In December 1968, Barbara Jane Mackle was a 20-year-old Emory University student staying in an Atlanta motel when two people posing as police officers knocked at 4am. They chloroformed her mother, tied her up, and forced Barbara into a car at gunpoint.
Her kidnapper was Gary Steven Krist, a 23-year-old drifter who had been stalking her for months, looking for what his parole officer later described as “a rich, tough-minded female. Someone who could stand up to the trauma of being buried alive.”
He had already built the box.
It was a fiberglass and plywood capsule, six feet underground in woods near Duluth, Georgia, engineered with disturbing care. An air pump, ventilation hoses, a battery light, blankets, water laced with sedatives, 30,000 calories of food, and three pages of written reassurances that she would survive.
“I screamed and screamed,” Barbara later wrote. “The sound of the dirt got farther and farther away. Finally, I couldn’t hear anything above.”
She was underground for 83 hours.
Krist collected $500,000 in ransom from her father and was captured within 24 hours, the money still on board his speedboat. He directed rescuers to Barbara. She was found alive.
He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He served ten years.
After release he attended medical school in Mexico and the Caribbean. Alabama rejected his license application. Indiana approved him in 2001, because state law didn’t prevent convicted felons from obtaining medical licenses.
He practiced medicine as a licensed doctor in the United States. His license was eventually revoked. In 2007 he was arrested again for drug trafficking and smuggling.
Buried Alive for 83 Hours: The Chilling Kidnapping of Barbara Jane Mackle
