Crime Weekly - S3 Ep306: Crime Weekly News: Ex-Police Chief Escapes Prison in Cop Disguise

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Former Gateway, Arkansas, police chief, Grant Hardin, fled from the North Central Unit prison in Calico Rock on May 25, 2025. Hardin, convicted of the 2017 murder of James Appleton and a 1997 rape, managed to escape by wearing a makeshift law enforcement uniform, raising serious concerns about prison security protocols. We're coming to CrimeCon Denver! Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your tickets! https://www.crimecon.com/CC25 Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod 

Hey everyone, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Lavassar. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. So today, as you can probably tell from the title, this is not something we hear about every day. Prison escapes and then it being a former police officer. As a former officer myself, I can tell you that this is a scary situation because this person knows our tactics and techniques. They know our policies and procedures. They know how we operate. They know how we think.

And this is not just a police officer. This is a former police chief. So what am I talking about? Well, Grant Hardin, a disgraced former chief, convicted of murder and rape, just escaped from an Arkansas prison. He allegedly dressed up like a cop and rolled a cart right out the front of the facility. There's actually a picture of it. You can see it.

I don't know how this happens. So Stephanie, I wanted to ask you, you see the situation, you know about law enforcement, obviously there's some bad actors in law enforcement already, but as a civilian, when you see something like this, are you more concerned knowing that this person is not only what they're capable of, but also their background?

Is that more concerning to you as someone who's out there conducting their business on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, yeah, of course. And I want to address one thing quickly because you always say, if criminals were smart, they wouldn't get caught. It's true. Most of the time, we're looking for the mistakes.

Right, some criminals are smart, at least in this area, right? Or at least knowledgeable. Knowledgeable enough to know how to not make the mistakes that would get most criminals caught. And if you look at this, according to reports, like you said, Hardin had disguised himself in a makeshift law enforcement uniform,

and then he pushed a cart filled with utility materials to slip past security. Now officials have confirmed he wasn't wearing any official Department of Corrections gear and all of that equipment, at least for their prison, was accounted for, so like, where did he get this stuff from? It was a makeshift, so he kind of just,

he was able to look enough like a Corrections officer in order to trick the actual Corrections officers. So that's concerning, even without a legitimate uniform. And I also wanna talk a little bit about his history because it's very disturbing. I think this person might be a psychopath, to be honest with you. He's a scary person, and I'm gonna do this a couple times

throughout the episode. This will be the first time. So the reason we're covering this is, in many cases, there's an opportunity to talk about the history and learn from it. This episode today is more of a Bolo, a be on the lookout. So throughout this episode, I'll keep doing this, but right now, if you're on YouTube, the wanted poster is up on the screen,

but for everybody on the audio version here, Grant Hardin was born December 6th, 1968. He's 56 years old. He's a white male, approximately six feet tall, 259 pounds. So again, if you're on audio, do a quick Google search so you can see what he looks like, especially if you're from that area, we need to be on the lookout for this guy. And if you do happen to see him, do not approach as Stephanie's going to tell you about right now, his history. This is a dangerous individual who's out on the loose and probably has no plans on going back to prison and will do everything in his power to ensure that doesn't happen, including taking someone's life again. So just wanted to put that in there, sprinkle it throughout the episode. That's the first time I'll do it again. But if you're from there, be on the lookout. Law enforcement needs your help.

look out law enforcement needs your help. So Harden's criminal history is as follows. In 2017 he pleaded guilty to the first degree murder of 59 year old James Appleton, a city employee. Appleton was shot in the head while sitting in his car speaking on the phone with his brother-in-law who was the mayor at the time. Now while serving his sentence for that murder, DNA evidence linked Harden to a 1997 rape case involving an elementary school teacher in Rogers, Arkansas. This victim was assaulted at gunpoint in a school bathroom during a community event, and Hardin was subsequently convicted and received an additional 50-year sentence. So once again, like I said, I think he's kind of a psychopath. I don't really understand how you could behave

as a law enforcement officer. You'd have to wear a mask. You'd have to wear a mask of somebody who actually cared about justice, who actually had a distaste for crime and criminals. And this person was a criminal disguised as somebody who was trying to stop criminals. And so who knows?

Not only that, the leader of this organization, right? He was the chief of police. Now, I don't know how big the police department was where he works. There's some departments out there where all they have is a chief and one patrolman. So it doesn't hold the same weight, but nevertheless. Well, he was the police chief of Gateway, Arkansas,

which is a small town near the Missouri border. So probably not a huge, probably not a huge police department, but you know what this kind of area, the Missouri, Arkansas area is known for is there's a lot of drugs, right? A lot of things happening that I guarantee you this guy looked the other way on, and not only that, most likely took part in facilitating it

and benefited financially from it. Yeah, and I did a quick search here. It doesn't look like the police department statistics where he worked are available. So that just tells me it's probably, like you said, a very small department because most larger agencies disclose that information, how many sworn and non sworn personnel you have for budgetary reasons, for transparency. So this might be a very small PD. Either way, still very alarming. Yeah, absolutely. many sworn and non sworn personnel you have for budgetary reasons for transparency. So

this might be a very small PD either way still very alarming. Yeah, absolutely. And you have to wonder, you know, what kind of what kind of things happened under his tenure? Yeah. Well, we're going to the way on. Yeah. Yeah. How many criminals got away with things? How many you know, how many people were put in danger because he just truly doesn't care about crime happening because he is part of crime happening. Yeah, that's the most alarming thing about a lot of these cases,

including I would say Karen Reed, right? It's not necessarily the crime itself or even the victim in many cases. It's the fact that individuals who are put in these powerful positions to take away the freedom of other human beings are committing crimes like this, or even having conversations like we saw with Proctor

on text messaging. They're supposed to be the best of us. So it's a complete break of trust from the community to law enforcement because the reality is there are people working right now who should not be police officers. So when you're given actual examples of it, it's alarming, it's for alarming for you,

it's alarming for me, and that's why I take such an interest in it because I'm trying to show that there are good guys out there, and it's difficult to do that with things like this and things like, you know, even in other cases where they didn't kill someone, but they're still just very unprofessional. So whenever you see something like this, obviously the concern today is to find him as fast as

possible. But also the bigger macro perspective, as you're alluding to is this guy is in a position where he was involved in other crimes with, you know, that he might have been investigating and how did he conduct those investigations if this was the mindset he was approaching them with? How deep does this run? I mean, even if it's something as small as, and then the people are sure.

Yeah, the people of his community, I'm sure will agree. Even if it was something as small as pulling somebody over for a DWI and maybe this person is close to him or knows somebody and then he's like, ah, just let him go. And now this person gets in the car again and kills somebody because he keeps driving drunk. Even if it's something as simple as drugs and, you know, this guy Hardin is getting kickbacks and then you have parents whose children in the community are dying from drug overdoses because he's not doing anything to stop drugs. Even if it's not violent

crime, even if it's not letting murderers and rapists go. Not to that extreme. Right. It still has such a negative effect on the community and the people whose tax dollars paid to employ him. And not only that, who looked at him as the arm of the law that they could trust to keep things in order while they go about their business

and they contribute to society in their own ways. He was supposed to keep up his end of the deal, and didn't know he didn't and it boils down to one word Ethics right everything comes down to ethics and the discretion that officers have I we joke about Taking a coffee right for free and you joked about it Have you ever done it before and it's it's deeper than that It's bigger than that because if someone is willing to take a coffee and I'm not being a hypocrite, I've definitely taken a coffee or a donut and not paid for after offering

multiple times to pay for it. But to not over, not to make it extreme cause I'll have cops in the comments coming back at this. You have to ask where the line is. Does it stop at coffee and donuts? Or does it go to the point of like you're saying where if I know the person, even though they committed the same crime that I just arrested someone else for and donuts or does it go to the point of like you're saying where if I know the person even though they committed the same crime that I just arrested someone else for that I didn't know a week prior if I'm not black and white in my discretion that's a problem it's either yay or nay it's binary it shouldn't it shouldn't be subjective in most cases so there isn't a gradient

and this is obviously an extreme case you have a rapist and a murderer I mean that's a I don't think that most people out there in that position are doing that but it still poses the question If there's one of them out there, how many more are there over a million police officers in the country? He got arrested after a 2017 Murder, right, but then they find his dna linked to a 1997 rape case so from 1997 to 2017, 20 years, this man sat as a police officer knowing what he had done to that teacher,

that elementary school teacher in that bathroom during a community day. And now every time a rapist comes across his desk, is he looking at this person as a bad person? Or is he looking at this person as, oh, he's just like me Yeah, what do he do wrong? He has the right to take that you're not wrong and I want to qualify here Just so we're this is coming out on wednesday

So this is a few days later than when we're recording it and as far as the escape itself So when you're going to see this video or when you're going to hear this audio, you're going to be looking at May 28th, right? The escape happened on May 25th at approximately 3 40 PM. So there could be, I'm hoping by the time this audio and video comes out, he's already been captured. So we'll have an update in the description. If that is the case. Um, but we want to put this information out there as fast as we can, but with turnaround and editing, that's just the quickest we can do it. So there may be an

update, I hope there is, before this all comes out. And if there's not, understand that he's still on the loose, and understand that, like Derek said, you should be on the lookout for this person, and we will put the appropriate phone numbers in the description box and in the show notes to call. The wanted person is up there. Yeah. And so I want to change gears for one second because Yes, I want you to be on the lookout, but how are we gonna catch them? And when I say how are we I'm talking about police officers, right? You guys are part-time detectives as well. We got to put our thinking caps on so as I said at the top of the show

this person thinks like us and when I mean, we're all investigators at this point. And I almost think the approach has to be reverse, right? We have to think what they're going to think we're going to do and do the opposite. So you have to be almost unorthodox in your approach. Yeah, we're going to do the traditional stuff. We're going to monitor his friends and family. We're going to look for a digital footprint. We're going to look at cameras.

We're going to try to track him down through that but if that doesn't work you have to anticipate what he's going to do and Understand his mindset because that's how you catch the bad guy is putting yourself in their shoes Well, this bad guy happens to have been a cop So, you know what he's gonna be thinking, you know how he's gonna approach it You know that he's going to try and avoid where we would be roadblocks, etc So we have to go to avoid where we would be, roadblocks, et cetera. So we have to go to places where we wouldn't look usually.

We have to think outside the box because more than likely- Well, do you think cops have to think that way or do cops have to kind of look at it as in, if I'm a cop and this is me escaping for prison and I knew where to go where the cops wouldn't look, that's where I should go. That's where I gotta go. That's what I'm saying. So you have to think about how you would do it

and do the opposite. So what we would normally implement, as far as tactics and strategies, what we would think you don't have to do or what wouldn't be a priority, I would make that the priority, right? I would look at the map and I would say, if this were me and I didn't know

that this other person was involved in law enforcement before, this is what I would normally do. Because more than likely that's what Hardin's going to be doing. He's going to be looking at it from the perspective of law enforcement and saying, more than likely, this is what they're going to do based on my experiences. So we have to implement an unorthodox approach with him so that we can maybe catch him sleeping, maybe catch him lacking in the sense that he's going to try and avoid areas of concern that law enforcement's going to be monitoring and therefore we have to try to do something innovative to catch him because

it's not saying he's smart, right? Like you had said, if they were smart we wouldn't catch them. It's about being knowledgeable. He knows what we would normally do and therefore more than likely he's going to avoid those situations. I also think it's important that they look who he was talking to in the months before his arrest because it is very likely he might have some help on the outside. It could be a drop bag there for him with cash, even a fake ID, something, a disguise. You know this guy could put on a wig, he's bald in the picture so he could put on like a toupee

Change his appearance put some glasses on have a fake ID have some cash He could be out of the country as we speak by the way yeah complete cuz if if I'm him I'm not staying in the country. That's the way you got to go. He's got to try to get to the border for sure He's got to try to get to the border because that's the only chance he has at this point And he does have a distinctive look if you're seeing it on YouTube. So he's definitely going to try to change his appearance. I would say at this point, he's growing out his facial hair. He's doing different things to try to alter his appearance. He's not going to be eating a ton, so he's probably going to lose weight pretty rapidly. So these are the things you have to consider as you're going forward

with this investigation. Yeah. And I just don't see somebody like him making the attempt to escape. This wasn't just something he was like, huh, woke up one day and said, I think I'll escape today. Nope. He planned this. 100%.

There's no way he doesn't have a plan about what he does and where he goes next. He's not sitting around thinking, okay, I just got out, now what do I do? You're right. He has a plan of approach and time is of the essence. He's probably, if I'm him, I'm moving as fast as I can because they're creating boundaries,

they're creating perimeters and they're trying to search those areas. You have to get outside those virtual perimeters so that they're searching a grid and theoretically they're searching a grid that you've already passed. That's, you have to stay ahead of them because if you sit down,

I don't know if this is gonna apply to certain people here, but fortnight, right? You have this big area and the map starts to get smaller and you want to be inside that circle as it gets smaller This is the opposite You want to be outside that perimeter you want to be outside that circle so that when they think okay Based on his you know walking distance how far he could go. This is the amount of square footage. We have to cover You want to try to be outside of that grid patterns have to cover. You wanna try to be outside of that. Grid patterns, things like that.

You wanna try to be above that. So when they start looking, they're wasting time in an area that you've already passed through. Yeah, I think he's just gonna get the hell out of the country. Honestly, cause he's knowing like, and please understand, he's got nothing to lose at this point.

He's in prison for life. He has zero to lose. That's what I'm saying. He'll kill anybody he can to get away. If he needs to get transportation, he'll kill somebody to get transportation. If he needs money, he'll kill somebody to get money. If he thinks that somebody's looking at him weird

and sees that person lift their phone to their head and he just in his mind thinks they're acting sketchy, he will kill that person. So also be on the lookout. But be on the lookout from, if you see this guy and you think you see him, don't just pick your phone up and start calling the police. Get out of earshot, act completely normal.

Don't make him see that you've noticed him or spotted him. Just, you know, don't be suspicious. Don't be suspicious. Yeah, and one other area of concern that we should all be considering, especially when it comes to safety, I'm talking about the men and women in law enforcement right now as well as they're trying to hunt this guy down. Someone like this who has a very dark past they have to know they are they're always

looking over their shoulder and in many instances people like this will have a bug out bag. If they get caught or they feel like they're about to get caught they'll put a bag together with money, potentially a passport, a gun, ammunition, whatever, right? Something where they can be on the move for a short period of time and have the things they need. So he may have a grab bag or a bug out bag somewhere that was buried or something that he knows about

that he may be trying to get to. He was from Arkansas, he was in a prison in Arkansas. I don't know how far it would be away from it, but if it's close enough, he may be trying to get to that. So you could be looking at this saying, well, how much of a danger is he? He's an overweight guy, he's in his 50s, whatever, right? He may have a gun. He may have had a gun out there hidden for something just like this. Maybe not escaping prison, but if he had to avoid law enforcement because he knows what he's done in the past So he knows it's just they're one day away from capturing him. He's probably always Considering that element so that is also something we have to consider when you're going forward not only as a civilian

But as law enforcement we have to consider him at this point armed and dangerous. Yeah I also want to point out first of all This guy's a creep. Okay in both of his mugshots. He's got a smirk on okay at this point armed and dangerous. Yeah, I also want to point out, first of all, this guy's a creep, okay? In both of his mug shots, he's got a smirk on. Okay, do you know who he looks like, by the way? Who does he look like? If you nail this, if you read into my brain right now and figure out who he looks like,

people, put him up on the screen right now, who is it? When I say it's going to shock you, unless you haven't seen the show, and that would be shocking in and of itself. He looks like every, you know, middle-aged. Okay, if you're watching this video, pause it right now. Do not cheat. Who does he look like?

Okay, we're back. The Penguin, Colin Farrell. Tell me he doesn't without the scar. Now you cannot unsee it. Yes. Right? Yeah, absolutely. It's him.

Especially the right photo. That is the it. Yes. Right? Yeah, absolutely. It's him, especially the right photo. That is the penguin. Yeah. And you can see, you both see both photos, right? Yeah, I can see both of them. There's two different mug shots. He's got the same exact like one-sided mouth smirk in both pictures.

He's a psychopath. And I also wanted to point out that he only actually served as Gateway's police chief. They only have a population of 436 people. Yeah, so it's a small PD. He only served as their police chief for four months in early 2016. But before that, he had a checkered history at small police departments that dated back to the early 90s. So he was fired multiple times,

he was accused of excessive force, poor performance, even falsifying police records. So this is a person who's been waving red flags since he popped on the scene. And somehow, because of whatever, falling through the cracks, I don't know, he kept getting jobs at small police departments and then would have to be fired

or he would have issues there and then he still gets a job as Gateway's police chief with that kind of history? Gatway, I don't care. Zero police chiefs are better than that, dude. I agree. Well, one more time, just so everyone's aware, Grant Harden is 56 years old, Caucasian male.

And he looks like a penguin. Looks like the penguin, approximately six feet tall, 259 pounds. He escaped from the North Central Unit in Arkansas on May 25th. It's Calico Rock. Calico Rock. OK, that was on May 25th, approximately 340 p.m. If you happen to see an individual that that looks like him, do not approach. Be a good witness, be a good note taker. Any information you can gather, gather it, try to keep an eye on them if you can,

but contact local authorities because local authorities, state authorities and federal authorities, including the department of corrections in Arkansas, they're all working this case. They're looking for tips. They may already have some tips and they're tracking them. So that little piece of information that you have may just put another pin on the map. So if you have something, call in, but above all else, do not approach and stay safe. Yes, absolutely. Any final words from you about this scumbag?

That's it. I'm just looking at him. The penguin? I really get such bad vibes from his face. For anybody who hasn't watched the penguin Shannon Do me a favor throw up a side-by-side of his mugshot in the penguin people need to see this It's a good show by the way amazing show Colin Farrell Leave a blow in that show always been a great actor not didn't love the finale won't spoil it for you guys

Didn't love the finale, but that's a different story for a different day guys We appreciate you being here. Above all else, stay safe out there. We will see you later this week with part two of Darlie Routier. We had a lot of feedback on part one. Everyone's very engaged. We have more to cover.

So audio on Friday, video on Sunday, and also bonus episode if you're on audio right now. If you're watching on YouTube, you've already seen it, but we did a bonus episode on the Diddy trial. That will be coming out, actually it already came out. It should be out on audio as of yesterday, but let us know what you think about that. We're gonna be doing that more often.

Until later this week, everyone stay safe out there. We will see you soon. Bye.