A former police chief and convicted killer known as the “Devil in the Ozarks” was captured 1.5 miles northwest of the prison grounds by law enforcement official after he escaped from a prison, triggering a massive manhunt in the mountains of northern Arkansas, authorities announced on Friday.
Grant Hardin’s identity was confirmed through finger printing, the Izard County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.
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.”
Searchers had been using bloodhounds, officers on horseback, drones and helicopters in their hunt for Hardin since he escaped nearly two weeks ago, on May 25.
A former police chief in the small town of Gateway near the Arkansas-Missouri border, Hardin had been held at the Calico Rock prison since 2017 after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in a fatal shooting for which he was serving a 30-year sentence.
Hardin’s DNA was matched to the 1997 rape of a teacher at an elementary school in Rogers, north of Fayetteville. He was sentenced to 50 years for that crime. Eventually, his notoriety led to a TV documentary, “Devil in the Ozarks.”
