Posted on 05/26/2025 4:14:43 PM PDT by Libloather
A disgraced ex-Arkansas police chief who was serving 80 years in prison for rape and a shotgun-to-the-head execution escaped from a high-security prison disguised as a cop.
Grant Hardin, 56, the former police chief of Gateway near the Arkansas-Missouri border, was seen on security cameras walking out of the North Central Unit prison, in Calico Rock, dressed in what appears to be a homemade law enforcement uniform on Sunday afternoon.
Hardin, who is considered extremely dangerous, used the outfit to sneak through the controlled gate while inconspicuously pushing a cart full of utility materials, according to the Stone County Sheriff’s Office.
“It has been determined that Hardin was wearing a makeshift outfit designed to mimic law enforcement when he escaped the North Central Unit. He was not wearing a Department of Corrections uniform, and all DOC-issued equipment has been accounted for,” Rand Champion, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, said in a statement.
Hardin served as police chief in Gateway, population 436, for only four months in early 2016, but had a checkered history at small police departments dating back to the early 1990s..
He was fired multiple times, and accused of excessive force, poor performance and even falsifying police records, according to local reports.
In 2017, Hardin pleaded guilty to the murder of James Appleton, 59, a Gateway water department employee who was shot in the head at point-blank range with a shotgun while on the phone with his brother-in-law, who was at the time the mayor.
Hardin never offered a motive for the murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
In November 1997 an Arkansas schoolteacher at work on a Sunday morning was raped. The perpetrator was so careful to not leave evidence that detectives thought he might have had law enforcement training, but he left something behind: his DNA.
The same DNA that resulted in the 2003 issuance of Arkansas’ first-ever “John Doe” DNA arrest warrant, prior to the expiry of Arkansas’ six year statute of limitations for the crime.
In October 2017, more than twenty years later, Hardin, then 50 years old, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, admitting that he had killed James Appleton. Appleton pulled into a parking lot on Gann Ridge Road in Gateway, Arkansas on February 23, 2017, to talk with his coworker and brother-in-law on his cell phone. A passerby saw the pickup and a blue Chevrolet Malibu parked behind it.
The driver of the Malibu waved him around, the passerby told police, and when he was a few hundred yards away, he heard a bang and saw the Malibu speed toward him, before turning onto the dirt road where Hardin lived. With his family. And his blue Malibu. His wife Linda thought he had been outside spreading grass seed, but the passerby knew Hardin all his life. He was sure it was him.
Hardin was sentenced to 30 years in prison and was required to provide a DNA sample to the state. It was a match. Hardin had never even been a suspect, but on February 7, 2019 Hardin pleaded guilty to two counts of rape, finally closing the 1997 case. Hardin received 25 years on each of the two counts, which are running concurrently with his murder sentence. All in all, Hardin will serve at least 21 years of the 30-year murder sentence, and then another 14, before he is first eligible for parole at age 84.
Hardin had worked for four police agencies. He was fired from one, allowed to resign from one rather than be fired and resigned from two, always claiming his separation was on higher ground. For example, he claimed to have left Fayetteville Police Department because other officers were stealing and his work environment became intolerably hostile after he reported their theft. He resigned after seven months from Huntsville, stating that he refused to treat people unfairly, as was expected of him. A couple of departments later, and he found himself filing for unemployment. And being denied.
Hardin returned to the private sector, but kept his toe in law enforcement, serving two one-year terms as volunteer constable in Benton County. In 2016 Hardin became chief of police in Gateway, resigning after four months to earn an associate’s degree in criminal justice at Northwest Arkansas Community College.
Hardin was working in corrections when he was arrested for Appleton’s murder.
Hardin is now #168541 at Arkansas DOC’s North Central Unit, where — apart from the whole murder and rape thing — he has no major disciplinary violations, has completed an anger management course, and in October 2017 was determined to be minimum risk classification.
To this day no one knows why he killed Appleton.
~~~ Interrogation video is on YouTube courtesy
/r/realworldpolice
@realworldpolice
~~~
Like a movie out of a POW camp escape.
Hopefully his rape victim has been alerted to it, and the murder victim’s sister, etc.
He may or may not be coming after them but the possibility is there.
Or, he may just hitch a ride on a train to Mexico ...he was looking at getting out when he turns 84 sometime in the 2050s. That is a lot of incentive to get lost.
How does someone that cruddy get to be in law enforcement?
And this is why criminal public servants need to have their certifications terminated the FIRST time they majorly screw up. Shuffling them around creates a public menace.
LOL!!! I wonder how anybody who's not cruddy gets hired in law enforcement. The whole business needs a thorough overhaul, top to bottom, of how officers are recruited, trained, paid, and held accountable.
Minimum risk?
A lifer?
4 hr.?
More evidence for the “thugs with badges” side. Literally.
It’s about technique
Escapes prison wearing homemade cop uniform.
ANDY HE’S DONE
Best of his "early, funny ones". The singing on the chain gang scene, the whipping the silhouette, stomping glasses...
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