Gary Krist: The Einstein of Crime
"Don't Leave Me"
Krist decided his safest escape would be by boat. He planned to cross Florida via canals, then buzz across the Gulf of Mexico to the Texas rendezvous.
The morning after receiving the ransom, Krist pulled into D & D Marine Supply in West Palm Beach and purchased a 16-foot motorboat, using the name Arthur Horowitz.
But he paid for the boat with $2,240 in $20 bills.
The Mackle kidnapping was front-page news across the country, and everyone in America knew that morning that the ransom had been paid in $20 bills to a burly, bearded man.
At D&D Marine, owner Norman Oliphant thought it was curious that Arthur Horowitz, burly and bearded, had a thick stack of $20 bills.
He called police just after "Horowitz" towed the boat off the lot at noon.
An hour later and nearly 15 hours after the ransom pickup Gary Krist stopped at a payphone and called the Atlanta FBI office to leave directions to Barbara Mackle's burial site.
An army of agents raced toward Duluth. The first agents who found the spot spoke to Mackle through the air tubes, then frantically clawed at the earth with their bare hands to free her.
"She kept saying, 'Don't leave me,'" the FBI's Ange Robbe told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "We assured her we wouldn't."
She was finally freed after 83 hours underground dehydrated, stiff and 10 pounds lighter.
Mackle told her rescuers, "You are the handsomest men I've ever seen."
She was whisked back to Miami in her father's private jet. During a brief appearance for the press, Mackle insisted her kidnappers had treated her humanely and that she was feeling "absolutely wonderful."