Last month, I wrote about the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list turning 75, and what really stood out to me is that only eleven women have made the list over the years. The very first was Ruth Eisemann-Schier. Of course, I had to take a deep dive into learning what finally led to a woman becoming one of the most wanted people in the United States, as well as why she eventually ended up deported to Honduras, given that she didn't look or sound like someone originally from Central America. What I learned was pretty wild, so I thought I'd share.
In 1968, Barbara Jane Mackle was living what seemed like a perfect life. The beautiful 20-year-old was the daughter of Robert Mackle, a super-wealthy businessman and real estate developer from Coral Gables, Fla., and she was studying economics at Emory University just outside of Atlanta.
In December of that year, Barbara got so sick with the Hong Kong flu during her exams that her mother, Jane, had to drive up and nurser her back to health and then planned to bring her home to their Florida mansion for Christmas break. Only, things didn't quite go that smoothly.
The two women stayed at the Rodeway Inn in Decatur, Ga., for a few nights while Barbara recovered, presumably so she wouldn't get her dorm mates sick, and one night around 4 a.m., someone knocked on the door, yelling out that he was a detective. He told the women that someone who had been in an accident was asking for Barbara and described Barbara's boyfriend, Stewart Woodward, who'd visited them earlier in the night. They could see someone outside the door wearing a police hat. Even so, Barbara reportedly told her mother not to answer it. Unfortunately, Jane opened the door anyway.
As you can imagine, the person on the other side was no detective. It was Gary Steven Krist, along with his girlfriend, Ruth Eisemann-Schier.
As soon as they were inside, they tied Jane up and used chloroform on her. She pretended to pass out but was actually wide awake and watched them take her daughter out to their car. When I first read this story, I thought they must have killed or tortured her, but no, they buried her alive.
They took Barbara to the woods in nearby Gwinnett County, which is about 20 miles from the hotel — and just 30 minutes outside of Atlanta — and buried her in a wooden box with a blanket, food, sedatives, and some other essentials, including a note telling her not to worry. The box also had hoses that poked up through the ground above the box and allowed oxygen to get inside. It was buried about a foot and a half underground.
Krist and Eisemann-Schier demanded a $500,000 ransom from Robert Mackle's Florida-based company, Deltona Corp, which People magazine says was worth about $65 million at the time. After the criminals received the money, they called the FBI and gave them coordinates for where to find Barbara.
After 83 hours of screaming, pounding the walls, and trying to focus on mental images of spending Christmas morning with her parents and brother, Barbara was rescued. Thankfully, she wasn't physically harmed, and she was immediately flown to Coral Gables to be with her family.
But as you can imagine, there is much more to this story.
What these two didn't count on is that Barbara's father had friends in high places, including Florida senators, President Richard Nixon, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover himself. They made the Mackle family's case a top priority, and before long, a national manhunt was underway and news of the situation was spread all throughout the media.
While they're both incredibly intelligent people, Krist and Eisemann-Schier weren't quite as smooth as they thought they were. Krist used some of the ransom money to buy a new boat, and the person who sold it to him called the FBI. They eventually found Krist hiding in a mangrove swamp near Fort Myers, Fla. But what about his female companion? Well, that's how she ended up on the Most Wanted list. She was finally captured 79 days later in Oklahoma. She'd applied for a job and given her fingerprints for a background check, having no idea the FBI had them on file.
Krist and Eisemann-Schier are an interesting duo, to say the least. She was born in Honduras to Austrian-Jewish refugees who escaped the Nazis. A well-educated woman, she was a graduate student attending the University of Miami's Institute of Marine Science when she met Krist (who was married at the time and living a family life in Florida). After she was caught, she served four years in a Georgia prison and was deported back to Honduras (I'm guessing no Democrats in Congress went to visit her), where she reportedly still lives today.
I could write a book on Krist alone. Born in Alaska in 1945, he had essentially lived a life of crime, starting at the age of 14 when he was involved in several robberies. In 1966, he escaped from prison, where he was serving time for stealing a car. After the FBI captured him after he kidnapped Barbara, he was sentenced to life but paroled after serving only ten years.
While in jail, he reportedly acted remorseful, began attending church, tutored other inmates, studied, wrote a book, and somehow became pals with the chairman of the Georgia Parole Board. He promised that if released, he would move back to Alaska and work at his family's fishing operation or maybe even become a missionary. He even managed to earn himself a pardon.
Upon his release, Krist went to Grenada and Dominica and attended medical school (for what it's worth, no med schools in the United States would accept him). In 2001, he even managed to get a job as a doctor in a small town in Indiana until a local journalist found out he'd been the guy who had kidnapped Barbara. According to ABC, "Indiana law does not prevent convicted felons from obtaining a medical license [as other states do], and the state medical board put a number of restrictions on his ability to practice medicine."
When he couldn't find another job practicing medicine, Krist did what any logical person would do — he became a drug kingpin. He and his stepson set up a fake construction business in Barrow County, Ga., but they would sail to Colombia ever so often and bring cocaine and even traffic in illegal immigrants who paid him thousands do dollars to bring them. In 2006, his little operation was busted off the coast of Alabama. Back at his home in Auburn, Ga., authorities found a bizarre underground drug lab that he had built himself.
After that, he spent some more time in jail, was released, violated his parole by leaving the country, and then spent more time in jail. As of 2015, he's been released, and it's said he's still alive and lives in Georgia. If that's true, he'd be around 80 years old. Why he's walking free after this life of crime — some of which I didn't even mention — is beyond me.
As for Barbara, I couldn't determine whether or not she's still alive. It's said that she married Woodward and had a couple of kids. They supposedly lived in the Atlanta area but after Woodward died, she moved back home to Florida.
All I know is that she's one strong woman. As a matter of fact, one of Krist's former parole officers once said that Krist was never interested in the money. He just wanted to see if he was up to the challenge of keeping a victim alive underground, and "he was looking for a rich, tough-minded female, someone who could stand up to the trauma of being buried alive."
By the way, if you visit this link, you can actually read the instructions the two left for Barbara. They're long and quite detailed, proving that this guy really did have some kind of weird obsession with keeping someone buried alive.
