Barbara Jane Mackle
Overview
 
Barbara Jane Mackle is an American heiress who was the survivor of a notorious crime. Her book about the ordeal was the basis of two television movie
Television movie
A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...

s.
On December 17, 1968, Mackle – then a 20-year-old Emory University
Emory University
Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...

 student – was staying at the Rodeway Inn
Rodeway Inn
Rodeway Inn is a chain of economy-priced motels in the United States and Canada. Rodeway Inn is a brand of the Choice Hotels group. There are over 150 locations in North America. The hotels are often located in or near popular tourist destinations and are known for providing guests with attractive...

 in Decatur, Georgia
Decatur, Georgia
Decatur is a city in, and county seat of, DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. With a population of 19,335 in the 2010 census, the city is sometimes assumed to be larger since multiple zip codes in unincorporated DeKalb County bear the Decatur name...

 with her mother. Mackle was sick with the Hong Kong flu
Hong Kong flu
The Hong Kong flu was a category 2 flu pandemic whose outbreak in 1968 and 1969 killed an estimated one million people worldwide. It was caused by an H3N2 strain of the influenza A virus, descended from H2N2 through antigenic shift, a genetic process in which genes from multiple subtypes reassorted...

, which had severely struck the student body of Emory; her mother had driven to the Atlanta area to take care of her daughter and then drive her daughter back to the family home in Coral Gables, Florida
Coral Gables, Florida
Coral Gables is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, southwest of Downtown Miami, in the United States. The city is home to the University of Miami....

 for the Christmas break.
 
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