Devil in the Ozarks ////// 848

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Welcome to True Crime Garage.

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This week we are quite intrigued and perhaps a little afraid because in the garage we have Mothman with us today.

Mothman is an Imperial or double New England style IPA from the Cryptic Brewers at Ogo Pogo Brewing.

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ABV 8.5% garage grade 4 out of 5 bottle caps.

And here's a big cheers to some of our good friends that helped us out with this week's beer run.

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IO.

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And Colonel, that's enough of the business.

All right, everybody, gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer.

Let's talk some true crime.

Former police chief Grant Hardin, known as the Devil in the Ozarks, escaped from prison on May 25th, dressed as a corrections officer.

Now the FBI and U.S.

Marshals are offering a combined $25,000 for any information that leads to his arrest.

News Nation's Mills Hayes is on the scene for us and in Arkansas Mills.

This hunt has the community still on the edge.

Hey Nick, for some people they are concerned because of course there's a convicted murderer and rapist that is on the loose right now, but there's also a lot of people who say that they aren't that concerned.

But keep in mind, this is a gun-toting community.

These are people who fish and hunt.

And so they say they're ready if Hardin does actually appear.

Now, police say that he is still believed to be in this area.

They're using all their resources to try and find Hardin at this point.

They're using bloodhounds, helicopters,

and also using drones to try and find Hardin.

It's difficult because the terrain out there in the Ozarks is rugged.

There are dozens of abandoned homes, and there are also thousands of caves out there.

It really is the perfect place for someone to hide.

We spoke with the Arkansas Department of Corrections just yesterday about this investigation.

Here's what they said.

What makes you guys think that he's still in the area?

The way that we kind of operate and go about it is until we get a verifiable tip or evidence or something that puts him outside of this area, we have to operate under the assumption that he is still here.

This week we head out to Benton County, Arkansas.

Benton County is the northwesternmost county in the state.

So this is the county in Arkansas that if you leave it going north, you are in the state of Missouri.

And if you leave it going west, you will find yourself in Oklahoma.

If you go to the northeast portion of Benton County, Arkansas, you will find the tiny little town of Gateway, Arkansas.

The town's name reflects its situation as the gateway to and from the great state of Arkansas.

Gateway is about six and a half square miles in size, and the population is only about 430 people.

All in all, if you're not familiar with this true crime story that we are bringing to you today, I'm guessing that most people outside of the state of Arkansas and Missouri have never heard of Gateway, Arkansas.

However, it has been in the news quite a bit lately.

If you are watching the news, listening to news podcasts, the story that takes place is Calico Rock, Arkansas, which is actually about a three-hour drive east of where the story should start, which is in Gateway, Arkansas.

So Northwest Arkansas is generally a metropolitan area and region within the Ozarks, the Ozark Mountains.

It includes four of the 10 largest cities in the state, Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, and Bentonville.

Gateway, however, is God's country, or perhaps the devil in the Ozarks' country.

So let's go to Gateway, February 23rd, 2017.

This is a Thursday.

This should have been a normal, uneventful day out in the sticks.

It's getting close to dinner time.

People are heading home from work.

We are just a couple of hours away from the day really winding down.

We have a hardworking hard-working dude.

This is 59-year-old James Appleton.

James works for the Gateway Water Company.

Now, out here,

and folks listening in their garages out in rural areas know this to be true.

In smaller communities, if you work for one of the utilities, you kind of work for them all.

So, James is employed by the water company or the water board, but is often working on roads and parks wherever and whatever is needed.

Not to simplify this guy, but a good short description of James is he's the type of guy that can quickly trouble, shoot an issue, and then fix it.

James Appleton on this Thursday, he's sitting in his pickup truck.

So he pulled over to the side of the road for a work-related phone call.

His truck is parked on the side of Grand Ridge Road.

He is on the phone with his coworker and brother-in-law.

This is Andrew Tillman.

Andrew works for the utilities as well, but he is also the mayor of Gateway.

Now, at this time, we have a dude driving home from work.

His name is John Bray.

John is an iron worker and a cattle rancher.

He's on his way home when he comes up upon a white Chevy Malibu that is pulled over on the side of Grand Ridge Road.

And in front of this Chevy Malibu is the work truck that James Appleton is sitting in and on the phone with his co-worker brother-in-law, the mayor.

Both vehicles, engines are running, but pulled over to the side.

The driver of the Malibu signals to John Bray to pull ahead, go around us.

You can continue on.

John does just that.

He maneuvers his vehicle into the oncoming traffic lane to the left of the Malibu and then drives past both.

the white Chevy Malibu and the work truck.

So at this moment in time, these are the only three vehicles and the drivers are the only three people on this country road.

John Bray continues on and he goes, I believe he said it was about 200 yards or so, and he says that he hears what he described as a gunshot.

This loud noise came from behind him.

So he hears a gunshot and he believes that it's coming from back on the road, right from where he just was with those other vehicles.

He decided that he would turn around and make sure that everything was okay but before he could do so he sees the white chevy malibu speed past him driving away and then taking a turn onto a nearby dirt road not good not good no now let's back up just a couple of minutes on our timeline here just to this is just very shortly before the gunshot sound that john bray heard james sitting in his truck on the phone says to andrew tillman I'm on the side of the road.

They, I believe he's got to be referring to the vehicles behind him, they must think I'm a policeman or something sitting over here.

James tells Andrew that a car is maneuvering around him.

Then at the same time, Andrew on the other end of the phone call hears a noise that he described as a truck door being slammed shut.

And now suddenly, James ain't talking.

Andrew Tillman on the other end of this call, he says that James Appleton often had his Bluetooth on.

That, yeah, he pulled over to either make or receive this call.

But Andrew Tillman believes that the Bluetooth was on, and that's why he could hear what he described as the truck door slamming very loudly on his end.

But then we have the other driver, John Bray.

who is already up ahead when he heard the shot or the loud noise.

So now when John Bray gets back to the parked pickup truck where he believes he heard this, what he described as a gunshot noise, he finds James Appleton slumped over in the driver's seat of James's truck.

There's blood and John quickly recognizes that James has been shot and he's probably dead.

John flags down the next vehicle that he sees and tells the driver to call 911.

So he has a description of the vehicle, but I'm guessing he doesn't have a license plate number.

No license plate, but no license plate number required, okay?

Because we are not left with a huge mystery here, Captain, like we are many times with many of the cases that we cover here in the garage.

This is because the town, again, only has like 400 people living there.

Right.

And John Bray

is Gateway born and raised.

If you lived there for a considerable amount of time, as he did,

he knows you.

He knows your family.

And he likely has a general idea of what vehicles you and your family drive.

So when emergency personnel and services show up at the scene, we have ambulance, we have police, fire, everything show up at the scene.

He tells them he knew the truck and the truck's driver, James Appleton, who was shot and killed at the scene.

But he also knows the Chevy Malibu and its driver, who he says was Grant Harden.

It makes sense.

There's 430-ish people that live in this town, and this guy's lived there his entire life.

He knows these people, and he's telling the police that I grew up here.

I'm 100% certain that the guy who gestured for me to go around, the guy who he said he also saw fleeing the area after he heard this sound, the gunshot sound,

was Grant Harden

in his own white Chevy Malibu.

Again, this makes so much sense, a lot of sense, because Grant Harden's residence was on that same road, on Grand Ridge Road, the same road where this murder occurred.

So, who is Grant Harden?

Of course, the authorities right then and there are going to want to know where is he?

Grant Harden was the one-time police chief of Gateway, Arkansas.

In fact, he was the police chief for a very short stint.

This was in 2016.

By this time, after the gunshots, after emergency personnel are on the scene, Grant Harden is on his way to take his family out to dinner.

But that's what you do after you kill somebody.

You go get a steak dinner.

This is a very strange situation, and I'm still surprised that almost 900 episodes, and we still come across unique situations.

Everything.

And I don't, I don't know if this was some really lame attempt at trying to create an alibi.

Right.

If that's the fact, if that's the case, it's not going to work out because they know what time the 911 call comes in.

They know from the restaurant surveillance footage from the security cameras at the restaurant where Hardin and his wife and daughter go to, what time they arrive.

And that's not going to.

That's not going to remove him as a possible suspect because he's getting there after the 911 call is made.

So, one part of this, this is in a weird way, like it feels to me, given the description of what Grant Hardin's wife and daughter say after the fact, well, after the fact,

the way that Grant was behaving, this almost is like a last meal, right?

Maybe not a last meal for me forever, but a last meal together with my family.

Because during the course of dinner,

he's a little emotional and he's like repeating how much his wife and daughter mean to him.

And he's saying things like,

you know, you guys, I just want you to know you never have to worry.

If there was ever something happened to me, you guys are going to be okay.

Well, it's strange because him being in law enforcement, you think, I'm going to wave this vehicle on and I'm going to wait till they're out of sight.

It's a possibility that with this conflict, he didn't have the chance to wait so then he kills his victim and then he just has to take his chances of what is the eyewitness what did they see are they going to be able to identify me but again like you said such a small community even if they don't identify who the driver is you're going to be able to identify the car i mean it's not that common of a car and not that

and because we have details of it we know what color the car is and we know what model it is it's probably going to be pretty quick quick to figure out who's involved.

Well, and I like what you say there, Captain, because while it is a rather common car,

what we have here is a detailed description right down to the color, right?

You don't have the license plate, but the color separates that common car from all the other colors of that common car.

And then you have to compound that with the fact that this is a community of 430 people,

so it's less than 400 people that drive cars, right?

And it's less than 430 people that have a driver's license.

Now, one thing I will say about folks that live out in the country, they tend to own more cars than the family needs or more vehicles than the family needs.

But in that too, was the case with Grant Harden.

They, when law enforcement go to his property,

they find the Chevy Malibu parked in the driveway.

this white Chevy Malibu.

And one thing that's really damning about finding this vehicle there, not only the description matching the one from the scene, and as the captain points out, a limited number of these vehicles in the town of Gateway, Arkansas, just based off of sheer numbers, there's blood on this car.

This

shit up.

No, you can't make it up, but it's so disturbing to think about

when we get to the point.

When we get clean off the blood.

Right.

And I think that shows his level of haste.

He just simply wanted to get out of the house and maybe delay what he knew to be inevitable, his arrest.

Or he may simply not have noticed when he was trying to get out of there or trying to rush about, or maybe the adrenaline took him over.

Sometimes adrenaline can make you lose control of your body.

And maybe he didn't even see it.

And I apologize because this is so disturbing, but what police believe happened based off of the way that the victim is lying in the truck and

the trajectory of the blood spatter evidence that is found on the white Chevy Malibu, they believe that Grant Harden simply pulled up to the side

of James Appleton's work truck.

James Appleton's got the window down and that Harden just pointed a shotgun at the victim from within his car.

He's still sitting in the driver's seat.

He just pulls a shotgun on the guy, stays in his car, and shoots the guy who's in his truck.

And the force, a shotgun's very powerful.

The force of that, the blood ends up on top of the roof of this white Chevy Malibu.

Look, of course, they're going to have to do their due diligence, test it, make sure it's not animal blood, make sure that's actual human, then make sure that it does belong to the victim.

But

you're everything's adding up here.

And not only that, it's a freaking white car.

It couldn't, small town murder is rare, right?

But this couldn't, if you're a detective and you're showing up on the scene and you're walking to this guy's house, you get to the scene and a guy says, yeah, I know who did it.

I know who was in the other car.

I can't say 100% that he did it, but I'm guessing he did it because we were the only three people there.

Well, you'd think that some of the people in law enforcement might even know who Grant Harding is.

They do.

They do.

So we have because one, because it's a small town, but two, because anytime somebody works in law enforcement long enough, that they at least maybe there's a reputation or people hear about, oh, well, he used to be the chief of police.

This is what happened to him.

This is what he's doing now.

This has they have to know him, or at least some of them have to know him, because, as you said, they're in law enforcement as well.

Now, this is going to be a different outfit.

This is going to be Benton County that we'll be investigating because I can't believe that Gateway investigates murder as that town being so small.

It looks like they have typically have a police chief and then like one other officer.

So

the force is two people.

I'm the chief of police.

How many men are

under your command?

One.

Right, right.

And if he's not on the clock, it's just, it's, you know, it's just a one-man show.

But they would have to know him because he would be the police chief of a tiny town at one time within their county.

And the thing, too, with this case and this story, it's in the news a lot right now.

And we'll get into the reasons why here soon.

But one thing that I find a little annoying about this story is everyone keeps saying like

the motive for this murder is unknown.

We still don't know why Grant Harden killed James Appleton.

Seems almost like a road rage or something.

That sounds reasonable.

However,

I don't know why that it's repeated that there's, we don't know what the motive is.

It's a motiveless murder.

No, everybody in the town of Gateway said these two did not like each other.

They hated each other.

We've said a million times.

A lot of times these investigations are not that difficult because person A is angry at person B for some reason.

They know each other, and person A kills person B because they're angry with them for some reason.

Here you have exactly that.

Two people that know each other, they don't get along.

They have a history of not getting along.

And

one guy ends up dead.

The other guy ends up with blood on his car.

Blood on his car.

And now he's sitting out there at dinner with his wife and daughter telling them how much he loves them.

Where did he go out to eat?

Was it just a local place?

I wish I had a local place.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'm guessing it's

guessing it's not a not a franchise, but you, I don't know if you've seen the

security camera footage, but you see him and his wife and daughter walk in.

And of course, the poor wife and daughter have no clue what just happened, but you have

him, so they probably know he's an asshole.

Well, and Grant Harden is this very large, he's a very large dude.

And you see him in the surveillance footage of this restaurant.

He's like walking in.

He's He's like looking around.

Now, I know that that's a typical security guard, cop, deputy type move to always be aware of your surroundings.

But I don't know if he was looking for law enforcement or who he was looking for.

But he is very clearly looking around the restaurant before they are seated.

Well, he's not stupid.

I mean, look, especially if you work in law enforcement,

most cases get solved.

Most of the time, law enforcement gets the bad guy.

Sometimes it takes longer than others.

This guy, knowing it's a small town, knowing that there was an eyewitness or at least an ear witness, and then he drove past.

That's what baffles me.

You drove past the guy again

so he gets a better look at you.

It was, there was, you either go forward or you go backward.

Those are the only two ways out.

but you know, hey, better take my family to go get myself a McDouble.

Well, and I think we can piece together the motive rather quickly because we get later

his wife and his daughter would give interviews for newspapers and on camera and such.

They had a lot of great things to say about their husband and father,

but their recollection of this day, the two of them were inside the home.

Remember, it's near the end of the day.

And I don't believe that Grant Harden was actually working at this time.

He is outside working in the yard.

He's not working professionally.

He's working in their yard around the yard.

And at some point, he comes in and he says, hey, how about we all go out to dinner tonight?

But you guys get ready, take your time because I'm out piddling around in the yard.

And whenever you guys are ready, you just let me know and we'll take off and go get something good to eat.

He goes back outside, presumably to work in the yard, but then

the wife and kid later say, well, at some point, he comes back into the home and now he's completely changed.

He seems to be, you know, sweating.

He seems to be nervous.

He seems to be rushed.

And he's like, hey, let's go.

I said, you know, let's...

It's been too long.

We need to get out of here.

Let's go.

Let's go get something to eat.

Hurry up.

Hurry up.

He's rushing them.

He's rushing them at this time.

Now, the reason why he is unemployed

is because

he was removed as the chief of police of Gateway, Arkansas.

This was by the city council, which, of course, is made up by the mayor and several other people.

But one of the people that is on the city council, from my understanding here, Captain, is James Appleton.

So,

Grant Harden

loses his job.

Yeah,

Grant Harden loses his job because the city council says, you cannot be our police of our chief of police.

You cannot work for our police department.

You're unfit because he was doing some very strange stuff.

There was a lot of people that said that once he got that chief of police job, that the power went to his head.

And he just thought he was the king of gateway and that he could do whatever he wanted.

Everybody had to listen to him.

Everybody had to bow down to him.

And he was driving around and randomly pulling over vehicles for apparently no reason.

He would do this even when he was not on patrol, not on the clock.

He was policing the town at all hours of the day, just whenever he felt like it.

And at times,

he's Batman.

At times, he was pulling up his vehicle, his cop car, and

aiming a gun at the driver of the vehicle that he ordered over.

He did this multiple, multiple times.

So it's not too difficult to believe.

Yeah, not too difficult to believe that on this day, when he saw the guy that he didn't like, the guy that he despised, that he pulled up alongside of him and he did the same thing with a shotgun.

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All right, we are back.

Cheers, mates.

Cheers to you, Captain.

Cheers to the people in the back.

But like you were saying, this is a small community, and that lends itself to a different type of investigation here.

Yeah.

I also think that it amplifies his bad behavior when he was the chief of police.

Yeah, because who's going to stop him?

From my understanding, man, there's one officer that he's in charge of.

He was the chief for like four months.

Now, he did work as an officer for this outfit on and off for a good period of time.

And he worked for different law enforcement agencies during his law enforcement career.

But

as described by the mayor of Gateway.

Now, keep in mind, the mayor is the brother-in-law of the victim, but he said that

when

his brother-in-law, James Appleton, was out doing some work somewhere.

He works for the city.

You know, he's out doing work that is approved and authorized by the city.

Old chief Grant Harden pulls up to talk to him or bully him or force him out of the area.

And I believe he had to take his cop car off-road to get to wherever this work was being done.

And it tore up the car and tore up the mechanics of the vehicle.

And so Grant Harden comes in to

city council and says to James Appleton, hey, you got to fix my cop car.

because it got all damaged because I, yeah, he came out there to talk to him.

And James Appleton's like,

I'm not, I refuse to work on your car.

And nobody could make Appleton do it.

And so that is when my understanding is when the beef started between these two guys.

Now, maybe they didn't like each other for any number of reasons before this, but the mayor is on record saying they got up in each other's faces.

They looked like they were about to be in a fistfight.

And that's where he believes that this all started, this hatred between the two.

The mayor speculates that Hardin was probably out in his front yard working, as his family would later state, and happened to, everybody knows everybody.

Everybody knows each other's vehicles.

And he probably saw James Appleton drive by, and he hops in his car to either chase him down, or maybe even Appleton pulled into the driveway and said something nasty to Harden.

But whatever took place, I do believe that before he shot James Appleton, I do believe that Grant Harden had every intention of going out to dinner with his family and not for it to be a last meal situation.

I think it was just another day.

And I think that something happened that caused James Harden to lose his damn mind.

And anger and rage took him over.

And even though his cop sense told him he would get caught for this and arrested for this,

he couldn't stop it.

He couldn't.

He couldn't stop it.

Yeah, but also there's a problem in law enforcement.

And people that work in law enforcement will tell you this.

The worst worst thing you can do is hire somebody that is power hungry, that wants to have this job not to serve and protect, but because it's a power move.

It's the reason why guys with small dicks buy giant trucks and they want to feel a little bit powerful.

I would like to point out that I have a medium-sized truck.

Thank you very much.

So, let's look into his background a little bit.

So, Grant Hardin becomes the chief of police

for Gateway in 2016.

Four months later, city council forces him to resign.

Nine months after his resignation, Grant Hardin kills James Appleton.

I don't think, I don't know why there's such a mystery as to the motive here.

Now, we end up, as said, with James Appleton's blood on Grant Harden's vehicle.

There was a number of other items that they were going to use as evidence against this guy should this thing go to trial, but it doesn't have to go to trial because

we have the eyewitness, we have the blood.

I imagine you're going to have gunpowder residue.

A shotgun is going to put off an alarming amount of GSR

that would be present in the vehicle itself.

Now,

as you said, Grant Harden is no dummy.

He's brought in very quickly, and he simply tells the police, like, look, I have the right to remain silent.

I'm going to remain silent.

I'm not talking to you guys.

I'm getting a lawyer.

I'm not talking to you guys.

I don't care what you have.

They charge him with this murder, and he does fight back.

He gets an attorney.

He fights back.

One of the things they were trying to get removed was the blood evidence.

So they did a search warrant.

They issued a search warrant on Hardin's property and vehicles.

And they came out and they executed that search warrant that very night at like 4.30 in the morning.

And there's something on the Arkansas books that says that search warrants are to be executed during this timeframe of day, like this window of time.

And the search that they executed didn't fall within that window.

So they were trying to get all of that evidence tossed out because they showed up a little early.

Well,

my guess is

when you have a prime suspect who has a history of pulling guns on people and a history of law enforcement that you're you don't really want to be showing up when this guy could be armed to the teeth ready for a gun battle.

So they may have had to step outside of the box a bit on

serving.

But I would assume that because of the evidence, they would be able to charge him and he would be locked up during the time of the search.

It's just my right.

And that's what I'm saying.

He may have still been at the police station.

He still may have been at the sheriff's department when they were executing that search warrant.

Yeah.

And

they don't want him there.

If I'm the judge, I might be throwing out this evidence because when you're doing an investigation, you need to make sure you're crossing your T's and dotting your I's and your lowercase J.

The part of this is a judge signed off on this warrant, and they're going to execute it.

So you will have some hoops to jump through.

The short of it, though, Captain, is it doesn't even end up going to trial because Grant Harden pleads guilty to the murder charge.

I was going to say, I think some of that is because of his law enforcement background.

Hey, get them to make a deal.

I'm not going to spend the whole time in prison anyways.

If I can get a 15-year sentence, I might be out in seven.

Yes, that could be the case if you can get a lenient sentence.

But the issue is going to be it's first-degree murder, which we know carries a heftier sentence.

He gets 30 years, even though he pled guilty.

He does not give a reason in court for why he killed James Appleton.

Maybe that's why everybody circles around the motiveless murder.

Yeah, this guy's a real piece of shit.

Yeah, 30 years.

And from my understanding, he was going to have to do a minimum of 25 years before he would be even eligible for parole.

But not good.

You're going to prison and

you are ex-law enforcement and these guys in prison, they figure this stuff out pretty quickly.

And then it becomes an issue of are you in there for real because you did a really bad thing?

Or are you in there?

Are you like a spy?

Are you legitimately a prisoner if not?

But

this prison sentence is not going to go well for old Grant.

They enter his DNA into the CODIS database, and when they do so, they get a hit on an old cold case.

Now, this cold case dates all the way back to November of 1997.

This is an old cold case from Rogers, Arkansas.

It's a rape case, a sexual assault case, very violent one.

And the case had gone cold.

It's 20 years between this sexual assault case and the murder of James Appleton.

Right.

Right.

And it's another year removed because it wasn't until 2018 when this was working its way through the court system before he pled guilty.

Grant Harden would have been 28 back in 1997.

We have a school teacher who is working at the Frank Tillery Elementary School.

She arrived early.

This is a Sunday, so there's no class on Sunday.

She's in there.

She's doing extra work.

She says that she even locked because the building was practically empty.

The school was practically empty.

It was like her and the janitor that she locked her classroom door.

She was busy in there working for quite some time, and it's around 11 a.m.

when she decides to go to the restroom.

Now, prior to this, she says that she thought she heard someone at some point jiggle the handle, like check the door, but because it's locked, the door did not open, obviously.

Now, she probably

Even if she recognized this, she probably assumed it was the janitor or maybe another teacher or what have you.

She certainly didn't anticipate this.

Around 11 a.m., she leaves her classroom to go out to the teacher's lounge to use the restroom.

She would later tell police that when she enters this area, there's a man there.

She encounters a man there with a gun.

And at gunpoint, this man forces her back into the teacher's lounge.

where he assaulted her and then he takes her to another portion of the building.

I believe it was another classroom, not hers, and then assaults her again there.

And she described the man as wearing a stocking cap, like a ski mask, but he

it was sort of Golden State killer style.

Where

remember all the composite sketches we saw of Golden State, where he's always wearing some kind of mask or disguise.

And in some of them, he's wearing the when I hear the words ski mask or see the word ski mask, I assumed it's, it's like a bank robber or home invasion and the thing is pulled down and all you're seeing is eyes and the mouth.

This is more of he had it tucked up so it's only covering the top of his head down to some sunglasses.

So she can only see

the assailant's nose and mouth and chin.

And he's dressed in black.

One thing that was very strange she thought was he was shoeless he was wearing only socks he assaults her strange and well and what's even more strange at one point he says to her do you recognize my voice

and she says no and she even told the police i didn't recognize his voice but him asking me that makes me wonder if it was somebody that i know somehow had to be yeah

This case goes unsolved for a very long time.

They actually had some leads early on.

In fact, one lead they had was that there was a witness who said that they believed that they saw the rapist when fleeing the school hop into a blue pickup truck.

And later, that truck,

they believed they had located it.

And when they speak to the owner of that vehicle, they said we figured out very quickly that this wasn't our suspect because the guy was significantly older than

what our suspect was.

And

so this case goes cold, not for a lack of effort or for a lack of

persons working the case.

I don't think they had any really great leads here or any great suspects, let's say.

But this DNA evidence would change all of that.

Now,

here's where we need to give the

officers and the investigators a big kudos here.

So they did something that was kind of unprecedented at the time in Arkansas.

Now, unfortunately, back in 1997, the laws were different back then.

There was a six-year statute of limitations on rape cases.

It was rape back then was declared to be a class one felony.

So all class one felonies, regardless of the specifics of the charge, it's six years from the report date date to make an arrest or to issue an arrest warrant for a suspect.

So you have six years to do one of those two things, make an arrest or get an arrest warrant for a suspect.

I'm just going to say this.

It's so stupid.

So stupid that we put a time limit on anything.

You commit a crime.

You should be held responsible for the rest of your damn life.

If it takes them 30 years years to solve it, so what?

Yes.

I mean,

I'm fine with statute of limitations on crimes.

I mean, somebody shouldn't be picked up for shoplifting 45 years after the fact.

But

that's way different than a sexual assault.

Well, no, duh.

But what I'm saying is that

if men, look, if men were being raised.

You can get mad, but this has changed.

This has been changed throughout every state in the United States.

And at one time, there was a statute of limitations on murder.

What I'm saying is societies get smarter.

Communities get smarter.

And then when they do, they band together and they push these laws and change laws and make change for good happen.

And that certainly has happened with rape cases.

I think it was in the 90s here in the state of Ohio where they removed the statute of limitations on rape cases.

Now, in this situation, they are running out of time as this case goes cold.

And these good officers, they come up, they see what another state had done.

It was

what was called a John Doe warrant.

And so they go and they get issued a John Doe warrant for an arrest of the perpetrator of this rape before

it could reach.

the deadline of the statute of limitations.

And I mean, they did this days before it would have expired.

Very smart.

Now,

this is very smart.

And this is very interesting here, the way that this plays out.

This was something I was familiar with John Doe warrants, but I wasn't familiar with how it all came about.

So a John Doe warrant, simply, to put it in its most simple form, is a warrant that is issued by a judge for the arrest of a person who committed a specific crime on this date against this victim, committed this crime.

And we know the person who did it, we just don't know their name.

Well, how do we know the person that did it?

Well, in this case, we have the DNA of the perpetrator.

So,

whatever person, whatever man, John Doe out there matches this DNA is the perpetrator.

So, you know who the individual is, in a sense, you just don't know their name.

So, they get this John Doe warrant for whoever committed this rape in 1997 in Rogers, Arkansas.

A John Doe warrant comes from the state of Wisconsin.

This was Wisconsin in 2003.

They actually

had

a John Doe warrant issued prior, years prior, and then it held up in court in 2003.

Now, the way that this goes, this is pretty fascinating because much of the genesis of the John Doe warrant stems from a case out of Wisconsin.

Bless them for coming up with this very smart legal maneuver.

So, this takes place in Wisconsin, 1994.

On December 7th, 1994, an unknown male accosted a 15-year-old girl at a bus stop in Milwaukee.

He forced her at gunpoint into a nearby lot.

There, he tied her hands behind her back, covered her eyes, and led her to a car.

He pushes her into the car, drives a short distance, stops and threatens her life, and sexually assaults the girl, the young girl.

This is a horrible, horrible crime, but he did let the victim go.

The victim runs home, and a family member calls the police.

The victim was taken immediately to a sexual assault treatment center, and the state crime lab was able to develop a DNA profile for the unknown male suspect.

Now, Wisconsin was facing the same thing only earlier than what the folks in Arkansas would later be experiencing with the statute of limitations on a class one felony.

So on December 4th, 2000, three days before the opportunity to get a conviction would expire, the state of Wisconsin charged a person that they named as John Doe number 12 with kidnapping and four counts of first-degree sexual assault.

The DNA profile was included in the arrest warrant.

So eventually, this would lead them to a person named Bobby Dabney, who they later arrested based off of the DNA evidence on that particular case in Wisconsin.

And then, as I had already said, in 2003, the Court of Appeals decision was instrumental in establishing the use of DNA profiles in John Doe warrants because it upheld in court, right?

His attorneys were saying,

this bothers me, maybe as much as the statute of limitations bothers you i don't know but this bothers me because his defense wasn't oh i didn't commit the sexual assault i didn't commit the kidnapping his defense was that it was against his rights that they were charging him you know that they had this actual john doe warrant for him right it it's not hey i'm innocent and all you know by the way that don't use this

this instrument to convict me.

No, it's like,

I don't know how much he even challenged it.

He's just, his attorneys are just saying, you can't use this instrument, toss it out of court.

And the judge didn't see it that way.

So this leads to additional charges for Grant Harden, who now gets an additional, I believe it was an additional 20 years for the cold case, the rape charge.

And this was a big deal in Rodgers, and it was a big deal for that school and that community.

And it should be.

This was a case that,

sexual assault case that had haunted the community and nobody had new and interestingly enough though when you apply hindsight to that case you can go okay well yeah this guy

the removing purposely going into the school with no shoes on because she told the detective she's like one thing that was really odd was i noticed he wasn't wearing shoes and his his

socks were covered in dirt so he this guy took off his shoes before entering the building yeah meaning he did there was a way to get shoe prints and he didn't want to leave shoe prints.

Also, distorts your height.

Shoe prints are great evidence, and it's something that's often overlooked or forgotten about by the perpetrators of these crimes.

But that's something that a cop would know.

So, why is this case we keep referencing at the start of the show that

this case is in the news again?

And it's in the news, not because they solve another cold case with his DNA evidence, but they probably will one day.

You know,

that's a good question to ponder because he lives so close to the border of two other states.

Right.

And he did commit this sexual assault at gunpoint on this poor teacher.

Have they run, you know, CODIS is, from my understanding, a national database, but there's a lot of databases out there.

And I don't know.

I'm with you.

Based off of the murder and the sexual assault, I'm curious if there would be anything that they could tie him to in Missouri or Oklahoma.

But the reasons for this to be back in the news is because

Grant Harden has recently escaped from prison.

So he was in.

He was imprisoned at the facility in Calico Rock, Arkansas.

As we said, this is about a three-hour drive east of the location that we've been discussing so far here today.

The way that this played out is he's 56 years old this year,

and he was being held at the North Central Unit in Calico Rock, Arkansas.

On May 25th,

he

slipped out.

He managed to get out of this prison, and his nickname is the Devil in the Ozarks.

and that is a name that

max gave him when they max being hbo when they did a one-hour documentary about this guy's crimes

now this documentary came out a couple years ago before he escaped in may of 2025 but the way that this plays out is he

He was in this area.

It's basically like a Sallyport area where you have a double gate, right where one gate opens up you walk in the gate closes behind you before the next gate opens up

so this guy is on the run

we don't have to spend any time telling you how dangerous he is he's got a law enforcement background he's committed murder he's committed sexual assault and he's desperate

He's desperate.

It seems like this guy, because you can sometimes get jobs within the prison, that he got a job, I believe.

He had a kitchen job.

Yeah, he had a kitchen job.

And they think that maybe because of that job and maybe because of his interaction with

some of the staff, that he was able to basically create like a makeshift uniform.

So when he,

like you said, these double gates, he basically was carrying something out and they didn't bother to identify him, you know, you know, facially identify him.

They just identified the person with a uniform and and let him out and um as of today I mean again guys very dangerous and like you said desperate

but they're searching that that that area still

within you know a couple I'm sure

what

I'm sure they're

searching within a couple miles of the prison but statewide manhunt statewide manhunt was issued that same day.

But I just saw a report where the U.S.

Marshals, or one of the U.S.

Marshals that's working on the case, is like, based on all the evidence that he sees or the type of individual he believes Grant Hardin to be, he's like,

it's most likely that he's not in this state anymore.

Yes.

And so here,

do you want to get into my speculation or what I'm fearful of?

Start with the speculation.

Okay, so speculation, oftentimes, more times than not, prison escapes that I've reviewed, they have some kind of help.

And

I'm not saying that that happened in this case.

It could just be malfeasance, or it could just be somebody dropped the ball and didn't, you know, really effed up.

But oftentimes, they have some kind of help.

And so that's where you kind of have to analyze this kitchen job.

I can't speak to that.

I can say that from my general knowledge of prisons, usually if you have a kitchen job, you do have access to certain areas and certain utensils and tools that other inmates may not have access to.

But what we do know is just like the captain said, he's spotted, Harden is spotted leaving the prison nonchalantly.

And the outfit that he is wearing, without seeing a close-up on this, it appears to me that he is in a police officer's uniform or a correction officer's uniform.

That's what it looks like to me.

And so the thought is, and he's wheeling like a little utility cart.

And so the thought is that he simply put on this getup, he has this disguise on, walks up, and whoever was in charge of gate A and gate B that he walked through

must have at a glance identified this guy as law enforcement or corrections officer and simply opened up the gates and then he left.

Now, one good thing is they seem to recognize that he was missing rather quickly.

So he only had about 30 minutes from the reports that are coming out.

I want to say from the underline that, from the reports that are coming out, because there'll be a full investigation on this escape.

And regardless if it's somebody who dropped the ball or somebody who

assisted this guy, they need to be, there needs to be disciplinary action that takes place.

We can all agree on that.

Now, he walks out of there.

If he had help on the inside, which is not too far-fetched, again, we've seen it in many prison escapes.

It's also not too far-fetched to believe that he may have had help on the outside.

Now, if he had help on the outside, I'm talking about things with provisions, right?

Transportation, money, food, what have you, housing, shelter, what have you.

I'm a little less fearful of what I think could be a very horrible situation if he has help on the outside, because he would be a little less desperate and he would be able to distance himself further from the prison.

And look, the further he gets out of this, away from this prison doesn't necessarily mean that it shrinks the likelihood that he's apprehended at some point.

These escapees, the apprehension rate is...

very, very high.

They're almost always caught eventually.

On a long enough timeline, they are most, almost always caught.

caught what scares the hell out of me is that he didn't have any help and he got out and he was desperate they only had he's got 30 minutes the average male and look he's he's an older guy he's bigger the the average male

running away he's walking away yeah and and the average male walking i believe i think it's like 13 minutes a mile so he's not very if he's just on foot he's not that far away when they are aware that he's missing Now, that doesn't mean they're going to find him right away, obviously, but what I'm getting at is they didn't find him.

So I'm worried that because that uniform that he's wearing or that outfit that he's wearing looks enough like a police officer's uniform that he could have knocked on a door, somebody would have opened up their door and he could have forced his way in.

That is what terrifies me because that's going to be a very horrible situation if that is what in fact took place.

Now,

in regard to the idea that he might still be in the state of Arkansas,

he's been gone for days, right?

We don't know exactly where this guy is.

He could be out of the state.

If he is still in the state, one thing that the searchers and law enforcement and the marshals keep pointing out is that there are

at least 2,000 registered or known caves in the state of Arkansas.

So it seems to be that there is a lot of thought and consideration that he may be hiding out in these different caves, maybe moving about or has selected one and has hunker down there.

But if that's 2,000 registered or known caves, that means that there's more caves out there than just the 2,000.

So

we're keeping an eye on this.

But law enforcement also did release

because he'd be on the run.

We don't know what he has access to.

So chances are are his appearance would be changing so his hair would have grown out a little bit his his beard might start growing out so they did release um

here's a picture of grant harden as we know him and here's what he possibly could look like doesn't look much different obviously with a beard and a little bit of hair on the side yeah he's a bald white man he's he's a large white man and as

we're talking you know as the captain's pointing out here

yeah, we're getting multiple pictures of him that's being released, and some are with facial hair, some are without.

It's

and he's possible that

he gets caught before we release this episode.

Hopefully.

I would like for him to be caught while these microphones are still hot.

Now,

but here's the problem, though, is a lot of the people that are reporting on this,

they're just saying some silly shit.

Does this guy have some insider information because he worked for law enforcement?

Yes.

Is he going to view life differently because he's coming from it?

Go back to the rape case.

Removes his shoes so there's no footprints.

Okay.

Yeah.

He has some insider information, but some of these news stations are going,

he must have extensive knowledge of

how they search databases and

drones, extensive knowledge on drones.

He was a chief of police of a, like you said, a two-man department.

I'm sure they didn't have a whole drones unit.

Well, that's why they only had two men because they had so many drones that they didn't need.

Well, so to go back,

we can review his

law enforcement career here real quick.

He did work for the Fayetteville Police Department, which is a large police department that he started working with them in 1990.

But he's fired.

This is one thing we should point out here, because a lot of the news outlets are saying the speculation is that he's got help on the outside.

Okay, that's fair speculation.

However, I'll say this.

If he does have help on the outside, it's coming from family or friends.

And he's not described as a very nice guy.

So I can't believe that he has a whole lot of friends.

And

the thing here is that would be easy to pick up on by law enforcement.

They are certainly vetting all those people.

That is not a problem.

I think that if a friend or a family member had assisted him in any way, they are on that breadcrumb trail like

flies on shit, my friend.

Now, the thing that I want to make sure that I point out here that when we go through his law enforcement career, this is not a guy that was liked by his fellow officers.

So he's not getting help from anybody in law enforcement.

I will say that and wager a Franklin on that right away.

As said, he worked for the Fayetteville Police Department in in 1990.

He was fired in 1991.

To keep it nice and short and sweet, he was determined to be unfit to be an officer.

He was then hired by the Huntsville Police Department in 1991.

He left.

The thing here is some of these jobs he leaves voluntarily.

Now, we need to point out that he's a lot of times it's because they're giving him the opportunity: hey,

we're going to play nice here and you can resign now or we can fire you later.

So he works for Huntsville Police Department again for only for less than one year's time.

Then a year after that, in 1993, after he leaves Huntsville, he is hired by the Aureka Springs Police Department, where he's fired three years later.

He made it a full three years at that one.

He was fired for excessive force and for lying on a police report.

It's around this time, shortly after this, about a year after this, in fact, that he commits commits the sexual assault at the school.

And then he begins a job as a constable for the Benton County District 1 sheriff's office.

That's in 2009.

He is then hired in 2016 to be the police chief in Gateway, Arkansas.

That constable job, while he held that for a considerable amount of time,

I believe it was for close to six or seven years.

I think that it's titled constable for one.

That term can mean a lot of different things in different areas and different lines of work.

But here in Benton County, I believe that it's kind of a, for the most part, like a voluntary job or it's a term job.

And I don't think the pay is real great.

I'm pointing that out only to suggest what I believe is that he was able to actually hold this job down considerably longer than the other jobs.

Because

if you're not paying the guy a whole lot of money, you're probably not going to force him out unless he does something really terrible, right?

Like unless he does something that fully warrants getting rid of a guy that's doing a job for peanuts.

Probably a position that's hard to fill.

But as said, he takes the police chief job.

That only lasts like four years.

And then he is unemployed up until the time that he kills James Appleton.

And then he goes away to prison.

And unfortunately, it wasn't forever because we now know that he is out.

He's currently on the run as of this recording.

And we are hoping and praying that he is caught, located, and apprehended very, very soon.

Convicted murderer and former Arkansas Police Chief Grant Hardin is back in police custody.

This after a 13-day manhunt.

Shortly after he was captured, Hardin's former boss at the Eureka Springs Police Department, Earl Hyatt, told News Nation it's a good thing authorities caught him when they did.

He's a violent individual and, you know,

my fear was that if he felt like it would be in his best interest to help him escape, he would have hurt somebody.

News Nation's Mills Hayes has been following this story closely, joins us now on the ground in Arkansas with the very latest Mills.

Hey, Kelly, well, people here in Calico Rock are breathing somewhat of a sigh of relief, but remember, this is a small community.

And one person even told me that it's not a matter of if people here have guns, but whether or not how many or what kind they have.

And so, a lot of people we spoke with throughout the week said that they weren't that concerned,

but they are really grateful that he has been captured now.

You guys can see the first images of him being apprehended by law enforcement.

He was taken into custody by Border Patrol, their tactical unit out of West Texas.

And this is a group that is taught and trained to search and find individuals like this.

And we spoke to some people who live here who say that they are somewhat frustrated though, because they feel like they were telling local police and local sheriff's deputies that something was off in

certain areas.

areas of town and they don't feel like they were listened to until Border Patrol came in.

Now we did speak, one of our local affiliates with one of the women who lives right next to where they found Hardin.

And this is what she had to say last night.

After the Border Patrol showed up today, all of a sudden

trucks came from everywhere and SUVs.

There was,

I wouldn't say there's 20 or 30 of them.

I don't know for sure, but they all took off down this way.

And next thing we know, they're hauling Grant Hardin out from back here out of the woods.

And Hardin has a long past in law enforcement throughout the years, especially in northwest Arkansas.

I spoke with some people who live in the communities where he used to be a constable, Benton County.

And they tell me that he was the kind of person who was supposed to be preventing crime, but instead he was creating crime.

And so a lot of frustration there.

But as you guys can see, that capture by Border Patrol yesterday is definitely a welcome sign for the people who live here in this community Kelly yeah you would certainly imagine so what happens Mills to Hardin now

Well, he's been transferred to a another Arkansas Department of Corrections unit.

He's in the Varner union and I'm told that he is in the Super Max unit of that specific prison.

And that's about 30 miles south of Pine Bluff.

For those of you who don't know the area, it's a couple hours south of where we are right now, but he is going to be in a Super Max facility.

So a much more guarded area than where he was here in the North Central unit, just a couple of miles away, Kelly.

Want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage each and every week.

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