The escape of the ex-chief known as the “ Devil in the Ozarks ” A L’Arkansas on the edge

While law agents search the rugged mountains of Ozark d’Arkansas for a former police chief and convicted killer who escaped the prison this weekend, the sister of one of his victims is at the forefront.

Grant Hardin, the former police chief of the small town of Gateway near the border of Arkansas-Missouri, served long sorrows for murder and rape and became known as the “devil in the ozarks”.

Hardin escaped the northern central unit on Sunday – an average security prison also known as Calico Rock prison – by disguising himself and carrying a “makeshift attire designed to imitate the application of laws”, said officials of the state prison in a press release.

“It was not a standard detainee uniform, not a standard correctional uniform,” said Rand Champion, spokesperson for the Arkansas Correctional Services department. “There is nothing inside the prison that looks like that, so this is one of the challenges we are going through to discover what it was and how he could get or make it.”

Champion said that the decision to house Hardin in an average security establishment weighed on the “needs of the various facilities and prisoners” and “assessments” of his crimes.

Hardin’s escape occurred a few days after 10 men fled a New Orleans prison by going through a hole behind a toilet. Eight of these fugitives have since been captured.

Escape

Cheryl Tillman, whose brother James Appleton was killed by Hardin in 2017, said that she and other relatives were alarmed by the escape of Hardin because they witnessed his legal proceedings.

“We were there when everything that happened, and he saw us there, he knows,” she told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

Authorities use dogs, drones and helicopters to search for the rugged field in northern Arkansas, champion said.

“Everything we have, we use,” he said.

The research zone has developed over the hours, although champion has not discussed the exact details of the search area.

“Where this installation is, the topography offers challenges,” he said. “At the same time, this limits in a way where he is able to obtain.”

“It’s called Calico Rock for a reason, because it’s very rocky,” he added.

Video surveillance shows that Hardin escaped around 2:55 p.m. on Sunday, said champion. The officials announced his escape around 5 p.m. that evening.

Complicating the research effort has been the heavy rain in recent days in the region, he said. “You take this rain and combine it with the ground, and that makes a difficult situation.”

The escape of Hardin in a rural part of the State is not necessarily an advantage, according to Craig Caine, a retired inspector of the American marshals who has treated many cases involving prisoners escaped throughout his career of almost 30 years with the federal police.

“At one point, he will lack provisions,” said Caine.

“In more rural areas, most people know each other,” said Caine, which makes someone identify Hardin and make him more likely. “In this aspect, it could be detrimental to him.”

A shaken community

The sheriff of the county of Izard, Charley Melton, urged residents to lock their homes and their vehicles and to call 911 if they notice something suspicious. Other sheriffs have also issued similar warnings to Hardin, which was at the center of a documentary in 2023, “Devil in the Ozarks”.

Gateway, the city of around 450 people where Hardin was briefly the police chief in 2016, is in the same big county as the headquarters of the Walmart retail giant in Bentonville. But Gateway and the northeast part of the county are much more rural and distant than Bentonville. The landscape is only accidental to the east, in the heart of the Ozarks and the National Buffalo river, towards the county of Izard where the escape occurred.

Some residents of the region where Hardin grew up and was then the police chief said they were not afraid when they heard of the escape.

“He was still only one of the children, a member of the community,” said Darla Nix, owner of a local coffee in Pea Ridge, Arkansas nearby. She said her sons grew up around Hardin and knew him as a mainly calm person.

Describing Hardin as a “very, very intelligent man”, Nix said that she provided that Hardin’s search will be difficult for the police.

“He knows where the caves are, he is just a survivor. He knows how to do it, they will have their hands full by trying to catch him,” said Nix.

Tillman said she was not surprised when she heard that Hardin had escaped. But the news suddenly added fresh pain for her and other family members after treating the grief of murder.

“He’s just a diabolical man,” she said. “It is not good for society.”

Hardin pleaded guilty in October 2017 for first degree murder for having fatally fired Appleton, 59. Appleton worked for the Gateway Water Department when he was killed on the head on February 23, 2017, near Garfield. The police found Appleton’s body in a car.

Investigators at the time did not disclose a reason for murder and Hardin were sentenced to 30 years in prison. He also served 50 years in prison for the rape in 1997 of a primary school teacher in Rogers north of Fayetteville.

Hardin had been detained in Calico Rock prison since 2017. The establishment has a capacity of around 800 detainees, according to the Arkansas Correctional Services department.

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Riddle reported in Montgomery, Alabama.