FBI increases reward in search for man known as the “Devil in the Ozarks”

CALICO ROCK, Ark. (KY3/AP) - Arkansas authorities are looking at whether a job in the prison kitchen played a role in the escape of a convicted former police chief known as the “Devil in the Ozarks.”

Grant Hardin, 56, was housed in a maximum-security wing of the Calico Rock prison from which he escaped on Sunday by donning an outfit designed to look like a law enforcement uniform, Arkansas Department of Corrections spokesperson Rand Champion told The Associated Press Thursday. But Hardin also held a job in the kitchen of the medium-security facility.

“His job assignment was in the kitchen, so just looking to see if that played a part in it as well,” Champion said.

The kitchen is divided into two shifts of workers, with about 25 inmates working each shift, according to a 2021 accreditation report, which involved an extensive review of the prison. In the kitchen, “tools and utensils were stored on shadow boards with proper controls for sign out/in of all tools,” the report stated. “A check of the inventory control sheets found them to be accurate and up to date.”

The kitchen is in one of 16 buildings on more than 700 acres of land on the sprawling prison campus. The prison grounds include a garden, two greenhouses, and extensive pastureland where a herd of more than 100 horses is raised and trained by staff and inmates.

Hardin, the former police chief in the small town of Gateway near the Arkansas-Missouri border, was serving lengthy sentences for murder and rape. He was the subject of the TV documentary “Devil in the Ozarks.”

Local, state and federal law enforcement continued their search for Hardin on Thursday, and the FBI on announced Thursday it was offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information leading to his arrest. Champion said officials remained confident that Hardin was in the north-central Arkansas area.

Officials have said there are plenty of hideouts in the Ozarks Mountains area, from caves to campsites.

The department late Wednesday said search teams also responded to Faulkner County in the central Arkansas area after receiving a tip.

Champion did not immediately know how many other inmates were housed in the prison’s maximum-security wing.

Hardin’s assignment to the prison, formally known as the North Central Unit, has drawn questions from legislators in the area and family of the former chief’s victims.

Hardin received culinary training at some point during his incarceration, said Cheryl Tillman, whose brother James Appleton was shot to death by Hardin in 2017.

Tillman said she was aware that Hardin had been working in the kitchen at the Calico Rock prison, and questioned why he would be allowed to do so.

“It sounds like to me that he was given free range down there,” she said in an interview this week.

Now that he’s free, “it makes it uneasy for all of us, the whole family,” she said.

Checkered Past

Hardin had a checkered and brief law enforcement career. He worked at the Fayetteville Police Department from August 1990 to May 1991, but was let go because he didn’t meet the standards of his training period, a department spokesman said.

Hardin worked about six months at the Huntsville Police Department before reg, but records do not give a reason for his resignation, according to Police Chief Todd Thomas, who ed the department after Hardin worked there.

Hardin later worked at the Eureka Springs Police Department from 1993 to 1996. Former Chief Earl Hyatt said Hardin resigned because Hyatt was going to fire him over incidents that included the use of excessive force.

“He did not need to be a police officer at all,” Hyatt told television station KNWA.

He continued to have trouble in his brief stint as an officer in Gateway, according to the 450-person town’s mayor Cheryl Tillman.

While Hardin was the town’s sole officer, “there was things that I seen that wasn’t good. He was always angry,” said Tillman, who wasn’t mayor at the time.

Hardin pleaded guilty in 2017 to first-degree murder for the killing of James Appleton, 59. Appleton, who was Tillman’s brother, worked for the Gateway water department when he was shot in the head on Feb. 23, 2017, near Garfield. Police found Appleton’s body inside a car. Hardin was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

He was also serving 50 years for the 1997 rape of an elementary school teacher in Rogers, north of Fayetteville.

He had been held in the Calico Rock prison since 2017.

If you have any information as to where Hardin may be, the FBI’s toll-free tipline at 1-800-225-5324 or local law enforcement.

Hardin escaped from the North Central Unit on Sunday, May 25 while serving a sentence for homicide and rape.

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