The “Devil in the Ozarks” killer spent months biding his time and collecting supplies to prepare for his whirlwind escape from an Arkansas prison in late May that sparked a two-week manhunt, according to an internal review by prison officials released Friday.
Grant Hardin, a 56-year-old ex-cop, is back behind bars, continuing the rest of his hefty 80-year sentence for murder, rape and kidnapping after authorities apprehended him just two miles away from the prison after he spent two weeks on the lam.
Hardin successfully escaped from the North Central Unit prison in Calico Rock on May 25, by impersonating a prison guard. He wore a shoddy, homemade police uniform he scraped together using tools he collected during his work detail in the jailhouse’s prison, according to the prison probe.
The escapee told authorities he spent six grueling months taking splices of what he needed from the kitchen, including used markers and even laundry left strewn about, according to the review.
He used it all to create a fake guard uniform that was, apparently, good enough to slip past every layer of security between his cell and the outside world.
He completed the makeshift uniform with a fake badge constructed out of an old tin lid.
“Hardin stated he would hide the clothes and other items he was going to need in the bottom of a trash can in the kitchen due to no one ever shaking it down,” the report read.
In the wake of his bombshell admissions to officials, two prison employees were swiftly canned, including a member of the “lax” kitchen staff who often left the convicted rapist unattended.
The other person fired was a guard who allowed Hardin to exit the prison during his escape without stopping to check his identity.
“[Hardin] stated when he walked up to the gate, he just directed the officer to ‘open the gate,’ and he did,” the report read.
Additional oblivious staffers were either demoted or suspended, officials told lawmakers this week.
Hardin asserted that he was not directly aided by any other inmates or staff — though their oversight surely made his escape a little easier, the review found.
He told the officers that he was planning to live in the woods for around six months until the dust settled before moving out west. At the time he was apprehended, he was living off of nothing but insects, bird eggs, berries and water distilled from a sleep apnea machine he took from the prison, according to the review.
The report concluded that Hardin had been misclassified and never should have been in a medium-security prison in the first place. When he was captured, he was swiftly placed in a maximum-security prison.
To patch blind spots highlighted by Hardin’s escape, the corrections department opted to remove the electric locks on the gates to prevent anyone from exiting without an officer’s say-so. It also plans to add extra cameras as well as new “shakedown” policies for contraband that could be taken from mechanical and side rooms, according to the review.
Hardin pleaded not guilty to the escape charges and is set for trial in November.
He is currently serving his lengthy sentence for the rape and murder of an elementary school teacher in 1997. The former police chief in a quiet town near the Arkansas-Missouri border wasn’t apprehended until DNA evidence pointed authorities investigating the cold case towards him in 2017.
His crimes were later portrayed in the TV documentary “Devil in the Ozarks.”
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