Grant Hardin, a former police chief and convicted killer known as the “Devil in the Ozarks,” was caught Friday afternoon, nearly two weeks after escaping from an Arkansas Prison, authorities said.
“Grant Hardin has been recaptured and was taken into custody shortly after 3 p.m. on Friday,” the Arkansas Department of Corrections said in a news release.
The 56-year-old former chief of Gateway, a small town near the Arkansas-Missouri border, was serving lengthy sentences for murder and rape when he escaped from North Central Unit in Calico Rock on May 25.
After he was taken back into custody, Hardin was transported to the North Central Unit for fingerprinting and a medical evaluation, then transferred to the Varner SuperMax facility in Gould, some 200 miles southeast of Calico Rock, according to local ABC affiliate KATV.
Hardin, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in 2017, escaped the Northern Arkansas facility “wearing a makeshift outfit designed to mimic law enforcement.”
The escape made national headlines and sparked a massive, 12-day manhunt that included hundreds of local, state and federal agencies.
On Friday, he was located by Arkansas police and the U.S. Border Patrol near Moccasin Creek in Izard County, after tracking dogs picked up a scent in the area.
He was ultimately recaptured just 1.5 miles northwest of the prison he’d escaped from.
A spokesperson for the Arkansas prison system said Hardin tried to run from police officers as they were approaching, but he was tackled to the ground.
“He’d been on the run for a week and a half and probably didn’t have any energy left in him,” the spokesperson said.
Hardin’s sentence for first-degree murder stemmed from the fatal shooting of a local water department employee. No motive for that killing was ever revealed.
Hardin was also serving time for the 1997 rape of an elementary school teacher. In 2019, he pleaded guilty to two counts of rape and was sentenced to 50 years behind bars. That vicious sexual assault, which was only solved with DNA evidence two decades later, became the subject of a Max/Investigation Discovery crime documentary released in 2023.
With News Wire Services
