It’s a runaway with a backdrop of romance that has been keeping America spellbound for a week, with an incredible cast: on the one hand a model little prison officer, close to sixty and with a swaying gait; on the other, a multi-recidivist colossus of 2.06 m, with a shaved head, described as extremely dangerous.
Vicky White, 56, and Casey White, 38, have the same name but are not related. The first helped the second to escape on April 29 from an Alabama prison and, since then, the improbable duo has been driving American law enforcement into a frenzy.
Their operation seems to have been thought out down to the smallest detail. And the surprise effect was total. Who would have thought to be wary of Vicky White, who has never made waves within the prison administration of Florence, a small town in this state in the south of the United States?
“She never did anything. I bet she never even got a speeding ticket,” her incredulous mother told local channel WAAY31.
Sheriff’s ‘model employee’, described by county attorney as ‘most trusted person in jail’, who oversaw prisoner transfers for Lauderdale County Sheriff is now one of the most wanted people from the country.
– Distanced –
When she shows up at the Florence prison on Friday morning to take Casey White away, under the false pretense of a psychological evaluation in court, a vehicle is already waiting for her parked in the parking lot of a nearby shopping centre, which she bought in anticipation of the run.
On the remote surveillance images of the prison, however, nothing suggests that the tattooed giant and the prison official are in cahoots. She holds the door for him but doesn’t give him a look until the moment to get him in chains, feet and hands, aboard his police car. Then, she carefully closes the door and the vehicle drives away shortly after 9:30 a.m.
Their disappearance will only be discovered several hours later, around 3:30 p.m.
The investigators launched in their pursuit seem distanced. The fugitives were last seen on Friday, the day of the escape, about 40 miles from prison in a rust-colored Ford SUV.
The hunt fascinates Internet users in the region, who went back to the dealership where Vicky White had bought this car.
The seller was bombarded with criticism, so much so that the authorities had to make an update on Wednesday, assuring that he had provided valuable assistance in the investigation and that “no one at the dealership (was) believed to have aided” the two Whites.
The elements unfavorable to the official have accumulated for six days. We learned that she had recently sold her house at a discount, pocketing $95,000.
After 17 years of good and loyal service to the sheriff, she had also announced that she was retiring … and Friday was precisely her last day.
Without confirming her dismissal, the sheriff assured Wednesday that she was “no longer employed” by his services.
– “Preferential treatment” –
The story, perhaps of love, had begun in 2020.
Casey White, who was serving a 75-year sentence in state prison for kidnapping, burglary and attempted murder, among other charges, suddenly declares himself responsible for the murder of a woman five years earlier.
The confession is short-lived — he eventually pleads not guilty in the still ongoing case — but triggers his transfer to Lauderdale County Jail, where he is served with arraignment for the murder and where he meets Vicky White for the first time.
He is sent back to his original prison after an escape plan, but the pair keep in touch.
“He told me he was writing to someone but I had no idea who it was,” his mother, Connie White, told the New York Post.
He returned to Florence prison in February this year, to attend a court hearing nearby. For several months the inmate then took advantage of what Sheriff Rick Singleton described as a “special relationship” with Vicky White.
“We have no evidence of any physical relationship,” notes the sheriff, but the other prisoners denounced “privileges”, the “rab” in the canteen and the “things she did for him and not for the others”.
“A preferential treatment”, he summarizes, for a man “extremely dangerous” and now on the run.
“He is very dangerous, for everyone around him,” confirms a former girlfriend. She delivered the following advice to Vicky White: “If you’re still alive, get the hell out of here. Run, run, run as fast as you can.”