Gary Krist: The Einstein of Crime

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Gary Krist's kidnapping victim has had nothing to say about his latest arrest.

In 1971, she coauthored a memoir about her ordeal, "83 Hours Till Dawn." She said in the book, "I wanted to tell it once completely and as honestly as I could, so that it will be behind me. I want to end it. I want to put it behind me. Once and for all, I want it to be over. Forever and ever."

Book cover: 83 Hours 'Til Dawn

She hasn't spoken publicly about it since.

"It's not a part of our life at all," her father, Robert Mackle, told The Miami Herald 10 years after the kidnapping. "Nobody will understand that it didn't affect her."

Barbara Mackle married her college sweetheart, Stewart Woodward, who became a successful accountant in Atlanta. The couple had two children, then moved some years ago to a seaside home in Vero Beach, Fla.

She has deflected all attempts by the media to talk about Krist, but their fates are forever intertwined.

She may have spared Krist's life with her merciful testimony.

"I know that I did not want Krist to be executed," she wrote in her memoir. "For one reason, it was he who called (the FBI to free her)."

And her attitude about his early parole and pardon left him free to commit his latest crimes.

In his memoir, Krist praised Barbara Mackle for the measured tones she used when testifying — a tacit acknowledgement that she may have saved his life.

As Krist put it, "My victim has put me in her moral debt for life."