LIFE SHOULD MEAN LIFE: BEING SOFT ON CRIME DOES NOT WORK

I was stunned when I read that Gary Steven Krist, who buried Barbara Jane Mackle alive for over three days in Georgia in 1969, not only was released after serving 10 years of a life sentence, but was pardoned so that he could get a medical degree. What in the world is wrong with the justice system?

Other than the O.J. Simpson fiasco, this is just the most horrendous miscarriage of justice I have ever seen. How any court or prison system could let this man out after 10 years, much less pardon him so that he could study medicine, is the craziest thing I have ever heard.

He practiced medicine in Indiana before his license was revoked in 2003 as a result of lying about disciplinary action received during his residency. Would you want to have as your physician someone who had kidnapped and buried a girl alive?

In March 2006 Krist and his stepson were arrested after Georgia police found an underground drug lab for manufacturing cocaine buried beneath a shed on his property, so, obviously, he is still into "burying" things. They were arrested on a sailboat off Alabama's coast with over 38 pounds of cocaine (about $1 million worth). On May 16, 2006, he pled guilty to drug smuggling, and on Jan. 19 he was sentenced to more than five years in prison. God help us all.

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Background:

Gary Steven Krist regards himself as the Einstein of crime. But Albert Einstein, with his measly theory of relativity, was a one-trick pony by comparison. Krist's criminal accomplishments are far more diverse-grand theft auto, prison escape, fraud, kidnapping for ransom and, most recently, cocaine importation and illegal immigrant smuggling.

He began by stealing cars before he could legally drive them. He had been incarcerated in three different states by age 18. He broke out of prison in California and fled across the country, where he managed to live under a pseudonym while working at two prestigious universities.

Next came his magnum opus, the "perfect crime" he planned while still a callow stripling. In one of the most audacious and notorious crimes of the 1960s, at age 23, he kidnapped a young heiress in Atlanta and buried her alive in an underground capsule he had designed. While the country held its breath, Krist and his mistress sidekick extracted a $500,000 ransom from the woman's father, a Florida real estate magnate and friend of President Nixon. Miraculously, the young woman survived a harrowing 83 hours underground.

But Krist wasn't as clever as he thought. His getaway plan collapsed, and he was apprehended after a dragnet pinned him down on a Florida mangrove island. Krist narrowly escaped a death sentence and was sent away to prison - "for life," according to the judge's decree. But life was short in those days.

Krist pulled one of the great flimflams in American prison history by convincing a gullible Georgia parole official that he was rehabilitated. Vowing to become a missionary, Krist waltzed out of prison after barely 10 years of confinement for a sickening crime that could have cost him his life.

His missionary work didn't pan out. Although it took awhile, Krist's path inevitably led back to crime. In the spring of 2006, a police greeting party was waiting at a dock near Mobile, Ala., when Krist returned from a two-month trip aboard a rented sailboat. Authorities found 38 pounds of cocaine on board, as well as four illegal South Americans who had paid handsomely for passage to the United States. An investigation revealed that he had been selling the cocaine in Georgia-the state that naively gave him the free pass out of prison years ago. And in an eerie echo from the kidnapping case, Krist had constructed an underground cocaine-processing lab at his home near Auburn, Ga.

Now 61, he has pleaded guilty to multiple federal offenses and faces another life sentence. His next departure from prison may be in a pine box. Gary Krist lacked education, family direction, motivation, money and a moral compass. But he never lacked self-confidence.

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(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)