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Hey, Weirdos. I'm Alayna.
I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
It is, and I'm so ready for part two.
This is part two, and the story just gets weirder.
The plot thickens. From here on out, it got weird at the end.
It's going to get weirder.
George Deacon is a wild man.
Oh, goodness gracious.
A wild man. And before we get into it, go pre -order The Butcher Game.
It's coming out September 17th.
It's so close, everybody.
Do it. Pre -order it.
It's so close. I promise you, you'll love it.
It's thicker. It's gnarlier.
it's looks good on a bookshelf looks good it's got a nice cover you can get one of those um stands where you can display it you can it's so pretty it has a bloody leaf on it what more could you ask for autumn is here spooky season god so it's perfect you don't even aesthetically understand so go pre -order it please i beg of you i love you so much if you already have i love you if you feel like you want to i love you even if you aren't going to but i'll love you even more if you do She has so much love in her heart for all of you.
So much love in my heart.
You can go to thebutchergame .com and you can see all the places you can pre -order it.
And there might still be tickets left to some of the events that we mentioned in last week's episode or the other day's episode.
It's true. There might be.
So go take a peek, but pre -order that episode.
Pre -order that episode.
Pre -order that book.
Remember, you might get it like a day early.
It's like that fun little like, who knows?
Who knows? That's a fun game to play.
You know, it's a fun game.
I like that. Yeah but that's all I got to say to you before we get back into this because I know you're sitting there going huh?
That's the thing I have nothing I could say a million things right now let's get to it.
Like let's go so when we last left you we had we had successfully done the ransom drop.
Yes. We had figured out we'd found the car the car from Massachusetts we had found that it traced back to George Deacon, and we found those wild photos of George Deacon.
We also found some photos of Barbara Mackel.
Yeah, which are so chilling.
Yeah, and it's the one you can look at, and again she's alive, don't worry, but she was drugged in that photo, by the way, we find out.
But that's where we left off.
So on the morning of December 20th, investigators learned that George Deacon had moved from Massachusetts to Florida where he had found work as a boat driver for a marine science laboratory at the University of Miami.
Now agents tracked down Deacon's boss at that university.
His name was Dr. Robert Hurley.
He was the head of the marine lab.
And Robert Hurley was who the car was registered to, right?
So there's all kinds of weird shit going on.
Uh -huh. So according to Hurley, George Deacon was an incredibly bright and capable man who provided field assistants to the research scientists in the field.
Weird that there was science shit buried in their front yard. Exactly.
In addition to driving the boat for them Deacon would apparently also help them build various kinds of ventilated boxes and containers that the team would use to transport their specimens.
Like marine specimens so he's very well versed in this.
Oh my god. Now, at the time of him being hired in June 1968 George Deacon said on his resume that he was 23 years old.
Okay. And he claimed that he had attended Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.
Hey! Under previous work experience, he had listed that he last worked as a channel charter service driver in Sitka, Alaska, and that his supervisor was Jay Crist. Now, his resume looked very impressive, and it reads as someone who is interested in a career in science, engineering, that kind of thing but he was only 23 years old well that's what i'm sitting here wondering about so he listed a lot of important jobs for someone who's 23 and it's not like totally out of the realm of possibility but like it would be a red flag for anyone they people would check on this like to make sure because he's
very young to have all these like esteemed positions yeah by 23 i think i had waitressed for a couple years and dropped out of community college so it's like Like not everybody's got like a thousand very important jobs on their resume.
So Dr. Hurley later told agents because they were like, yeah.
Did you guys check up on that?
Did you think about that at all?
He said, quote, obviously our people didn't study this thing very carefully.
Thank you, Dr. Hurley.
Yeah. It seems like it.
It seems like it. And what had happened was apparently he had gotten a job based on a recommendation from a previous co -worker at MIT.
So whoever was hiring him, the whole committee, didn't really bother to look deeper into his resume.
So he just put a bunch of bullshit.
Damn. He is very smart, though.
That is one thing we'll find out.
He's a brilliant human.
Okay. He just doesn't use it for good, evidently.
No, he certainly didn't.
Now, aside from providing some general information about Deacon, there was one other thing that Dr. Hurley showed the agents.
He said for the last several months, Deacon had been dating one of the younger researcher scientists, a graduate student named Ruth Eisman Shear.
Okay. Now, he was asked to describe Ruth.
What does she look like?
Tiny. Short. She's a small woman.
Knew it. The description, once they heard it, it made the agents think, huh, could Ruth Eisman Shear be the accomplice that Jane thought was like a team member?
boy because they were wearing a ski mask, you know, like they didn't hear the voice or anything like that.
It seemed very possible just because of the mask and everything.
So she could have easily passed.
And there was also a call made from a young woman at the Mackles house during all of this.
Oh. And I'm not sure exactly what they said, but there was a young woman's voice that somebody detected.
Okay. Now, based on the information that he provided to the human resources department at At the university, agents learned that George Deacon listed his address at the All Real Trailer Park in Miami.
And so they went to talk to neighbors there and the neighbors described him as, quote, bitter and bright and an admirer of wealth.
Huh. Now, according to that neighbor, Deacon apparently, quote, resented living in a trailer.
And apparently he lived there with his wife and two children for the last six months, for the previous six months.
but two weeks earlier, his wife and his children had left. I was like, you said wife, but you also said he was dating a graduate student.
They had left. Oh, goodness.
This is a mess. Yeah, so on the morning of December 20th, as the agents were starting to close in on their suspect now, investigators caught a big break because they received a call from a young man who thought they'd seen George Deacon the night before.
The previous evening, this man that was calling said he bought a detachable trailer in a local parking lot from someone matching George Deacon's description.
When he read the paper that morning, he said he read about the kidnapping, and the man, he was like, he really looks like this guy.
Like, I think it might be him.
So he was worried the trailer might have been used in the kidnapping, so he called and reported it right away.
Good. Smart. Now, inside the trailer, agents found some boxes, and most of it was just junk.
but one contained several letters that referenced george deacon as well as one as another man named gary christ okay now when the agents ran gary christ's name through their various databases they learned that gary christ was he had a criminal record not good several car thefts he'd been serving a prison sentence at the dual correction institution in tracy california until Until 1966.
Oh, shit. That was only a couple of years before.
Yeah. And then he escaped from the prison.
You're shitting me.
Quote, under a hail of gunfire that killed his escape companion.
Oh, my God. And then he went on the run.
What do they call it?
On the yam? On the lamb.
On the lamb. On the yam!
On the sweet potato!
He went out on the sweet potato, never to be seen again.
I'm tired. oh god as soon as i said it i said it's not the fucking yam i said why did you say that out loud you big idiot honestly petition to change it petition to change it go out on the sweet potato out on the sweet potato that should be a t -shirt i'm on the yam don't bother me i'm on the yam that'd be a good thanksgiving t -shirt that would be a good one oh holiday uh so yeah so gary crist was out on the yam you know he's out as one is he's out on the yam i'm in my afternoon slump it's 3 44 but throughout his criminal career gary crist had actually also Also gone by several aliases, including
the name Arthur Horowitz, George S.
Price, and Dr. Johnson Rarick.
Where did that one come from?
Good for you. Good for you giving yourself a doctor.
Dr. Johnson Rarick.
Like, all right. And when the agents compared George Deacon's fingerprints taken from the Volvo to those on file with the California Department of Corrections, they discovered that george deacon was the convict gary chris ding ding ding ding ding wow this is this is a man who is on the yam after on the yam being in prison and which escaped under hail of gunfire where somebody died yeah like this is serious yeah i know i should take yeah it is serious but like that's i mean like he's a serious motherfucker i shouldn't be picturing him riding a sweet potato out of jail right now well now that's
all i picture so i can't stop i'll never stop picturing that and honestly i don't want to i never want to stop picturing that someone draw that please i can't stop it's just with a lasso for some reason so gary christ was definitely a criminal definitely a sociopath at this point oh no a sociopath i mean he he buried a woman underground oh so i didn't know we got that far yeah sorry focused on the end of it all he's pretty bad he's pretty bad oh my god because he's definitely the the kidnapper he's he's george deacon oh that i missed that i'm really glad that you did that didn't hit because i
was like i thought that was gonna hit harder no yeah i'm so sorry sorry fuck all right all right i'm here i'm here i don't know what's going on you need some coffee i think i do probably give me a red bull okay all right what the fuck i don't know i was like yeah he's crazy i was like why are you questioning them yeah because you're like oh shit he is i'm like i i feel like that's pretty i feel like that's pretty safe to say that i don't know i was listening too i promise a whole person in a box under yeah that's fucked okay i'm i'm sorry yeah but don't worry about it it's because now you know
george hello is scary when i said it you were like oh and i was like damn i thought that was gonna hit there was a lot of names said within that that period there was there was i'll give you that and i like i said dropped out of community college so here we are well gary chris who is george deacon the kidnapper so he's the guy that had been in jail before yeah prison he's the guy who escaped on the sweet potato okay that's george deacon that's our guy with the police hat on the with the beefy description he's all though and he has all these aliases and he has a ton of aliases the problem was i
was was really focused on him riding out of prison on a sweet potato he was dating ruth eisman um sheer okay all right all right i'm here could be his accomplice in this because the agents are sitting there going well she is a small yeah i got all i got all the same people oh fuck um so So you guys I tried my mochi ice cream the other day and I was lifted off of this planet into just another galaxy entirely.
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Happy wedding. but you know like he's a bad person sociopath even and barbara again like according to barbara's instincts of saying like why wouldn't they just kill me if they were planning to kill me might have been right because according to everybody you know according to the people involved here gary christ george deacon the same guy oh and ruth eisman sheer did not intend to kill her that was not their end game apparently they just wanted the money they wanted to get the money and they wanted to get out of there okay my thing is though and i'm saying this because it's already happened so it's
like i feel like um they didn't have to put her in the ground they could have just held her where they were yeah um and then claimed that they had put her in a box underground because they didn't provide the Mackles with any proof that she was in the ground.
Right. That picture never got to them.
And they said that picture was coming.
Eventually they got that picture.
Or they said something was coming.
They said it was coming, some kind of proof, but they didn't get the proof.
And they technically didn't have to give the proof.
Right. They could have just got proof of her being alive.
Yeah. So they didn't have to put her in the ground, which to me says a lot more about them.
Yeah. It's like they didn't have to to do it they could have just lied right the the mackles would have i'm sure would have gathered that money would have done the same drop just to get her back i don't care if she's actually in the ground or not i want her back i want her out of your fucking possession like give me my child back that is interesting why'd they put her in the ground if they didn't intend to kill her i'm like i you didn't care about killing her well that's the thing seven days should they you didn't get that money you were just gonna leave that poor girl alone in the woods in a box
to suffocate to death so it's like we should look at them a little more like than just like they didn't mean to do it like like they weren't meaning to kill her it's like i don't know it would have happened it was a lot of intent here and there was a lot of negligence and a lot of there's a lot of like just uh strange pathology yeah i'm trying to think of the word i'm thinking of it's very um But there's definitely a disinterest in what is happening to her.
Indifference. Indifference.
That's exactly the word I was thinking of.
Indifference. There is an indifference.
Why the fuck can I think of that word?
No, I thought that's what you were thinking, too.
Thank you. But the word was not coming to me either.
That feels so much better.
Yeah, there's a... Indifference.
There's a total indifference to whether this woman lived, died, whatever.
That's the perfect word for it.
And they put her through a fucking nightmare scenario.
And they laid their heads on a pillow every night knowing she's in a fucking box in the middle of the woods panicking like i think i just think it's like it's looked at as like they were kidnappers i'm like well it's a little more than that it's like how attempted murder doesn't carry the same sentence as actual murder it's like you're still gonna go through with it that something just didn't work out luckily at what you were trying to do right like it just it bothers me but after the second money drop like after the second ransom drop chris waited nearly 15 hours and then called the FBI headquarters
in Georgia. And the secretary answered the call and she attempted to transfer him to one of the agents, but he cut her off and demanded that she take down the instructions, this poor fucking secretary.
And so Crist gave the secretary directions to a wooded area in the small city of Norcross, Georgia, which was about 25 miles outside of Atlanta.
But he gave super vague directions and he gave no indication about what the fuck they were supposed to be looking for when they got there so he just gave them a very vague very vast area and gave that's the other thing and he gave them nothing to look for and this is where she's supposed to be yeah and it's like and she's running out of air running out of everything yeah and I'm supposed to believe that you weren't intending to kill her or hurt her I feel like there is this I get the sense that like he's having fun making these calls and he's He's in control.
Yeah. And he's watching everybody run around.
Exactly. And it's fucked up.
Exactly. So moments later, the information was passed on to the agents on the case and the team just rushed to the location.
And when they arrived, the vastness of the area made it seem entirely unlikely that after now four days in the ground that they would find Barbara alive.
Yeah. And the agents fanned out across the area.
They were scouring the woods.
They were looking for anything.
They had no idea what they were supposed to look for.
They were looking for, they're like, maybe I'm looking for, like, some kind of pipe.
I don't know. Like, what should I be looking for?
And then suddenly one of the agents caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a small piece of flexible pipe sticking out of the ground.
Rushed over, began digging into the earth with his hands, calling out for everyone to help him dig.
And she can probably hear him in there.
Oh, yeah. When they dug about 13 inches into the earth, the agents could hear light tapping coming from the earth underneath them.
so they're digging faster and faster until about 18 inches down they discovered the lid of the makeshift coffin and the lid was it was airtight it had been screwed into place so she could never have gotten out of it oh my god and they had they had to remove the screws like they couldn't even rip the lid off right away they had to like manually get the screws out And they found Barbara Mackel very weak and very dehydrated, but still alive after 80 hours in that box.
80 hours. 80 hours in that box.
Four fucking days. Yep.
Holy shit. So Barbara was quickly bundled up in blankets and taken to an ambulance where they found that she had superficial injuries, but she was otherwise pretty unharmed.
That's good. Once she was cleared by medical personnel, she was loaded into her father's plane and and flown back to Florida where they retreated into their home and were like, get the fuck away from us.
So she got to spend Christmas with her family.
Yeah, she did. What a fucking Christmas that must have been.
Talk about being, like, thankful.
In a statement to the press, Robert Mackle's brother, Frank, told reporters that Barbara was, quote, in good health and good spirits, despite her ordeal.
And she told the family her kidnappers, quote, were very considerate, actually, and she was very well taken care of by a woman.
Huh. And in fact, Frank Mackel told reporters that Barbara's main worry was that we would be worried.
Oh. Yeah. And nobody knows if obviously that was true or if Barbara was just sparing her family.
The horrible details.
Any emotional horror of dealing what she had to deal with.
Yeah. But Gary and Ruth technically didn't have a history of violence.
Uh -huh. And both maintained that they only took Barbara for ransom.
them so I still don't really I mean I believe Barbara what she says yeah but I don't believe their intention was purely money we get money in that I think I think that was 100 % the motivation I don't think they went into this because they were like let's hurt someone today I don't think that was the case I think they were like I want the money I don't really care if she lives or dies exactly it's not my problem yeah I think it's the indifference of it that bothers me I agree But the next morning, J.
Edgar Hoover gave his own statement to the press, and he stated that arrest warrants had been issued for Gary Crist and Ruth Eisman Shearer for the kidnapping and attempted ransom of Barbara Mackle.
And in his statement, Hoover noted that Crist had escaped from the dual correctionist institution, and the warden described him as, quote, a young man of very superior intelligence.
That's scary. Very.
Ruth was described as a graduate student in the marine biology department and a native of El Jatio, Honduras.
I hope I said that right.
Both were described as armed and dangerous with a demonstrated willingness to fire upon law enforcement if cornered.
In the days after that, FBI agents tracked Gary Criss' movements to West Palm Beach, Florida, where he stored his car at the Allwright -West Palm Beach parking station on December 20th.
this was like as he was telling them where Barbara was they were able to track all these movements backwards he had told the clerk that he would return to get the car in 10 days and from there is where he went to the Dixie market and that's where he used the telephone to place the call to the FBI office to tell them where Barbara was that afternoon they were able to track him to the D &D Marine Supply where he rented a boat, an Orlando Clipper and set out along the coast in the direction of the Bahamas Oh, no. Now, again, this was them tracking his movements after the fact.
Uh -huh. So he's already set up.
Uh -oh. Now, they were like, cool, he's definitely trying to flee the country, obviously.
So they scrambled to capture him before he was outside of U .S. jurisdiction.
Holy shit. Is this a fucking movie?
It's wild. But did they make this a movie ever?
I think they did make this into, I can't remember if it's a movie or a TV show.
It might even be both.
Let me look it up. 83 Hours Till Dawn?
It's based on her autobiography.
It was a TV movie. Yeah, there it is.
Damn. Damn. That's crazy.
Okay, keep going. Now, unfortunately, by the time the sun had gone down, and without knowing exactly where he was, there was no way to find him in the dark at that time, so the following morning, December 21st, a Coast Guard plane carrying several FBI agents spotted his boat.
Shut the fuck up. It was abandoned.
Ugh! On the coast in Fort Myers.
And a local FBI helicopter was dispatched to the area.
And this was an area around Hog Island, which is a small alligator infested island of the southwest coast. Sorry, Quah?
Who the fuck is this guy?
Yeah. Where they searched the boat and they found a duffel bag containing all the ransom money, minus a few thousand dollars that Chris had already spent.
What? Yep. He just left the money on an alligator infested island?
island well given that he had beached the boat on an island he had to be on the island yeah where the fuck else was he gonna go fucking swimming with the alligators and so they fanned out and searched the island and after a few hours they located him he was just standing about around the trees just like in a bunch of trees just vibing with the trees taken into custody without incident and after all that had led up to this it was pretty uneventful and like it was like Up to this point, it's like, oh, my God, he's on a boat.
He's on his way to the Bahamas.
Holy shit, we can't even see him.
It's the next morning.
We have a plane. Oh, my God, it's his boat.
It's on an alligator -infested island.
Holy shit, he's on the island.
He's in the trees. It's just like, oh, there he is.
But where's Ruth? And it's like, what the fuck?
How does it end with, like, there he is?
He's just hanging. I just picture him leaning up against a tree, like drinking a coconut.
An agent literally said he was just standing there in the mangrove what the fuck they said he didn't even put up a fight he had no comment i mean what the fuck else was he gonna do i'm on an alligator infested island really what do i do i guess he wasn't armed then huh he was carrying a small gun and about eighteen thousand dollars of the ransom money all righty yeah so three months later on march 5th 1969 ruth eisman sheer was arrested by agents from oklahoma state bureau of investigation it took three months and oklahoma after a potential employer ran her fingerprints as part of a background
check and alerted the oklahoma sbi shut the fuck up so she's trying to get a job and they were like oh baby you're on the fbi's most wanted list like what the we're gonna have to uh apologize but yeah sorry you didn't get this one you didn't get that we're gonna pass on another candidate seemed to have uh what you don't which is not being on the FBI's most wanted list yeah that's kind of like what we go for around here neck and neck at that point but that's really what tipped them over the FBI list is always a tiebreaker it's always the thing we look for you know and in fact at the mo at that time
she was the first and only woman to appear on the FBI's most wanted list wow this woman that's crazy Ruth was charged with extortion and a judge set her bond at $500 ,000.
I'm like, can we put attempted murder in there as well?
They buried her in a fucking box.
At the time of her arrest, it appeared to agents as though Ruth was planning to flee the state.
And she told various friends and acquaintances different stories about how she was going to be taking some time off.
And she left her roommates three separate notes.
and later some of her friends deaf said that she was definitely expecting to be arrested it seemed uh when asked for comment about the arrest barbara mackle said i think it's a great tribute to the efficiency of the fbi barbara forever barbara's such a classy lady she's a sweet queen she really is and by the time she sat down with agents on the afternoon of her arrest ruth had prepared a statement regarding her relationship with gary christ whom she only knew as george deegan oh He did not know his real name.
According to Ruth, they met while she was studying marine science at the University of Miami, and she quickly fell in love with him.
And after about a month or two of having a relationship, Chris told Ruth, You know, I have the idea for the perfect crime.
Are you in? No. The answer is always no, baby.
And she was like, I'm sorry, what?
And he was like, well, if we pull it off, we could take all the money and run away together.
But you'll never pull off a great crime like that, and you shouldn't try.
eye nope she wasn't put off at all by her new boyfriend's suggestion at all and they began pouring over miami's social record which is how they came across robert mackle's name and they learned that robert mackle had a daughter barbara oh my god so they're pieces of shit yeah and the two planned the kidnapping meticulously for weeks like we said like these yeah we said this was planned also i was like they had to have done this before yeah they didn't and they didn't with all All the, like— They just planned it for, like, for weeks.
Even the specifications about the suitcase, though, like, how would you even fucking think about that?
That's his brain that he is misusing.
And Christ designed and built the box that they were going to keep Barbara in.
Because he did that.
Yeah, he did that. For a job.
And when they were finally ready to execute the plan, they left Miami for Atlanta, stopping at the Mackle House along the way to bury the ransom note.
And they had planned to kidnap Barbara from her dorm room, actually, at Emory.
But when they arrived in Atlanta, they learned she'd moved to a motel room with her mother.
I'm not sure how they knew that, which is like fucked up.
Yeah, somebody had to have said something.
Somebody must have not knowing said something.
Unless they may have been following her, like they may have spotted her on the campus.
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So they revised their plan over lunch at a diner and while they were at the diner, they stole the hat of a local police officer in the restaurant.
and that's the one they used.
Are you kidding me?
So, in case the whole situation with the kidnapping didn't make you think, like, what the fuck's going on with the police there in the 60s?
Yeah. One was, they were able to steal one of their hats at a fucking diner.
Just, like, whip it off his head?
Just took the hat. He probably left it on the fucking table while he was going to pee or something.
Oh my goodness. What the fuck?
So, in the few days leading up to the kidnapping, Ruth and Chris watched Jane and Barbara.
and that's how they learned about Stuart Woodward and knew what kind of car he drove so that he could use it in that ruse.
Now, Ruth explained that everything was going up to plan until the first night of the ransom drop when the police intervened.
Yep. And the couple became separated.
And a few hours later, because remember they went in different directions when the police came?
Yeah. Ruth, a few hours later, returned to the car that they'd abandoned and was trying to wait for him to come back, but he never showed up so he just fucking left so she thought he'd taken the money for himself and abandoned her so she thought she was used and she went back to atlanta gone on a bus she took the bus as far as her money would get her which turned out to be norman oklahoma she found work at a drive -in restaurant and took a room at a boarding house it was just gonna be like well so to be clear she helped bury a woman in a box in the middle of the fucking forest and then just dipped
and then she was like well looks like my boyfriend dumped me so i guess i'll just go get a job somewhere and live my life not caring at all about what happened to barbara i'm gonna go ahead and say it what a fucking cunt like whoa what like damn that is cold that's so cold and so callous and that makes me sit here and say what the the fuck else are you capable of that's the thing because if you're capable of knowing going on with your life knowing that a girl is in a box yeah that you don't know if it's gonna end or or not like like and the same for fucking this asshole like thank goodness they
got gary yeah because gary was just gonna take that money and you know off he goes and gary is gary's just as bad but ruth it's like you don't even you weren't even there when gary called the fbi to tell them where where Barbara was.
As far as you know, he's never told her where they are and they're never going to find her.
And you didn't place a call.
And you were just popping off into the rest of your life.
Exactly. At the very fucking least, Gary called and told where she was.
Yeah. Which I'm not giving him credit for, but I'm saying like, what a different situation where it's like, you were just popping off to live your life.
You had no idea. Like, damn.
This is mind boggling.
They are such vile human beings.
Now, at her arraignment on March 7th, Ruth told the judge, it's a terrible feeling to see all these people out there and you are all alone and they're all against you she was talking to the large crowd that had assembled outside the courtroom hey you know what else made her sad a terrible feeling is um very being buried in a box in the woods yeah like a couple days before christmas or fucking ever uh yeah all alone yeah it's like ruth you oh you feel alone if i was you feel alone you want like judges do get snappy sometimes and we We always love that, but you wonder how they're not just snappy
all the time. How do you look that girl dead in the face and just be like, yeah, anyway, moving on now?
I can't imagine. If I was the judge, I'd literally be like, are you fucking kidding me, Ruth?
Be so for real right now.
Be so for real right now, Ruth.
Like, are you kidding me with that I feel so alone?
You feel so alone? Well, maybe we should bury you in a box in the middle of the wilderness and the animals can keep you company.
How about that? That's alone.
alone and as far as you were concerned ruth she was gonna be alone forever in that box fucking but you feel alone because there's people outside that are mad that you buried someone in a box sorry yeah sorry about that so so sad life's tough huh yeah now after conferring with his client ruth's attorney told the judge as you can see from her actions actions yesterday the realization finally has come home to her that she is in a tough situation i found her somewhat despondent as you can well imagine she certainly is not as gay as she has been good it's like i'm sorry i'm really not she's found herself
in a tough situation where she signed on to a plot to extort a rich man by abducting his daughter and burying her in a box in the middle of the woods it's tough situation you know that's one thing to call that i guess that's pretty tough and oh no she's not as cheerful as she has been good man I guess we should change how we're dealing with this I suppose you know who's probably not as cheerful as they once were Barbara she probably has fucking PTSD up the wazoo oh when did you hear yeah we'll get there so a few days later Ruth was transferred back to Georgia where she was charged locally with kidnapping
her involvement in this case made her somewhat of a local celebrity with the press frequently commenting on her beauty and fashionable attire whenever she appeared in court i don't give a fuck what you're wearing you buried a girl in a box and of course this was one of those situations even in the 60s this is in the 70s this is one of those situations where people said no she's too beautiful she's too pretty for that pretty people do fucked up things she knows how to put together an outfit there's no way she was kidnapping people those two things are not mutually exclusive yeah i'm like have you
what the fuck what do you mean somebody can't you have to be ugly to be able to do ugly things no babies no some of the prettiest people do the ugliest shit the ugly shit is on the inside exactly and it comes out eventually but the ugly shit is on the inside saying she's too pretty for that is absolutely buck wild yeah and it's why and it's she the worst part is you look at her and you're just like like, wow, girl, like, really, like, because she's a very normal looking person.
So I understand why some people, like, especially because we look at it through, like, a 2024 lens.
Yeah. And we're like, of course, anybody can do that.
But I think even back then, it was still shocking to see, like, especially a woman, a woman, you know what I mean?
And especially a woman that's pretty and fashionable, like, being like that.
So they're just like, what?
People are like, no. Can you imagine if that was your defense?
I am way too pretty, and I put together way too good of an outfit to be accused of this and they're like got it but others really liked the femme fatale narrative because they found it more compelling one article asked could a woman like Ruth Eisemann Shear the fetching hysteria prone blonde with a knack for attracting males to love and protect her provide the motivation to drive a man to carry out a kidnap scheme I don't think she drove him to do it I think she was just along for the fucking ride yeah it sounds like he actually came up with the idea but thank you all right in fact the article
goes on to say as a miami beach clinical psychologist told me saturday are you ready for a miami beach clinical psychologist and what they have to say in many instances the woman is the driving force and yet when the crime is committed she does not bear the responsibility i would put my life savings on the fact that a man said that i would put my life savings on it okay unnamed miami beach clinic clinical psychologist my god but later that month ruth pleaded not guilty to the charges of kidnapping and extortion and a trial yeah and a trial date was set for june 9th but when her trial date came
ruth changed her plea to guilty to one count of kidnapping and immediately began serving her seven -year sentence at the georgia state prison for women seven back it up yes seven years one two three four five six seven that's it she went along with a plan to extort a father by burying his i just gotta say it one more time everybody burying his daughter in a box and then when it didn't really work out she just moved to oklahoma yeah the fuck seven years is everybody all right uh -huh and And, like, genuinely, why was attempted murder not put on there?
Because don't you get it?
No. They never wanted to kill her.
Psych. Don't you get it, everyone?
Oh, my God. Yeah, because they said.
Yeah, let's believe them.
In 1973, Ruth successfully petitioned for parole.
That's fucking crazy.
And was released from prison, and she was deported back to Honduras, and she receded from the public spotlight.
Good for her. Get out of there, girl.
After his arrest, Gary Criss said very little to authorities, and in early March 1969, he pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping and kidnapping for ransom.
The plea was made with a special attachment that it could be changed at a certain point pending a sanity hearing.
We do have to go back for just one second.
She really is the normalest looking girl I've ever seen.
Yeah, she really is.
Wow, that's scary. It's bonkers.
That's scary. so district attorney richard bell told reporters the special plea means that his lawyers think chris is unable to understand the charges against him now between his arraignment and his sanity hearing in april gary chris began a hunger strike in his cell in decatur georgia um and this is because he believed someone was trying to poison him he said kind of like he poisoned multiple people with chloroform and or ether yeah i also think it's complete bullshit and so did the authority they believed that the hunger strike was strike was his attempt to be moved to a more escapable place
yeah probably remember he escaped from prison before but after 28 days of hunger strike he collapsed from malnutrition and required intravenous feeding and the sheriff told reporters he does little now but sleep he stopped his almost continual writing but he still will wear nothing but a pair of underwear shorts in his cell.
He does love to be nakey.
He does. His attempts to convince psychiatrists of his mental illness were unsuccessful.
Okay. And he went to trial in mid -May.
In fact, despite having been evaluated by 10 different doctors, the defense never called any one of them to testify because as one reporter said, no psychiatrist would call the defendant insane.
Yeah. Rather than demonstrate any symptoms of mental illness, like a lot of these defense, you know, defendants do when they're being evaluated they at least try yeah he didn't he would just spend hours complaining to these psychiatrists about the justice system system as a whole okay he said he was quoted as saying the law is unjust in its conception and its application it's mechanically unsound it is bound to disintegrate and fall apart it's very poorly conceived disagree and when they came to his own case he believed the system was just rigged against him and in favor of those with wealth and power
and i was like wait do you mean the people whose daughter you stole and put underground like i don't know if that one's rigged against you like like i'm not saying in general i'm saying in this particular case i don't think that one was right i think you put someone's child underground in a box and then extorted money out of them so i i don't i don't think i'm with you on that that they that's rigged against you i know i think you did a bad bad thing even rigable and you happen to do it to a wealthy powerful person which was your problem no one else's yeah like I'm sorry you chose someone who is like
smarter than you when again like more powerful than you yeah I don't steal their child and put them in a box underground I don't know about all that it's like dude I don't think you're gonna win with that one I don't think that one you're gonna get a lot of people being like totally should have been able to totally rigged absolutely calling that rigged is wild and he said quote i've offended the cartel that runs this country in case you don't know i'm in jail simply because i was overpowered what so he's calling like the rich and powerful like the cartel of this country and he's saying i offended
them and i was like you you definitely offended some people yes i'd say so but like the other thing i don't see it the way you see you're not he's acting like he's like robin hood or something and i'm like you robbed from the rich and gave to the poor like you were trying just to become rich yeah you wanted to join that very cartel quote unquote and it's like you did it by taking someone's daughter and putting them in a box underground that's where you went wrong like i understand saying certain systems are rigged and like it's hard to make money and it's hard to get rich like 100p and that's
why i'm like you could could have just generalized that and made it a little more of like a stance yeah but you took someone's child and put them in a box underground like i can't you have no high horse to stand from he's like eat the rich and it's like but you had a suitcase full of almost four million dollars four point five million dollars you had in a suitcase and you were flying you were running off to the bahamas with it let's bury you in a box because you took someone's child and put them in a box underground it's like that is where your problem lies my friend yeah it's the box of it all
money no you didn't even extort money in any other way you took a whole human from somebody and put them in the fucking ground to possibly suffocate to death you didn't know if she was still alive you had no fucking clue you could have died the first night you did that with like specimen like marine specimen you never did that with a human you didn't know how that was gonna go and you've certainly never buried them under the ground i don't i don't see you burying marine fucking specimens underground for research knowledge and it's like so you're sitting there trying to take this like passion stance
and it's like nope not in your case buddy like let's be real to sum it all up that ain't it that ain't it that ain't it that ain't it and so despite his statements about a rigged system and trying to appeal to the greater you know thought of that people do look at the justice system yeah we've looked at it before as like Like, being unfair and being broken and all that stuff.
Instead of, like, you know, it does work.
And the jury did seem to take pity on him a little bit from that.
That's absolutely insane.
Because, like, not in this case.
They deliberated for a little over four hours and then returned a guilty verdict with the recommendation of mercy.
Why? Meaning they spared him the death penalty.
Okay. Instead, he was given a life sentence.
All right. That was the mandatory sentence in the state of Georgia.
that's crazy that he got a life sentence and she got seven years yeah that's wild that's where the yeah the problem with the justice system and lies yeah that's a problem like but he had the potential for parole after don't even don't seven years are you fucking kidding me yeah how why who what when where not sure but when the verdict was read aloud in court you You want to know what he did?
Do I? He yawned, grasping his wrist and glancing at the clock.
Ugh. Yeah. Like stretch yawned.
What a waste. He's like this kind of thing and was like.
What an absolute pompous waste.
Before he was let out of the courtroom by armed guards, that's what he did.
He just did like the stretch. Like, nope, not bothering.
Oh, boy. Life must be so tiring for you.
In a statement to the press, prosecutor Richard Bell told reporters, borders naturally were disappointed.
We thought the circumstances of the crime demanded the death penalty.
Hey weirdos, you know Ash and I have covered some seriously dark tales about romance gone really wrong.
Oh yeah, there are so many cases where too good to be true turns out to be exactly that.
Well, get ready for a love story that's gonna blow your minds because this one is happening right now and get this it's hosted by our friends hannah and saruti from red handed meet travis he falls head over heels for lily rose she's gorgeous she's understanding and she's literally perfect and she's not human that's right lily rose is an ai companion a computer program designed to be travis's dream woman and at first it seems like a perfect relationship but when lily rose's behavior starts getting strange this love story takes a dark and twisted a turn that no one saw coming.
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The trial was the first time the public got any insight into Gary Criss' psyche and personality.
And for many, they didn't like what they saw.
No. In an editorial in the Miami Herald, olds one journalist wrote the kidnapper is a brilliant man but we do not agree with his view that he is a superior human being we will not accept that definition of a man who put the macko girl girl in a crude grave and left her there in torturing darkness the superiority of gary christ is one of cruelty we believe that behind bars is where he belongs and where he should stay you're here and we said yes yes chin chin you're here and it turned out the supreme court of georgia agreed with the wider public with respect to his freedom in 1970 his lawyers filed
an appeal with the court arguing like a bunch of stuff but also that the you know to sum it up like you know the court argued like a bunch of shit it's giving legally blocked i love that they argued a bunch of shit but the lower car but the one thing i wanted to talk about was that the lower court they said that the lower court erred in overruling the defense's motion to dismiss the charge of kidnapping for ransom on the grounds that the offense was not defined by the statute.
And in their summary, the justices noted the offense for which the defendant was indicted, tried, and convicted, kidnapping for ransom, was designated a crime by necessary implication by the General Assembly and requires no definition.
Also, the justices pointed out that the evidence supported the indictment and thus the verdict was just. Yeah.
Resulting in the lower court's ruling being upheld.
Good. good now in the wake of her rescue barbara spent a few days in the hospital before you know going back home to her parents like i said and i had said like they just kind of were like get the fuck away from us um and they just kind of said like please respect our privacy yeah once a short amount of time had passed barbara did grant a small amount of interviews where she talked about the experience after being abducted from the motel she said she was injected with a tranquilizer by by her kidnappers.
Where the fuck did they get a tranquilizer?
I don't know. But Barbara said she was out in the woods and taken to the area where Christ had dug the pit.
And she said, I was woozy, but I knew what was happening.
And she said, I tried to talk them out of it, but they paid her no attention.
They didn't care about her pleas to please don't do this.
And instead they forced her to take that photograph of her holding the kidnapped sign.
So that's why she looks that way because she's on tranquilizers.
Yeah, no, it makes sense.
Throughout her ordeal, Barbara said she tried to keep her mind off of the terrifying potential of how the situation could end by thinking of her friends, her family, like we said, singing to herself, singing Christmas carols, trying to make herself laugh, she said.
But the reality of being in the box was unavoidable.
She said it was cold.
It leaked. It kept dripping from above.
83 hours. 83 hours.
And she said on the fourth day, when she was rescued by FBI agents, she said, I could hear footsteps.
steps. I thought it was the kidnappers coming back for me.
I'd been there so long.
I really didn't care.
And when she was pulled from the coffin, the first thing she asked the agents was how are my parents?
Oh yeah. And they, they said that was the first thing she cared about was how are my parents?
That's amazing. Um, and she said it was only after she looked around at their faces that she realized like how relieved she could be.
And she said they were all crying.
Like all the agents were bawling their eyes out.
I can't imagine. And after giving a few interviews, Barbara was determined to put the entire experience behind her and just move forward I don't blame her but two years later she partnered with Miami Herald writer Jean Harrell on a book about her kidnapping and following its publication she vowed that I'm not revisiting this story again and that book is called 83 Hours Till Dawn you can find it still today I don't know how how many there are but yeah in 1971 this is my favorite part of the story barbara married her best friend steve stewart woodward yes and i was so happy i love that i was like
that's her man i love that i love it just the fact that he like sat with her mom and who even knows how well he knew her what a good dude oh my god and they moved back to florida where they started a family shut and they made a concerted effort to stay out of the public eye yeah unfortunately stewart passed away in 2013 oh but they did have like a lovely life together good i love that she married him like that's my favorite 1971 they got married fuck yeah i was so fucking happy when i read that i was like that's what i need for my barbara that's what i need that's what barbara barbara deserves
a stewart she did stewart was the guy man hanging out all day studying with her yeah going to her dorm to get her notes the whole time i was reading this for the first time i was like what a good guy i know this guy seemed like a stand -up and then at the end i'm like thank you wow and start and they have a family they had a kid like it's great i'm so happy that she fucking queen yeah to say i'm gonna write this book because like this is a story that's gotta be told and then i'm done i'm gonna move on like she's a strong individual yes that's crazy good good for her wow what a fucking story oh
i'm not even done what you thought i was done i sure did you thought it just ended there i mean yeah kind of so that was in 1971 they got married like she's off she's happy yeah in the summer of 1973 gary chris tried to escape from the georgia diagnostic and classification center by crawling through the air conditioning ducts and hiding inside a large garbage bin where he was then loaded onto a truck to be removed from the grounds gary the attempt earned him he did get caught and he was he got an additional two years on his mandatory minimum so he had to do nine instead of seven in may 1979 he
was paroled that's fucking nuts from georgia's reedsville state prison much to the disappointment of atlanta residents yeah yeah superior court Court Judge H .O.
Hubert said, I just don't think he'll ever change.
Giving the nature of the case, burying the girl on the ground, like he was like, what the fuck?
Regardless of how the public felt or the judge felt, the state's parole board felt justified in their decision.
That's very interesting.
They said, there is nothing in our files to indicate Gary Stephen Crist is violent or dangerous.
How about the part where he buried a girl in a box underneath the ground?
Is that in your files?
You guys are just forgetting that part?
You guys are not very demure.
You're not very mindful.
No, not at all. And they said, if he does commit a crime, it won't be a crime of violence.
How do you know? And they went on to further justify their decision by minimizing his original crime.
Ready? Ready for what the parole board said?
Never. Mrs. Woodward suffers no lasting trauma from the ordeal.
Mrs. Woodward, meaning our girl Barbara, because she's married to Stewart now.
She doesn't give a fuck about you guys, but fuck you guys.
And also, how do you know?
No. Who the fuck do you think you are?
Did you contact her?
They're literally like, he's not violent and she's fine.
Wow. Wow. Gross. Gross.
To everyone's surprise, Gary Criss did make an effort in the beginning to show the world that he had turned around.
Yeah. The conditions of his parole required him to initially move back to Alaska.
Bye. And in 1983, he was accepted into medical school at the University of Washington.
after completing his program and earning a medical degree he struggled to find a state that would grant him a license because like i'm sorry i just have to ask the the the charge that he served time for that's a felony right yep can you can your doctor be a fucking felon uh that's excuse me that's why he was struggling i think to find somebody that would give him a license um and then in december 2001 the state of indiana granted him a probationary license to practice medicine you said what state indiana let's not go there yeah and he opened a private practice in the tiny town of christney already
yeah yeah it's yep so um now in the months leading up to and immediately following his parole period he found a number of people that were willing to vouch for for him and assure his critics that he had changed for the better um and in fact it was because of these people that the parole board even considered releasing him like they were really part of it uh -huh but for every one person that was insisting he was a better person there was twice as many who were like no no no incorrect sorry I just hit my microphone I'm so mad she said no no no no I slapped my microphone no that's the end it was twice
as many that would say no no he's a narcissistic a con man and like it's going to turn out bad um and within a year of opening his practice he kind of proved the critics a little right uh in the fall of 2002 after less than a year after receiving his probationary license to practice medicine the licensing board pulled his license for failure to comply with the supervisory requirements writing his own supervisory reports and forging his his supervisor's name.
In addition to the lies and fraud related to his license, there were other incidences that also led to this.
In one, he reportedly told a 13 -year -old patient with an eating disorder that she, quote, had a big butt.
Oh, my God. And on another occasion, records show that he told a woman who'd recently been diagnosed with HIV that, quote, her boyfriend must be thrilled.
Oh, my God. That's why doctors probably shouldn't be felons.
No. And during this period, he was also accused of sexual assault by a patient and he fled the state before facing prosecution.
Wow. So he was stripped of his license.
He returned to Alaska now and began finding various other means of making money, both legal and illegal.
I'm sure. In March 2006, U .S. Customs agents raided his boat in Point Clear, Alaska, and found 37 pounds of cocaine on board. That's a lot of cocaine.
cocaine that's a lot that's like all of the cocaine all the cocaine okay Pablo Escobar the fuck he also they also found four South Americans who had paid Crist $6 ,000 each to illegally smuggle them into the country who the fuck is this guy I don't know but how do you I just gotta know I'm not even done oh god I just gotta how do you like get a life and like do that with it yeah you're out here with a life doing this it's cool that we all got lives like i'm excited about it i don't know how it happened i mean i do but like we don't need to get into the skinny of it all but that's what you do with it
i'm just out here trying to have a good time legally make some fucking yummy treats every now and again and like i don't know enjoy shit it just i mean really he was out there trying to enjoy shit too but like but like work smarter not harder like what do you do he's doing so much just chill out he's doing so much just chill the fuck out chill the fuck out and go the fuck away don't be like go away like sir well i feel like he's just somebody that should live on a boat by himself just go live on an island yeah yeah right on a boat no one needs to see you that's just vibe just do your you know
go on a boat you know like here's 10 bucks see you later go ahead do with it what you will anyway keep going now when they caught him with the uh with all the cocaine pounds of cocaine on his boat uh they served a warrant at his georgia residence that he had kind of just up and abandoned sure uh they found a giant underground drug lab what like a meth lab like a huge one or like just like all the drugs Oh, just dogs.
Just drugs. Just manufacturing it all.
Definitely Murray Kogod, I think his name is, was quoted as saying, basically, there was a trap door.
It was wood covered with linoleum.
Unless you knew you were looking for something, you wouldn't notice it.
There was an eight foot ladder that led down to a 27 foot long lab underground.
What? It had a countertop at one end.
There was ventilation.
It was glass enclosed things.
It was fully equipped with light, electricity, water.
water and it had an escape tunnel that led into a covered barrel about 50 feet from the lab what you can't make that shit up yeah who the i mean i get wow they said he was like mega mind he was like mega like crime lord at this point like just he's a drug lord now isn't it i don't really know what makes one a drug lord to be honest it's though like i just feel like 30 30 -something pounds of cocaine will do it.
He's doing it all. He's doing it all.
He's doing all the things.
What the fuck? The new charges earned him an almost five -year sentence.
That's it? But not long after being released in 2010, he violated the terms of his probation and was sent back to prison in 2012 and stayed there until he was released in July 2015.
How old is this motherfucker at this point?
He's 79 right now. Okay.
Wow. And he's probably still out here, huh?
He's still out here.
He's still alive. Yeah, and he's just, you know, apparently he got tired at that point.
2015, he was let out and nobody's really heard from him since then.
You guys better keep your fucking eyes peeled into the newspapers.
Yeah, he's 79. I'm like, damn.
You build a fucking 8 -foot -down, 27 -feet -wide or long, whatever the fuck you want to call it, drug lab.
You're not. I mean.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're not just chilling out after that.
And that's the case of the kidnapping of Barbara Jane Mackle.
I got to say, you really popped the fuck off with that one.
Dave was so correct when he was like, yeah, you got to take a look at this.
He texted us one day and I was like, oh, yeah, that sounds interesting.
I was like, yeah, I'll look into it.
I looked, I was like, what?
Whoa. Hello? I'd like to report several crimes throughout the span of 60, 70, 80, 90.
That's like a career criminal.
Oh, 100%. Literally like 50 years of crime.
The only good thing is in the end, Barbara just came out, got married with Stuart, wrote a book, and off she went.
Had her family, you know?
Yeah. That's really crazy.
yeah I wow it's what a tale it's a that's why it had to be told in two episodes because it's just like you think the that the most action is happening well with like the kidnapping and the ransom and all that like yeah there's just so much happening and then it's like oh wait we haven't even scratched the surface of what happens here wow yeah wow so that's a tale what a fucking tale what a tale we you better keep we don't even hope at this point you heard that you're not gonna keep listening keep listening and we hope you do I even say that what is going on keep it weird keep it so weird that you
forget your own outro it's been a long time I don't know I'm riding out on a yam it's been a long time we did it the same day I said it's been a long time like doing this I mean I don't know you know you do something so so much and then you're just like how do I do this yeah you know we're six years in If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad -free right now Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery's podcast, American Scandal.
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