Speaker 1: H a wall Street line, shackle change, Oh weesome, gird,
it's calling my name. There is no mercy and it's
been a tentery juice as the hill Stream game Wrangle three.
Speaker 2: I'm here by me to die inside these.
Speaker 1: Walls, inside the wild.
Speaker 3: Han't went more girls.
Speaker 4: As I'm.
Speaker 2: Hey, Welcome back to Bloody and Gola. I'm going to
continue the fifty Shades of Evil series today and I'm
going to be taking you to Arkansas to tell you
the story of a man who, in February of twenty
seventeen was arrested for murder. Now that in turn also
led to a separate conviction for rape, where a former
police officer would be forever known as the Devil in
the Ozarks. His real name is Grant Harden, and today
I'm discussing his crime, his conviction, and an escape years
later that would put the entire country in fear. So
let's get into it. And first we're going to go
to Bentonville, Arkansas, where Grant Harden was born in nineteen
sixty nine. In Bentonville. Of course that may sound familiar
to you. It is the home of Walmart.
Speaker 3: It was where.
Speaker 2: Walmart was born in bred and Walmart actually brought a
lot of industry to that area of Arkansas. Very well
known now, but in those days a very sleepy town
in the late nineteen sixties. So Grant never really leaves
the Bentonville area. He graduates high school and he's a
very involved student. He's a member of the Student Council.
He's part of the National Honor Society. He actually participated
in Air Force RTC and that kept him very busy
during this time in his life. Now, after high school,
he attends college at the University of Arkansas, but he
doesn't graduate, and from everything I could find, he didn't
stay there very long. He then starts working more labor
intensive jobs. From nineteen eighty seven to nineteen ninety he
works at.
Speaker 3: A feed store.
Speaker 2: He works at the Walmart distribution center in Bentonville, a
big time employee in that area. And he also worked
as a driver's helper for UPS. And it was in
nineteen ninety that he applies and he gets hired at
the Fayetteville Police Department, but that does not last long.
He was fired after just nine months of working there. See,
Grant Harden.
Speaker 3: Was well, he was kind of an asshole to people.
Speaker 2: He worked around, very cocky thought he knew much more
than he did about policing, even though the guys that
were training him had, you know, twenty years on brand Harden.
As a matter of fact, in his termination letter, the
chief wrote, quote, since your employment, your training officers and
I have noticed your performance and determined your efforts fall
short of an officer. Your tendency to not accept constructive criticism,
along with your indecisiveness in stressful situations, played a major
role in my decision. Then his direct training officer actually
expanded on that, saying, quote, Harden seems intimidated under stress.
Even minimal stress causes him to get flustered. His voice
commands are bad, and he speaks so low. I can
barely hear him when he is speaking commands to suspect, which, y'all,
this is surprising because physically he's an imposing man. He's
six feet tall, two hundred and sixty pounds, not someone
you would expect would be soft spoken until he opens
his mouth, and we'll talk about that later. Also, the
fact that this commanding officer was saying that he fell
apart under stress another thing. Just looking at Grand Harden,
you wouldn't think would occur. Nonetheless, he gets fired, and
at this point it's nineteen ninety one. Rather than get
out of policing altogether, he just switches departments, really and
he gets hired on at the Huntsville, Arkansas Police Department. Now,
you would think this job would sit him better, smaller department.
Speaker 3: Heck, at that point.
Speaker 2: In time, there were less than three thousand people in
the whole town. But in less than a year, he
resigns from that department for what he listed as personal reasons,
and he's out of work for nearly a year before
he takes a job as a patrol officer with the
Eureka Springs Police Department, and again major issues. Harden learns
somehow that he's going to get fired for several issues.
Now he was doing things like using excessive force during arrest,
poor decision making. He had even been caught lying on
a police report. So Harden resigns before Eureka Springs Police
Department can fire him. Now he had been at this
job a little bit longer than in the past. He
actually made it three years in this department, but in
October of nineteen ninety six, according to some reports, he
was fired. Now there are other reports that conflict that
and say that he actually worked for Eureka Springs Police
Department through December of nineteen ninety seven. Look, sometimes these
reports conflict, and I'm not one hundred percent sure on
which is right. It doesn't play a major role in
this story, So go with whichever date you choose on that.
But I am going to bring you to nineteen ninety seven,
November of nineteen ninety seven, and I'm going to tell
you about an elementary school teacher by the name of
Amy Harrison. Now, Amy was twenty seven years old in
November of ninety seven, and she was a married mother.
As a matter of fact, she was married to a
police officer. On November ninth of that year, she had
to do like most teachers do. They use the weekend
to catch up on things like lesson plans, et cetera.
So she heads into school to her classroom on a
Sunday to do just that.
Speaker 3: And the reason she chose.
Speaker 2: A Sunday is she knew the school was unlocked because
they had a church service for a local church that
would meet actually in that school every Sunday. So she
goes to her classroom and she locks the door. Now
she didn't do this out of fear. She primarily did
this because they were having church service in the school
and she wanted to avoid getting interrupted while she was
in the middle of working. And look, Arkansas, this part
of Arkansas, everybody's pretty friendly, and if they see a
teacher sitting in their classroom as they're going to church service,
they're going to stop and talk to her. And she
loved to do that, but she was really behind on
some work and didn't want to get it interrupted. So
this teacher's in her classroom, she's working hard. She's in
there for about thirty minutes or so when someone pulls
on the door and.
Speaker 3: Then knocks on it.
Speaker 2: Now she assumes this is someone from the church service,
and being in the middle of work, she just kind
of kept as quiet as possible, I kind of hoping
they would go away. And after a few minutes she
didn't hear anything, so she opened the door because she
had to head down the hallway and go to the bathroom,
and the bathroom was twenty feet or so from her classroom,
not very far. She goes into the restroom, she frushens up,
takes care of her business, and upon exiting the bathroom, horror.
She's confronted by a man standing right there in the
bathroom door with a gun pointed directly at her head.
He has on a neck cap and he has on sunglasses,
so she can see everything from his nose down but
nothing above that. And he forces her back into the
bathroom and it's apparent what he's about to do because
the first thing he says to her.
Speaker 3: Is get on your knees. Now.
Speaker 2: She is obviously very scared, and she complied whatever she
had to do to go home alive, she was willing
to do. As she gets down on her knees, she
notices that this guy only had socks on and that
stuck out to her.
Speaker 3: No shoes, just socks.
Speaker 2: And then he makes a strange comment, and he asked
her if she recognized his voice. Remember he told her,
you know, get back into the bathroom whenever he pulled
the gun on her, or whenever she walked out, and
he had it in her face, and this would be
important later, so keep that in your back pocket. But
warning here, it's going to get a little graphic what
I'm about to tell you. But as she's on her knees,
the assailant ejaculates and.
Speaker 3: The poor woman.
Speaker 2: Obviously mortified, she takes some of the scenmen and almost
out of not even thinking, just a reaction, she wipes
a little bit on her shirt and he noticed this,
and this assailant says to her, what are you doing?
And by that time it's too late. She's already done it.
But it's in another important key later on. So they
both leave the bathroom, but he's not done yet. The
assailant then tells her to go in the teacher's lounge,
where he rapes her a second time. So after all this,
the attacker flees the scene and Harrison the teacher. She
runs out of the room. She sees a janitor and
she tells him what had just happened, and he calls police.
And keep in mind this is in the middle of
church service that all this occurred. But here is that
nine one one call.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's Schory School in Rochester.
Speaker 6: Have never had a teacher molected in the bathroom there?
Speaker 1: Teacher who did it?
Speaker 7: We don't know.
Speaker 5: She went in the bathroom and somewhere granded her Okay
at the prisons there there she should I don't know
that room pictured here, Okay, Thoson Andrew Harrison's life has
just listen in my soul.
Speaker 1: As far as I know, he left her having shirt here.
Speaker 2: In our Kevinaria. So this teacher really provided some great
details to the police once they got there. She mentioned
the assailant asking if she recognized his voice, and that
was a key piece of evidence because it's a big
time clue that this person was probably local. Otherwise why
would he be concerned about her recognizing his voice. It
was also key that she noticed he didn't have shoes on,
because police were able to kind of ascertain this is
probably someone who knew what they were doing and didn't
want to leave shoe prints.
Speaker 3: So whoever this was, either.
Speaker 2: They took off their shoes to sneak up on her,
or they took off their shoes so as not to
leave shoe print. And to the assailant's credit, the assailant
was very careful. They were able to lift no fingerprint.
They looked everywhere for him. He didn't touch anything. When
the bathroom door opened, it was opened by the teachers,
so there were no doors.
Speaker 3: That he touched. She opened and closed doors, etc.
Speaker 2: But the police did manage to get DNA off of
that shirt. However, in addition to what was collected via
a rape kit that this lady had to take, it
would be a while before that DNA would come back.
And remember this this teacher is the wife of a cop,
so there's obviously a ton of investigative support on this one.
Law enforcement from all over the area would assist. But
the days turned into weeks, the weeks into moss in
the year, and the DNA that was pulled off of
that shirt and out of that rate kit was uploaded
to what's none as Courtis, which is a database that
I'm sure you're all familiar with. But remember this is
nineteen ninety seven. Advancements in DNA were not there. DNA
was in its infancy. It's not like it is now
where you can actually get DNA and then be able
to match it to family members.
Speaker 3: That's called familiar DNA.
Speaker 2: There was no one, two, three and meters out there
at that point where there was a database where just
a rampant amount of people had their DNA.
Speaker 3: Curtis was it.
Speaker 2: And if you weren't arrested already in given your DNA
to where it could be uploaded to cotis, Yeah, they
may have had a DNA profile, but they had no
idea who it matched you. So we're going to fast
forward a little bit all the way from nineteen ninety
seven to two thousand and eight. Now Grant Harden. At
this time he decided to run for constable in Benton County,
and shockingly, he wins, and he wins big. He actually
got over sixty five percent of the vote. Then in
twenty twelve, he's reelected as constable. Four years later, in
twenty sixteen, believe it or not, he is elected police
chief of Gateway, Arkansas. This is the same guy who
lost three plus jobs in law enforcement and now he
is the chief of police, albeit for a town of
only four hundred and fifty residents. However, the old Grant Harden,
of course would surface, and only four months into his
tenure as chief, he resigns after the city council tells him, look,
either resign or we're going to have to fire you.
And this was due to a massive amount of complaints
from residents. After only four months of being in office,
the constituents would voice to the council that Harden was
basically a dick, very hard to get along with. He
would follow people for seemingly no reason, and kind of
harass them. And he would even have several run ends
with a city water company employee who was also a
firefighter for that city, and his name was James Appleton.
So he resigns in April of twenty sixteen, and in
the fall of that year he actually enrolls in a
criminal justice program, but that didn't last long and by
November of twenty sixteen, he is hired on at the
Northwest Correctional Center, which is a woman's prison in Arkansas.
Speaker 3: So let's go to.
Speaker 2: February twenty third of twenty seventeen. Remember that water company
employee and firefighter James Appleton, Well, he shot on an
old country road in Benton County, Arkansas. He's shot in
the head at close range by a car as it
passed him, and he was pulled off on the side
of the road. He was actually on the phone with
his brother in law, who was the mayor at the
point that he was shot.
Speaker 3: He died almost instantly. Now, a witness reported.
Speaker 2: Seeing Appleton pulled over to the side of the road
as he passed Appleton. He gets in front of Appleton's
truck heads on down the highway and he mentioned he
also noted a white sedan was pulled over behind Appleton
on that same side of the road.
Speaker 3: So this is a hilly part of the road.
Speaker 2: And he goes up that hill and he goes to
come down the other side of that hill, and he
hears a shot indistinguishable from anything else.
Speaker 3: It was a loud boom.
Speaker 2: It concerned him so much that he actually turned his
vehicle around and he headed back the way he was coming,
and he finds Appleton slumped over the driver's seat of
that truck, dead from a gunshot. Wing Now, he calls police.
Police arrive and they talked to this witness, and they
ask if he recognized the driver of the sedan or
the sedan itself that was behind Appleton's vehicle. And the
witness who had lived in the area his entire life,
and do everyone there, he basically says, hell, yeah, that
was Grand Harden and he was one hundred percent sure
of it.
Speaker 3: Did you see what happened in Texas today?
Speaker 2: Wait before you tell me that, let me tell you
what happened in New York. It cannot be as crazy
as the case I told you about yesterday in Louisiana.
Speaker 3: You know what we should do a podcast about it,
and with that we did.
Speaker 2: Crime War Weekly covers the crime news headlines that have
dominated the week. We cover trending crimes from all over
the country and even sprinkle in a few globally. Crime
War Weekly is available now wherever you listen to your podcasts,
simply by searching Crime War Weekly or clicking the link
in the description of this podcast. So police they immediately
haul Harden in for questioning. And look, he's got a wife,
he's got a young child, she's probably about twelve.
Speaker 3: At this point, a young child.
Speaker 2: And he gets hauled into the police station and they
were going to question him. And it had to be
awkward because because they knew Harden. As a matter of fact,
some of them have worked with Harden even though he
was policing in a different agency. They would back him
up in the past, and he would back them up
in the past. So at the police station, almost immediately
Harden refuses to talk.
Speaker 3: Listen to this.
Speaker 8: Club, I mean, or would you be willing to talk
to me about your day knowing that I need to
rule you out of something, or like, I'm just I'm
at a loss here and I need to I need
to I need to clear you from something and if
you didn't do anything wrong today, you have nothing to
worry about. And that's kind of where we're that's kind
of where we're at is I.
Speaker 4: Would have liked you before. Yeah, the right, So okay,
knowing what's going on.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, And you understand as a detective we have
we read those rights to everybody who comes in here.
It's not just you, but when we interview you know, kids,
and it's everybody. Once you come into our facility, we
we that's something we have to do. It's not something
it's not just something we're doing for you. It happens
to everybody that walks through this room and talks to us,
because I mean, you know, it's just like anything else
that we do. We have to we have to cover
all of our bases. And that's what we did by
it by reading you those rights. So we need to know.
I mean, does that make sense?
Speaker 4: Like I don't.
Speaker 8: I know, you've been a police officer for a while now,
so you've got you understand you know how how how
everything works. And so I've got to rule you out
as a suspect. And if I can't, you know, if
I can't do that, then where it stands. Still does
that make sense?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 8: So where what happened to day? Where like, can you
walk me through your day about what happened today?
Speaker 6: I have to remain sidled.
Speaker 3: Okay on that.
Speaker 8: Okay, So your tell it right, Okay. So you're telling
me that you did do something today that was so
was wrong?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 8: Is that what I mean? Is that what I'm in that?
I mean, I'm just okay, So you're you just don't
want to talk to me because.
Speaker 6: I don't understand what. No, they snatched me up out
there and didn't nobody told me anything. I don't understand. Okay,
what why I can't be told something? What's going on?
Speaker 8: And and uh okay, So virgin I guess my question
is this knowing what I just told you?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 8: I guess if it was me and I was you know,
if I was in your position, I'd be like, hey, James,
I didn't this. I was at or Grant, I did this.
I was at you know, here, here, here, and here,
and I would just be done with it and that
way you can get out of here. But at this point,
like I can't clear you from this because you could
still be potentially be a suspect. Does that make sense? Like,
am I I don't know if I'm not explaining a
writer or.
Speaker 3: What was going on.
Speaker 6: I just you once, once the rights have been granted,
I have to add it since I have the right
to be silent. Yes, okay, I don't understand why I'm
a suspect.
Speaker 8: Felt Well, that's for me to know and for you
to tell me why you're not a suspect. We can
do this online. I mean, it doesn't bother me. You're
going to continue to be a suspect until I find
out otherwhile.
Speaker 2: So as you can probably tell the male detective that
you hear speaking and questioning Harden. He did not geaw
with Harden, to say the least, and after thirty to
forty five minutes or so, it was clear this male
detective was getting nowhere with Grand Harden. But there was
another detective in that room that you didn't hear, a
young female detective and her name was Nikana Cordero. She
was amazing and as a matter of fact, she had
worked in the past with Harden. He had backed her
up as part of another department on some sort of
you know, calls that you would get in the middle
of the night that someone's breaking in the house or something.
So they they have worked with each other in the past,
and she provides one of the best interrogations that I
have ever seen. I want you to listen to this club,
but I think then.
Speaker 7: You could have You've dealt with a bad situation.
Speaker 4: I just want to know what happened.
Speaker 7: Sure, a lot of people are gonna want to know.
You know my answers socially, your family, I would.
Speaker 4: I do. I want to help you, that's the bad part.
I want to help you figure it out.
Speaker 7: All I can do is sit here and say, well, listen,
work it out with you, figure it out together.
Speaker 4: But you have to be willing to talk to me
about it. I'm a pretty rare person. MM, pretty straight
your step. I know it's uncomfortable.
Speaker 7: I know it's uncomfortable, and they're breaking and sitting in
a room by yourself with people that you worked with
in the past, knowing the situation. But like I said,
I wasn't there. You're the only one who can kind
of fill in the blanks at this point.
Speaker 4: M alright, No, you don't have to talk to me,
but I'm willing to listen.
Speaker 9: Right, we all make mistakes. We all get it put
in positions. We're all human, we all react a certain way.
Speaker 7: We all have emotions. Sometimes we over react. Sometimes we're
put in situations that we don't want to get putting
like I'd rather, you know, have met you again outside
having coffee so to see if you you.
Speaker 4: For the second time in year.
Speaker 7: But I went off. I think you just made a
mistake today, or somebody made a mistake today, And I think, do.
Speaker 10: You know what happened?
Speaker 4: I just want you to help you understand that, cause
I really do. I wanna understand why I helpen HM.
Speaker 11: And I think you know what I'm talking about. And
I think you know that some things are gonna come out.
Speaker 7: And don't wanna be able to stand on your side
and say, hey, this is what happened. And he was
up front, he was honest, and he explained it and
he cooperated.
Speaker 4: Does he need a lawyer? HM?
Speaker 12: So guy, you're talking about me, I think, honestly, I
think you're the only one who can make that call that.
Speaker 4: I think you're an honest man.
Speaker 10: I think you've been an honest man. I think that's
the best.
Speaker 4: Well, not just gonna be quiet, man, be quiet. I
don't keep talking. No, I'm serious.
Speaker 10: So I think you're an honest man.
Speaker 7: I think you've done a lot of good in your life.
I'm done to spent your life helping others just like
I have. Now you've had something happen and you're trying
to figure it out.
Speaker 4: But how are you supposed to figure it out on
your own?
Speaker 7: Like, why not? Let me help you figure it out.
Help me understand what happened today, so I can help
you before everything else comes out, So there's an explanation
instead of it just looking bad, cause I don't want
you to be You've portrayed like this horrible monster.
Speaker 4: If you made a mistake, you made a mistake. You're
no different than anybody else. Everybody's humor. Trust me, I
made plenty of mistake smiling.
Speaker 3: So she continued for well over an hour.
Speaker 2: And this young detective, as you can probably tell, is good,
soft voice, She doesn't appear threatening. She's there to help him.
As a matter of fact, in this interrogation, she refers
to Harden's daughter several times, which is a tactic. And
I mean, she was so good. I was almost ready
to confess to that crime. And she got close to
getting Grant Harden to talk about the crime itself, but
he never cracked, and toward the end he asked for
a lawyer, which is kind of the trump card for
interrogators because once you ask for a lawyer, as a
police officer is over with, you gotta do what they
asked for.
Speaker 4: Do you want to talk to me? Can get a lawyer?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 10: I don't feel like I need to you.
Speaker 4: Let's talk to you, but you can.
Speaker 6: Obviously something's going on in an unique one.
Speaker 4: It's talk to you. I just wanna hear your side,
but I like to get a lawyer.
Speaker 10: Okay.
Speaker 4: I can't give your advice on that.
Speaker 7: Okay, I can't talk to you anymore cause you ask
for eadware.
Speaker 4: What I do want you to know is if you
change your mind, do you know my name? You can
always ask for me.
Speaker 10: Okay?
Speaker 4: Do you have to be one too? Three?
Speaker 10: Re established that? Okay? All right, key stand up for me,
go ahead, turn off.
Speaker 7: Jack is out.
Speaker 10: He murders.
Speaker 2: So as you heard grand Harden, lawyers up and he's arrested.
In the voice, let's go back to the voice. I
haven't talked about that yet, but did you hear it?
Very distinctive, almost childlike his voice. Remember that rape from
years earlier, when the assailant was concerned about his voice. Well,
if you haven't figured it out yet, Grant Harden has
a very unique voice, especially for his size. This is
a big man and he talks like a child, and
so that stand out to anybody that knew him. And
I guess that's why the assailant was so concerned. And
we'll get into that later. But he does get arrested
for this murder. He is arraigned, This is in late
February of twenty seventeen, and he pleads not guilty.
Speaker 3: Nothing to lose. You always plead not guilty.
Speaker 2: In an arraignment, and then they assigned bond. But in
the case of Grand Harden, they denied bond. He was
going to have to stay in jail till his trial.
And it wasn't long after that that Harden and his
defense team they had time to look over all the
evidence that prosecutors had and they realized prosecutors had a
massive amount of evidence related to this shooting. So on
October sixteenth of twenty seventeen in Benton County, Harden enters
a guilty Police Now that doesn't come without an agreement
of some sored, and that agreement included a recommended sentence
of thirty years in prison with all of his appeal
rights waived. During this plea hearing, Harden actually addressed the
Appleton family directly stating, quote, I don't know how to
express it, but I'm sorry, unquote. He is then sentenced
to thirty years in prison, to be served at the
North Central Unit Prison. This is in Calico Rock, Arkansas.
So while grand Harden is acclimating to life behind bars,
on February twelfth of twenty eighteen, the Arkansas Crime Lab
has collected his DNA and they're now going to enter
it into cutis that database which this is done in
Arkansas and most other states with every new inmate that
gets put into prison. But guess what it hits as
a match to the seamen that that elementary school teacher
wiped on her shirt way back in nineteen ninety seven.
Grant Harden was indeed the ripest of teacher Amy Harrison.
So the police they announce this DNA link publicly and
he is charged with two counts of rape while already
in prison for murder.
Speaker 3: And he's really dead.
Speaker 2: To rights right this DNA evidence it's ninety nine point
nine nine percent positive, and rather than go to trial,
Harden pleads guilty this is on February eighth of twenty nineteen,
to those two counts of rape, and he sentenced to
an additional twenty five years per count to run consecutive.
Speaker 3: So it's a total of fifty years. Now.
Speaker 2: All told, Grant Harden now has to spend eighty years
in prison, and that's.
Speaker 3: A long time.
Speaker 2: That's a lifetime in fact, for Grant Harden to never
see life outside of prison again. He would spend the
rest of his life behind bars, or would he so?
By May of twenty twenty five, Harden was still in
that North Central unit. It's a medium security prison. But Harden,
at this point fifty six years old, he wasn't just
going to ride behind bars. Drawing on his law enforcement background,
he began plotting an escape that would honestly expose some
glaring flaws in the prison system and trigger a twelve
day man hunt. So Harden's scheme takes root in the
prison's kitchen, where he had been assigned a work detail.
And everybody wants to work in the kitchen, that's the
place to work.
Speaker 3: In prisons. He somehow managed to get that.
Speaker 2: Job, and for six long months he observed the routines
of guards and inmates a light and he would note
in his mind there was kind of a lack of
security around lunchtimes and kitchen times in general that were
unique to that area of the prison. So the kitchen
kind of became his learning ground, and he would actually
steal black sharpies from all around the facility. And the
reason that he did this was he would painstakingly die
an inmate uniform and a kitchen apron in deep black
from that sharpie marker to mimic a correctional officer's uniform,
which were all black. He then fashioned a makeshift badge
from a soup can lead in the cover of a bible,
and he would polish it to give it a certain
detail where at a slight glance.
Speaker 3: It would look like a real badge.
Speaker 2: Then he would put on his newly dyed black pants,
a black T shirt, and a black baseball cap.
Speaker 3: That he managed to get his hands on. To complete his.
Speaker 2: Disguise, Harden even smuggled out small amounts of food and
distilled water from his seapat machine, and he would stash
them for his escape, and he chose May twenty fifth
of twenty twenty five, which was a rainy Sunday, because
he had ever heard staff discussing a new policy that
made Titan kitchen access soon he knew it's time to
make my escape. The weather was perfect that day because
it would muffle sounds and it would reduce outdoor activity
from the staff from the correctional officers, and he felt
like that would give him an edge. And that afternoon,
at one point fifty eight pm, he felt like that
was the time to jet. He was allowed some unsupervised
access to the kitchen's back loading dock by one of
the prison employees, which incidentally was a major violation of protocol.
An hour would tick by as he prepared for his escape.
At two point fifty three pm, he was disguised in
that homemade uniform and he's pushing a cart loaded with
a box in wooden pilots and that was kind of
to obscure the stuff he was bringing with him, and
he approached the Sallyport gate. He signals up to the
control tower to open the gate in another employee, failing
to verify the identity of Harden. He opens the gate
he assumed this was a legitimate officer. First glance, it
looked like a legitimate officer in Harden. He just strolled
right out of the freaking gate, very casually, and he
vanishes into the dent woods that surrounded that prison.
Speaker 3: It was a brazen walk to freedom, y'all.
Speaker 2: And you could tell by the way he did it
he was someone that knew how to walk like a
police officer because he used to be one. Now back inside,
at about three h eight pm, they noticed this is
only this is a little over ten minutes later, but
correctional officers noticed Grant Harden's missing. But it wasn't until
three forty pm that they initiated a full lockdown. And
that's basically these correctional officers realizing this guy's dounehauled ass
and we want to find him before we have to
report this to a lieutenant because we're going to get
fired over it. But at three forty they realize we
can't find.
Speaker 3: This sucker anywhere. By then, he had a pretty good
head start. And this is the Ozarks, y'all. This is some.
Speaker 2: Unforgive being terrain, and he had about an hour head start.
Authorities launch an immediate man hunt and imagine the press
this is going to generate. This is a murderer and
a rapist that just walked out of your prison. They
got tracking dogs, local sheriffs showed up, state police, the
Border patrol, even and the search spanned a huge mountainous
region full of caves, full of hiding spots, There's a
lot of water, creeks, etc. That he could get the
scent off of himself. Helicopters were buzzing overhead. They were
looking everywhere for Grand Harden and for twelve grueling days,
hardened somehow manages to evade capture. Now he survived on
the bare minimum that's available in the wilderness, berries, raw
eggs taken from birds nests, and he even ate amps
for protein. And he did have some rations that he
had smuggled out of the prison as well. And this
wilderness was also rain soaked, so it was hard for
the dogs to track him, and he managed to stay
one step ahead. However, on June sixth of twenty twenty five,
around four o'clock pm, tracking dogs pick up a cent
near Moccason Creek, which is only about one and.
Speaker 3: A half miles northwest of the prison.
Speaker 2: Law enforcement closes in hardened attempts to run. He bolts
through an underbrush, but officers see him and tackle him
to the ground, and the man hunt was over. Harden
was backing handcuffs and headed back to prison. Now, of course,
in the aftermath, investigators found some pretty big systematic failures
that shouldn't have occurred, and two prison employees were fired,
one for allowing the unsupervised doc access and the other
for opening the gate that he walked out of without
identifying him first. And Harden himself would face some pretty
swift justice for his escape. On February seventeenth of twenty
twenty six, only a couple of weeks from this recording,
he pleaded guilty to second degree escape in Izard County
Circuit Court, and he received an additional thirteen years to
be served consecutive with his other sentence, and then he
was transferred to what's known as Varner Supermax Prison in Gould, Arkansas,
where he now resides in maximum security. So all told,
he now has ninety three years in prison, increasing from
eighty years that he originally had.
Speaker 3: Prior to his escape.
Speaker 2: But now that is all in a supermax facility, and
I'm comfortable saying he will never taste the free world
again because you ain't escaping from a supermax no way.
So there you have it, the story of what is
widely considered the most dangerous inmate in Arkansas, and that
is Grant Harden, the devil in the Ozarks. Thank you
so much for listening. I'll be back next week with
another episode of fifty Shades of Evil. Not sure what
state I'm going to go to. I'll decide that in
the next couple of days, but until then, check out
the Patreon Patreon dot com slash Bloody Andngola podcast, And
until next time for Bloody and Gola, I'm Jim Chapman.
Speaker 3: Much love, h.
Speaker 1: A Wall Street line, shackle change, Oh gluesome gird, it's
calling my name. There is no mercy and it's been
a tentery juice as the hill Stream game Rango three.
Speaker 7: I'm here behind by mere or die.
Speaker 1: Inside these walls, inside the wild.
Speaker 3: Han't went more girls, I know it's so.
Speaker 1: Bloody angle
Speaker 7: Body had tol