Buried Alive: The FBI's "Most Bizarre" Kidnapping Ever

Most kidnappings are brutal, because they're simple. This one is dangerous, because it isn't. It unfolds less like a crime thriller and more like a Coen Brothers movie, the kind where the plan keeps getting more elaborate. Everyone is very sure of themselves, and every extra detail makes things worse. There are unnecessary rules, over-explained instructions, and people who mistake having a plan for knowing what they're doing. What starts as a kidnapping quickly turns into something stranger, a kind of Rube Goldberg crime where bad decisions and serendipity triggers the next absurd outcome, and no one can quite stop it. This is the story FBI agents called "The Most Bizarre Ransom Kidnapping Case Ever Investigated by the Bureau." I'm Harvey Guillen, and this is "The Most Bizarre Ransom Kidnapping Case Ever Investigated by the Bureau." And I'm Harvey Guillen, and this is "The Most Bizarre Ransom Kidnapping Case Ever Investigated by the Bureau." killer story. It's December, 1968, Atlanta, Georgia, with less than 10 days until Christmas. The city shines with holiday tinsel. On the campus of Emory University, students hustle to their classes in heavy coats. There's just one last thing standing in the way of their winter break, final exams. Barbara Jane Mackle, a 20-year-old junior, is in the tide to let a few tests get to her. She describes herself as a terrible optimist. Her friends think of her as the most down-to-earth rich girl they've ever known. Her cheery attitude is infectious. But you know what else is infectious? The flu. It's been really bad this year, and it's hit the campus pretty hard. The school clinic is completely full. When Barbara catches it too, she decides she's just going to tough it out and power through the end of the semester. But when she shows up to take her economics final, she's so obviously sick that the TA says, yuck, ew, no, bye, and sends her away. Not knowing what else to do, and not wanting to miss her last test, Barbara calls her parents in Florida. Barbara never complains, so when her mom, Jane, hears how sick she is, Jane flies out to Atlanta. She gets a motel room right off campus and moves Barbara from her dorm room into the motel. If Jane has to nurse her daughter to health to get through the last few days of school, so be it. This family is always there for each other, no questions asked. Mom's TLC is exactly what Barbara needs. Now she can buckle down and study. But the move from her dorm room is a major speed bump for two other people. For now, we'll call them George and Ruth. Here's how they figure into Barbara's story. Okay, bear with me, this will all make sense in a minute. About three months ago, the two of them met in Florida at the University of Miami's Marine Lab. They both live there, not far from Barbara's hometown of Coral Gables. Ruth is a grad student from Honduras, and George works at the lab as a research assistant. He's always fixing the equipment and tinkering with little projects. Some colleagues like him because he gets the job done. But everyone agrees George can be a bit of a conceited prick. He's smart, but he thinks he's smarter than everyone else. He has a tendency to overestimate his own intelligence and underestimate others. Anyways, he meets Ruth on a research excursion to the Bahamas. And even though George is married, he and Ruth start sleeping together. And I mean sleeping together. In a very small boat so everybody knows what's going on. Not long after that, George and his wife separate. Hmm, wonder why? He and Ruth are free to be together. And George has always had big plans for his future. These plans are kind of all over the place, to be honest. Remember, he thinks he's a big shot, and in order to reach any of his lofty goals, he needs one thing: money. At some point, George devises a plan to get a lot of money, fast. He talks Ruth into helping him. She's totally infatuated, so she goes along with it. Even though it's a bonkers plan. That's where Barbara Mackle comes in. Barbara comes from a prominent family in the Miami area. Her dad, Robert, and his brothers are the biggest land developers in the state of Florida. His company is worth tens of millions of dollars. At some point, George probably does some research into them and learns Robert Mackle has a big weakness: his college-age daughter, Barbara. So, in mid-December, George takes Barbara to her school in Atlanta and begins to stalk her. When she falls ill and moves into that motel with her mom, they have to track her down all over again. But finally, they find Barbara, and they rent their own room a few doors away. And then they wait. On the night of December 16, George and Ruth are probably keeping an eye on Barbara in Jane's room when this guy, Stuart, drops by. Stuart is Barbara's "he's just my best friend, not my boyfriend" friend. He's there to help her study for her last final. Around 10 p.m., he leaves in his white Ford. A few hours later, around 4 in the morning on December 17, George pounds on their door. Jane, the mom, wakes up and rushes to answer. Barbara's groggy from the flu and medication, but she's alert enough that she pleads with her mom not to. She's ready to open the door. George identifies himself as a police officer, and he does have an officer's hat on. What's really convincing, though, is his story. He tells Jane that a young man driving a white Ford has been hurt in a car accident down the road. Immediately, Jane knows he's talking about Stuart. And George says, "Yes, Stuart's in the hospital, and he's asking for Barbara." So Jane opens the door. The rest happens in a flash. George barges into the room armed with a shotgun, with Ruth behind him. She's clad all in black with a ski mask, and she's so petite that Barbara and Jane assume she's a 12-year-old boy. George orders Ruth to tie Jane's hands and feet. In all the confusion, Jane finds this annoying. She yells at them, "For heaven's sake, take our money and take our jewelry and get out. Like, damn. Let's be professional about this and let us go back to bed." But the intruders aren't there to steal the woman's purses. Ruth holds a rag of chloroform up to Jane's face until she stops fighting. Then they take Barbara. George pulls her by the arm down to an idling car and throws her in the back. Ruth holds her, trying to soothe Barbara by telling her they're not going to hurt her. That's when Barbara realizes Ruth is not a little boy. But a woman. And Ruth figures out that Barbara's sick. Feverish. She's starting to worry about putting Barbara through this terrible plan they've concocted. George doesn't seem to care. As he drives, he's too busy patting himself on the back for doing such a great job of kidnapping her. Barbara tries to stay calm. She's oddly at ease. Because George isn't scary. He's calm. He seems intelligent. But what frightens her? Is that this whole time, George hasn't been hiding his face. She can easily identify him. He's tall, maybe 6 foot and 240 pounds or so, and he has a dark beard. Sometimes he and Ruth even address each other by name. In front of Barbara. And when her kidnappers aren't trying very hard to hide their identities, that could mean something very bad is about to happen. George and Ruth insisting they're not going to harm her, Barbara tries to plan a way out. She considers jumping from the moving car, but they're driving too fast through the dark night. Until they aren't. After what seems like a short trip, the car comes to a stop. And George gets out and walks away. A few moments later, he returns with some chilling words. "They dug the hole too deep." Not the most comforting phrase in the English language, no matter what your situation is. Nobody wants to hear that. Barbara steals herself to run for it. Before she can, George pulls her out of the backseat. He sets her down on the ground on a blanket. And he takes this. picture of her holding a sign that says kidnapped proof of life which he'll send to Barbara's family by the way they forced her to smile like that and she does it only because she knows her dad will see the photo and she doesn't want him to worry looking around her Barbara can see trees she's in the woods literally and mentally she has no idea if they're about to kill her and bury her body out there turns out she's half-correct as they tie up Barbara's hands and ankles George explains this is a kidnapping and he adds we are asking for quite a bit of money and and he says it like that emphasis on quite a bit of money and he chuckles I say this because it's important to understand how annoying and condescending this guy can be after he laughs like this is all a sick joke he tells Barbara we are putting you in an underground room an underground room as in they're about to bury Barbara alive this episode is brought to you by talk I a treat when your mental health is suffering finding the right treatment can be overwhelming that's where talk I a treat comes in talk I a treat is an online psychiatry practice with licensed psychiatrists who can evaluate diagnose and provide ongoing medication management when appropriate they accept major insurers can treat anxiety ADHD depression and more and you can schedule your first visit in days not months go to talk I a treat comm slash killers and get matched in minutes that's T a l ki a TR y comm slash killers talk I a treat comm slash killers this episode is brought to you by TX you energy for the first time ever Texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings it's called free nights and cool summer you get free nights every night all year long plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer it's a first-of-its-kind plan created for how Texans actually use energy discover how much more you could save with free nights and cool summer TX you energy energy for everything visit TX you comm for more information rep number one zero zero zero four Monday on NBC all new line of fire the thrilling new crime drama the world sees us as heroes but they don't know what the job will really cost one family of federal agents it's one thing to put yourself in danger it's different when it's your family balances duty to their country an assassin is still out there and each other how do you protect the world and the people you love at the same time every case it's home on line of fire Monday on NBC being buried alive is like a classic phobia in a list of people's biggest fears it consistently ranks up there with losing family members and dying in fact a lot of people say they would rather die then be buried alive and now 20 year old Barbara Mackle is staring down at an underground box which some people would call a coffin and her kidnappers are telling her they are going to put her in it now George never says it's a coffin he refers to it as a room that's big enough for her to move around in that to even walk around in but the thing is George is a pathological liar well that's how he describes himself to authorities Barbara can see this box is only 8 feet long 2 feet wide and 2 feet high which sounds pretty coffin II to me definitely not a room she thinks okay maybe this is just the entrance that leads down to a room but it's not this is it really the only difference between this box and a coffin is George has built in a life support system he's used a bunch of tools and equipment from around the University lab to do it it's all designed to keep her alive down there at least for a while there's a fan and an exhaust pipe that will pump in fresh air so Barbara can breathe there's drinking water a bucket to pee in even some snacks apples bread caramel candy and a jar of honey to eat in a coffin underground while she's terrified it's like they're trying to be considerate in the weirdest way possible sorry we're making all of your nightmares come true caramel to make matters worse George tells Barbara she can survive this if she listens carefully to his directions which are extremely confusing the battery for the life support system should run the fan for about seven days also there's a light in there she can turn it on if she wants to but if she does it'll eat up the battery so maybe don't oh and the box should be waterproof but also it might not be but but but but there's a water pump she can turn it on but if she does you guessed it it will use up the battery and if the battery dies Barbara dies George presents all of this like a big math equation he actually starts talking about amps as if Barbara was sitting in a physics class and not freezing her ass off in the middle of the woods during a kidnapping it's like taking somebody skydiving and giving them directions on how to open the door to a place where they don't know what's going on the parachute after they jump a lot of this information goes over Barbara's head but honestly she still doesn't believe they're really going to bury her I mean who would do that why not just keep her in a house somewhere like a normal kidnapper she holds on to the hope that she can run away or talk some sense into them this can't really happen right but it does it does happen they force her down into the box Barbara can feel all this random stuff down at the bottom where her feet are it's so crowded she can't even strain out her legs all of a sudden Ruth climbs into the box with her scrambling for something she hands Barbara a rubber tube the straw for her drinking water and then Ruth climbs back out Barbara tries to pull herself out of the box but George slams the lid down on top of her and then it gets real Barbara hears them screw the lid shut then comes the dirt it hits the top of the box loudly at first as it piles on top all sound grows fainter and fainter until she realizes she really genuinely has been buried at first Barbara screams she pounds on the box but it's solid she pleads with her captors not to leave her they can still hear each other through the air pipe that reaches from Barbara up to the surface George promises her they'll come check on her every two hours and then silence Barbara's alone she tells herself not to panic she can be brave for two hours and then she'll hear their voices again and it won't be so bad in the meantime she unties her hands and her feet turns on her little light and tries to get her bearings she counts slowly to 7200 the number of seconds in two hours when the kidnappers still haven't returned she counts again maybe she miscounted when they still aren't back she realizes it was just another lie nobody's coming back to check on her but that doesn't mean nobody's looking for her okay when we left Barbara's mom Jane she was chloroformed in her motel room well surprise Jane is smarter than George gave her credit for when they tried to drug her she held her breath and pretended to pass out a couple seconds after the kidnappers leave the room with her daughter Jane springs into action it's just a little difficult see because her hands and feet are bound she can't reach the phone to call the police so she hops outside and screams for help only nobody comes out of their rooms but she has another idea Jane hops over to her car and leans on the horn until the motel's night manager runs out of his little office but he doesn't try to help either he thinks she's some mad woman he screams at her lady shut up we run a nice place here eventually Jane gets the manager out to untie her and call the police within minutes officials in Atlanta know that Barbara Mackle has been kidnapped so does her powerful dad Robert and he gathers his closest friends. When the kidnappers call a few hours later to ask for the ransom, they're ready. Down in Florida, a phone rings at the Mackle residence. It's George. Of course, because it's George, he devised this whole convoluted way of demanding his money. Like, he's already on the phone. He could just spell it out then and there. Instead, he instructs Roberts' associate to look for a palm tree on the northeast corner of the house, find a rock, and dig six inches down. Now, they're on a golf course in a rich neighborhood in Florida. There are tons of palm trees. Luckily, the Mackles have the FBI working with them now. One agent finds the right tree and the right rock and uncovers a ransom note that George planted there at some point, like a weirdo. He demands $500,000, half a mil, for Barbara's safe return. Her dad's like, yeah, of course I'll pay. Get on it. But it's not all that simple. It's 1968, and that's a lot of cash for any bank to have on hand. Plus, it's protocol that they have to manually record the serial numbers of all the bills so they can identify them later. If the money's recovered, it takes a huge team, but they scrape together the money they need. It's time to prepare for the drop-off. Meanwhile, Barbara is still alive and not exactly well. But she's a freaking champ. She tries to keep her mind busy. She sings Christmas carols, musicals. She tries to run through the entirety of Camelot. She thinks through tasks that make her happy, like decorating her family's Christmas tree. In her mind, she stops to look at each ornament, remembering every last detail. Somehow, she remains logical. And the most reassuring thought is this: if they wanted to kill her, they would have just ended it quickly. But instead, George built this giant Rube Goldberg device to keep her alive. You know, I have to hand it to Barbara. She stays so brave. She lets herself break down at times, because that's only normal. But overall, she clings to hope. So does her family. George has promised them that once he has the money, he will call with directions to find Barbara. They're so close now. They just have to ensure the handoff of the money goes smoothly. Unfortunately, George has once again concocted what he thinks is a brilliant scheme but is actually the most complicated set of directions ever. He wants Robert Mackle to be the one to drop the money. It has to be in a new suitcase full of twenty dollar bills. By the way, half a million dollars in twenties weighs about seventy-five pounds. And doesn't even fit in a regular suitcase. The FBI agents have to run around town finding one that's big enough. Another agent has to go shopping for pants. Yeah, George insists that Robert wear an all-white outfit. But he doesn't own any white pants. So he gives his sizes to an agent who has to go on a wild shopping spree. This may be Miami, but it's December. Right before Christmas. And wearing white after Labor Day is still illegal. Okay. Not accurate. Not actually illegal. But, ah, a faux pas. That FBI agent has to look everywhere for these white pants. By the way, if being a shopper for the FBI is a specific job, I just, you know, I want to put my name out there. Because it might be kind of interesting. And I think, like, we could really work with the palettes. There's different kinds of white. There's eggshell. There's bone. And beige. And bone. Anyway, finding the suitcase and pants turns out to be the easy part. George wants Robert to drop the money on a little wall on a specific bridge. He says there will be a flashing light. Only George gives bad directions. Only George, because no one else is this bad. He uses the wrong street names. And he tells Robert to take a left turn instead of a right. Robert gets super lost on his way there. He's freaking out. He finally finds the right spot, except there is no blinking light. Like George promised. But Robert wants his daughter back more than anything. And he knows she's being held underground. George told him so. And explained the whole life support system keeping Barbara alive. But I have to wonder. Robert now knows. George isn't nearly as smart as he thinks he is. This doofus can't even give turn-by-turn directions with 500k on the line. So who's to say he can build a working air pump to keep Barbara alive? Like he claims. At any rate, Robert returns home triumphant. He gave George the money, and Barbara's one step closer to being home. Except everything goes to hell. So while George is waiting for his big payout to get dropped off, he leaves his station wagon parked in kind of a suspicious place. It's near a jewelry store that's been robbed recently. So a police officer and a sheriff's deputy notice it sitting there and kinda stake it out. Now they've heard about the kidnapping, but for all they know, that's happening up in Atlanta. They have no idea the action is going down in their backyard. In Florida. The Mackle family and the FBI intentionally kept local law enforcement out of the loop. Cause George told them to. So the officer and the deputy have no idea there's a ransom drop going on or that anybody's looking for George in Miami. And when George comes waltzing up with the suitcase of money, he sees the officers, drops the money, and runs away. The officers pursue George on foot until he's cornered on a dead-end street. His only way out is climbing up a chain-link fence. He almost makes it, when one of the officers fires off some warning shots. George has no choice but to jump down. I guess he intends to surrender. But on the way down, he literally rips himself a new one. The fence tears a hole in a very sensitive area. So George probably makes some kind of painful sound. And the officer knows George is carrying a rifle, so he ducks. It's chaos. And that's how George gets away. Only, he leaves the ransom money behind in that suitcase, in the middle of the street, where he dropped it. When the officers go back and recover it, and open the suitcase, they can't believe their luck. They thought this guy was maybe planning to rob a jewelry store. Now they think they've stopped someone who robbed an armored car or something. They march proudly into the precinct, with the stolen loot, expecting a hero's welcome. Only to find out they just royally screwed up the recovery of Barbara Mackle, who's still underground. And nobody knows where, except George and Ruth, who are now on the run. Which means the officers may have accidentally signed Barbara's death certificate. This episode is brought to you by TXU Energy. For the first time ever, Texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings. It's called Free Nights in Cool Summer. You get free nights every night, all year long, plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer. It's a first of its kind. The TXU Energy plan created for how Texans actually use energy. Discover how much more you could save with Free Nights in Cool Summer. TXU Energy. Energy for everything. Visit TXU.com for more information. Rep number 10004. Monday on NBC. U.S. Marshals! All new Line of Fire. The thrilling new crime drama. The world sees us as heroes, but they don't know what the job really costs. One family of federal agents. It's one thing to put yourself in danger. It's different when it's your family. Balances duty to their country. An assassin is still out there. Stop! And each other. How do you protect the world and the people you love at the same time? Every case hits home on Line of Fire, Monday on NBC. Hi there. I am fully charged and here to tell you, Toy Story 5 is now on Disney+. Woody! It's been too long, cowboy. Woody, Buzz, and Jesse are back for a brand new adventure with some seriously cool new tech. What? Holy butterscotch! Oh yeah, Jesse! So save your batteries and watch the global phenomenon at home. And the best part? It's perfect for the whole family. Power up your movie night and watch Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5, now streaming on Disney Plus. Rated PG. A couple of days have passed since the kidnapping. Barbara still hasn't heard anybody come to check on her, and she starts to consider that she might actually die down here. Desperation started to creep in after the light bulb in her box went out. She's been sitting in the pitch dark, unable to see, unable to stretch out, unable to breathe through her nose because of the flu. And everything's wet. The box George built is not waterproof, as he claimed. It's winter. It's cold. Everything underground is damp. The blanket they left her, the food, little droplets. The droplets keep forming above her head and dripping down, adding to her torture. But she's not giving up hope yet. Not completely. And neither is her dad. When Robert hears that the police bungled the whole drop-off, he demands that they tell the kidnappers it wasn't his fault. He still has the money, and he wants the kidnappers to have it. But he makes this plea to Newspaper. Newspaper's all over Miami, who print the story, hoping George and Ruth will read it. Somehow, George gets the message, and he wants that money. So, he's willing to try again, too. Even though he's a wanted man. By now, the FBI has done a lot of digging on George and Ruth. Once they recover the station wagon, they quickly figure out who they were looking for. The vehicle was filled with clues. Including Ruth's student ID. But it's George who really interests them. Because, as they learn, he's not who he says he is. He's been using the alias George Deacon for a while. But his real name is Gary Stephen Crisp. And he's an escaped convict. He's been on the run for the past two years. So, it's pretty risky. For George, I'm going to keep calling him George, by the way, for clarity. It's risky for him to come back for the money. They know who he is now. They know his parents live in Alaska, and his wife and kids are in California. He could cut his losses and simply disappear. But, he comes back for the money. This time, George calls a Catholic priest, whose church is near the McElhome. And he gives the priest's directions to the new drop site. Complete with terrible driving directions. It's now the night of December 19th. Two and a half days since Barbara was taken. And Robert hasn't slept. He's exhausted. He appoints a right-hand man, Billy Vessels, to deliver the money. As always, Billy Vessels gets the job done. And this time, there's nobody around to screw up the delivery. The Mackle family and the FBI wait for one last call from George. The one where he'll tell them how to find Barbara. All they can do is hope he'll keep his end of the bargain. George is true to his word, but he's also an a-hole. He makes them wait until lunchtime the next day, December 20th, four days before Christmas Eve. And he doesn't call Miami. He dials the FBI office in Atlanta. Then, insists on giving directions, bad ones, to arrest. A random switchboard operator. She's like, uh, sir, I don't do directions. Uh-uh. No, sir. I don't do directions. I mean, she has no idea who this random caller is. Thankfully, she does an amazing job writing down George's terrible instructions. He says Barbara can be found 100 feet off a dirt road near I-85 in the woods. Dozens of FBI agents flood the streets. Trying to decipher this vague wording. They have no idea if they're near the right dirt road. Plus, the ground is under a blanket of fallen leaves. By some miracle, one of the agents brushes away some of those leaves. And he realizes he's standing on a patch of earth that's been dug up. And then, he hears something. The fan. The one blowing the fan. The one blowing air down to Barbara. She's there. Just 18 inches below his feet. But the fan is near her head. It's really loud. Like a white noise machine. She almost doesn't hear the agents calling to her. She thinks maybe there's an animal up there. But she turns the fan off. Just in case. She starts pounding on the box. Slamming her fist as hard as she can. And that's when she hears them. It's the FBI. The agents are down on their knees, clawing through the cold ground with their bare hands, using anything they can find to scoop away the dirt. Buckets, sticks, whatever, until they finally uncover the top of the box. They found her. Nobody can believe it. The agents are crying. They're crying happy tears. They pry the lid off. And there's Barbara. Smiling at them. She's just spent 83 and a half hours buried alive. That night, Barbara is reunited with her family. Now the FBI turns their attention to tracking down the kidnappers. Ruth? She vanishes. There's a reason. There's a reason we haven't heard much from her since the kidnapping. She and George got split up during the first botch ransom drop-off, when George was chased down. Since then, she's disappeared from her rented room and nobody knows where she went. So, Ruth actually becomes the first woman ever added to the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives list. George is a little easier to track. Mostly because he makes a bad impression. On almost everybody he interacts with along the way. He stops for gas and a coke and, instead of keeping his head down and staying quiet, he makes some snide remark to the clerk about being rich. It rubs the clerk the wrong way. So, he remembers George later, when agents question him. The FBI's best tip comes from a boat salesman in West Palm Beach. He believes his latest customer was George Deacon, aka Gary Crist. He says the guy was looking for a fast boat and was really impatient, and he paid with a roll of 20s. And he tells the FBI George was planning to head to Fort Lauderdale and then on to the Bahamas. A huge manhunt comes together. It's not just the FBI anymore. The Coast Guard, sheriffs, officers from wildlife and game commissions, they are all hunting George down. And they spot him in his brand new boat off the Gulf Coast. In the dark, he runs his boat aground on Hog Island. It's a huge private island and, by coincidence, it used to be owned by none other than Robert Mackle. He even developed the closest suburb, which they suspect George might try to run to. So, Robert could probably tell him that Hog Island is filled with dense jungle, mud, swamps, mosquitoes, alligators. Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful, but not a place I would want to be running around in the middle of the night in the dark. George doesn't have to hide for long, though. In the middle of the night, he's discovered. He's riddled with mosquito bites and has $18,000 in cash on him. Just to be really certain they've got their guy, they look for an identifying mark. The five stitches he just got in his skull. That's scrotum from his last escape. Ruth is found about three months later working as a car hop at a restaurant in Oklahoma. She's convicted at trial. George/Gary's trial in 1969 is heated. The judge, the prosecutor, and most of the jury members want to send him to the electric chair. But other members of the jury are like, "Look, Barbara didn't die, we'll convict him, but only if he gets life in prison." Not the death sentence. So that's what happens. But in a twist, he gets paroled in 1979. People are spitting mad about it, too. It doesn't help when the head of the parole board is like, "Hey, listen, if he does commit a crime, it won't be a crime of violence." George had successfully convinced the board that he wanted to go back to Alaska and simply take over his family's shrimping business. but he does go on to commit another crime in 2006 he's convicted of trafficking cocaine when detectives search his home they discover a drug lab he built beneath his house underground as for barbara she made a full recovery physically and mentally she gave exactly one public statement to thank everyone involved in the case and assure the world that she was doing fine. Later, she takes part in the definitive source on the case, a book titled 83 Hours Till Dawn. And then she puts that part of her life behind her. She avoids the spotlight for the rest of her life and settles down and builds a family with her best friend, Stuart. If you stuck around for a moral at the end of this tale, you're probably out of luck. Some stories don't have morals. They just happen. If there is a lesson that can be gleaned from this series of events, it might be that you can be confident, you can be smart, you can follow directions and do as you're told. And still, you're subject to an absurd universe that doesn't care what we intend or what we want. In this story, the difference between life and death came down to a handful of moments that could have gone the other way just as easily. A ransom note that might never have been found. A dirt road lost among many. A fan that could have been turned off. Barbara Mackle survived 83 1⁄2 hours underground despite all the reasons, she shouldn't have. Not because anyone was in control, just because this time, the universe broke in her favor. Thanks for tuning in to Killer Stories, a Spotify podcast. New episodes release on Mondays. If you like today's story and want to learn more, we drop some of our favorite sources in the episode description. Until next time, I'm Harvey Guillen. Stay safe out there. We'll see you next time. Rep number 10004. Monday on NBC. U.S. Marshalls! Stop! And each other. Every case hits home on Line of Fire. Monday on NBC. I'm not giving up. I am selling the building. The final season of FX is the Bear. The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay. No! Stop! Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned, but we have each other. FX is the Bear. is The Bear, the final season, all episodes now streaming on Disney+.