Barbara Jane Mackle: The Real 83 Hours Til Dawn Story

 

Photo source

A Christmastime Abduction

If you lived in Florida in 1968, you knew who the Mackle family was.  The Mackle Company (soon to be Deltona), run by brothers Frank, Elliott, and Robert, began building large retirement-oriented communities in rural areas of the state in 1955.  The brothers had noticed that Florida had become a popular vacation destination and rightly assumed that many of the people who enjoyed vacationing there might also prefer to retire to the Sunshine State.  The land they purchased in those rural areas was vast and cheap and they had soon developed Key Biscayne, Marco Island, Port St. Lucie, and St. Augustine Shores, among others.   The sale of homes reached $3.5 million (nearly $31 million in 2023 dollars) and the company's stock had climbed from $12 per share five years earlier to $20 per share in January and with a 12% return after taxes.  Frank, Elliott, and Robert were sitting on a $65 million ($590 million in 2023)  empire. 

Their good luck changed drastically in the early morning of Tuesday, December 17.  Robert's 20-year-old daughter, Barbara Jane, had been kidnapped from a hotel room in Atlanta, Georgia.  Barbara, a student at Emory University, had come down with the flu pandemic known as the Hong Kong flu that was sweeping not only the campus but the country at the time.  Her mother, Jane, had traveled from Coral Gables and checked into the Rodeway Inn on Clairmont Road in Decatur, not far from the campus; she had arrived to not only care for her daughter but to accompany her home for Christmas.  

Barbara (photo source)

During the evening of December 16, Barbara's boyfriend and fellow Emory student Stewart Hunt Woodward had dropped by to visit.  After he left, mother and daughter sat up talking and were still awake when a man who identified himself as a detective knocked at their door around 4 a.m.  Saying he had information about an auto accident involving someone in a white Ford who was hurt (Stewart Woodward drove a white Ford), he tricked Jane Mackle into opening the door.  Instead of a police detective, she was confronted by a masked man carrying a shotgun and a second, smaller person wearing a mask.  The two bound, gagged, and chloroformed Jane before kidnapping Barbara, dressed in her red and white nightgown, at gunpoint.    

The tape the kidnappers had placed over Jane's mouth became loose almost immediately after they gagged her and she began screaming for help.  When that did not result in any attention, and despite being bound hand and foot, she hopped outside to Barbara's car, where she managed to open the door backwards, fall in and repeatedly honk the horn.  A motel employee responded to the honking and alerted the police.  

Ransom

Due to Robert Mackle's connections (he was close personal friends with Florida Senator George Smathers and President-elect Richard Nixon), the FBI acted immediately, mobilizing agents in both Georgia and Florida.   FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover took charge of the Mackle kidnapping personally.   

Robert Mackle was soon contacted by his daughter's abductors and directed to dig up a ransom note that had been buried in his garden.  $500,000 (nearly $4.4 million in 2023) was requested and a photo of Barbara holding a sign that said "Kidnapped" was offered as proof.  If Robert agreed to their terms, he was to place an advertisement in the Miami Herald with very specific wording; "Loved one, please come home.  We will pay all expenses and meet you anywhere at any time.  Your family."  Robert did as he was instructed, as well as stuffing a suitcase with the $500,000 in the requested old $20 bills and dropping it off at the designated spot along Biscayne Bay on Thursday, December 19.  Unfortunately, a local resident was awakened around 5 a.m. by the sound of an outboard motor and seeing a white Boston Whaler being beached on a neighbor's lawn and concerned about a recent rash of burglaries, called the police.  As the FBI had not notified the local police of the ransom drop off, two officers responded and noted what they took to be two men; one was carrying a large duffle bag, the other a suitcase and a carbine.  Spotting the police, the two dropped everything and fled.  The police discovered the duffle bag contained scuba gear, the suitcase held Robert Mackle's $500,000.  

Photo source

A Break

Scouring the area, police located a blue Volvo parked nearby that contained scuba gear -- and a photograph of Barbara Markle holding the "kidnapped" sign.  The car was registered to a George A. Deacon, a research technician at the Institute of Marine Science across the bay.  The Boston Whaler that had been beached by the two individuals had been stolen from the Institute earlier that evening.  

Meanwhile, Robert Mackle, terrified that his daughter's abductors would think they had been ambushed, placed another ad in the Miami Herald for them.  They contacted him at 10:35 p.m. and provided a new money drop location.  This time, the ransom drop was successful and the Mackles spent the next 12 hours awaiting word as to where Barbara was.  

Authorities in Florida had continued to dig into George Deacon's background and discovered that he built ventilated boxes.  Speaking with Deacon's boss, they learned that Deacon often spent time with a coworker by the name of Ruth Eisemann-Schier, a 26-year-old biology researcher.  To their surprise, they learned that George Deacon was not actually George Deacon but a 23-year-old escaped convict from California named Gary Steven Krist.  The FBI issued warrants for their arrests.  

Photo source

Gary Steven Krist and Ruth Eisemann-Schier

Born in Aberdeen, Washington, Krist grew up in Pelican, Alaska and in Utah.  He reportedly began stealing at the age of nine and in 1959, when he was fourteen, was convicted of auto theft and placed in a juvenile facility in Utah.  In August of 1963, this time in California and an adult, the 18-year-old Krist was jailed for the attempted theft of yet another car.  It was while he was in jail for that offense that he began to formulate what he considered the perfect crime: to find and kidnap a young heiress.  He went so far as to devise how to communicate with the family and that burying her underground was the perfect hiding place while awaiting the ransom money.

Three years later, the now-married and father to a young son Krist, was jailed near Tracy, California at the Deuel Vocational Institution, serving yet another sentence for auto theft.  In November of 1966 and with another prisoner, he escaped by scaling a fence.  The other prisoner wasn't so lucky; he was killed during the escape attempt. 

Krist took his family across the country to Boston, where he invented a new identity for himself as George Deacon and got a job as a research assistant at MIT at a salary of $7500 a year ($70,000 in 2023 money).  He and his wife had a second son and attempted to live a rather conventional lifestyle but always worried that his true identity would be discovered, Krist moved his family to Miami, Florida, where he would meet Ruth Eisemann-Schier. 

Eisemann-Schier was born in Honduras to Austrian Jewish refugees who had escaped to Honduras to avoid Nazi persecution.   A petite green-eyed blonde, she was a graduate of the National University of Mexico who spoke fluent Spanish, English, German, and French.  She was a graduate student at the University of Miami's Institute of Marine Science when she met Gary Krist.  

In November of 1968, Krist told his wife Carmen he no longer loved her and she packed up both children and headed back to California.  It was then that Krist told Eisemann-Schier about his get rich quick scheme and she agreed to participate.  The couple planned to head to Europe and live as fugitives once they received the ransom money.  

The highly intelligent Krist had chosen Barbara Mackle very carefully.  He had searched the social registers, eliminating children and males and narrowed his initial list of 100 down to one.  He spent months stalking her and researching her family.  Once he had chosen her as his intended target, he built a special ventilation box, one with a battery-operated air pump that would allow its captive to survive for seven days.   In that box would be a supply of food, water, sanitary products, a blanket, and a light.  

Capture 

Fifteen hours after Robert Mackle had paid the ransom, a phone call rang through a switchboard at the FBI's Atlanta office on December 20.  The caller, Gary Krist, gave the operator a tip that Barbara Mackle was buried 20 miles northeast of Atlanta, near Duluth, Georgia in a wooded area of Gwinnett County.  Teams of agents scoured the woods until they spotted ventilation tubes poking out of the ground.  They dug frantically with their bare hands, their fingers bleeding from the Georgia red clay, until uncovering the box in which Barbara Mackle had been buried.  After 83 hours underground in the cold and dark, Barbara was rescued.  Despite being dehydrated, stiff, and ten pounds lighter, she was alive and in remarkably good spirits.   Flown back to Miami in her father's private jet, she gave a brief press interview stating that she had been treated humanely and she felt "absolutely wonderful."  

Where Barbara had been buried (photo source)

Following the call disclosing Barbara's whereabouts, Gary Krist and Ruth Eisemann-Schier had split up.  Within 24 hours, Krist was captured in south Florida after attempting to purchase a boat and heading for Mexico.  The boat owner grew suspicious when Krist paid him the $2,240 in all $20 notes and called the police.  When arrested, Krist had $17,000 in his pockets.  An additional $480,000 was found in the boat by FBI agents, leaving $760 unaccounted for.  Ruth Eisemann-Schier was also unaccounted for.  The FBI put her on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, giving her the dubious honor of being the first female ever to be so placed.   She would survive 79 days on the run before being apprehended in Norman, Oklahoma on March 5, 1969, where she had been working as a car hop.

Ruth Eisemann-Schier under arrest (photo source)

   

Krist and Eisemann-Schier were indicted on January 3 on charges of kidnapping with ransom, a capital crime in Georgia.  While in custody, awaiting trial, he startled jailers with confessions to strings of previously unsolved murders.  By his own account, Krist's first victim was a 65-year-old hermit that Krist had engaged in a homosexual relationship with at age fourteen while he was still in Pelican, Alaska.  Krist claimed he had tripped the man while walking across a bridge over a deep ravine; the man's death had been ruled an accident.   

In 1961, after his escape from confinement in Utah, Krist claimed he picked up a homosexual male and killed him in a fit of rage, dumping the body near Wendover, Utah.  On July 27, 1967, the skeletal remains of an adult male were discovered where Krist claimed to have dumped the body.  

At nineteen, Krist claimed he had strangled and beat a girl to death near San Diego, concealing her body under a pile of rocks.  A victim by the name of Helen Crow had been discovered on October 3, 1964, with the coroner estimating she had died six to eight weeks earlier.  Krist had been incarcerated in Tracy at the time of her death but his knowledge of very graphic details of the murder remains a mystery.  

Krist also confessed to a fourth murder but declined to give any details or information.  

Gary Krist under arrest in Florida (photo source)

In their trials in 1969, Krist unconvincingly attempted to persuade the court psychiatrist that he was legally insane, claiming that he was "a superior human being" and acting as an egomaniac.  Eisemann-Schier blamed her participation in Barbara's kidnapping on the fact that she was blindly in love with Krist but she did plead guilty to kidnapping.  She was sentenced to seven years.  The prosecutor,  Richard Bell, sought the death penalty against Krist but four hold-out jurors forced him to settle for a life sentence instead.  Many believe that Krist's life was spared thanks to Barbara Mackle, who testified at his trial and expressed appreciation that he spared her life.  

  

Epilogue

At the advice of Richard Nixon, Barbara Mackle wrote a book with Miami Herald reporter Gene Miller about her ordeal called 83 Hours Till Dawn, published in 1971.  The following year, ABC aired the story as part of its Movie of the Week, calling their production The Longest Night.  From February 27 through March 11, 1972, in a fourteen-part series, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published excerpts from her book, allowing readers a firsthand account of the terrifying hours she spent in captivity.  She recalled being eerily calm at Krist confronting her at gunpoint but hysterical once she realized the "underground room" Krist mentioned was actually a box that didn't allow her to fully straighten out.  She spoke to God during her ordeal and claimed that she got through it by realizing she was not and would not die in that box and thought positive thoughts of spending Christmas with her family. 

A second television movie, called 83 Hours Til Dawn, was made in 1990.

Barbara went on to marry Stewart Hunt Woodward and have two children.  They resided happily in Atlanta while Stewart worked as an accountant and retired to Florida until his death in 2013.  She has not spoken publicly about her ordeal since 1972.  

Ruth Eisemann-Schier served four years of her seven-year sentence.   She was paroled in 1973 on the condition that she would be deported to her native Honduras.   She went on to marry and have children and according to her Facebook page, last active around 2013, worked at Laboratorioaloe-Salvia.  

Gary Krist was sent to Reidsville State Prison to serve out his sentence. In 1972, he wrote a book called Life: The Man Who Kidnapped Barbara Jane Mackle.  In 1973, he attempted to escape by burying himself in garbage.  By 1976, when he first became eligible for parole, he had become a model prisoner, attending classes to become an EMT and working in the prison hospital.  At his first parole hearing, he expressed a desire to return to Alaska and help his ailing father with the family shrimp business.  Alaska declined to accept him then and parole was denied but three years later, in 1979, they agreed and Krist was paroled after serving ten years of his sentence.  The Parole Board Chairman, Tommy Morris, believed that there was nothing to indicate that Krist, with whom he had become friendly, was violent or dangerous and said the kidnapping was a negligible charge, as no one had been killed.   Georgians, including prosecutor Richard Bell, were infuriated.  

Walking out of Reidsville on May 14, 1979, Krist was 33 years old and wanted to attend medical school.  As a convicted felon that would be impossible and so Tommy Morris helped him obtain a pardon.  Krist went on to finish college in Alaska and attend medical school in the Caribbean.  He married a prison pen pal by the name of Joan Jones and finished medical school.  He worked as a doctor in Haiti, West Virginia, Alabama, and Connecticut but inevitably, once his past became known, he lost his job.  Chrisney, Indiana hired him in 2001, aware of his criminal history but the rural town was in need of a doctor.   In 2003, he lost that job and the state revoked his medical license after a paper in the nearby city of Evansville published a story about the Mackle kidnapping.  Krist complained to a reporter that he tried to be a beneficial member of society but he was not allowed to.  

In 2001, Krist, along with his wife's son Jackie Greeson, had incorporated a company with the Georgia Secretary of State called Greeson & Krist Construction, Inc.   Their specialty, they claimed, was sheet metal fabrication and "bulletproof" rooms.  They apparently had another specialty as well.

Just before Christmas of 2004, Krist rented a 27-foot sailboat in Point Clear, Alabama and sailed to Cartegena, Colombia where he purchased a kilo of cocaine.  A year later, another sailboat was chartered from November 14, 2005 until December 4, 2005, sailing from Mobile Bay to South America.  This time Krist and Greeson bought six kilos of cocaine.  Once they returned, the charter company found a map of the Colombian coast and grew suspicious, contacting authorities.  When Krist reserved yet another sailboat in January of 2006, federal agents installed a tracking bug on the boat.  Returning to Mobile Bay on March 6, again from Colombia, local, state, and federal lawmen rushed the boat as it was docking.  They seized four illegal aliens - two from Colombia, two from Ecuador - and 38 pounds of cocaine.  The cocaine had been secreted in a cooler that Krist had rigged with a rope and cement in case he had been stopped out to sea; all he would have had to do was cut the rope and push the cooler overboard and the evidence would have been lost.  

On March 10, investigators searched Krist's home, located in a rural area just outside of Auburn, 35 miles from Atlanta.  Finding a concealed trap door in the floor of a garden shed, they discovered a submarine style laboratory which was being used to convert the cocaine from paste to powder, after which Greeson and Krist were selling it in Atlanta.  

On May 16, 2006, both Krist and Greeson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import cocaine and smuggling aliens.  On January 19, 2007 both were sentenced to five years and five months at the Federal Correctional Institution in Marianna, Florida.  Greeson was released July 31, 2009; he died September of 2010 at the age of 53.  Krist, then 65 years old, was released two months later, in November of 2010.  

On August 27, 2012, Krist's supervised release was revoked for violating his probation after it was discovered he had left the country without permission, sailing to Cuba and South America on his sailboat.  He was sentenced to 40 months imprisonment and released July 2, 2015.

Today, Krist is 78 years old, still living in Georgia, and active on Facebook.

Sources

All That's Interesting (December 9, 2021).  He Buried Barbara Mackle Alive - Then Became a Doctor and a Drug Trafficker.  

Atlanta Journal-Constitution (September 21, 2016).  From Kidnapper to Doctor.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution (February 25, 2019).  AJC Deja News: Emory Coed Mackle Kidnapped, Buried Alive (1972).   

Coastal Breeze News (January 16, 2020).  The Daring Kidnapping of Barbara Mackle.   

Coastal Breeze News (January 23, 2020).  The Nerve-Wracking Rescue of Kidnapped Heiress Barbara Mackle. 

Coastal Breeze News (January 30, 2020).  Who Dunnit: Anatomy of an Egomaniacal Con Artist.

Corrections1 (March 7, 2011).  Notorious Georgia Kidnapper Out of Prison Again.

Murderpedia (2023).  Gary Steven Krist. 

The New York Times (May 14, 1979).  Parole of a Kidnapper Angers Atlanta. 

Time (December 27, 1968).  Crime: The Girl in the Box.

Wikipedia (2023).  Barbara Mackle Kidnapping. 

Your Tango (June 28, 2020).  The Insane and Forgotten Story of Barbara Mackle - The Heiress Who Was Kidnapped and Buried Alive for Three Days.

  

Louis Nava: Abducted and Killed in Broad Daylight

(Photo source)

The Assassination of an Atlanta-Area Teenager Leads to His Killer's Controversial Claims of Mental Impairment

June 6, 1998

Louis Nava was sixteen years old in the summer of 1998, a member of the Dunwoody (Georgia) Takedown Club, captain of his Dunwoody High School wrestling team, and the second child and second of three sons in a family of four children.  In addition to wrestling, he had a dedication to teaching and instructing children.  On Saturday, June 6, he was only six days from turning seventeen.

The biggest news story in Dunwoody before the summer of 1998 was the F2 tornado that tore across the metro area in April.  Although it struck DeKalb, Fulton, Gwinnett and Cobb Counties, the most severe damage was in Dunwoody, where its half-mile wide width and more than 150 mile-per-hour winds caused one fatality, ten injuries and over $100 million in damage.  Hundreds of homes in the area had major damage with dozens that were destroyed.  

Unlike Georgia's capitol city of Atlanta, located less than 20 miles south, Dunwoody typically had little violent crime.  A former bedroom community, the growth of the metro Atlanta area and urban sprawl sent residents north and Dunwoody found its community and borders growing.  New neighborhoods, with single-family residences, townhomes, condos and apartment buildings sprouted up, as did commercial businesses.  Perimeter Mall, on busy Ashford-Dunwoody Road, and immediately off Interstate 285 and with a Marta train stop conveniently outside the mall, and its environs, was the largest of the commercial and retail spaces.  Dunwoody Village, the city's oldest shopping area, remained on Mt. Vernon and Chamblee-Dunwoody Roads and it was soon joined by an area called the Mt. Vernon Shopping Center, further down Mt. Vernon, toward Dunwoody Club Drive, by the Dunwoody Country Club, and Jett Ferry Drive.

The Atlanta Pet Supply and Grooming was in the Mt. Vernon Shopping Center, a strip center which also housed banks, a Harris Teeter grocery store, a drug store, a jewelry store, and restaurants, among others.  Seventeen-year-old Dakarai Sloley's family dog, Scotty, was being groomed at the Atlanta Pet Supply on that Saturday in June.  Like Louis, Dakarai was also a student at Dunwoody High; he and Louis were best friends.   Dakarai and his family were staying with his aunt after their home had sustained damage two months earlier during the tornado.  

It was Dakarai's aunt who agreed to let her nephew and Louis, who was hanging out at the house, drive her white 1995 BMW 318i to the shopping center to pick up Scotty from the groomers.  It was around 6 p.m. when the two boys left in the BMW.

Louis as a wrestler (photo source)

Meanwhile, 20-year-old Riorechos Wilson, known as Rio, 20-year-old Eric Perkinson and Eric's two brothers, 18-year-old Cicero and 30-year-old Walter Jerome, known as Jerome, were hanging out together that Saturday at their family home in Cartersville, the county seat of Bartow County and nearly 45 miles northwest of Dunwoody.  Around noon, the quartet decided to head to a flea market in Stone Mountain but not before they talked about stealing a vehicle.  Their vehicle of choice was a BMW, as they felt it would garner them the most money.  In fact, on Friday Eric and Rico had talking about hijacking a car should one become available so that Rico could use the money to pay off a debt.  A .9 millimeter pistol was acquired for that purpose.

The four left in Cicero's green Toyota Camry, armed with the pistol.  They traveled to Stone Mountain to the flea market before heading into Dunwoody, a relatively affluent community with no shortages of BMWs.  It was around 6 p.m. when they finished eating and spied exactly what they were looking for: a white BMW.

Dakarai and Louis had been told that the Sloley dog was not ready to be picked up and so they decided to head back to the car and sit and wait for the half hour or so until the dog was ready.  Neither would have been concerned or worried about doing so; it was early evening, still light, on a Saturday evening in Dunwoody.  There was both vehicle and foot traffic not only in the Mt. Vernon Shopping Center but the Williamsburg Shopping Center, a busy center with banks, a McDonald's, an Arby's, and a Dominos Pizza, among others, directly across the street.  Certainly neither boy would have noticed the green Toyota scoping them out as they had pulled into the parking lot, gotten out, walked into the store and then returned.  

Cicero, seeing Dakarai and Louis exit the BMW, commented that they were "two suckers" and pulled the Toyota into the parking space behind the white car and waited.  

As Dakarai and Louis climbed back to the BMW, Eric and Rico climbed from the Toyota to the back seat of the BMW.  Eric had the pistol and after robbing the two boys of the few dollars they had, he pointed it at the front seat, instructing Dakarai, who was behind the wheel, to follow the Toyota being driven by Cicero.  

The Toyota left the shopping center, pulling onto Mt. Vernon Road and then taking a left on Tilly Mill Road before turning onto North Peachtree Road, the BMW following.  The two-car caravan pulled into the parking lot of St. Barnabas Anglican Church, with the Toyota parked a few spaces from the BMW.  Dakarai and Louis were told if they tried to run, they would be shot.  The keys to the car were taken from Dakarai by Eric, who ordered him into the front passenger seat and Louis into the trunk.  Rico took over the driving duties of the BMW, while Eric sat in the back seat.    

Rico steered the car to the Interstate 285 on-ramp at North Peachtree and headed west, with the green Toyota carrying Jerome and Cicero following.  Despite having just committed armed robbery and kidnapping, the two vehicles played a game of racing and passing each other on the freeway.  Eric noticed a pair of black gloves that Dakarai had and forced the teen to turn them over to him.      

As the two cars headed toward the 75 northbound freeway, Dakarai attempted to communicate with his captors.  He told Rico and Eric that the car belonged to his aunt and if they wanted it, they could have it.  He begged them not to kill him and Louis.  Rico reassured Dakarai that neither he nor Louis would come to any harm; they would be let out but it had to be far from Dunwoody.  Eric added that while Dakarai was "a brother" like them and might be trustworthy, Louis was not.  

The terrifying drive lasted 45 minutes, during which Dakarai noted the license plate of the Toyota during one of the occasions it passed the BMW as Rico and Eric laughed and smoked cigars.  He also recognized that they were passing over Lake Allatoona.  Dakarai's fear that their abductors would kill him and Louis and throw them into the lake only lessened as they drove further north.  

Nearly 40 miles from the Dunwoody shopping center where the carjacking had taken place, the cars exited on Paga Mine Road in Bartow County, where two-lane country roads dotted the landscape.  The cars wound down a dirt road, seemingly at random but the Perkinson brothers were familiar with the area.  Cicero had taken Rico there a few weeks earlier.  

The BMW pulled to a stop and the Toyota followed suit, staying a car length or so behind.   Eric pulled Louis from the trunk and told him to take off his shirt and shoes.  Louis asked why and Eric put the pistol to his head and demanded he follow directions, which the teen did.  Dakarai, still sitting in the passenger seat of the BMW, watched as Eric, holding the pistol to Louis' head, began marching him off to a wooded area with trees and bushes.  Rico walked over to the Toyota and told Cicero, after Cicero rolled down his window, that Eric had freaked out.  After that very brief exchange, Rico returned to the BMW to resume his watch over Dakarai, who was still observing his best friend and praying that he would be let go or simply left.  

Eric, meanwhile, had stopped Louis and aimed the gun at him.  Louis turned his head away from the gun and Eric pulled the trigger twice.  Dakarai saw Louis fall, dead from a gunshot to his head.  

Dakarai was frozen with fear and in shock.  Eric returned to the BMW and through the open passenger-side window, put the gun to Dakarai's head.  "Get out of the car," he said.  "It's your turn."  "No," said the teenager.  "I thought you weren't going to kill us."  Eric told him that he noticed Dakarai had seen the license plate of the Toyota and he had seen all their faces, before impatiently telling him to hurry up.  Dakarai climbed out of the car and Eric, with one hand on his back and the other holding the gun against his head, began to walk him into the woods where Louis lay.   Looking at his friend's body and figuring he only had one option to attempt to save himself, Dakarai made a break for it and took off running.   Eric opened fire.  Dakarai heard the gunshots and felt a sharp pain in his left arm.  He squatted down by a tree, where he noticed that he had been shot in the arm.  His abductors, seeing him go down and assuming he had been fatally struck, climbed into both cars and left.  Only after both vehicles had left did Dakarai get up and run through the woods and grass and over a barbed-wire fence, all the while holding his injured arm (which would later reveal to be a bone completely bisected and shattered by a bullet).  He came to a road where he saw a Domino's Pizza delivery driver.  He flagged the driver down and the driver told Dakarai to wait where he was while the driver went to a nearby house to summon help.  

Sheriff's deputies, along with paramedics, arrived within minutes.  Dakarai was able to give descriptions of all four of his abductors, as well as the green Toyota, the white BMW and the license plates of both.  

Around 8 p.m., a man observed a car that appeared to be a green Toyota Corolla with three individuals in it and a small fire burning nearby.  He called the police and put the fire out.  In the ashes were papers for and from the Sloley BMW.  The Perkinsons and Rico Wilson, after leaving Bartow County, had returned to the Perkinson residence before traveling to Rome, Georgia for a party.  They drove both the Toyota and the BMW and the BMW was spotted at a motel in Rome where Cicero Perkinson was seen.  At some point, Cicero and Rico drove the BMW to the home of Eric's girlfriend, where it was recovered by the police.  Once recovered, Cicero's fingerprints were found on the car and the gun used to kill Louis and to shoot Dakarai was found on the floorboard.     

Back in Dunwoody, Louis' mother Laura had grown concerned over why Louis had not returned home.  She drove to the Sloley house and not knowing that the boys had left in the white BMW, saw Dakarai's car in the driveway and assumed Louis was safely inside, still visiting with his friend.  Her relief would last only until around 2 a.m., when police arrived to inform the family that Louis had been murdered. 

For Dunwoody residents, the carjacking was bad enough but the kidnapping of the high schoolers and the murder of Louis Nava left them feeling terrorized and grief-stricken.  The only consolation was that the perpetrators had been identified and taken into custody very quickly. 

In Custody

With Dakarai's identification of the Perkinson brothers and Rico Wilson, as well as the recovery of the BMW, on August 7, 1998, two months and one day after the crime, a Bartow County grand jury indicted Eric Perkinson, Cicero Perkinson, Jerome Perkinson and Rico Wilson for malice murder, three counts of felony murder, aggravated battery, two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of false imprisonment, theft by taking, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.  

Initially, all four defendants were to be tried together.  It was during pretrial hearings that the cases were severed.  Before his trial, Eric Perkinson, the accused triggerman, attempted to get a change of venue (denied) due to the pretrial publicity.  Following the State's pretrial discovery of Perkinson's school records, his attorneys retained a psychologist  to test and evaluate Perkinson for a potential mental retardation claim.  On July 28, 1999, he filed notice of his intent to raise mental retardation.  The State retained its own psychologist, who concurred with Perkinson's psychologist that he was mildly mentally retarded.   A plea bargain was then put on the table in which Perkinson would plead guilty but mentally retarded but he rejected the deal.  

After an eight-day continuation, Perkinson went to trial on August 9, 1999.  The jury was not swayed by his defense of mental retardation and after Dakarai Sloley recounted the terrifying day of June 6, 1998 and identified Eric Perkinson from the witness stand, they found Perkinson guilty on all counts on August 27.  They deliberated for an hour and 40 minutes.  The following day, the jury recommended that Perkinson be sentenced to death for his crimes.  

During the penalty phase, Perkinson again presented evidence that he was mentally retarded, including reports that he had done very poorly in school and IQ tests that indicated he scored lower than 70, generally the benchmark of significantly subaverage intellectual functioning.  The State countered by presenting evidence that Perkinson had scored above 70 on two separate IQ tests and that his poor school performance was more related to disruptive behavior than an actual impairment.  (The argument was incredibly important as in the state of Georgia, a guilty but mentally retarded individual cannot be sentenced to death.)  

Given the options of the death penalty, life without parole or life, Perkinson was sentenced to death for the malice murder of Louis Nava.  For his remaining convictions, he received consecutive sentences totaling 60 years.   

Cicero Perkinson, Jerome Perkinson, and Rico Wilson all had their day in court and all were found guilty.  

Post-Convictions

Following his trial and sentencing in Bartow County, the DeKalb County (the county where Louis and Dakarai were robbed and abducted) grand jury indicted Eric Perkinson for two counts of kidnapping with bodily injury, two counts of armed robbery, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.  Perkinson filed a plea claiming double jeopardy as Bartow County had already convicted him on charges of kidnapping and false imprisonment.  The firearm possession charges were dismissed and the Georgia Supreme Court in 2001 ruled that the State could not prosecute Perkinson for the charges in DeKalb County.  

Cicero Perkinson, Inmate 0001040413
(photo source)

After his conviction, Cicero Perkinson filed a motion for new trial in February of 2000; that motion was denied in October of that same year.  He appealed in November, claiming that the State failed to show he intended to or even participated in the crimes he was convicted of and that he had merely been present and at worst, he was an accessory after the fact.  In May of 2001, the Supreme Court found that he had indeed been a willing participant in the carjacking of the BMW and the other felonies, resulting in the murder of Louis Nava and the shooting of Dakarai Sloley.  They further opined that Cicero had been part of the initial plan to steal a BMW, had been the individual to select Louis and Dakarai as victims, aided in stealing the BMW and abducting the teens, and enjoyed the fruits of the crimes.  His sentences of life imprisonment, twenty years for aggravated assault, ten years for each count of false imprisonment, ten years for theft by taking, and five years for possession of a firearm stand.   To date, he remains incarcerated at Hancock State Prison in Sparta, Georgia.

Jerome Perkinson, Inmate 0000685262
(photo source)

Walter Jerome Perkinson, who had two prior convictions in 1991 and 1995 for cocaine possession, was sentenced to a total of 30 years for his role in connection with the abduction, assault and murder.  He is scheduled to be released in 2028.  He is currently incarcerated at the Augusta State Medical Prison in Grovetown, Georgia.  

Riorechos Wilson, Inmate 0000944037
(photo source)

Riorechos (Rio) Wilson, the man whose idea it was to steal a BMW to pay off a debt, is serving his life sentence at the Coffee Correctional Facility in Nicholls, Georgia.  

Eric Perkinson, Inmate 0000919671
(photo source)

Eric Perkinson too filed a motion for new trial, on September 15, 1999.  That motion was amended in March of 2001, the same month of which it was denied.  The following month, April of 2001, Perkinson filed a notice of appeal.  In his appeal, he claimed that the trial court erred in refusing to change venue, in permitting the pretrial discovery of Perkinson's school records, in granting the continuance without Perkinson himself present, in allowing the State to introduce a videotape that depicted the church parking lot, the interior of the BMW's trunk and the area of Paga Mine Road where Louis Nava was murdered (all filmed from the perspective of Louis), and in its charge to the jury.  Perkinson also claimed ineffectiveness of counsel, although one of the attorneys continued to represent him during the appeal process. 

Perkinson's appeal was orally argued on October 12, 2004 and it was denied on March 14, 2005.  A rehearing was denied on April 14, 2005.  

On July 14, 2005, Perkinson filed a petition for writ of certiorari, which was denied on October 3.  On November 15, 2005, Perkinson filed a petition for rehearing, which was denied on December 12.

On June 10, 2015, Perkinson filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.  In his petition, Perkinson again cited ineffectiveness of counsel, both trial and appellate.  Perkinson's appointed trial attorney, Christopher Paul, had no experience with death penalty cases at the time he was appointed.  More troubling was attorney Alan Medof, whom Perkinson's mother hired.  Medof was a Florida criminal lawyer who had practiced briefly in Georgia during the 1980s.  Like Paul, Medof had no death penalty experience and further, had never tried a murder case.  Two years before Perkinson's trial, during which he had admitted he had fallen asleep,  Medof had been suspended by the Florida State Bar for his crack cocaine addiction.  Although he was reinstated after completing a rehabilitation program, he lied when he filed his motion to appear pro hac vice and stated that he had never been reprimanded by a court.  Medof also missed a pretrial hearing, was not prepared by the start of trial and during the trial was arrested for soliciting a prostitute.  

Perkinson also brought up the issue of mental retardation, claiming that his counsel only had ten days before the start of trial to prepare his mental retardation defense, of which they had no experience.

In January of 2019, District Judge Amy Totenberg found in Perkinson's favor and concluded that his counsel was ineffective, that had the 1999 jury had all the evidence from social workers and former teachers, they would have found him intellectually disabled and that a death sentence was excessive due to his cognitive defects.  In so finding, Eric Perkinson's death sentence was overturned.  As of the time of this writing, a new trial date has yet to be set.

Perkinson remains incarcerated at Telfair State Prison in Helena, Georgia. 

Louis Nava's classmates, in the wake of his murder, created the Louis Nava Memorial Garden at Dunwoody High School.  It was officially dedicated in May of 1999.

In 2008, the Nava/Breffle Wrestling Club was established in Dunwoody.  Named for Louis and for Dunwoody High student Doug Breffle, who had died in 2002 following a car accident, the Club teaches wrestling to children aged 6 to 14.     

Louis' final resting place (photo source)

 Sources:

The Atlanta Journal Constitution (02/05/19),  Judge Throws Out Death Sentence Involving Dunwoody Teen.

CBS46 (2019).  Dunwoody Family Angry After Federal Judge Overthrows Death Sentence of Son's Murderer.

Find a Grave (2021).  Louis G. Nava.  

Georgia Department of Corrections (2021). 

Perkinson v. Chatman, USDC No. 4:15-CV-0101-AT (2019).  

Perkinson v. State, 542 S.E.2d 92 (2001).

Perkinson v. State,  610 S.E.2d 533 (2005)

Perkinson v. State, 279 Ga. 232.

The Assassination of Sara Tokars

 

Sara Tokars with her sons, Ricky and Mike (photo source: Atlanta Magazine)

The Murder

It was Thanksgiving weekend, 1992.  Sunday night, November 29, was a quiet one in the Marietta neighborhood of Kings Cove, which housed comfortable, upscale homes that ranged from twenty years old to new.  It was not long after 10 p.m. when one of the homeowners heard a knocking at his front door and opened it to two little boys, who were spattered with blood and holding hands.  The older of the two told him that "a bad man shot my mom," "a bad black man" with a "pirate gun."  He wanted the man to call his grandfather, who was a doctor.  The little boy, six-year-old Ricky Tokars, thought that since his grandfather was a doctor, he could make his mom better.  

Ricky pointed to a white Toyota 4-Runner, parked in a field across the street only half a mile from the Tokars residence.  The homeowner took a friend to investigate and found a terrible sight.  When they opened the driver's-side door, the body of thirty-nine year old Sara Tokars fell out.  She had suffered a horrifying shotgun wound to the back of her head.  

The Cobb County police notified Sara's family in Bradenton, Florida and her husband, Fred Tokars, who was at a Montgomery, Alabama hotel.  Sara's father, John Ambrusko, later recalled that Fred was hysterical the first time they talked by phone following the notifications.  Detectives found Fred to be a sobbing mess, which was understandable, but they also smelled beer on his breath, which Fred claimed to be an attempt from his attorney -- one of his first calls--  to calm him.  Less understandable was Fred's refusal to cooperate and his resistance to walk through the family home with the investigators.  He provided sketchy details on how the house was secured, couldn't say whether or not Sara's jewelry had been disturbed, or why the safe was open.  He was certain, though, that his guitar had been moved.     

The Investigation

Fred Tokars (photo source: Oxygen)

As Fred was a well-known attorney and former prosecutor, the murder became an immediate big news story.  

The detectives had little physical evidence to go on.  No fingerprints, no gun casings and nothing apparently left behind by Sara's killer.  All they had was the massive amount of her blood and fragments of her skull and brain.

From Ricky Tokars, the police learned that after he, his mother and little brother had returned home on Sunday evening from a family visit in Florida.  By the time the SUV had pulled into the garage, four-year-old Mike was asleep.  Sara had left him in his car seat while she and Ricky and Ricky's spaniel, Jake, got out of the vehicle.  As she had opened the door to the house, a black man wearing a dark cap had appeared, holding a gun.  Jake began barking and the man kicked him, before forcing Sara and Ricky back into the car.  The man had climbed into the backseat beside the still-sleeping Mike and directly behind Sara and ordered her to drive.  By the time Sara had pulled the car into the cul-de-sac half a mile from her home, on the gunman's orders, Mike Tokars had awakened.  The gunman then shot Sara in the back of the head.  The car, motor still running, had coasted across the road and into a nearby field, where it came to rest.  Ricky, covered in his mother's blood, reached over and turned the ignition off before pulling his crying younger brother from the backseat and going for help. 

Police began investigating Sara and Fred Tokars in an attempt to find out who had wanted to kill her.  

Sara had first seen Fred on the evening news eight years earlier, when he was a junior prosecutor assisting in a high-profile murder case involving the slaying of an attorney by his lover.  The slim, attractive and outgoing Sara felt attracted to the tall and lean Fred, who sported a look of seriousness with his tortoiseshell glasses and hair he combed back behind his ears.   Then 31 years old, Sara was working at the trendy Elan nightclub by Perimeter Mall as a promoter and sharing a Dunwoody condo with her sister Krissy.  She had been an elementary school teacher in Florida before moving to Atlanta with her first husband, a health club owner she had met at the beach.  Sara became a fitness instructor at her husband's gym but the marriage did not last and ended in divorce.  

Fred had worked as an accountant before earning his law degree in night school.  Even while working as a junior prosecutor for the DA, he quickly began the aggressive self-promotion he would become known for.   Although he had no experience prosecuting cases involving white-collar crime or computer fraud, he deemed himself an expert and began teaching at local colleges and night law school, as well as tax and accountant seminars and law enforcement seminars.  He also gained a reputation for his eagerness to work on projects he found interesting -- as well as the Atlanta nightlife and women.  Soon enough, he was known as "Fast Fred" around the office.

On impulse following that television appearance, Sara called Fred at his Fulton County District Attorney's office.  A friendly chat led to a date and that date led to being married in Judge John Langford's chambers the following year.  For Sara, she felt she had finally found what she had been searching for:  a good man who was promising her a suburban home and children.  Sara, the middle child of seven daughters in a Catholic family, dearly wanted to recreate her own comfortable upbringing.  Fred, who nursed political aspirations and spoke of wanting to be a tax attorney with wealthy clientele, found Sara to be an asset; she was gorgeous, have a vibrant personality, and had the social contacts Fred desired.   

Within months of the wedding, Sara was pregnant with Ricky and the couple purchased their King's Cove home.  Cracks, however, were already beginning to form in the Tokars' marriage.  If Sara was disheartened by Fred's inattentiveness and long work hours, she was discouraged when her desire to quit working was met by resistance.   She continued working throughout her pregnancy and after Ricky's birth until the decline of the nightclub business led her to being laid off.   While Sara became a stay-at-home mom, Fred left the DA's office to start his own practice.  Where he had once worked to prosecute crimes, now he worked to defend the accused.  Starting first with criminal defense, he soon expanded his practice to include divorce and tax fraud in hopes of making as much money as quickly as possible.  

Sara was less than happy with her husband's new clientele.  As some of them paid Fred in cash, she worried that they were mixed up in the drug business.  Financial problems -- repairs needed on the house, the loss of Sara's salary, and the addition of baby Mike -- were compounded by Fred putting Sara on a budget.  He refused to allow her credit cards or her own bank accounts and insisted they pay for everything with cash.  Fred later claimed that he put his wife on a budget because she had a lot of debt when they married.  

(photo source: People)

Sara tried to start her own small promotions company but Fred refused her budget proposals and only gave her a small portion of the funds she requested.  She told her sister Krissy that Fred would now allow her access to the basement of their home, where he kept a safe and a bunch of files locked up.  He also began objecting whenever Sara wanted to visit her family, refusing to provide her with money for gas or a hotel room.  If she insisted on going, she would drive the nine hours with the children while Fred would fly down.  

Sara alleged to an attorney and private investigator she eventually hired that shortly after Ricky's birth Fred began physically abusing her, an allegation he later denied.  She wrote a new will after Mike's birth, naming her sister as her executor and leaving everything to her sons.  For his part, Fred took out three life insurance policies worth $1.75 million on Sara.  

By 1989, Sara was convinced that Fred's late nights had more to do with other women than work.  She sought out advice from a Buckhead divorce attorney but was clearly intimidated by Fred, who had threatened to take the children from her if she ever tried to leave.  By that time, she believed he had the political connections to do it.   He served as campaign treasurer for a superior court judge's winning race and was appointed by Mayor Andrew Young as a part-time city judge.  

Sara's private investigator confirmed her suspicions that Fred was engaging in extramarital affairs, leading her to gather information on Fred that she could use against him in any divorce action.  She broke Fred's house rules, got the combination to his basement safe and opened it, finding documents, bags and vials of what appeared to be prescription medication.  She asked her PI to turn his files on Fred over to the police should anything happen to her.

Fred was becoming better known to law enforcement and not for his seminars.  He was not only representing drug dealers but apparently going into business with the people who fronted them.  It didn't help that some of the clients he was representing faced allegations of drug trafficking and money laundering.  Sara was uneasy with Fred's clientele and, due to the fact that she and the children were alone so often at night, begged her husband to install an alarm system on the home, which he had done, and to fix the broken lock on the sliding door, which he did not do.  She seemed terrified of leaving Fred and taking any steps forward for herself, but she did volunteer as a teacher's aide several times a week at the Catholic school Ricky and Mike attended.  

Three weeks before Sara's death, federal agents were investigating claims of tax evasion and money laundering against Fred's client, Anthony Brown, who was also suspected of managing a cocaine distribution ring.  As Fred had been Brown's attorney, he was viewed not only as a witness but a target of their probe.  As such, had she not been murdered, it was possible that Sara might have been subpoenaed in the investigation.

On Tuesday, November 24, 1992, five days before Sara was killed, she and the children left to visit her family in Bradenton, Florida.  They stopped at the Tampa airport to pick up Fred, who had flown down from Atlanta.  On Saturday, shortly after 1:30 in the morning, the fire alarm in their Marietta home went off.  Six hours later, a second alarm sounded.  The alarm company, who phoned the Tokarses in Florida, was instructed to disconnect the alarm.  Fred would later insist that it was Sara's decision to disconnect it.  

Fred left Florida to return to Atlanta later that day, with Sara and the boys set to follow the next day after lunch.

Fred Tokars under arrest (photo source: Oxygen)

The Break

Through their investigation detectives learned about a 28-year-old man named Eddie Lawrence.  Lawrence was a classic slumlord who had amassed a small fortune using drug money to purchase ramshackle properties, fix them up and rent them out.  He would then default on his mortgage payments, while continuing to collect rent from his beleaguered tenants.   He had found Fred Tokars after getting into legal jams.  Fred not only represented Lawrence but chose to go into business with him.  Eventually their relationship began to crumble, with Lawrence owing Fred $70,000.  Fred had an affair with a stripper, who was an employee of Lawrence's.  She told investigators that during one of their rendezvous he had told her he was sick of Sara and he was going to get her out of the way.    

Lawrence had criminal charges pending against him for writing bad checks when the police picked him up but worse for him, informants told police that he had been shopping for a hit man before Sara's murder.  Lawrence denied killing Sara Tokars or participating in her murder but he was arrested anyhow. 

Curtis Rower (photo source: Ga. Dept. of Corrections)

Less than a week after Eddie Lawrence was arrested, the Cobb County Police were given the name of 22-year-old Curtis Rower.  Rower was a crack addict known as "Cornbread" who had gone on a binge following Sara Tokars' murder and blabbed to several people that he had been the one to kill her.  The informant who provided Rower's name said that Lawrence had initially offered to pay him (the informant) $5,000 for a hit.  When he turned the job down, Rower accepted it.   On December 23, 1992, Rower was discovered hiding under his cousin's bed and arrested.  He almost immediately confessed to Sara Tokars' murder but said he had not meant to kill her.  

Fred Tokars, upon hearing of the arrests of Eddie Lawrence and Curtis Rower, dropped Ricky and Mike off with Sara's family in Bradenton to go to a local hotel.  Locking the door and putting a "do not disturb" sign on the door, he then took pain pills with alcohol.  His attempt at suicide failed and he survived.  He recovered enough to speak in Atlanta on December 31 at a news conference, where he asked the media to leave him alone and to claim that Sara's murder had cost him everything.  

Ricky and Mike Tokars with their aunt Krissy (photo source: Atlanta Journal Constitution)

Only a few days later, Fred closed his law office and put the Marietta home on the market.  He moved to West Palm Beach with his mother, leaving Ricky and Mike in the care of Sara's parents and sisters.  Investigators in Atlanta, though, continued their probe into Sara's murder and in August of 1993, he was indicated by a federal grand jury.  

Justice is Served

Eddie Lawrence (photo source: Ga. Dept. of Corrections)

It would take until 1997 for Fred Tokars to be brought to trial.  In the meantime, Curtis Rowe was convicted of life in prison after two trials (the first ending in a mistrial) and Eddie Lawrence managed a plea deal in exchange for testifying against Tokars and Rowe.    The trial outlined what actually happened on the terrible night of November 29, 1992.

The prosecutors believed that Sara had confronted Fred with his secret bank accounts and illicit business dealings in an effort to get a speedy divorce.  He went to Eddie Lawrence, who owed him $70,000, and offered to clear the debt if Lawrence would get rid of Sara.  It served two purposes for Fred:  not only would Sara be gone but if Fred went down, so would Lawrence, ensuring his silence.   Fred made the deal even more enticing for Lawrence by offering him half of the proceeds from Sara's $1.75 million insurance policies as investments for his businesses.  Lawrence testified that he had tried to talk Fred out of the plan.  As one of Fred's clients, he had been to the Tokars home and had met Sara.  In fact the last time he visited the home Fred had insisted that Lawrence play his guitar; the same guitar that he told investigators in 1992 had been moved.  Lawrence had no problem being a conman and a slumlord but he apparently wanted nothing to do with actually pulling the trigger on Sara.  Fred insisted,  offering him $25,000 up front.  Lawrence agreed but decided he would contract the job out.

He went to the most desperate person he knew, Curtis Rower, and offered him $5,000 to commit the murder.  He accompanied Rower on two drive-bys in which the Tokars residence was scoped out before Curtis Rower agreed.  Shortly before Thanksgiving of 1992,  the two men entered the Tokars home in the early hours of the morning.   They knew the sliding glass door would be unlocked, the house alarm would be off and that Sara and the boys would be sleeping together in the children's bedroom.  What they didn't account for was Ricky's Springer Spaniel, Jake, who began barking.  When a light came on, Lawrence and Rower fled.   

On Sunday, November 29, Lawrence received two calls from Fred Tokars, who had just returned to Atlanta from Florida.  Tokars said that he was on the way to Montgomery, Alabama where he had an appointment with a federal prison inmate.  

By 9 p.m. Curtis Rower was in the Tokars home, which was left unlocked, awaiting Sara and the boys.  He waited for more than an hour, possibly taking the phone off the hook (or possibly Fred did that before leaving for Montgomery).  He confronted Sara with a .410 sawed-off shotgun and forced her and Ricky back into the car, kicking Ricky's barking dog on the way.  He climbed in behind Sara and next to Mike, who would indeed wake up en route to their final destination.  Rower had specific orders not to touch the children.

Rower forced Sara to drive to the location where Eddie Lawrence was parked and waiting.  When she saw Lawrence, she knew who he was and surely knew what was going to happen and who arranged it.   She begged for Rower to take the car, take her handbag but to leave her and the children alone.    Although Rower claimed he had had no intention on killing Sara, he pointed the shotgun at the back of her head and pulled the trigger.  Ricky and Mike saw their mother being killed.  

Rower and Lawrence then fled the scene, leaving the blood-spattered children to run for help.

Sara (photo source: Find a Grave)

Sara's family had hoped that Fred Tokars would receive the death penalty for orchestrating Sara's murder but the jury voted 10-2, with two jurors objecting.  Instead, he received life without possibility of parole.  He was also convicted in federal court of racketeering and money laundering and sentenced in federal prison to life without parole.   While in prison, he testified against other suspects in federal criminal trials, leading to six murders being solved.  According to his attorney, he was beaten for cooperating with the government.  He had been suffering with several diseases, including a form of MS, and had been unable to walk for a decade when he died in a Pennsylvania prison in May of 2020 at the age of 67.  

Curtis Rower remains incarcerated at Macon State Prison in Oglethorpe, Georgia.  

Eddie Lawrence remains incarcerated at the Coffee Correctional Facility in Nicholls, Georgia. 

Sara was originally buried at Arlington Memorial Park in Sandy Springs, Georgia on December 3, 1992.  Following her husband's conviction in 1997, her remains were disinterred and reburied at Mount Olivet Cemetery in her birthplace of New York.  Her mother was interred by her in 1998 and her father in 2002.

Sarah's final resting place (photo source: Find a Grave)

A Final Tragedy

Following Fred Tokars' arrest and incarceration, Ricky and Mike Tokars never spoke to him or saw him again.  Their father attempted communication by sending letters written from prison, but they rebuffed him.  The boys grew up in Florida, raised by Sara's parents and sisters.  Ricky went to college in San Diego, where he became an avid surfer and traveler before becoming an emergency medical technician.  Mike stayed in Florida for college and then toured the south by van and played guitar in bands before moving to New York, where he was inspired to become a reporter and writer.  He eventually graduated from Columbia's Master of Journalism program but despite his successes, he never got over his mother's murder.  He died suddenly and unexpectedly on April 3, 2020, a month before his father, of a pulmonary embolism in Newport Beach, California.  His obituary mentioned that he was "beloved by family and friends" and that Mike had been "cherished for his tenacious curiosity, compassionate heart, infectious sense of humor, kindred spirit and remarkable zest for life."  Mike Tokars was 31 years old.  He was interred by his mother at Mount Olivet Cemetery in New York.

(photo source: Contently)

The Unsolved Murder of Kirsten Davis

Vidalia, Georgia is a stereotypical small southern town, situated between interstates 75 and 16, and halfway between Savannah and Macon.  At one time its fields harvested pecans and tobacco, the area became best known for its sweet onions, first produced in 1931 and by 1940, so popular that they became a tourist item. So proud of its onions is the area that each spring Vidalia hosts a five-day long Onion Festival, drawing in many tourists.

Vidalia was also the birthplace to notables such as NFL players Mel Blount, Carl Simpson and Fred Stokes; golfer Paul Claxton; baseball player Wallace Moses; oilman and benefactor Algur H. Meadows; and NBC News correspondent Don Harris.

Some five minutes away, the tiny hamlet of Santa Claus sits, home to fewer than 200 residents but a place that tourists and locals alike will travel to in December in order to mail their Christmas cards and letters.  In keeping with their seasonal name, Santa Claus boasts several themed street names, including Candy Cane Road, Rudolph Way, Dancer Street, Prancer Street and Sleigh Street.

By 1991 "The Sweet Onion City" of Vidalia hit its population peak at just over 11,000 residents.  With the increased population came increased crime but violent crime, like murder, was a rarity.

July 3, 1991 was a Wednesday. Kirsten Davis, 21 years old and a recent graduate of Berry College, was traveling from Rome, Georgia to Vidalia to visit a friend.  The drive would normally be about four hours, give or take, and Kirsten had exited Interstate 16 and was driving on Highway 297 around 1 a.m.  She was roughly five miles outside of Vidalia when the shooting happened.

About thirty minutes later, passing motorists spotted Kirsten's blue 1985 Subaru station wagon overturned in a ditch.  She was still inside, dead from a shotgun wound to her face and neck.

An investigation yielded little.  Kirsten, a friendly girl who planned to be a teacher, had no apparent enemies who would wish her harm.  She did not live a high risk lifestyle and was, in fact, a scholarship student from Boulder, Colorado.  As a child in her native Colorado, she had collected aluminum cans for recycling and gave the money to missionaries.   While at Berry College, she again begun collecting aluminum cans as a way to raise money to install a flagpole on campus, by the Dining Hall, so that students could pledge to the flag and pray.  She planned on staying in Georgia to pursue a teaching career and in her spare time, Kirsten mentored foster children through the Big Sister program and worked as an aide at a Christian summer camp.  Even if she were to have incited someone to kill her, it's unlikely they would have followed Kirsten from Rome to Vidalia.

Kirsten was buried on a hillside in Rome, a spot where four months earlier, after her graduation, she had pointed out to her mother Barbara as a place she would sit to watch the sunset.

Executive from Chick-Fil-A, who had sponsored Kirsten's scholarship, contacted Berry College to ask what they could do in the wake of Kirsten's death.  That led to the installation of the flagpole, just as she had hoped, with a granite marker at its base, memorializing Kirsten.

The case, however, quickly went cold.

I have an opinion (of course.)  I don't believe, based on what is known about Kirsten, that she was a target.  Why wait until she's four hours away from her home base of Rome before taking action?  Choosing to follow her and then shoot her with a shotgun would require a ruse of some sort to get her to stop, or to be ahead of her, which seems unlikely.  The fact that her car was found overturned indicates to me that she was driving along normally when she was shot.  There were no skid marks reported at the scene, so I don't believe she was fleeing an attacker.

Given the time the shooting happened, I think it's possible that someone was drunk and/or playing around with a gun.  I think it's possible that Kirsten was shot accidentally and whoever shot her did not intend to shoot another person, much less Kirsten.  I think that person either fled when they realized they shot her, or they never realized they shot a person until perhaps they saw it on the news and out of fear, have not come forward.

Last July, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his sister's death, Kirsten's twin brother Tim recalled her as a straight A student, someone who was involved in every club.  He wonders what she would be like today.

The homicide of Kirsten Davis is still an active case but seems to be at an impasse.

If you have any information, please contact the Toombs County Sheriff's Office at 912-526-6778 or the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Eastman Office at 478-374-6988.

Kirsten and her brother Tim

Abby Vandiver's Murder by Richard Gellner

Dunwoody, Georgia in 1987 was the very essence of a bedroom community.  Roughly twenty miles as the crow flies from downtown Atlanta, it seemed a world away from the violence, crime and traffic that had clogged up the state's capital city, earning it the dubious title in the early 80s as the murder capital of the U.S.  Upscale subdivisions with names like Brooke Ridge, Hidden Branches, Redfield, Wynterhall, Village Mill and Dunwoody Station skirted the homey Dunwoody Village, where you would pop into the local Hallmark store or Versatile Video to rent a game or VHS movie.  You played tennis at Dunwoody Country Club, you shopped, to shop or be seen - - usually wearing your tennis outfit - - , at Perimeter Mall and your kids went to Vanderlyn or Austin Elementary and then Dunwoody High.  Friday nights were devoted to Dunwoody's football games, weekends were devoted to one of the handful of churches in the area, shopping and possibly driving into the city to watch the Braves (America's Team) play baseball at the old Atlanta Fulton County Stadium.  Journeying into the city, be it for work or sport, was the closest residents of Dunwoody got to the grittier, less insulated, aspects of life.  Until July 18, 1987.

Dunwoody had been established in the early 1830s, named for Major Charles Dunwody. (The misspelling occurred due to an extra "o" being added to a bank note.)  The area's first church, the Ebenezer Primitive Baptist Church, dates back to 1829 and still stands, and is active, today.  It's also home to one of the area's oldest cemeteries, where many of Dunwoody's founding fathers were laid to rest.  Thanks to the Roswell Railroad running north along the Chattahoochee (the 'Hooch to locals) and what is now Chamblee-Dunwoody Road in 1881, the town of Dunwoody became a crossroads of sorts.  President Theodore Roosevelt made a campaign whistle stop in Dunwoody in 1905 on his way to Roswell.  While the railroad shut down in 1921, the little community of Dunwoody flourished.  It remained relatively rural until the 1960s, when suburban residential development was initiated.   The Spruill family, who owned a great deal of the land in Dunwoody, sold a large portion of it in 1971 in what would become Perimeter Mall.  In the years following Perimeter Center would sprout up around the Mall, complete with major office, commercial and residential developments, leading it to become one of the Metro Atlanta area's largest job centers. Also in 1971, Dunwoody Village, with its distinctive Colonial Williamsburg architecture, was completed and became what residents would consider the center of Dunwoody.

By 1987, Dunwoody had become one of "the" places to live outside the Metro area.  Good schools, nice homes and an involved (perhaps too involved by some) community.  Dunwoody residents prided themselves on their nice homes, cars and clothes; their children were expected to go to college and do just as well as, if not preferably better than, their parents. If the pressure was too much, either for the adults or their children, it wasn't discussed.

Abby Vandiver was twenty years old that summer of 1987.  She had been a competitive figure skater in upstate New York but had come to Dunwoody to stay with her older sister, Hope Taratoot, and Hope's family.  The pretty young lady had gotten a job working part-time at an Italian restaurant in Dunwoody Village.  She was happy; she would be turning twenty-one in September; her whole life was ahead of her.

Richard Gellner was fifteen years old that summer, also a resident of Dunwoody.  He lived with his parents and younger sister not far from Abby's sister Hope.  He was an Honor student at Dunwoody High School and a former Boy Scout who was seven merit badges away from becoming an Eagle Scout.  His sub-freshman yearbook photo from 1986 shows a slight boy, almost more innocent and teddy bear in appearance.  His slight frame and intelligence made him an easy target for the larger (and meaner) boys at his school.  Back in the 80s bullying wasn't looked at seriously; it was simply how some kids were.  You just had to deal with it.  Later on, after Abby's murder, there were rumors that there was physical abuse in the Gellner household. Regardless, no one seemed to recognize or appreciate the violent anger that was festering inside Richard.

As many boys did before they were able to drive or get a "cool" job, Richard mowed lawns around the neighborhood. He would occasionally mow the Taratoots' lawn, as he was friends with Abby's nephew.  It's unknown if he first saw Abby there at the house or at the Italian restaurant, where he also had a job washing dishes.

In June of 1987, Motley Crue released their album Girls, Girls, Girls. That album, along with Nikki Sixx's song "You're All I Need," became an obsession for Richard.   Sixx had written the song after learning his girlfriend was cheating on him.  The wording is raw and angry and the narrator of the song proceeds to get his revenge by stabbing his girlfriend to death.  A frightening portent of things to come.

Richard began listening to the song on his earphones every night before he went to bed. Parental advisories on music labels had just become a "thing" but the artists being singled out were more along the lines of 2LiveCrew, not the more mainstream Motley Crue.  With the glam metal sounds of the popular title track, along with Wild Side, the album hardly seemed destined to trigger something unhealthy, even violent, in a teen listener.

He had also begun to prowl his neighborhood, armed with a butcher knife, looking for some place to break into and cause some form of trouble.  He would later claim the only thing keeping him from following through with these dark fantasies was the fear of getting caught.  Sadly, that fear would not last long enough to save Abby Vandiver.

July 18, 1987 was a Saturday.  In six days' time, Atlanta would have its hottest day of the year with temps scorching to a blistering 98 degrees. On this day, the temperature would peak around 91.  Richard, at the Taratoot home, mowing the lawn had already decided that he was going to do "something" when he knocked on the front door.  He had taken off his wristwatch in preparation, so that it would not get bloody by his own later recounting.

It is unclear if he knew that the Taratoot family was out that day, save Abby, but given that he was friends with Abby's nephew and that he had already planned a vicious attack, it's likely he did.

Abby had just taken a shower when Gellner knocked at the door.  She answered in her bathrobe and when he asked to use the phone, she let him in without hesitation.  He was, after all,her nephew's friend and a co-worker.

Prosecutors later theorized that when Abby headed back upstairs to finish dressing, Gellner followed her.  It's unknown exactly how the attack started or what, if anything, precipitated it.  It's possible that he made advances to her that she rebuffed.  It's also possible she did nothing at all.  He attacked her with a phone cord, wrapping it around her neck.  He didn't count on her fighting back, and she did.  She bit off the tip of his right hand little finger before he managed to strangle her into unconsciousness.  At that point, Richard Gellner exploded.

He stabbed Abby 57 times with three different knives; bludgeoned her with a drinking glass to the head; and attempted to decapitate her with hedge trimmers.  Spent, he took a shower and returned home in his bloody clothing.

Quite amazingly, Gellner told his parents that he had an accident with the lawn mower in which he had lost part of his finger, in order to account for the blood. Equally amazingly, they appeared to believe him.  They drove him to the ER where they were told that the tip of his finger could be reattached if it could be located.

The Gellners, including the newly murderous Richard, returned to the Taratoot residence to search for the finger.  Instead, they were met by the police.

In the interim, Hope Taratoot had returned home to find her younger sister dead and had called the local police.  When the Gellner clan rolled up, they were naturally curious as to who they were and why they were at the property.  Richard Gellner informed them he was looking for his finger, saying he had lost it in the garage where - - not surprisingly - - there was not a drop of blood.

The police were happy to tell him they had found his finger . . . not six feet from Abby's savaged body.  Gellner was taken into custody immediately in what surely was one of the most quickly solved homicides in Georgia's books.

While the PD was able to consider the case "solved," the rumor mill was just getting fired up.  Classmates of Gellner's began telling tales of the unsuspecting looking teen being teased so badly that it took four, five, maybe even six, big teen boys to hold him down, he was so irate.  Whispers were that a friend of a friend said that Gellner had made sexual advances to Abby that she rejected.  Or that she had been teasing him and then laughed at him, sparking his murderous attack.  Some reported that she had been stabbed more than 100 times.  Some said that Gellner had rolled up his bloody socks and attempted to flush them down the toilet.  No one tried to understand why Richard Gellner had done what he did.

The arrest of Richard Gellner was a mixed bag for Dunwoody.  On the one hand, residents didn't need to worry about some bushy hair stranger (because aren't they always bushy haired strangers?) lurking around the community, waiting to commit unspeakable acts on them; on the other, it was one of their own members who had done such a thing.

Richard Gellner around 2013

The murder trial was scheduled to begin in late winter/early spring of 1988, with Gellner being tried as an adult.  In February of that year, seven months after the murder, Gellner plead guilty to first degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.   His plea saved the state a boatload of money on the trial, as well as the special kind of agony Abby's loved ones would have to endure, reliving her brutal death.  It also left a lot of questions open.

The biggest question is why.  Why did Richard Gellner kill Abby Vandiver?  Why did he have such dark urges?

Despite the suggestive lyrics of Motley Crue's song, music cannot be held responsible.  If it wasn't their music, it would have been another band's or something else that Gellner would have grabbed ahold of, to obsess over.

If physical abuse was indeed present in the Gellner household, it could have affected Richard's emotional growth as well as his capacity for empathy.  I have not found a definite answer anywhere on whether there was abuse.  Regardless, there had to be have been something missing, something deficient in Richard Gellner with or without abuse.

The court appointed psychiatrists that examined Richard in preparation for the trial that would not happen could only guess at what went wrong. They stated he might have Borderline Personality Disorder.  BPD is characterized by emotional instability, feelings of worthlessness, insecurity, impulsivity and impaired social relationships. (These things, at least to me, also characterize being a teenager.)  There is no cure for BPD, only treatment which can include therapy, medication or even hospitalization.

The psychiatrists said his possible BPD was coupled with "low self-esteem and difficulties with his sexual identity."  I find this the most interesting part of their theory and the most realistic.  Most teenagers suffer with low self-esteem at some point.  Certainly Richard Gellner did, physical abuse in his home notwithstanding.  Being rejected by an attractive girl like Abby would be crushing but especially so to someone like Richard, who may have been sensitive about his slight size and who was being overtaken by dark fantasies telling him to act out violently.  If he was questioning his sexual orientation - - especially at a time when being gay was not as acceptable as it is now; when being questioned "What are you? Gay?" was the single biggest insult that a teen could hurl - - along with these dark desires to harm someone, his emotions and his identity itself could very easily have been fracturing.

In the end, it's likely no one will know exactly why Richard Gellner chose to murder Abby Vandiver on July 18, 1987.  Neither he nor his family have spoken publicly about it.  Abby's sisters have spoken at Gellner's parole hearings - - one would like to talk to him to know why; the other wants nothing to do with him and wants him to remain locked up for the rest of his life.



Abby was buried at the Westminster Memorial Gardens in Peachtree City, Georgia, never to see her twenty-first birthday.

Abby's final resting place