Buried Alive True Story. The Barbara Jane Mackle Kidnapping

The sound that haunts this story is simple: dirt landing on wood, again and again, until even screaming can’t reach the surface. Barbara Jane Mackle is 20 years old when she’s taken in the dark hours of December 1968, then sealed into a coffin-like capsule and buried under Georgia clay with a thin lifeline of air hoses and a set of written “reassurances” meant to keep her alive for ransom. It’s a true crime case that feels impossible, which is exactly why it still gets under your skin. 

We walk through how the kidnapping unfolds, from the fake “detective” at the door to the calculated choice of a wealthy target, and how the ransom demand for $500,000 pulls her father, Robert Mackle, into a nightmare that quickly dominates national headlines. Along the way, we track the FBI investigation as it swings on tiny breaks: a ransom drop interrupted by chance, an abandoned car with chilling photos, and a paper trail that leads straight to the University of Miami and an alias hiding a fugitive’s past. 

Then comes the race against time. More than 100 agents spread across the area, digging and searching until they finally reach Barbara after 83 hours buried alive. Her condition, her attitude, and the way she describes staying hopeful give this story a human center that goes beyond shock. We also follow the unsettling aftermath: the arrests of Gary Stephen Crist and Ruth Eisman Scheer, the controversies around parole and pardon, and the later discoveries that suggest Crist never truly left crime behind. 

If you’re drawn to Southern history, FBI true crime investigations, and survival stories that are rooted in fact, press play, then subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review. What part of the case do you think mattered most to solving it?

Transcript

Buried Alive In Georgia Clay

Carole Townsend 0:22

The young woman shivered. Her hands clutched across her belly in a tight grasp. There wasn't room to hug herself in the damp cold. The box was barely big enough for her to squirm into this position. Her nightgown clung to her body, a poor barrier between her and the clammy chill. Between her and the dark and the fear. She trembled from head to toe, and her teeth had started chattering. When did that happen? she thought wildly, her thoughts tripping over one another, like those ping pong balls you'd see spun around and around in a bingo hall. Am I going mad? I think I am, she thought. Here it was again. Another shovel full of dirt hitting the box. Hitting the core box. How many was that? And what did it matter? She knew they'd keep coming. Another and another. But now the sound was muffled, farther away. She knew what that meant. Please, she thought, please. She was screaming now, or had she been screaming all along? I can't breathe, please. She screamed, a constant shriek and a wail, fueled by terror. She had no idea where she was, only that she was being buried alive. December in Georgia. It was cold. Did you know that it's much colder under the damp Georgia clay? Stories, they're like books, because they let our minds provide the images, the feel, the sounds, and the smells as we go along. And when a story is rooted in truth, it takes on a whole new dimension. Like a newsreel running behind the story being told, we're reminded that this all really happened. That the characters aren't born of fiction, but of fact. Somehow, that makes a story like the one I'm going to tell you tonight even more frightening. The idea that there are people who are capable of the unthinkable. That thought gives us pause. The story I'll share with you tonight is riveting. It will stay with you. And it could keep you awake at night because it is true. Let's draw a clothes again tonight here on my porch. There's comfort and company, isn't there? And there's safety. Never mind the dark and the mist rolling in off the river tonight. We're here together. And I'll turn on the light. Because it's good to tell ourselves that light pushes back the darkness, that it keeps us safe. The following podcast contains material that may be disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. Time had passed, but she had no idea how much. It had been a while since she could hear the dirt raining down on top of her box, and she knew what that meant. No one could hear her. Maybe by now there was no one up there to hear her. It was December 17, 1968, in the dark of night in Georgia. Deep in the woods north of Atlanta, a coffin-like box had been buried under 18 inches of dirt. The fiberglass and plywood capsule in which the young woman was buried contained an air pump, hoses, a light, 30,000 calories of food, water laced with tranquilizers, some blankets, and three pages of instructions and reassurances that she would live through the ordeal. This woman was not chosen at random. She was chosen because she was strong and because she was from a very wealthy family. She would have to be strong to survive what her captors had in store for her. An unlikely passerby probably wouldn't notice anything amiss. Even though two vent tubes protruded slightly above the cold Georgia clay, the woods were dark and quiet as they usually were. No one could hear the young woman's cries for help. Inside that box was twenty-year-old Barbara Jane Mackle. I should probably tell you how she got there. For back in 1968, even Atlanta slept soundly in the wee hours of the morning. Barbara Jane Mackle and her mother Jane had sat up all night talking, catching up as mothers and daughters do when they've been separated by time and by distance. Barbara was a college student at Emory University in Atlanta, and her mother had driven from Coral Gables, Florida to meet her daughter and drive her back home for Christmas. Barbara had fallen ill with the Hong Kong flu, which had swept through the college campus like a brush fire. Still, she relished the idea of being home for Christmas, and just being with her mother was a warm comfort. By 4 a.m., both women were eventually talked out and tired, and as they readied themselves for bed, Jane heard a knock at the door. Answering before opening the door, Jane asked, Who was there? The man who identified himself as a detective informed her that there had been a car accident, and a young man that her daughter knew was involved. Of course, Jane opened the door immediately. She was pushed back into the room by a masked man wielding a shotgun. A smaller person, perhaps a young boy, accompanied the gunman. Before Jane could scream, a hand pressed a chloroform-soaked rag over her nose and her mouth. Someone then tied her up. Barbara was pushed and shuffled out of the room and into the back seat of a waiting car. You're being kidnapped, the man said to her. He slammed the car door, jumped into the driver's seat, and sped off into the brisk Georgian mood. Blackness before them parting way for the headlights, and the blackness behind them closing with dark inevitability. Now you understand how a young college student came to be buried under a foot and a half of heavy Georgia clay deep in the woods somewhere north of Atlanta. Later that same day, with Barbara having been buried for about 10 hours and alternating exhausted sleep with screaming, a family friend received a call at the Mackel home in Florida. The caller instructed them to look in the northwest corner of the Mackel's yard, where they would find a ransom note with details about how to ensure their daughter's safe return. Barbara's father was Robert Mackle, a prominent millionaire land developer based in Florida, known for developing communities such as Key Biscayne and Marco Island. Robert was a take-charge kind of man, and he loved his daughter fiercely. It seemed that the people who took his daughter somehow knew that, and they banked on it. The kidnapping of Barbara Jane Mackel was an elaborately planned, well-executed crime that quickly came to dominate local and national headlines. No small feat in a year of passionate social upheaval. Remember, in April 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee, even as he admonished followers to go forward in peace. Also in 1968, Robert Kennedy charmed crowds by the thousands as he campaigned for the office of President of the United States. Just five years earlier, his beloved brother Jack was murdered in Dallas, Texas. Young people were protesting the war in Vietnam on college campuses from coast to coast. By the 1960s, kidnapping for ransom was a familiar concept. But to be kidnapped and buried alive was a terrifying thought that shook Americans to their core and left everyone wondering what kind of person could do such a thing. Barbara's kidnappers were Gary Stephen Crist and Ruth Eisman Scheer, and their ransom note demanded that Robert Mackle pay $500,000 in $20 bills packed into a suitcase if he ever wanted to see his daughter alive again. The first attempt at a ransom drop, which Robert Mackle helped coordinate, was disrupted when two policemen drove by the drop spot purely by coincidence. The kidnappers spotted the officers, got spooked, and fled on foot. The plan had been to retrieve the $500,000 from the ocean floor after the suitcase containing the money was dropped into the water, as Krista demanded. Agents later learned that he and Ruth had planned to retrieve the money using a Boston whaler that Chris had stolen from the University of Miami Institute of Marine Sciences. The FBI, who actually was surveilling the drop, found the kidnapper's blue Volvo abandoned after they fled. Inside the car was a photograph of a man wearing a policeman's hat and a photo of Barbara Chayne Mackel holding a sign over her chest that read, kidnapped. The image was chilling. The car was registered to a George Deacon. The second ransom drop, which Robert Mackel also helped arrange, was successful. But surprisingly, there was no immediate word from the kidnappers once the money had been retrieved. The FBI was able to trace George Deacon to the University of Miami, where they discovered that he was employed by the university. His job was building ventilated boxes at the Institute for Marine Science. Deacon's supervisor provided Ruth Eisman Shear's name to authorities. Ruth also worked at the university, and those who knew the pair told agents that George Deacon spent a great deal of time with Ruth. Another coincidence played a key role in helping the FBI track down Barbara's kidnappers. The local FBI office received a call from a man in Georgia claiming that he had just bought a small trailer from a man and found some strange paperwork inside. The FBI found letters addressed to George Deacon and to Gary Christ, who had escaped from a California prison in 1966. When the FBI compared fingerprints they found in the car to those found in Christ's file, they discovered that George Deacon and Gary Christ were the same man. As promised in the ransom note on December 20th, Christ finally called and gave an FBI switchboard operator vague directions to Barbara's location. The FBI set up their base in Lawrenceville, Georgia. More than 100 agents spread out through the area in an attempt to find her, digging at the ground with their hands and anything else they could find to use. Barbara Mackle was found on the afternoon of December 20th. She suffered from dehydration and had lost 10 pounds, but was otherwise unharmed. She had spent 83 hours buried underground in Berkeley Lake, Georgia, alone and terrified. Agents were pleasantly surprised to find that Barbara's state of mind was a positive one. When asked how she had remained positive, not only during the kidnapping, but in those dark days buried underground. Barbara said she would close her eyes and imagine spending Christmas with her family. She said she never doubted she would be rescued, and she insisted that her kidnappers had treated her humanely and that she felt wonderful when she was found. She remembered telling the agent who finally opened the box and pulled her out, I think you're the most handsome man I've ever seen. Gary Christ was arrested while hiding in a swamp after a tip led to a search in Florida that began on December 20th and went through the night. When captured, he had $17,000 in his pockets, and another $480,000 was found in the speedboat he had purchased after picking up the ransom money. When agents found him hiding in a dense crop of mangroves near Fort Myers, Christ shouted at them, I have rights. During the interrogation and trial that followed, Christ would make statements like, I am a superior human being. And he often compared himself to Albert Einstein. Ruth Eisman Schear earned herself the distinction of being the first woman to be added to the FBI's most wanted list 58 years ago. Special agents arrested her in Norman, Oklahoma after she had applied for a job in a hospital and provided her fingerprints as part of the screening process. She was later found guilty of kidnapping Barbara Jane Mackel. And even though Gary Crist was arrested and eventually convicted and sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping Barbara and burying her alive, he was paroled just 10 years later and then pardoned by the state of Georgia in 1988 when he was heralded as an example of rehabilitation. Christ then worked as a general practitioner in Indiana, but his license was revoked just two years later for lying about a disciplinary action received during his residency. Following his arrest, Christ was sentenced to five years and five months in prison, and he was granted supervised release in November 2010. On August 27, 2012, in Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. district judge revoked Christ's supervised release for violation of his probation. He had again left the country without permission, sailing to Cuba and South America. An employee at the charter company that rented Chris the sailboats contacted the FBI about suspicious maps found aboard a vessel Chris had rented. The FBI placed tracking devices on a sailboat the company later rented to Christ, and that device led to the high-profile capture of Gary Christ and his stepson, both wanted criminals at the time. This time, the judge sentenced Chris to 40 months' imprisonment. On March 10th of that same year, FBI investigators searched Christ's home on Georgia Highway 324, just outside of Auburn, Georgia, about 35 miles northeast of Atlanta. They made a stunning discovery when they pried open a concealed trapdoor in the floor of a small garden shed. A ladder gave underground access to a submarine-style workshop built inside a metal cylinder that measured 27.5 feet long and eight feet in diameter. The laboratory had running water and electricity, and it was stocked with chemicals and containers used to convert cocaine from paste to powder, which authorities believe Christ and his stepson then sold in and around Atlanta. The lab also featured an escape route, a tunnel nearly 20 yards long that snaked to the surface, terminating in a camouflaged 50-gallon barrel. With respect to his crimes against Barbara Jane Mackle and her family, Christ would often praise his victim for her merciful testimony regarding the kidnapping and burial. She told the judge that she did not want Chris to be executed for those crimes. After all, she said he was the one who called the FBI to tell them where she was buried. Well, sort of. He gave them a general idea of where to look. Over the years, Christ would get upset and complain when confronted with questions about his past. I'm quoting Christ here. Ambush journalists inflicting pain on people who are trying to do the right thing are almost as shameful as Osama bin Laden, he said after being approached by a reporter from an ABC News affiliate. She's not spoken publicly about the kidnapping since. After her arrest, Ruth Iceman Shear was deported to her native Honduras. Her current whereabouts are not publicly known. As far as I know, Gary Christ is still alive. There is no record of his death in the customary searches for such information. If that's true, he's now 81 years old. His specific whereabouts and activities have not been publicly reported, so I can't tell you where he lives today. Or what he's up to.com. As always, thanks for listening, and if you're enjoying these tales of Southern history and lore, I hope you'll tell your friends. Subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, Apple Play, iHeart, and anywhere you listen. My team and I used the following sources for information about this episode. People.com, how a twenty-year-old heiress survived her kidnapping, dated November second, two thousand twenty-four. ABC News, Man Who Buried Girl Alive, Becomes Doctor, dated November 14, 2002. In the book Eighty-Three Hours Till Dawn, written by Barbara Jane Mackel.