Charges Kidnapping-for-ransom Number 293 Caught March 5, 1969 | Added December 28, 1968 Penalty Seven years Name Ruth Eisemann-Schier | |
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Status Paroled (after four years), deported Education National Autonomous University of Mexico | ||
Ruth Eisemann Schier (born 1941 or 1942) was the first woman to appear on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.
Biography
Schier was born in Honduras, the daughter of Austrian-Jewish refugees living there after escaping Nazi persecution. She was a graduate of National University of Mexico and was a graduate student at the University of Miami's Institute of Marine Science when she met Gary Stephen Krist.
Schier was added to the list in 1968, for participating in the kidnapping-for-ransom of land heiress Barbara Jane Mackle in Decatur, Georgia in a plan concocted by her boyfriend, Krist. He was arrested two days later, but Schier eluded police for 79 days before being apprehended in Norman, Oklahoma on March 5, 1969. Schier was extradited from Oklahoma to Georgia to face trial where she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
While Schier was in prison, Gene Miller, in collaboration with Mackle, wrote about the crime in 83 Hours Till Dawn. Schier served four years of her sentence and was paroled in 1973 on condition of deportation to her native Honduras.
Schier's case was one of many covered in the 2002 book Mistresses of Mayhem: the Book of Women Criminals.