A convicted murderer and rapist who broke out of an Arkansas prison over the summer had planned his escape for six months, quietly collecting items while working in the kitchen and stashing them in areas rarely checked by staff.
The Arkansas Department of Corrections’ critical incident review committee detailed Grant Hardin’s elaborate escape in a report released two months after he was captured in the woods about 1.5 miles from the North Central Unit in Calico Rock.
Hardin, a former police chief who was convicted of murder and rape, was taken into custody on June 6 by U.S. Border Patrol agents and state law enforcement officers after tracking dogs picked up his scent.
He pleaded not guilty to an escape charge and is scheduled to go on trial in November. He’s currently housed at Varner Supermax prison in Gould, Arkansas.
Hardin told Arkansas Division of Correction Director Dexter Payne in an interview that he used black Sharpie markers he took from the kitchen and laundry to color the clothes he wore when he fled, according to the report. He told the committee in a separate interview that he left the world “POLICE” outlined on his white T-shirt before coloring the rest of it.
He said he molded the top of an empty food can into the shape of a police badge and used black aprons from the kitchen to craft an officer’s body armor vest, according to the report, released Friday.
Officials said Hardin was wearing a makeshift law enforcement uniform and pushing a cart with wooden pallets on it when he walked out the prison gate.
Hardin said that the markers had been left lying around “because staff were not keeping up with them,” the report stated. Hardin said he hid the clothes and other items in the bottom of a kitchen trash can because it was never checked by staff, it said.
He also said that the staff did not monitor him while he was working on the back dock near the kitchen.
On May 25, the day of his escape, Hardin said he overheard a deputy warden tell a kitchen supervisor that inmates would no longer be allowed to go on the dock by themselves. Despite rainy weather, Hardin said he decided to try to escape.
The report said that Hardin “gathered up everything he had been hiding, including his clothes and food from various areas around the kitchen and dock area,” and made his way toward the gate.
Hardin, according to the documents, walked up to the gate and directed the guard to “open the gate.” Without checking for proper identification, the guard let him out.
The documents allege that on the first night of the escape, Hardin stayed in one area in the woods and “dodged the K-9 team that was searching for him.”
The second night, he moved around some more and became separated from the bag he used to store his food. Hardin told Payne that he survived on berries, bird eggs, and ants and drank water from the creek, the documents stated. He also had some distilled water with him that he got from the infirmary for his CPAP machine, it said.
During his interview with committee members, Hardin allegedly said that he was initially able to avoid capture because of the rainy weather, dense vegetation and landscape.
His escape left the small Arkansas town on edge and angered the family of the man he killed in 2017. The murder, as well as the 1997 rape of an elementary school teacher, were featured in the 2023 HBO Max documentary “Devil in the Ozarks.”
He planned to hide in the woods for six months if he needed to and then move west out of the area. But after becoming concerned by the lack of food available to him and how close the search teams were getting, he tried to leave the area sooner.
“This is what led to the search teams spotting him and capturing inmate Hardin,” officials wrote in the report.
The committee said that, considering the nature of Hardin’s crimes, he was incorrectly classified and should have been held at a more secure prison. But several procedural issues at the facility contributed to Hardin’s escape, the committee found.
It issued recommendations for corrective actions the facility should take, including the removal of all black kitchen aprons, additional surveillance cameras for blind spots, and changing the electric locks at the prison gates.
The committee also suggested that all side rooms and mechanical rooms need to be checked during searches.
A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections said Tuesday that it has reviewed the report “and will implement the suggestions made in regards to the findings.”
Ultimately, the employee who worked in the gate tower and the employee who left Hardin unsupervised on the kitchen dock were fired for policy violations. Several other employees were suspended, demoted or faced disciplinary action, according to the report.
