“Devil in the Ozarks” Gets 13 More Years for Escape
Grant Hardin, a former police chief who was convicted of rape and murder, received an additional 13-year sentence after pleading guilty to charges related to a prison escape in May 2025. Hardin had planned his escape for six months, according to a 900-page review compiled last year by the Arkansas Department of Corrections (DOC).
While working in the kitchen at North Central Unit in Calico Rock, Hardin quietly collected items and hid them in areas rarely checked by guards. He used these items to craft a makeshift disguise that allowed him to impersonate a prison guard. Hardin used a black Sharpie he had stashed away to darken his shirt, molded an empty food can lid into a police badge, and stitched together black aprons to make a vest resembling a guard’s body armor. The costume was convincing enough to fool a guard into opening a secure gate that Hardin walked out of while pushing a cart of wooden pallets.
Hardin was captured less than two weeks later, in a wooded area around 1.5 miles away from the North Central Unit. Although he had planned to stay in the woods for up to six months, the former police chief of Gateway City was surviving on berries, birds eggs, ants, and creek water, and decided to venture out due to a lack of food and how close search teams were getting, he told interviewers; he was captured shortly thereafter.
The ex-police chief began his career in law enforcement as a cop in 1990. As PLN reported, he worked for numerous police departments in Arkansas, jumping from one position to another before landing a job as a guard in Fayetteville, where he admitted to murdering Gateway city water employee James Appleton in 2017 [See: PLN, Jul. 2025, p. 40]. After submitting a guilty plea for Appleton’s murder, Hardin was found to have raped elementary school teacher Amy Harrison. Both crimes were detailed in a 2023 HBO Max documentary titled “Devil in the Ozarks.”
According to the DOC report, Hardin’s escape succeeded due to his own meticulous planning and the failures of the agency itself. Although none of the guards were found to have prior knowledge of Hardin’s escape plan, which took four minutes and was captured on video, two guards were fired as a result of their negligence. Guard William Walker, assigned to the West Tower, allowed Hardin to walk out of the gate without checking identification, while guard Justin Delvalle would leave Hardin unchecked for hours in the kitchen area as he slowly accumulated supplies.
Source: NBC News
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