Buried Alive!
Saturday, November 10, 2007 at 12:29AM A dear friend emailed me today to tell me that she had just returned home from a vacation on Marco Island, Florida. In the time it would take to pick up a starfish from the seashore, the mention of Marco Island brought back a flood of memories that I just had to sit and think on for a while. In December of 1968 I was an 11-year-old living in Oakland Park, Florida. One day the spectacular news story broke that Barbara Jane Mackle, a 20-year-old coed at Emory University in Atlanta, had been kidnapped at gunpoint from a Rodeway Inn in Decatur, Georgia (the bedroom community of Atlanta where, a little over a decade later, I would be married). The reason this was big news where I lived was that the lovely Barbara Jane was an heiress from Coral Gables, Florida, a privileged place situated only 35 miles down I-95 from where I lived with my family, but light years away from an economic standpoint.
Marco Island is a fabulous residential and resort community on Florida's gulf coast, about 100 miles west of Miami. Robert Mackle, Barbara Jane's father, was the wealthy land developer who, with his brothers, had been responsible for developing the island in the early '60s. Barbara Jane's kidnappers demanded and got a $500,000 ransom from her father, but not before they had buried his daughter alive in a wooded area northeast of Atlanta. This was the part that caught and held my attention when the story broke and over the days it unfolded in the television and print media. Barbara Jane had left her dorm to stay at the motel with her mother because she, Barbara Jane, was suffering from the Hong Kong Flu that had spread like wildfire through the Emory University campus. The next morning her mother planned to drive Barbara Jane back home to Coral Gables to spend the Christmas holiday in their mansion.
Their trip would be delayed. In the middle of the night, a man banged on the door of the Mackle women's hotel room, identifying himself as a police officer and saying that Barbara Jane's boyfriend had been involved in an automobile accident. When the door was opened, Gary Krist and his female accomplice bound and gagged Barbara Jane's mother and took Barbara Jane away in a car! I shuddered as it was revealed in the news that Barbara Jane's kidnappers had constructed a "coffin" for her, outfitted it with supplies that included water laced with sedatives, and buried her under 18 inches of dirt. She stayed underground, alone, for 83 hours, with only a little pipe coming up through the dirt to give her an oxygen source. What if a wild animal had come along and taken the little pipe that was for Barbara Jane to breathe through? She would have died.
But she didn't die; the kidnappers got their money (although they were later apprehended) and Barbara Jane was found by the FBI. I was fascinated by the picture of her that was printed in the newspaper, supposedly taken the moment they took the lid from her coffin. Imagine having been buried alive for three days, being dug up, having the top of the box removed, and instantly having flashbulbs going off in your face! I would have demanded -- and gotten -- that roll of film and thrown it deep into the woods. They could take my picture after I'd had a shower and put on some makeup. Even so, the picture they took of Barbara Jane has an eerie beauty to it. My mother said that you could tell from the picture that the kidnappers had given Barbara Jane drugs to keep her quiet. Her eyes do look dreamy.
Twelve years ago something happened to me that felt like being buried alive. The details aren't important; insert your own personal tragedy here. No ransom was demanded, however, and, unlike Barbara Jane, no one looked for me. No desperate hands dug into the earth, determined to locate my shallow grave and free me from it. I walked and I talked and I functioned for eleven years after the event, but it felt like I had been taken from my life in the middle of the night, shoved into a cold wooden box with drug-tainted water and a skimpy air supply, covered up with dirt, and left alone in the dark, terrified. I know I sound like a drama queen, but it's the truth.
A year ago, through what I consider to be an extraordinary set of circumstances, I was freed from that horrible box. The way it happened, however, is not as important as the fact that it did. Lots of lovely people helped me. God helped me. To some extent I helped myself. I can breathe deeply again; I can see the light of day. Praise the Lord and pass the mascara; I want my eyes to look extra dreamy.
Barbara Jane
Reader Comments (6)
I must say, Barbara Jane looks very good for what she endured--they must have been really good drugs. I'm so glad you've been freed from your box of pain because you are a delightful person with many layers!
Thank you, my friend. It is good to be among the living again. Barbara Jane declines all interviews, which is too bad; I'd love to write her follow-up story!
My claustraphobia hit while I was reading that, Jen. What a brave girl to have survived it - I do hope she was able to get on with her life.
As have you, and the world is all the more delightful for it.
What a precious thing to say! Thank you. Barbara Jane actually went on to marry the boyfriend whose fake car accident served as the ruse that got Mrs. Mackle to open the door on the night of the kidnapping! They live in Florida, and Barbara Jane will turn 60 next year.
Not sure how this works, but Jen, I too am very glad you escaped your box. May never have known you otherwise, and would have missed out on a very dear friendship.
Aww, thanks Jules ... and thanks for stopping by and for reading. Your (very dear indeed) friendship is one of the many reasons I could write that last paragraph.