A REAL 3 Page Ransom Note

delaney

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The following ransom note is the real note used in the Kidnapping of Barbara Mackle and appears on page 65, 66, and 67 of the book 83 Hours Till Dawn.
I have not posted this note since 2003 and many of you are new to the JonBenet case and I thought perhaps you might enjoy reading the note and knowing that a REAL 3 page ransom does exsist. The kidnapper in this case did indeed tell Barbara's father what to wear and also what car to drive. There were also instructions left in the box that Barbara Mackle was left in, those instructions are on the internet.

For background information you may google Barbara Mackle, or 83 Hours till Dawn.

THE RANSOM NOTE




Sir, your daughter has been kidnapped by us and we now
hold her for ransom. She is quite safe, if somewhat
uncomfortable. We offer no proof of our possession of her
at this time. It will arrive by mail in a few days. Barbara is
presently alive inside a small capsule buried in a remote
piece of soil. She has enough food and water and air to
last seven days. At the end of the seven days the life supporting
batteries will be discharged and her air supply will be cut off.

The box is waterproof and very strong-fiberglass reinforced
plywood-she has little chance of escaping. The box is in an unusual and lonely place. She has no chance of being accidently stumbled upon.

Contemplate, if you will, the position into which this puts
you. If you pay the ransom prior to seven days,
we will tell you of her whereabouts. Should you catch the
messenger we send to pick up the ransom, we will simply
not say anything to anyone and ergo Barbara will
suffocate. The messenger knows only one of us and he will report to us via radio from the pickup site. We will
immediately know his fate.

Should you catch all, of us we will never admit anything as to do
so would be suicide and again-she will die. As you can see, you don't want to catch us for to do so would be condemning your lovely and intelligent daughter to death. The police may allow you to have a free hand prior to the return of your daughter
should you be so callous as to contact them. If you ask the police to advise you in this matter please be aware that
their very presence will scare us off. We can see no way for you to secure the safe return of your daughter other than to obey instructions explicitly.

1) Although we will always anticipate the involvement of the police in this situation, be assured that if your communication with them or their actual presence is detected, we will break off negotiations with you immediately. We have tied into several
of the possible means of communications that you have with the police and feel that you will be unable to contact them without our
knowledge.

2) The ransom will be $500,000 in recently issued $20 bills. Here are the requirements you must meet in this matter:
The notes must not be older than 1950 issue.
No more than ten notes must have consecutive serial numbers; ie., the notes must have a great variety of serial-numbers and not be merely shuffled.
The notes must be Federal Reserve notes of standard configuration.

No more than one-half of the notes may be uncirculated.

No form of marking on the bills is acceptable. Please note that the bills will undergo a minimum of eight hours of intense examination before we allow you to have knowledge of the subject's whereabouts. We have planned a series of 44 tests on a large representative of the bills. These tests include every chemical and physical test of any remote applicability.


No omission, shaving, spotting, cutting, counterfeiting, irradiating, ad nos will go undetected.

3) The bills should occupy no more than 400 cubic inches and thusly fit into a standard large suitcase of inside dimensions 31.5" longx18.75" highx6.25" deep. Purchase such a suitcase and lock the bills inside.
When you have the money in readiness, call all the Miami
area major newspapers and place the following ad in the "personal" section of the classified advertisemsnts:

"Loved one-please come home. We will pay all expenses
and meet you anywhere at anytime. Your Family."

Prepare your car for a trip and on the night of the ad's first appearance we will call you at home after midnight to advise you of where you must go to deliver the money. You must be the one to deliver the money, Robert. You will dress yourself in an all-white outfit. You must use the Lincoln to deliver the money.

In order to prevent the instructional call being traced it will be very brief and no portion of it will be repeated. If the phone rings more than three times or the connection takes longer than 15 seconds we will not contact you. You will have a limited period of time to make the rendezvous so you should be ready to leave your house within one minute of receiving the phone call in order to be within the time limit. You will proceed to the area of the meeting within the legal speed limit as if you were in no hurry. We will not meet you if you fail to show within the time limit which is only a short time longer than you will require to drive to the pickup site. Any unusual police activity or other activity in the area of the pick up will cancel the appointment.

When you arrive at the pick up site you will know it by a signal of three short flashes repeated continuously from a flashlight directed at the windshield of your car. When you see the signal you will stop the car and immediately take the suitcase toward the light. The light will be mounted on the top of a box. The suitcase should be placed within the box. You will then return to your car and proceed back up the street, in the direction from which you came and go home.

Any deviation from this outline will result in your death.
Our messenger will have you in his sights from the time you leave your car. Within twelve hours after you deliver the money you will receive another call advising you of your daughter's whereabouts. A letter will be sent also to insure the findings of your daughter.
 
Thanks Delany,this is a very long ransom note,but unlike the Ramseys note this one seems to make sense.Very direct and percise with everything thought out,unlike the one Patsy wrote.
 
I just skimmed over the note. Did the kidnappers receive the ransom money?

Did the kidnappers kill the kidnapped person?

Did the FBI take over the case and catchem?



.
 
Fuzzy on this one, however I think it was the story of the college girl that was buried alive. The guy, in Atlanta?, had an accomplice, they collected 500,000 in ransom , he was arrested while on vacation spending the money.
Here is the best part, he was sentenced , served ten or so, got his medical degree, and is a practicing doctor in some state that allows felons to get their licenses. I believe the group were college students, both of the perps and the victim, but not certain. I wonder if he had any kids, that wanted to be like "dear old dad"?
 
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/miami/4069377.htm

Kidnappers force student into wood box for 3 nights

When two strangers knocked on her door the night of Dec. 17, 1968, Barbara Jane Mackle was suffering from chills and a fever and ached all over. She was about to feel worse. The strangers chloroformed her mother, kidnapped Barbara at gunpoint and buried her in a plywood box on a remote Georgia hillside.

They wanted half a million dollars in ransom from her wealthy father, land developer Robert Mackle. Her mother was in Atlanta from Coral Gables to care for her daughter after a Hong Kong flu epidemic jammed the infirmary at Emory University, where Barbara was a student. Barbara, 20, was buried alive for nearly four days and three nights.

Family, friends and more than 100 FBI agents worked feverishly to find her. After Miami police unwittingly thwarted a first attempt to deliver a suitcase full of $20 bills, Billy Vessels, a college football Heisman Trophy winner, made a second ransom drop on a lonely dirt road off Tamiami Trail.

More than 12 hours later, kidnapper Gary Steven Krist, 23, called a switchboard operator at the Atlanta FBI office with sketchy directions to Barbara's burial place. Frantic agents scrambled through woods, dug with whatever they could find and clawed at the cold ground with bare hands. Unearthed after 83 hours, she was in good condition, unlike the kidnappers.

Krist, already suffering from severe jock itch, painfully injured his scrotum as he fled the first ransom drop. The wound required five sutures. His lover and accomplice, Ruth Eisemann-Schier, 26, burned her buttocks when she inadvertently sat on a chloroform-soaked cloth intended for the victim.

Krist bought a getaway boat with $20 ransom bills. Pursued across the state by the FBI and the Coast Guard, he ran aground on Hog Island off Florida's west coast and fled into its swampy jungle. Eighty-five agents and local law enforcement members ran him to ground in 12 hours. Mosquito-bitten and miserable, he was positively identified by the five stitches in his private parts.

Eisemann-Schier broke the sex barrier twice, successfully posing as a man during the kidnapping, then as the first woman on the FBI's most wanted list. She still had burn scars on her bottom when arrested in Oklahoma 79 days later.

She claimed she did it out of love for Krist, already married with two children. Sentenced to seven years, she was paroled in four and deported to her native Honduras.

A California prison escapee, Krist had built the coffin-like ''capsule'' at the University of Miami Institute of Marine Sciences, where he worked. Sentenced to life, he was paroled in 10 years, then pardoned so he could become a doctor. He never completed his medical training.

Barbara Mackle married her college sweetheart.







 
Thank you Tipper, wonder how old PR woulda been at the time this was news in Atlanta GA, and national news?

Maybe 15 or a teenager at least. 3 page ransom note, hmmm.



.
 
She'd have been 12. As I recall there was very little, if any coverage of the note. All the news was (naturally) focused on how horrible it must have been to be buried alive etc. etc. I think most people never read the note until it was available on the internet.
 
thank-you for doing the background on the mackle case. this case was huge in the south.

a movie was made and played on the lifetime channel called 83 hours till dawn. it starred peter strauss and a former miss america. parts of the ransom note were read as part of the script of that movie. if you recall peter strauss was also in "the nick of time".

thinking back to my own childhood, i remember two crimes that took place in chicago, and in subsequent years always read articles that followed up on them. it is not a stretch to think patsy watched alot of lifetime channel while she was ill and may have seen this movie.

krist tried to get a licence to practice medicine in indiana and ran into trouble with the medical board down there.
 
tipper said:
She'd have been 12. As I recall there was very little, if any coverage of the note. All the news was (naturally) focused on how horrible it must have been to be buried alive etc. etc. I think most people never read the note until it was available on the internet.




------------>>>Most likely it did make the newspaper headlines, and it would have been memorable to a youngster about 12 or so. I know that my interest in crime began when I was around that age, 12, 13.

Most likely a child of 12 would have asked or just read some to understand what a 'kidnapping' was. Kidnappings did not make the news on a regular basis back then. Unusual then, to have ransom notes along with kidnappings. Then to continue the learning and wondering experience of a 12 year old perceptive child, 'what is a ransom note'?

Today children and young women disappear without ransom notes, more times that we like to hear about.




.
 
I noticed a few MAJOR differences in this note and the ramsey note. First, the kidnappers demanded almost 5x as much money! Not to mention that was almost 30 years earlier, so with inflation, it's a lot more than that. Second, the kidnappers actually wanted the money, and indeed kidnapped the girl. It is still questionable, if at all, that the perp(s) in the Ramsey case ever wanted the money or intended a kidnapping. Finally, the kidnappers in the Mackle case contacted police.
 
Voice of Reason said:
I noticed a few MAJOR differences in this note and the ramsey note. First, the kidnappers demanded almost 5x as much money! Not to mention that was almost 30 years earlier, so with inflation, it's a lot more than that. Second, the kidnappers actually wanted the money, and indeed kidnapped the girl. It is still questionable, if at all, that the perp(s) in the Ramsey case ever wanted the money or intended a kidnapping. Finally, the kidnappers in the Mackle case contacted police.
All true... I lived in the area and had also attended Emory (as the victim did). I recall her recovery and it was like a later day when Elizabeth Smart was found...unbelievable emotion.

The interesting thing is how the initial pure hatred for the kidnapper evolved into a grudging recognition that he had taken unusual steps to keep her alive, and had made the contact leading to her recovery. This undoubtably is why he was paroled in 10 years.
 
Katz - love your Pope Benedict picture and caption!

Ok, let's be real about any similarity between the Mackle case and the Ramsey case.
The Mackle case was a REAL kidnapping! The girl WAS taken. Kidnapped. The motive WAS money!
NONE of that was true in the Ramsey case. None of it.

The girl was NOT kidnapped in the Ramsey case.
The motive was NOT money.

The only similarity is the length of the notes.
One was real and necessary with the elaborate instructions to the parents.
The other was a long, rambling and disorganized attempt to divert attention away from what really happened in the house that night to their daughter.
Veering off track to say silly things like to be "well rested." Switching from "we" to "I". Switching from the formal "Mr. Ramsey" to the more familiar "John."
The real ransom note in the Mackle case stuck to it's intent and purpose the whole way through.

The comparison of these 2 "kidnap/ransom" notes highlight even further the absurdity of the Ramsey one.
The FBI had good reason to suspect the Ramsey note from the get-go.
 
Primary evidence in the Ramsey case is the ransom note. Therefore the note is "real" and may be what sends the perp(s) to prison.

How absurd, fake, or misleading the JBR ransom note is can't be determined without knowing what actually happened.

For instance, suppose the murdering perp was trying to get accomplices to help out, under the supposition the crime would be a kidnapping for money. The accomplices find out after its too late the perp had ulterior motives.

For another instance, What if the perps fully intended to kidnap JBR and something went wrong?

There's all kinds of possibilities that make the ransom note 'real'. IMO the ransom note can't be measured for validity without knowing what actually happened (echo).
 
K777angel said:
Katz - love your Pope Benedict picture and caption!

Ok, let's be real about any similarity between the Mackle case and the Ramsey case.

The Mackle case was a REAL kidnapping! The girl WAS taken. Kidnapped. The motive WAS money!
NONE of that was true in the Ramsey case. None of it.

The girl was NOT kidnapped in the Ramsey case.
The motive was NOT money.

The only similarity is the length of the notes...

The FBI had good reason to suspect the Ramsey note from the get-go.
Thanks Angel ~ I'm really glad that you like it ~ that says a lot.

I completly agree with everything you posted... The note rings so phony... and I can't get past that pineapple... no kidnapping here...
 
KatzHome said:
Thanks Angel ~ I'm really glad that you like it ~ that says a lot.

I completly agree with everything you posted... The note rings so phony... and I can't get past that pineapple... no kidnapping here...

Thanks Katz - it says alot about you too! :) I think we are so very blessed to have the former Cardinal Ratzinger for our new Holy Father!

Yes - the note is full of red flags and is obviously phony. The discovery of the child's dead body in the home simply confirmed it.

And the pineapple as you mentioned is but another piece of incriminating evidence against the Ramseys.

It is the collection of all the individual pieces of evidence, facts and circumstances in this case put together that make it obvious this was a familial homicide and NOT one committed by some unknown intruder or 'foreign faction."
One can argue and minimize individual points or facts in this case but it is the totality of the facts and evidence that points to the Ramseys and makes the case against them and no one else.
That is why they REMAIN under that "umbrella of suspicion." And no one else does!
 
Was this long three page ransom note written on papper from the house in which the kidnaped girl lived as in the Ramsey case?? Did the kidnappers take all that time in the home to construct the note with a pen or another instrument that came from the girls home as in the Ramsey case???? Any practice notes found which would mean more time was spent in the home as in the Ramsey case???
 
The following ransom note is the real note used in the Kidnapping of Barbara Mackle and appears on page 65, 66, and 67 of the book 83 Hours Till Dawn.
I have not posted this note since 2003 and many of you are new to the JonBenet case and I thought perhaps you might enjoy reading the note and knowing that a REAL 3 page ransom does exsist. The kidnapper in this case did indeed tell Barbara's father what to wear and also what car to drive. There were also instructions left in the box that Barbara Mackle was left in, those instructions are on the internet.

For background information you may google Barbara Mackle, or 83 Hours till Dawn.

THE RANSOM NOTE




Sir, your daughter has been kidnapped by us and we now
hold her for ransom. She is quite safe, if somewhat
uncomfortable. We offer no proof of our possession of her
at this time. It will arrive by mail in a few days. Barbara is
presently alive inside a small capsule buried in a remote
piece of soil. She has enough food and water and air to
last seven days. At the end of the seven days the life supporting
batteries will be discharged and her air supply will be cut off.

The box is waterproof and very strong-fiberglass reinforced
plywood-she has little chance of escaping. The box is in an unusual and lonely place. She has no chance of being accidently stumbled upon.

Contemplate, if you will, the position into which this puts
you. If you pay the ransom prior to seven days,
we will tell you of her whereabouts. Should you catch the
messenger we send to pick up the ransom, we will simply
not say anything to anyone and ergo Barbara will
suffocate. The messenger knows only one of us and he will report to us via radio from the pickup site. We will
immediately know his fate.

Should you catch all, of us we will never admit anything as to do
so would be suicide and again-she will die. As you can see, you don't want to catch us for to do so would be condemning your lovely and intelligent daughter to death. The police may allow you to have a free hand prior to the return of your daughter
should you be so callous as to contact them. If you ask the police to advise you in this matter please be aware that
their very presence will scare us off. We can see no way for you to secure the safe return of your daughter other than to obey instructions explicitly.

1) Although we will always anticipate the involvement of the police in this situation, be assured that if your communication with them or their actual presence is detected, we will break off negotiations with you immediately. We have tied into several
of the possible means of communications that you have with the police and feel that you will be unable to contact them without our
knowledge.

2) The ransom will be $500,000 in recently issued $20 bills. Here are the requirements you must meet in this matter:
The notes must not be older than 1950 issue.
No more than ten notes must have consecutive serial numbers; ie., the notes must have a great variety of serial-numbers and not be merely shuffled.
The notes must be Federal Reserve notes of standard configuration.

No more than one-half of the notes may be uncirculated.

No form of marking on the bills is acceptable. Please note that the bills will undergo a minimum of eight hours of intense examination before we allow you to have knowledge of the subject's whereabouts. We have planned a series of 44 tests on a large representative of the bills. These tests include every chemical and physical test of any remote applicability.


No omission, shaving, spotting, cutting, counterfeiting, irradiating, ad nos will go undetected.

3) The bills should occupy no more than 400 cubic inches and thusly fit into a standard large suitcase of inside dimensions 31.5" longx18.75" highx6.25" deep. Purchase such a suitcase and lock the bills inside.
When you have the money in readiness, call all the Miami
area major newspapers and place the following ad in the "personal" section of the classified advertisemsnts:

"Loved one-please come home. We will pay all expenses
and meet you anywhere at anytime. Your Family."

Prepare your car for a trip and on the night of the ad's first appearance we will call you at home after midnight to advise you of where you must go to deliver the money. You must be the one to deliver the money, Robert. You will dress yourself in an all-white outfit. You must use the Lincoln to deliver the money.

In order to prevent the instructional call being traced it will be very brief and no portion of it will be repeated. If the phone rings more than three times or the connection takes longer than 15 seconds we will not contact you. You will have a limited period of time to make the rendezvous so you should be ready to leave your house within one minute of receiving the phone call in order to be within the time limit. You will proceed to the area of the meeting within the legal speed limit as if you were in no hurry. We will not meet you if you fail to show within the time limit which is only a short time longer than you will require to drive to the pickup site. Any unusual police activity or other activity in the area of the pick up will cancel the appointment.

When you arrive at the pick up site you will know it by a signal of three short flashes repeated continuously from a flashlight directed at the windshield of your car. When you see the signal you will stop the car and immediately take the suitcase toward the light. The light will be mounted on the top of a box. The suitcase should be placed within the box. You will then return to your car and proceed back up the street, in the direction from which you came and go home.

Any deviation from this outline will result in your death.
Our messenger will have you in his sights from the time you leave your car. Within twelve hours after you deliver the money you will receive another call advising you of your daughter's whereabouts. A letter will be sent also to insure the findings of your daughter.
I've been catching up on some reading and ran across this note. Very interesting and I'm actually stunned by the similarities to the Ramsey ransom note. And the mention of a flashlight, suitcase, tedious details on the size of the suitcase and the money and delivery and pick up site, possession of her, deviation, she dies, and it started with Sir, and later on switched to Robert...
 
thank-you for doing the background on the mackle case. this case was huge in the south.

a movie was made and played on the lifetime channel called 83 hours till dawn. it starred peter strauss and a former miss america. parts of the ransom note were read as part of the script of that movie. if you recall peter strauss was also in "the nick of time".

thinking back to my own childhood, i remember two crimes that took place in chicago, and in subsequent years always read articles that followed up on them. it is not a stretch to think patsy watched alot of lifetime channel while she was ill and may have seen this movie.

krist tried to get a licence to practice medicine in indiana and ran into trouble with the medical board down there.
Again I'm stunned. This took place in the south and the tv movie starred a former Miss America.
 

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