A former police chief serving a life sentence for murder and rape, dubbed the “Devil in the Ozarks,” escaped from an Arkansas high-security prison on Sunday by disguising himself as a law enforcement officer.
Grant Hardin, 56, was serving a 30-year sentence for the 2017 murder of James Appleton, a Gateway water department employee, and an additional 50 years for the 1997 rape of an elementary school teacher, according to a report by the Associated Press.
He escaped Sunday from the North Central Unit, a high-security facility in Calico Rock where he had been incarcerated since 2017, according to CNN.
Rand Champion, spokesperson for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, confirmed Hardin wore a “makeshift outfit designed to mimic law enforcement” during his escape, prison officials stated.
“That was not a standard inmate uniform, not a standard correctional uniform,” Champion…
