil, leaving her trapped in darkness.
For 83 hours, Barbara lay in what she would later describe as her “tomb,” fighting panic and clinging to visions of spending Christmas morning with her family. “I screamed and screamed,” she later recalled in her memoir 83 Hours Till Dawn. “The sound of the dirt got farther and farther away until I couldn’t hear anything above.”
A $500,000 Ransom
The kidnappers demanded half a million dollars — a staggering sum in 1968. FBI agents and Barbara’s father, real estate developer Robert Mackle, scrambled to deliver the ransom while also searching for clues. Investigators discovered Krist’s alias, “George Deacon,” after an earlier botched ransom drop, which helped them track the pair down.
Meanwhile, Barbara endured the impossible: buried alive in a coffin-like box, alone with her terror.
The Rescue
On December 20, Krist finally called the FBI with vague directions to Barbara’s location. Agents raced to the site and clawed at the dirt until they unearthed the box. When the lid was pried open, Barbara was weak, dehydrated, but alive.
Krist was later captured in Florida while attempting to flee on a speedboat. Eisemann-Schier was arrested months later in Oklahoma after applying for a job that required fingerprints. Krist was sentenced to life in prison, though he was paroled after just 10 years. Eisemann-Schier was deported to her native Honduras.
Life After Survival
Despite her ordeal, Barbara’s family insisted she remained remarkably resilient. She later married, raised children, and built a quiet life in Atlanta, rarely speaking publicly about her harrowing experience.
Her story — one of survival, strength, and the determination to endure — remains one of the most haunting and unforgettable kidnappings in American history.
