The former rural Arkansas police chief Grant Hardin had earned the epithet “devil in the Ozarks” because of the 2017 murder and separate 1997 rape to which he ultimately admitted. Then came his recent escape from prison by disguising himself as a guard and taking cover in the surrounding wilderness.
Much of the US was gripped by Hardin’s brazen 25 May breakout, a riveting epilogue of sorts, unfolding in real time, to the 2023 documentary whose title gave him his evocative nickname.
In a criminal complaint filed after Hardin managed to flee Arkansas’s Calico Rock prison by impersonating a facility corrections officer, investigators asserted that he had “extensive knowledge” of the surrounding Ozark mountains region, had possibly been “hiding in caves or rugged terrain” there, and may even have fled the state.
It would turn out that he would be caught late on Friday afternoon less than 2 miles (3km) from the prison he had escaped from, his identity confirmed through fingerprints, according to authorities.
Related: Arkansas killer and rapist caught after 13-day manhunt in mountains
Spectacular as those details may be to casual observers, Hardin’s 13-day dash for freedom terrified those whose lives were shattered by his crimes – and those who worked to bring someone they once mistook as a fellow law enforcer to justice.
A local police chief whose department had a hand in securing Hardin’s plea of guilty to raping a local schoolteacher has said the survivor in the case – who has chosen to publicly identify herself as Amy Harrison – was “appalled, concerned and disappointed”, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper.
“She had the opportunity to let her guard down and live her life, and we’re back to the pre-conviction days,” Hayes Minor, the police chief of Rogers, Arkansas, said to the Democrat-Gazette, before Hardin was re-apprehended.
Cheryl Tillman, the mayor of Gateway, Arkansas, the town of about 450 residents where Hardin spent five months as police chief before his imprisonment, told the same outlet that news of the breakout had “brought back all the memories” of how the fugitive had fatally shot her brother, James Appleton.
“He’s just an evil man,” Tillman reportedly said of Hardin, adding that she had initially been hesitant to even go to work upon learning of the breakout. “He is no good for society.”
After Hardin’s recapture, the Arkansas governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, issued a triumphant statement on X, saying state residents could “breathe a sigh of relief”.
But that was only after they had been unnerved by admonitions from law enforcement to lock their houses as well as cars – and to report anything suspicious to authorities.
As Minor put it: “It’s appalling to me that we’re even having to discuss this.”
‘Never knew what he was going to do’
Hardin, 56, began his career in law enforcement working for police in the Arkansas cities of Fayetteville, Huntsville and Eureka Springs from 1990 to 1996. Each of those communities sits in the densely forested Ozarks, the mountainous and rural region that is mostly in northern Arkansas and southern Missouri, and is popular with lovers of the outdoors.
Hardin’s tenure at every one of those agencies ended prematurely. Fayetteville fired him for not completing his training, the local news outlet KFSM-TV reported. He reportedly resigned from Huntsville due to personal reasons. And he quit his post at Eureka Springs after being caught lying on a police report, according to what the chief there told KFSM.
Then, from 2009 to 2010 and 2013 to 2014, Hardin served two terms as a constable in Benton county, within whose limits sit the headquarters of retail giant Walmart. Constables generally respond to low-level offenses, though they also serve legal documents such as restraining orders, whereas municipal police typically do not.
Finally, in January 2016, officials in the tiny Benton county town of Gateway hired him as the chief of their single-officer police force.
But Hardin resigned within five months after officials recommended that he be relieved of duty over “the way that he was treating the citizens here in Gateway”, Tillman, who was a member of the town council at the time, was quoted as saying by CNN.
CNN added that, as Tillman saw it, Hardin didn’t react well to criticism “and was quick to anger”.
“He was very hard to get along with,” Tillman, Gateway’s mayor since 2023, also reportedly said. “You never knew what he was going to do.”
‘Fight for justice’
According to authorities, on 23 February 2017, Hardin – then employed as a correctional officer at a lockup in Fayetteville – and Appleton were sitting in the latter’s parked pickup truck. Hardin reportedly ended that encounter by shooting and killing Appleton, the brother of Tillman, whose husband, Andrew, was Gateway’s mayor at the time.
A witness later informed police that he had seen Hardin – someone he had known his whole life – in a white car behind Appleton’s truck. That man described hearing a loud bang as he drove past the two vehicles, and said he looked back and saw the 59-year-old Appleton’s body after he had been shot in the head.
Prosecutors charged Hardin with capital murder, which in Arkansas can carry life imprisonment or the death penalty. He chose to plead guilty – albeit to the reduced charge of first-degree murder – in October 2017.
Hardin did not provide a motive for murdering Appleton, a Gateway water department employee who was a father and grandfather. But he offered an apology to Appleton’s family, and his attorney maintained that Hardin “understood his actions had destroyed two families: His and Appleton’s”, the Democrat-Gazette reported at the time.
The judge presiding over the case, Robin Green, sentenced Hardin to 30 years in prison. “Many of us, including myself, are puzzled by this senseless killing,” she said.
State officials collected a genetic sample from Hardin after he pleaded guilty to murdering Appleton. Investigators subsequently determined that that sample linked him to what was then Amy Harrison’s unsolved 1997 rape case in the Benton county city of Rogers.
Authorities said Harrison had been attacked shortly after arriving at the elementary school where she taught to work alone in the morning. She had gone to use the restroom in the teachers’ lounge, and after she emerged, she was confronted with a man holding a gun. He made her go back into the bathroom, raped her and fled.
Harrison called police and reported that her rapist had been shoeless, though he had worn a stocking cap and sunglasses. She said he took her underwear and was careful to not touch any surfaces. Yet he had left semen on her leg, which she wiped on to her sweatshirt and T-shirt.
That turned out to be the genetic sample with which authorities eventually identified Hardin as Harrison’s assailant. In February 2019, he pleaded guilty to raping Harrison, and Green sentenced him to another 50 years in prison – leaving Hardin to face the reality that he would be about 84 before he was eligible for parole, as the Democrat-Gazette reported.
Harrison addressed Hardin on the day the already convicted murderer was sentenced for raping her.
“I know there was nothing I did to make this happen,” Harrison said as some people in Green’s courtroom wept. “I could not have done anything differently, and I definitely did not deserve to be raped. I was just choosing to do the next right thing in my life when you bumped into me.”
According to the Democrat-Gazette, she added: “I am going to use my free will to overcome the evil you did to me. I am going to walk out of this building with my family and friends and enjoy the fresh air before I go home.
“I hope that my story is an encouragement to all survivors who fight for justice.”
Green asked Hardin whether he knew Harrison – whose husband was a Rogers police officer – or he targeted her at random. Hardin said the rape had been a crime of opportunity.
Given the chance to address Harrison, Hardin reportedly remarked: “I just want to say I hate my old life and hope one day you will be able to forgive me.
“I’m sorry.”
‘A broader system failure’
About four years after Harrison and Hardin spoke in court at his sentencing, the convicted rapist and murderer was the subject of the true-crime documentary Devil in the Ozarks.
Roughly two years after that film came out, Hardin was completing his punishment at Arkansas’s Calico Rock prison when he slipped into clothes meant to make him look like a corrections officer.
He approached an actual corrections officer stationed at a security gate, who fell for Hardin’s ruse, opened up and let him saunter out, according to a sworn statement filed in court.
Rand Champion, spokesperson for the Arkansas state prison system, has since said that someone should have checked Hardin’s identity before he was allowed to leave the Calico Rock facility. Champion said that the lack of verification was a “lapse” that’s being investigated.
A frantic, multiagency search for Hardin ensued and went deep into a second week, seizing headlines across the US alongside an unrelated, similarly dramatic 10-man jailbreak in New Orleans.
In the Hardin case, search crews were aided by bloodhounds, officers on horsebacks, aerial drones and helicopters. The FBI and US marshals offered $25,000 for information leading to Hardin’s recapture.
Arkansas prison officials released a photo to the public showing what the fugitive may have looked like after weeks on the run. There were a couple of potential but unconfirmed sightings publicized in central Arkansas and southern Missouri.
Finally, on Friday, tracking dogs picked up Hardin’s scent. Arkansas law enforcement officials and US border patrol agents collared him near a creek about 1.5 miles north of the Calico Rock prison. They confirmed they had the right man through fingerprints, as KFSM reported.
Cheryl Tillman told KSFM she was grateful no one had been hurt while Hardin was on the lam, and she praised those who again had successfully gone after the ex-Gateway police chief.
The Arkansas corrections board chair, Benny Magness, echoed Tillman’s sentiments, saying he appreciated all that had been done so that “the community could feel safe”.
Nonetheless, in a letter addressed to Magness prior to Friday, Arkansas legislators said Hardin’s escape from Calico Rock was chilling because of a number of factors.
“Given Hardin’s background as a former law enforcement officer and his history of working for multiple law enforcement agencies, it is evident that he possesses knowledge and skills that enabled him to exploit weaknesses in our security protocols,” said the letter from Howard Beaty and Matt McKee, Republican members of the state house and senate, respectively.
“His manipulation of the system by wearing a disguise resembling a uniform is disturbing and speaks to a broader system failure.”
The Associated Press contributed reporting