Former police chief, convicted of rape and murder, escapes Arkansas prison

A former police chief in Arkansas, serving decades-long sentences for murder and rape, escaped from prison Sunday, state corrections officials said.

Grant Hardin, the former police chief of the tiny town of Gateway near the Arkansas-Missouri border, escaped from the North Central Unit in Calico Rock, where he has been held since 2017.

Corrections officials did not provide any details about how he escaped.

They did say that Hardin had disguised himself and was “wearing a makeshift outfit designed to mimic law enforcement when he escaped the North Central Unit.”

The Division of Correction and the Division of Community Correction are following leads with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

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Hardin pleaded guilty in October 2017 to first-degree murder in connection with the shooting death of 59-year-old James Appleton.

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According to an affidavit filed in the case, Appleton worked for the Gateway water department and was talking to his brother-in-law, then-Gateway mayor Andrew Tillman, when he was shot in the head on Feb. 23, 2017, near Garfield. Police found Appleton’s body inside a car.

Hardin, who was Gateway’s police chief for about four months in early 2016, was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He is also serving 50 years in prison for the 1997 rape of an elementary school teacher in Rogers north of Fayetteville.

KFSM-TV, reporting on his guilty plea in 2019, wrote that police used DNA samples from the crime scene to apply for a John Doe warrant in 2003 as the statute of limitations neared.

The DNA was tested against old and new profiles, and investigators got a match when Hardin was imprisoned for killing Appleton.