A former small-town police chief and convicted murderer who escaped from a prison in Calico Rock Ark., on May 25 apparently used his job in the prison’s kitchen to help plan and carry out his escape, according to prison officials.
They believe that the prisoner, Grant Hardin, took advantage of his kitchen assignment to study staff movements, access restricted areas and gather materials for a disguise that helped him slip past security, Rand Champion, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, said in an interview. Mr. Hardin, 56, was captured on June 6; he pleaded not guilty to second-degree escape on Tuesday.
Mr. Hardin spent months preparing, the authorities believe, watching the prison’s routines from inside before picking the right moment to make his move.
“This wasn’t something he came up with that Sunday morning when he woke up,” Mr. Champion said. “This was well thought out and was something he had been planning for a while.”
Officials have started to interview Mr. Hardin, but they say that won’t know for sure how he pulled off his escape until they finish speaking with him — or at least examine the altered uniform. Still, early evidence — including prison video and an examination of kitchen utensils and food — suggests he had used his kitchen job to help him alter one of his old white prison uniforms.
The prison kitchen is stocked with tea, coffee, spices and markers used for labeling, Mr. Champion said. Mr. Hardin may have dyed an old prison uniform with tea, darkened it with coffee, used ink from a permanent marker — or, possibly, all three, Mr. Champion said.
“It looked black,” he said. “He either dyed it or colored it in with Sharpies over time. Maybe both.”
A former police chief with three decades in law enforcement, Mr. Hardin knew patrol routines, badge placement and how to look official, Mr. Champion said.
Dressed in a black shirt, pants, cap and what looked like a makeshift correctional vest — dark with a white patch on the back — Mr. Hardin, whose crimes led him to be called “Devil in the Ozarks,” rolled a cart past a checkpoint on the afternoon of May 25 and a guard opened a secured fence to let him out. Surveillance video captured his casual pace, the authorities said.
Now, more than a week after his capture barely a mile and a half from where he had started, Mr. Hardin sits inside Varner Supermax, the most secure prison in Arkansas, more than 200 miles from the facility from which he escaped.
“To my knowledge, there has not been an escape from Varner Supermax,” Mr. Champion said.
Prison officials are studying surveillance footage, interviewing guards and reviewing the prison’s procedures, Mr. Champion said. So far, they have determined that Mr. Hardin did not have help putting the uniform together, he said. After he pleaded not guilty to the escape charge on Tuesday in an Izard County courtroom, Mr. Hardin was appointed a public defender. His lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.
Years earlier, Mr. Hardin served as police chief of Gateway, Ark., and held various other law enforcement positions in the state. His record, though, was troubled and included firings, complaints that he had used excessive force and a charge of falsifying a police report.
In 2017, the police arrested him in the fatal shooting of James Appleton, a local water department employee, during a roadside encounter near Gateway. Witnesses identified Mr. Hardin as the man who had pulled the trigger. He pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Later, DNA taken while he was in prison matched evidence from the 1997 rape of Amy Harrison, an elementary schoolteacher in Rogers, Ark. The victim had been attacked at gunpoint in a school restroom. Mr. Hardin pleaded guilty to kidnapping and rape in the case and received an additional 50 years in prison.
At Varner Supermax, there are no kitchen jobs. There are no open dorms or shared cells. Most inmates see only the hallway outside their cell through a narrow slit in the steel door.
Guards patrol more often. Fences double up, with electric currents running between razor wire.
Like other prisoners, Mr. Hardin will now be alone in a concrete cell for 23 hours a day.
“Once an offender puts both our department staff and citizens of the state of Arkansas at risk,” said Dexter Payne, director of the Arkansas Division of Correction, “we house them in a facility where they won’t have the opportunity to endanger again.”
Mark Walker is an investigative reporter for The Times focused on transportation. He is based in Washington.
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