'Devil in the Ozarks' subject, convicted murderer escapes prison: Who is Grant Hardin?
A convicted murderer who was the subject of a 2023 documentary remains at large following a May 25 prison escape.
Grant Hardin, 56, escaped from the North Central Unit in Calico Rock, Arkansas, where he was serving time for the 2017 murder of James Appleton and the 1997 rape of a school teacher, according to the Arkansas Department of Corrections.
He was sentenced to 80 years on the combined convictions, according to court records.
Hardin, a former police chief, escaped while wearing an "an ADC type uniform," according to the Stone County Sheriff's Office.
"He's a sociopath," former Benton County prosecutor Nathan Smith told Arkansas ABC affiliate KHBS/KHOG May 27. "Prison's not full of people who are all bad. It's full of a lot of people who just do bad things. Grant's different."
What was Grant Hardin convicted of?
Hardin pleaded guilty to in 2017 to murder in the first degree for shooting and killing Appleton in February of the same year, according to court records.
Appleton's brother-in-law, Andrew Tillman, told Benton County Sheriff's investigators that he was on the phone with Appleton when he was shot, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Appleton had filed a police complaint shortly before the phone call and had pulled to the side of the road to complete the conversation, according to the affidavit. Appleton noted that a car had sped by his then stopped, saying, "It must think I'm a policeman or something," according to the affidavit.
"Tillman said the next thing he heard on the phone was what sounded like a loud slammed door and 'that was it,'" the affidavit reads.
A witness told investigators that he saw a white car parked behind Appleton's truck, heard a loud bang and saw the white car speed off. The witness then turned around to check on the truck only to discover Appleton dead, according to the affidavit.
Tillman was the mayor of Gateway, Arkansas when the shooting occurred and his wife, Cheryl Tillman, currently serves as the town's mayor, according to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
"He’s just an evil man," Cheryl told the paper. "He is no good for society."
Paste BN reached out to both Andrew and Cheryl Tillman for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
Hardin was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murder, according to the plea agreement.
DNA connects Grant Hardin to 1997 rape
A DNA test conducted following the murder conviction connected Hardin to the 1997 rape of a school teacher in Rogers, Arkansas, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in the case.
The victim told investigators that she was attacked on a Sunday morning, a time she normally worked to prepare for the week and noted that a church group was meeting in the school's cafeteria, according to an affidavit filed at the time of the attack.
She was attacked at gunpoint after leaving her classroom for a restroom off of the teacher's lounge, according to the affidavit.
The assailant was described as white male wearing a knit stocking cap and sunglasses, according to an application for a search warrant filed for a storage unit owned by Hardin.
Hardin pleaded guilty to two counts of rape in 2019 and was sentenced to serve 25 years in prison for each count consecutively, according to the plea agreement.
Grant Hardin held police jobs before arrest
Hardin bounced around police departments before becoming the chief of police in Gateway, according to KHBS/KHOG and the Associated Press.
He was with the Fayetteville Police Department from Aug. 6, 1990, to May 22, 1991, according to KHBS/KHOG. The department’s chief of police then said he terminated Hardin because his efforts "fall short of the average probationary officer" and that he had a "tendency to not accept constructive criticism along with indecisiveness under stressful situations."
A spell at the Eureka Springs Police Department, from April 1993 to October 1996, was marred by excessive uses of force and poor decisions on the job, the department’s former police chief said, according to KHBS/KHOG.
Hardin was the chief of police for Gateway for about four months at the start of 2016, according to the Associated Press.
Grant Hardin's crimes covered in Max documentary
The 1997 rape was the focus of a 2023 documentary titled "Devil in the Ozarks," distributed by Investigation Discovery – according to the documentary's IMDB page.
"A vicious sexual assault stuns a small town but goes unsolved for two decades, until a murder nearby reveals a suspect with matching DNA," the documentary's tagline reads.
Paste BN reached out to Warner Bros., the parent company of Investigation Discovery, as well as the documentary's production company AMPLE and did not receive an immediate response from either.