The photo depicts Barbara Jane Mackle, daughter of billionaire Robert Mackle, and has become a famous photo because of the absurd circumstances of her kidnapping

The photo depicts Barbara Jane Mackle, daughter of billionaire Robert Mackle, and has become a famous photo because of the absurd circumstances of her kidnapping.

Then twenty years old, she contracted the Hong Kong flu at Emory University in Georgia, which the girl attended. In order to better care for her, her mother decided to fly from Florida to the home of relatives in Coral Gables, where she was visiting, to move her from the campus to a nearby motel and then bring her back home during the Christmas holidays.

On December 17, 1968, the same night they checked into the motel, the two women were surprised by two officers, who were actually Gary Stephen Krist and Ruth Eisemann Schier disguised as a man, who informed her that the girl's close friend Stephen Woodward had been the victim of a car accident. They entered the room and stunned her mother Jane Mackle with chloroform, tied her up, and told Barbara that she had just been kidnapped.

The next day, the Mackles received a phone call demanding an exorbitant ransom, five hundred thousand dollars, approximately $3.8 million today; if they did not write a pre-arranged message for the delivery of the money in the Miami Herald, Barbara would die of hunger, thirst or simply lack of oxygen, since she had been buried in a coffin in which she could survive for a week.

The Mackles agreed, the delivery of the ransom was organized but a resident, suspicious of the noises, called the police, ruining the agreement and scaring away the kidnapper who in the meantime had left the ransom behind. The investigators found an abandoned blue Volvo in the area containing the photo of a man wearing a police cap and Barbara's Polaroid with the word "kidnapped" written on it.

Thanks to the fingerprints found in the car, the FBI was able to track down a certain George Deacon who produced boxes with ventilation systems at the University of Miami. Deacon's superior also named Eisemann Schier, who also worked at the university, and described her as an acquaintance of Krist, an escapee who had been on the run since '66. After further analysis of fingerprints and documents, the FBI concluded that Deacon was actually Krist, living in disguise.

The Mackles arranged for a second ransom drop via a press conference in which they let the kidnapper know that they had had no part in the police raid the previous time, and the kidnapper confirmed his agreement with a phone call in response to the statement. Robert Mackle delivered the ransom and Krist gave vague directions to Barbara's burial location: despite the time that had passed, almost four days since her capture, and the limited information to locate her, Barbara was found alive in her coffin and returned to her family.

Stephen Krist was captured shortly after on a speedboat with part of the loot, and was later sentenced to life in prison but released ten years later, while Eisemann Schier, who eluded capture for 79 days, making her the first woman to be placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, was sentenced to five years after which she was extradited to her native Honduras. Barbara Mackle survived and said she managed to stay alive by thinking about seeing her parents for Christmas. Continue reading