This image provided by the Arkansas Correctional Services department shows Grant Hardin, a former police chief and sentenced killer, escaping the northern unit prison with Calico Rock, Ark.
Arkansas / AP Correctional Services Department
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Arkansas / AP Correctional Services Department
While law agents search the rugged mountains of Ozark d’Arkansas for a former police chief and the convicted killer who escaped the prison this weekend by pretending to be a goalkeeper and leaving a door, a goalkeeper opened for him, the sister of one of his victims is on the point.
Grant Hardin, the former police chief of the small town of Gateway near the border of Arkansas-Missouri, served long murder and rape penalties and has become known as the “devil in the ozarks”.
Hardin escaped Sunday from the central northern unit – an average security prison also known as the Calico Rock prison – by usurping the identity of an agent of the correctional services “in clothing and in mode”, according to a court document. A prison agent opened a secure door, allowing him to leave the establishment.
Rand Champion, spokesperson for the Arkansas Correctional Services department, described clothes as not a standard detainee or a correctional uniform.
“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 obtain or manufacture it,” he said.
Champion said that the decision to accommodate 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 passing through a hole behind toilets. 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.
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 receives 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.
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, and other local sheriffs urged residents to lock their homes and their vehicles and call 911 if they notice something suspect.
Bryan Sexton, who continued Hardin for murder and rape, said that his office contacted officers who investigated Hardin and families affected by Hardin crimes, who were the subject of a documentary in 2023, “Devil in the Ozarks”.
“Make these contacts with people who have evolved in their lives during the best of a decade now and having to be the one who won the phone and reminds them of what happened to them is something that weighs heavily on me,” said Sexton.
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.
Darla Nix, owner of the local coffee in Pea Ridge, nearby, Arkansas, said that her sons had grown around Hardin and knew him as a mainly calm person before being convicted.
“He was still one of the children, a member of the community,” said Nix.
Describing Hardin as a “very, very intelligent man”, Nix said that she was planning that Hardin’s search will be difficult for the police.
“He knows where the caves are. He’s just a survivor. He knows how to do it. They will have their hands full while trying to catch it,” 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.
