Barbara Mackle: Buried Alive for 83 Hours

[00:00:08] Hey everyone, my name is Nikki Young and this is Serial Napper, the number one true crime podcast for naps. I'm back with another true crime story to lull you to sleep or perhaps to give you nightmares. Barbara Mackle would regret answering the door in the early morning

[00:00:34] hours of December 17th, 1968. On the other side was a masked man, 23-year-old Gary Stephen Crist, who had been researching all of the intricate details of Barbara's life for the last several months. He forced her into the back of a car that he had waiting around

[00:00:53] the corner and he drove her to a remote forested destination where he instructed her to climb into a fiberglass box located at the bottom of a pit that had previously been dug. The

[00:01:06] box was expertly built to house a person for some time without them perishing and it was fitted with an air pump, food, water laced with a sedative and a lamp. After Barbara climbed inside the box, she was buried alive where she would remain for three days before

[00:01:25] being found. Miraculously, she survived the shocking kidnapping and burial underground, but the only thing more shocking was what would become of her captor. So let's jump right in. Barbara Mackle was a 20-year-old university student who came from a wealthy,

[00:01:44] well-known family. Her father, Robert, had built a sizable wealth by creating the real estate business known as Deltona Corp with his brothers Elliot and Frank Jr. They were responsible for the development of several large community projects located just outside

[00:02:01] of Orlando, Florida and a newspaper estimated Robert Mackle's value at the time to be around $65 million. As a child, Barbara would have grown up in a beautiful golf course side mansion with her parents Robert and Jane and her older brother Robert Sr. She would catch the attention

[00:02:22] of a deranged young man named Gary Stephen Crist by doing nothing more than existing. Barbara had no idea that Crist had been watching her for the last several months, learning about her routine, her friends, her family, and every intricate detail of her life that

[00:02:41] he could use against her. In the fall of 1968, Crist sat down at the Miami Public Library and he had a look through the names of the social register. He had obtained this register by using a fake name and pretending to be researching wealthy Floridians. Of course,

[00:03:00] Robert Mackle's name came up on the roster. Listed alongside his name was that of his 20-year-old daughter Barbara Mackle. She fit the profile of someone who Crist needed to pull off an elaborate plan, so unfortunately for Barbara, things were set in motion that

[00:03:18] day. A few months later, while attending Emory University in Atlanta, Barbara was hit with the Hong Kong flu. The virus had been spreading quickly across the country and her campus. It was getting close to Christmas break, so the plan was supposed to be for Barbara to

[00:03:36] take her end-of-semester exams and then to fly back home to spend the holidays with her family. But when she became really sick with the flu, the plan had to change. Barbara didn't

[00:03:49] want to miss out on her exams, but she was so sick she didn't know how she was going to get through it, so her mother Jane flew to Atlanta to help take care of her. Because

[00:04:00] the flu was continuing to spread across the university, Jane rented a motel room located near the campus where Barbara could be segregated and cared for while still being able to travel to campus for her exams. Together, they checked into the Roadway Inn on December 13, 1968.

[00:04:19] Jane was able to keep her daughter comfortable and bring her food and medicine so that she could rest in between studying. The arrangement was working out perfectly, until a few days later in the early morning hours of December 17th. At around 4am, there was a loud knock

[00:04:38] on the motel room door. Personally, there's not a chance in hell that I would have answered it and Barbara and Jane had their reservations too. But when they looked out the door's peephole, they saw a man standing there wearing a police officer's hat. Barbara reluctantly

[00:04:57] opened the door to find a man claiming to be a police officer with serious news to share. He asked her if he could come inside, telling her that her boyfriend, a young man named

[00:05:08] Stuart Hunt Woodward, who she had been dating for several months, had been in a tragic car accident. Barbara was freaking out and as she began to open the door, the man's true intentions were revealed. This man pushed his way inside the motel room as a masked accomplice

[00:05:27] followed behind. Once they were inside the room, the pair brandished a gun while they bound and gagged Barbara's mother, Jane. After Jane was tied up, they forced Barbara into the back of their station wagon that was parked just outside, and then they drove

[00:05:43] to a remote location. Barbara was terrified. She had no idea where these people were taking her or if they were going to kill her. They stopped the car when they arrived at a forested location in Norcross, Georgia, about a 45 minute drive away from the motel. The man

[00:06:01] pointed at a large trench, which he had dug earlier, and he instructed her to go inside. A fiberglass box sat at the bottom of the trench, but this was no ordinary box. Whoever constructed it did so meticulously with intention. The box had two plastic pipes that connected

[00:06:21] the inside to the outside, a mechanism so that the person inside the box could breathe air from the outside. There was a battery-powered fan to circulate the air, a lamp, food, and water, which Barbara would later discover was laced with sedatives. Barbara pleaded with

[00:06:39] her captors not to force her into the box, repeating the words, I'll be good. Instead, one of her abductors held her down while the other covered her face with a towel soaked in chloroform. Then they lowered Barbara into the box. She was drowsy, but very much still

[00:06:57] aware of what was happening to her. The box was roughly 3 feet wide, 3 feet deep, and 7 feet long, just big enough for Barbara to fit lying down inside. She was handed a sign

[00:07:10] to hold, which had the word kidnapped handwritten on it, and then the captor took a photo of Barbara to be used as part of his ransom letter. Then the man and his accomplice closed

[00:07:21] the lid of the box, securing it with 14 screws before shoveling dirt on top of it, burying her alive. Barbara would later write in a book, quote, I started screaming and pounding

[00:07:34] to try to get out. With my fists, I hit the walls as hard as I could. With all my strength, I braced and pushed. I was screaming, God, no, you can't leave me. This was all according

[00:07:48] to the plan laid out by 23-year-old Gary Stephen Crist, the man wearing the police cap, and his accomplice, his girlfriend, 26-year-old Ruth Isman Shire, who wore a ski mask and disguised herself as a man. They had left a note for Barbara inside the fiberglass box

[00:08:07] that read, Do not be alarmed. You are safe. You'll be home for Christmas one way or another. As if that was meant to calm her down. I can't imagine how claustrophobic she must have felt.

[00:08:21] Even though there was a battery-powered lamp and fan left inside of the box, which Crist believed would have had enough energy to last for 11 days, the battery died after just three hours, leaving Barbara in the dark. His perfect kidnapping plan was already off to an unperfect

[00:08:41] start. Crist was no stranger to breaking the law. He began his career as a criminal at just 14 years old when he stole a boat. Only a year after that, at 15 years old, he upgraded

[00:08:53] and he stole a car. By the time he was 16 years old, he was committed to the Utah State Industrial School, which was a juvenile reform school that operated from 1889 to 1983. It was an overcrowded space that lacked the appropriate staff and facilities to properly cater to

[00:09:14] troubled youth, so his stay here likely did more harm than good. After a year or so, he was incarcerated elsewhere, but he managed to escape. He fled the country, took up a new identity,

[00:09:30] and lived under a fake name until 1961 when he was recaptured. By the age of 18, Crist had been incarcerated in three different states, mostly for stealing cars. In November of 1966, he managed to escape prison once again, he fled across the country, and he assumed a new fake identity.

[00:09:51] He was still on the run and working at SeaWorld as a research assistant when he came up with this kidnapping plan along with his partner. The plan was to find a wealthy target with something to

[00:10:04] lose. He just so happened to pick real estate tycoon Robert Mackle, who was vulnerable because he had a 20-year-old daughter who he loved very much. A young woman her age would be the perfect

[00:10:17] victim, not so young that she would be difficult to handle. He would learn everything that there was to know about Barbara so that he could get her to trust him, making the abduction all that much

[00:10:30] easier. They would kidnap her, keep her in a box buried deep within the ground, but not kill her. That way, they didn't have to worry about taking care of her while they waited for the second part

[00:10:44] of the plan to hatch. The ransom money, which Mackle would surely pay to see the safe return of his daughter. By the time they found her, Crist and his girlfriend would be long gone,

[00:10:56] ready to start over with the ransom money. No one was going to die, no harm, no foul, at least in Crist's mind. He did not anticipate any of the hiccups along the way that would lead

[00:11:08] to his victim, Barbara, being trapped in a box beneath the earth for three agonizing days. On the day of the kidnapping, Crist called the Mackle family home to tell them that he had

[00:11:27] buried a full set of instructions in their yard underneath a rock. This was just another one of his tactics to let them know that he was watching them and he had been there. Thank you to a user

[00:11:40] by the name of Delaney on Websleuths who posted the contents of the ransom letter because it's very interesting. I'm going to read for you a portion of it now and then I'll have a link

[00:11:52] to the full version in my show notes because it is quite long. The letter said, Sir, your daughter has been kidnapped by us and we now hold her for ransom. She is quite safe if

[00:12:04] somewhat uncomfortable. We offer no proof of our possession of her at this time. It will arrive by mail in a few days. Barbara is presently alive inside a small capsule buried in a remote piece

[00:12:18] of soil. She has enough food and water and air to last seven days. At the end of the seven days, the life-supporting batteries will be discharged and her air supply will be cut off. The box is

[00:12:32] waterproof and very strong, fiberglass reinforced plywood. She has little chance of escaping. The box is in an unusual and lonely place. She has no chance of being accidentally stumbled upon. Contemplate if you will the position into which this puts you. If you pay the ransom prior to

[00:12:53] seven days, we will tell you of her whereabouts. Should you catch the messenger we send to pick up the ransom, we will simply not say anything to anyone and ergo Barbara will suffocate. The

[00:13:07] messenger knows only one of us and he will report to us via radio from the pickup site. We will immediately know his fate. Should you catch all of us, we will never admit to anything as to do so

[00:13:21] would be suicide and again she will die. As you can see, you don't want to catch us for to do so would be condemning your lovely and intelligent daughter to death. The police may allow you to

[00:13:35] have a free hand prior to the return of your daughter should you be so callous as to contact them. If you ask the police to advise you in this matter, please be aware that their very presence

[00:13:47] will scare us off. We can see no way for you to secure the safe return of your daughter other than to obey instructions explicitly. Number one, although we will always anticipate the involvement

[00:14:01] of the police in this situation, be assured that if your communication with them or their actual presence is detected, we will break off negotiations with you immediately. We have tied into several of

[00:14:14] the possible means of communications that you have with the police and feel that you will be unable to contact them without our knowledge. Number two, the ransom will be $500,000 in recently issued

[00:14:28] $20 bills. Here are the requirements you must meet in this matter. The notes must not be older than 1950 issues. No more than 10 notes must have consecutive serial numbers, i.e. the notes must

[00:14:43] have a great variety of serial numbers and not be merely shuffled. The notes must be Federal Reserve notes of standard configuration. No more than one half of the notes may be uncirculated. Number three,

[00:14:57] the bills should occupy no more than 400 cubic inches and thusly fit into a standard large suitcase. Purchase such a suitcase and lock the bills inside. When you have the money in readiness, call all of the Miami area major newspapers and place the following ad in the personal section

[00:15:17] of the classified advertisements. The ad says, loved one, please come home. We will pay all the expenses and meet you anywhere at any time. Your family. Prepare your car for a trip and on the night of the

[00:15:31] ad's first appearance, we will call you at home after midnight to advise you of where you must go to deliver the money. You must be the one to deliver the money, Robert. You will dress yourself in an

[00:15:44] all-white outfit. You must use the Lincoln to deliver the money. Any deviation from this outline will result in your death. Our messenger will have you in his sights from the time that you leave your

[00:15:56] car. Within 12 hours after you deliver the money, you will receive another call advising you of your daughter's whereabouts. A letter will be sent also to ensure the findings of your daughter. So clearly, Crist had thoroughly thought about how this was going to go down and had made provisions.

[00:16:15] According to the instructions, if Robert Mackle wished to see his daughter again, he needed to pay a $500,000 ransom. This was pocket change to Mackle, so of course he would pay to get his

[00:16:27] beloved daughter back. To signal to the kidnapper that he agreed to the terms, he was ordered to place a classified ad in the Miami Herald on the morning of December 18th that read,

[00:16:39] Loved one, please come home. We will pay all expenses and meet you anywhere at any time. Your family. And with that, the deal was on. Crist began to make preparations for the exchange. After picking up the ransom money, he and his girlfriend slash accomplice would fly to Chicago

[00:16:58] and then they would catch a flight out to Europe where they would basically start over. He also bought a small boat, which they would use during the ransom pickup. On the evening of December 18th,

[00:17:11] Crist called the Mackle home again with further instructions. Robert Mackle was told to leave the $500,000 in a specific spot, which was located along the Fair Isle Causeway, just a few miles away from the Mackle residence. Crist would be waiting in that boat that he had purchased

[00:17:30] in the bay near the causeway. The plan was to watch for the drop off, run to shore and grab the ransom money, then to jump into a getaway car, which was driven by his girlfriend slash

[00:17:43] accomplice. Once again, things did not go according to Crist's plan. Robert Mackle carefully left the ransom money where he was instructed to, but right as that happened, two police officers just

[00:17:56] so happened to drive by and Crist thought that he was being set up. He fled on foot and his girlfriend slash accomplice, she abandoned the getaway car. This was a huge mistake, leaving behind a getaway car that contained a ton of personal information about both kidnappers,

[00:18:15] including their checkbooks, old bills that had their addresses on it, and the passport of Crist's girlfriend, Ruth Eisman. To really tie the whole thing together, police also found a Polaroid photo of Barbara with her holding that sign that said, Kidnapped, the picture that she had been forced

[00:18:35] to take before she was buried alive. While Crist frantically put together a plan for a second ransom drop, the authorities now had a hunch as to who had kidnapped Barbara Mackle. They put out a

[00:18:48] warrant for the arrests of both Gary Crist and Ruth Eisman. They began looking for their suspects while Crist rented a vehicle and made yet another phone call to the Mackle household. This time, he

[00:19:02] told Robert Mackle to drop the money at a spot on Southwest 8th Street. The ransom exchange was successful this time, and Gary Crist was $500,000 richer. For now. Crist began to make his way to Austin, Texas, where he was to rendezvous with his accomplice slash girlfriend, Eisman. It wouldn't

[00:19:26] be until 15 hours after the ransom exchange that Crist called the FBI to give them directions to find Barbara Mackle still buried beneath the ground. On December 20th, search teams quickly moved into the remote area of the burial site, trying to find her location as quickly as possible.

[00:19:46] They finally found the spot when they could hear Barbara Mackle quietly calling for help through the air tubes. Officers wasted no time waiting for assistance, as they frantically began to dig at the

[00:20:00] earth until they finally reached the box that Barbara was buried in. She had been left underground for 83 hours. Barbara was emaciated and dehydrated, but she was alive. It was a miracle, considering

[00:20:16] that the battery that was supposed to help sustain her ran out after only three hours of being inside that box. Still, when questioned by the press after her rescue, she said that she was feeling

[00:20:29] wonderful and that she was treated humanely by her abductors. Likely, she was just thankful to be alive and out of that box. As you can imagine, the story of Barbara Mackle's ransom kidnapping

[00:20:43] was front news everywhere. So when a local boat shop owner was met by a customer paying for a $2,200 boat in $20 bills, he was immediately suspicious. The customer called himself Arthur Horowitz and he was there to buy a 16-foot motorboat. The boat shop owner decided to call the

[00:21:04] authorities just in case right after this customer left with the boat. Authorities believed Arthur Horowitz to be Gary Christ, and now they knew they had to keep an eye on the waters. And it's true,

[00:21:17] Gary Christ was fleeing across the state on a boat. He had to go through a series of locks on his way, and each time he told them that he had lost his registration paperwork, and they allowed

[00:21:29] him to pass through. However, when he arrived at the final lock and tried the same lost paperwork story, the worker was suspicious and called the authorities. From all of the details that this worker provided, it sounded like this was their man, Gary Christ. They deployed another search

[00:21:48] team, this time by boat and helicopters in an attempt to track down Christ's boat. Christ figured out that the police were on to him. He abandoned his boat on a private island, Hog Island, and then

[00:22:00] he ran through the jungle terrain on foot. But it was too late. The police knew exactly where he was. This wasn't a huge island, so they surrounded him and waited for him to give himself up.

[00:22:14] When they took him into police custody, they found $17,000 in cash in his pocket. Later on the boat that he had abandoned, they would find another $480,000. He never had the chance to meet up with his girlfriend and accomplice, Ruth Eisemann. She wouldn't be

[00:22:32] arrested until a few months later after spending time on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. At trial, she tried to play the role of a lovesick girlfriend who would have done anything

[00:22:44] for her boyfriend, Gary Christ. But no one in the courtroom was buying it. For her role, she was sentenced to 7 years in prison. She was paroled after 4 and promptly deported back to her homeland of Honduras. As for Gary Christ, he was a diagnosed narcissist and the mastermind in

[00:23:05] this kidnapping-for-ransom plot. Back in Georgia where he was charged for his crime, he faced the death penalty. But the jury there considered extenuating circumstances, like his attempt at trying to make sure Barbara stayed alive with the food and water and air pipes. They also

[00:23:23] considered the fact that he had given the FBI the location that she was buried. Personally, I cry bullshit on that one. He's very lucky that Barbara didn't die in that box. He left her there

[00:23:37] for 3 days without checking on her. The battery he put in the box that was supposed to keep a light and air circulation, it failed shortly after she was buried, so really anything could have happened.

[00:23:50] Gary Christ was sentenced to life in prison. His time behind bars was nothing less than interesting as he dedicated all of his time trying to figure out how to get out. First,

[00:24:02] he tried to make amends with Barbara Mackle. Maybe if he was able to convince her that he was sorry and a changed man, she might go to bat for him when his parole hearing came up. He wrote her

[00:24:14] a letter that said quote, Of course my crime was evil, immoral and cruel and I cannot excuse it. I don't deserve forgiveness but it would make me happy to receive it. The crime is past and I can

[00:24:28] learn from it but I cannot change it. When that didn't seem to work, he tried the old-fashioned way, a prison break. He hid in a garbage truck waiting for it to leave for the day. But he was

[00:24:40] caught. Christ was stuck with only one option, he had to be a model prisoner, do something productive with his time and wait for his moment at his first parole hearing. He found himself a

[00:24:53] penpal slash girlfriend outside of the prison and she became a huge advocate for his early release. He enrolled in college courses to become certified as a paramedic and he started working at the prison hospital. His goal? To become a doctor, at least that's what he told everyone. By 1979,

[00:25:13] when his parole hearing had arrived, Gary Christ had all of his ducks in a row. He appeared to be a model prisoner who was looking ahead to a positive future. By this point, his victim,

[00:25:25] Barbara Mackle, was now married with children. She had moved on and she even supported his early release, which would ultimately lead the parole board to approve his parole. Gary Christ walked out of prison once again at the age of 33 years old. He married his prison penpal girlfriend

[00:25:44] and he even obtained a medical degree from a medical school abroad. When he returned to America, he applied for a medical license, first in Alabama but that was denied, and then again in Indiana in

[00:25:57] December 2001 and it was approved. He actually worked as a physician in the state until 2003 when he found himself in trouble once again. He had failed to disclose a disciplinary action that he received, which led him to lose his license to practice. Gary Christ was almost a success story,

[00:26:18] from convicted criminal to practicing doctor, but he just wasn't about that life. After losing his license, he pretty much lost his mind too and he found himself in the cocaine business. He would

[00:26:32] use his boat to traffic cocaine back and forth across the border and because we know that Christ's perfect plans are far from it, he would be caught with over 30 pounds of cocaine in 2006 off the

[00:26:45] coast of Alabama. He pled guilty to drug smuggling and was sentenced to five years in prison, which if you're looking at his history, it is basically a slap on the wrist. In all of the

[00:26:57] things that he had done, notably kidnapping and burying a woman alive, he always seemed to escape any sort of substantial jail time. Gary is now in his 70s living in Georgia and as of a few weeks

[00:27:11] ago, he's still very much active on social media so he's kicking around. Barbara Mackle married her boyfriend, Stuart Hunt Woodward, the one who Christ had said was in a car accident to get her

[00:27:24] to open the motel door. The couple would have children and live together until he died in 2013. She wrote a book about her harrowing experience with Miami Herald reporter Gene Miller. It's called

[00:27:38] 83 Hours Till Dawn, but it doesn't look like any new copies have been made in recent times so you're going to have to find one already in circulation if you want to read it.

[00:27:49] That's it for me tonight. If you want to reach out, you can find me on Facebook at Serial Napper. I also have a Serial Napper true crime discussion group, it's called Serial Society,

[00:27:59] and I'll have the link in my show notes. I'd love to chat with you about all of the cases that I cover and more. You can find my audio on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[00:28:11] I post all of my episodes in video format over on YouTube so go check it out. And if you're watching on YouTube, I'd love if you could give me a thumbs up and subscribe.

[00:28:20] I'm over on X, formerly known as Twitter, at Serial underscore Napper and I post things on TikTok. Serial Napper Nick and that's all one word. Until next time, sweet dreams, stay kind, especially in the comments. Bye.