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of shows. And for that, we thank you. Yeah. BW are you in? Beer run. If you need bonus content, check out our show
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Off the Record on Apple Podcast or on Patreon. And Colonel, that's enough of the business. All right, everybody,
00:03:31
gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime. Former police chief Grant Harden,
00:03:40
known as the devil in the Ozarks, escaped from prison on May 25th dressed as a corrections officer. Now, the FBI
00:03:47
and US Marshalss are offering a combined $25,000 for any information that leads to his arrest. News Nation's Mills Hayes
00:03:55
is on the scene for us. And in Arkansas, Mills, this hunt has the community still
00:04:01
on edge. Hey, Nick. For some people, they are concerned because of course there's a
00:04:08
convicted murderer and rapist that is on the loose right now, but there's also a
00:04:13
lot of people who say that they aren't that concerned. But keep in mind this is a guntoing community. These are people
00:04:19
who fish and hunt. And so they say they're ready if Harden does actually appear. Now, police say that he is still
00:04:27
believed to be in this area. They're using all their resources to try and find Harden at this point. They're using
00:04:34
blood hounds, helicopters, uh, and also using drones to try and find Harden. It's difficult because the terrain out
00:04:42
there in the Ozarks is rugged. There are dozens of abandoned homes and there are
00:04:46
also uh thousands of caves out there. It really is the perfect place for someone
00:04:52
to hide. We spoke with the Arkansas Department of Corrections just yesterday about this investigation. Here's what
00:04:58
they said. What makes you guys think that he's still in the area? The way that we kind of operate and go
00:05:05
about it is until we get a verifiable tip or evidence or something that puts him outside of this area, we have to
00:05:12
under operate under the assumption that he is still here. This week we head out to Benton
00:05:19
County, Arkansas. Benton County is the northwesternmost county in the state. So, this is the county in Arkansas that
00:05:28
if you leave it going north, you are in the state of Missouri. And if you leave it going west, you will find yourself in
00:05:36
Oklahoma. If you go to the northeast portion of Benton County, Arkansas, you will find the tiny little town of
00:05:44
Gateway, Arkansas. The town's name reflects its situation as the gateway to and from the great state of Arkansas.
00:05:54
Gateway is about 6 and 12 square miles in size and the population is only about 430 people. All in all, if you're not
00:06:04
familiar with this true crime story that we are bringing to you today, I'm guessing that most people outside of the
00:06:10
state of Arkansas and Missouri have never heard of Gateway Arkansas. However, it has been in the news quite a
00:06:16
bit lately. If you are watching the news, listening to news podcast, the story that takes place is Calico Rock,
00:06:25
Arkansas, which is actually about a three-hour drive east of where the story should start, which is in Gateway,
00:06:32
Arkansas. So, northwest Arkansas is generally a metropolitan area and region within the Ozarks, the Ozark Mountains.
00:06:42
It includes four of the 10 largest cities in the state. Fagatville, Springdale, Rogers, and Bentonville.
00:06:50
Gateway, however, is God's country, or perhaps the devil in the Ozarks country. So, let's go to Gateway, February 23rd,
00:07:00
2017. This is a Thursday. This should have been a normal uneventful day out in the sticks. It's getting close to dinner
00:07:09
time. People are heading home from work. We are just a couple of hours away from
00:07:14
the day really winding down. We have a hardworking dude. This is 59year-old James Appleton. James works for the
00:07:22
Gateway Water Company. Now, out here and folks listening in their garages out in
00:07:28
rural areas know this to be true. In smaller communities, if you work for one of the utilities, you kind of work for
00:07:36
them all. So James is employed by the water company or the water board, but is often working on roads and parks
00:07:45
wherever and whatever is needed. Not to simplify this guy, but a good short description of James is he's the type of
00:07:53
guy that can quickly troubleshoot an issue and then fix it. James Appleton on this Thursday, he's sitting in his
00:08:01
pickup truck. So he pulled over to the side of the road for a work-related phone call. His truck is parked on the
00:08:10
side of Grand Ridge Road. He is on the phone with his co-worker and brother-in-law. This is Andrew Tillman.
00:08:17
Andrew works for the utilities as well, but he is also the mayor of Gateway. Now, at this time, we have a dude
00:08:25
driving home from work. His name is John Bray. John is an iron worker and a cattle rancher. He's on his way home
00:08:32
when he comes up upon a white Chevy Malibu that is pulled over on the side of Grand Ridge Road. And in front of
00:08:41
this Chevy Malibu is the work truck that James Appleton is sitting in and on the
00:08:46
phone with his coworker brother-in-law, the mayor. Both vehicles engines are running but pulled over to the side. The
00:08:54
driver of the Malibu signals to John Bray to pull ahead. Go around us. you can continue on. John does just that. He
00:09:03
maneuvers his vehicle into the oncoming traffic lane to the left of the Malibu and then drives past both the white
00:09:11
Chevy Malibu and the work truck. So, at this moment in time, these are the only three vehicles and the drivers are the
00:09:20
only three people on this country road. John Bray continues on and he goes, I believe he said it was about 200 yards
00:09:29
or or so and he says that he hears what he described as a gunshot. This loud noise came from behind him. So, he hears
00:09:38
a gunshot and he believes that it's coming from back on the road, right from where he just was with those other
00:09:45
vehicles. He decided that he would turn around and make sure that everything was
00:09:50
okay. But before he could do so, he sees the white Chevy Malibu speed past him, driving away, and then taking a turn
00:09:57
onto a nearby dirt road. Not good. Not good. No. Now, let's back up just a couple of minutes on our timeline here.
00:10:06
Just to This is just very shortly before the gunshot sound that John Bray heard.
00:10:12
James sitting in his truck on the phone says to Andrew Tilman, "I'm on the side of the road. They I I believe he he's
00:10:21
got to be referring to the vehicles behind him. They must think I'm a policeman or something sitting over
00:10:27
here. James tells Andrew that a car is maneuvering around him. Then at the same time, Andrew on the other end of the
00:10:36
phone call hears a noise that he described as a truck door being slammed shut. And now suddenly James ain't
00:10:44
talking. Andrew Tilman on the other end of this call, he says that James Appleton often had his Bluetooth on
00:10:52
that. Yeah, he pulled over to either make or receive this call, but Andrew Tilman believes that the Bluetooth was
00:10:59
on and that's why he could hear what he described as the truck door slamming very loudly on his end. But then we have
00:11:08
the other driver, John Bray, who is already up ahead when he heard the shot or the loud noise. So now when John Bray
00:11:17
gets back to the parked pickup truck where he believes he heard this, what he described as a gunshot noise, he finds
00:11:24
James Appleton slumped over in the driver's seat of James' truck. There's blood and John quickly recognizes that
00:11:33
James has been shot and he's probably dead. John flags down the next vehicle that he sees and tells the driver to
00:11:41
call 911. So, he has a description of the vehicle, but I'm guessing he doesn't have a license plate number. No license
00:11:49
plate, but no license plate number required. Okay. Because we are not left with a huge mystery here, Captain, like
00:11:57
we are many times with many of the cases that we cover here in the garage. This is because the town again only has like
00:12:05
400 people living there, right? And John Bray is Gateway born and raised. If you
00:12:14
lived there for a considerable amount of time, as he did, he knows you. He knows
00:12:20
your family and he likely has a general idea of what vehicles you and your family drive. So when emergency
00:12:27
personnel and services show up at the scene, we have ambulance, we have police, fire, everything show up at the
00:12:34
scene. He tells them he knew the truck and the truck's driver, James Appleton, who was shot and killed at the scene.
00:12:43
But he also knows the Chevy Malibu and its driver, who he says was Grant Harden. It makes sense. There's 430ish
00:12:52
people that live in this town and this guy's lived there his entire life. He knows these people. And he's he's
00:12:59
telling the police that I grew up here. I'm 100% certain that the guy who gestured for me to go around. The guy
00:13:09
who he said he also saw fleeing the area after he heard this sound, the gunshot sound, right, was Grant Harden in his
00:13:19
own white Chevy Malibu. Again, this makes so much sense, a lot of sense because Grant Harden's residence was on
00:13:25
that same road on Grand Ridge Road, the same road where this murder occurred. So, who is Grant Harden? Of course, the
00:13:33
authorities right then and there are going to want to know where is he? Grant Harden was the one-time police chief of
00:13:39
Gateway, Arkansas. In fact, he was the police chief for a very short stint. This was in 2016. By this time, after
00:13:48
the gunshots, after emergency personnel are on the scene, Grant Harden is on his
00:13:53
way to take his family out to dinner. Well, that's what you do after you kill somebody. You go get a steak dinner.
00:13:59
This is a very strange situation and I'm still surprised that almost 900 episodes
00:14:06
and we still come across unique situations. And I don't I don't know if this was
00:14:13
some really lame attempt at trying to create an alibi, right? If that's the fact, if that's the case, it's not going
00:14:22
to work out because they know what time the 911 call comes in. They know from the restaurant surveillance footage,
00:14:31
from the security cameras at the restaurant where Harden and his wife and daughter go to what time they arrive.
00:14:39
And that's not going to that's not going to remove him as a possible suspect because he's getting there after the 911
00:14:48
call is made. So, one part of this, this is in a weird way, like it feels to me given the description of what Grant
00:14:58
Harden's wife and daughter say after the fact, well, after the fact, the way that
00:15:03
Grant was behaving, this almost is like a last meal, right? Maybe not a last meal for
00:15:10
me forever, but a last meal together with my family. Because during the course of dinner, he's he's a little
00:15:18
emotional. And he's like repeating how much his wife and daughter mean to him. And he's saying things like, you know,
00:15:27
you guys, I just want you to know you never have to worry. If there was ever something happened to me, you guys are
00:15:33
going to be okay. Well, it's strange because him being in law enforcement, you think, I'm going to wave this
00:15:39
vehicle on and I'm going to wait till they're out of sight. It's a possibility that with this conflict, he didn't have
00:15:47
the chance to wait. So then he kills his victim and then he just has to take his
00:15:53
chances of what is the eyewitness? What did they see? Are they going to be able to identify me? But again, like you
00:16:00
said, such a small community, even if they don't identify who the driver is, you're going to be able to identify the
00:16:06
car. I mean, it's not that common of a car and not that and and because we have details of it, we know what color the
00:16:13
car is and we know what model it is, it's probably going to be pretty quick to figure out who's involved. Well, and
00:16:20
and I like what you say there, Captain, because while it is a rather common car,
00:16:26
what we have here is a detailed description right down to the color, right? You don't have the license plate,
00:16:32
but the color separates that common car from all the other colors of that common
00:16:37
car. And then you have to compound that with the fact that this is a community of 430 people. So, it's less than 400
00:16:46
drive cars, right? and it's less than 430 people that have a driver's license. Now, one thing I will say about folks
00:16:52
that live out in the country, they tend to own more cars than the family needs or more vehicles than the family needs.
00:16:59
But, and that too was the case with Grant Harden, they when law enforcement go to his
00:17:06
property, they they find the Chevy Malibu parked in the driveway, this white Chevy Malibu. And one thing that's
00:17:13
really damning about finding this vehicle there, not only the description matching the one from the scene, and as
00:17:21
the captain points out, a limited number of these vehicles in the town of Gateway, Arkansas, just based off of
00:17:27
sheer numbers, there's blood on this car. Yeah, this this can't make this [ __ ] up.
00:17:35
No, you can't make it up. But but it's it's so disturbing to think about when we clean off the blood, right? And I
00:17:43
think that shows his his level of haste. He just simply wanted to get out of the
00:17:48
house and maybe delay what he knew to be inevitable that his arrest or he may simply not have noticed when he was
00:17:59
trying to get out of there or trying to rush about or maybe the adrenaline took him over. Sometimes adrenaline can make
00:18:05
you lose control of your body. And maybe he didn't even see it, but and I apologize because this this is so
00:18:13
disturbing, but what police believe happened based off of the way that the victim is lying in the
00:18:19
truck and the and the trajectory of the blood spatter evidence that is found on the white Chevy Malibu. They believe
00:18:28
that Grant Harden simply pulled up to the side of James Appleton's work truck. James Appleton's got the window down and
00:18:39
that Harden just pointed a shotgun at the victim from with inside his car. He's still sitting in the driver's seat.
00:18:46
He just pulls a shotgun on the guy, stays in his car, and shoots the guy who's in his truck. And the the force a
00:18:54
shotgun's very powerful. the force of that, the blood ends up on top of the roof of this white Chevy Malibu. Look,
00:19:04
of course, they're going to have to do their due diligence, test it, make sure it's not animal blood, make sure it's
00:19:08
actual human, then make sure that it does belong to the victim. But, right, you're but everything's adding up here.
00:19:14
And not only that, it's a freaking white car. It couldn't Smalltown murder is rare, right? But this couldn't if if
00:19:22
you're a detective and you're showing up on the scene and you're walking to this
00:19:27
guy's house, you you get to the scene and a guy says, "Yeah, I know who did it. I know who was in the other car." Um
00:19:33
I can't say 100% that he did it, but I'm I'm guessing he did it cuz we were the only three people there. Well, you'd
00:19:39
think that some of the people in law enforcement might even know who Grant Harding is. They do. They do. So we have
00:19:48
one well one because it's a small town but two because anytime somebody works in law enforcement long enough they at
00:19:55
least maybe there's a reputation or people hear about oh well he used to be the chief of police. This is what
00:20:01
happened to him. This is what he's doing now. This h they have to know him or at
00:20:05
least some of them have to know him because as you said they're in law enforcement as well. Now this is going
00:20:10
to be a different outfit. This is going to be Benton County that will be investigating because I can't believe
00:20:16
that Gateway investigates murder as that town being so small. It looks like they
00:20:23
have typically have a police chief and then like one other officer. So if the the force is two people
00:20:32
um I'm the chief of police. How many how many men are under your con under your command? One. Right. Right. And and if
00:20:41
if he's not on the clock, it's just it's, you know, it's just a oneman show. But they would have to know him because
00:20:47
he would be the police chief of a tiny town at one time in within their county. And the thing too with this case and
00:20:56
this story, it's in the news a lot right now, and we'll get into the reasons why
00:21:02
here soon. But but one thing that I find a little annoying about this story is everyone keeps saying like the the
00:21:09
motive for this murder is unknown. We we still don't know why Grant Harden killed
00:21:16
James Appleton. Seems almost like a road road rage or something. That sounds reasonable.
00:21:23
However, I don't know why that it's repeated that there's we don't know what the motive is. It's a motiveless murder.
00:21:30
No. Everybody in the town of Gateway said, "These two did not like each other. They hated each other." Right?
00:21:36
We've said a million times a lot of times these investigations are not that difficult because person A is angry at
00:21:43
person B for some reason. They know each other and person A kills person B because they're angry with them for some
00:21:51
reason. Here you have exactly that. Two people that know each other, they don't get along. They have a history of not
00:21:58
getting along. And one guy ends up dead. The other guy ends up with blood on his
00:22:04
blood on his car. Yeah. And now he's sitting out there at dinner with his wife and daughter telling him how much
00:22:09
he loves him. Where did he go out to eat? Was it just a I I wish I local place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm guessing
00:22:16
it's I'm guessing it's not a not a franchise, but you I don't know if you've seen the the security camera
00:22:23
footage, but you see him and his wife and daughter walk in and of course the poor wife and daughter have no clue what
00:22:29
just happened, but you have but they live with him, so they probably know he's an [ __ ] Well, and Grant Harden
00:22:37
is this very large. He's a very large dude, and you see him in the surveillance footage of this restaurant.
00:22:46
He's like walking in. He's like looking around. Now, I know that that's a a typical security guard, cop, deputy type
00:22:54
move to to always be aware of your surroundings. But I I don't know if he was looking for law enforcement or who
00:22:59
he was looking for like but he is very clearly looking around the restaurant before they are seated. And well he's
00:23:07
not stupid. I mean look especially if you work in law enforcement mo most cases get solved most of the time. Law
00:23:16
enforcement gets the bad guy. Mhm. Sometimes it takes longer than others. this guy knowing it's a small town,
00:23:26
knowing that there was a eyewitness or at least a ear witness and then he drove that's what baffles me. You he drove
00:23:34
past the guy again so so he gets a better look at you. It was there was you either go forward
00:23:43
or you go backward. There's those are the only two ways out. So, but you know, hey, better take my family to go get
00:23:51
myself a McDouble. Well, and I think we can piece together the motive rather quickly because we we get later his wife
00:24:00
and his daughter would give interviews for newspapers and on camera and such. They had a lot of great things to say
00:24:08
about their husband and father, but the their recollection of this day, the two of them were inside the home. Remember,
00:24:17
it's near the end of the day. And I don't believe that Grant Harden was actually working at this time. He is
00:24:24
outside working in the yard. He's not working professionally. He's working in their yard, around the yard. And at some
00:24:30
point, he comes in and he says, "Hey, how about we all go out to dinner tonight, but you guys get ready, take
00:24:37
your time, because I'm out piddling around in the yard, and whenever you guys are ready, you just let me know and
00:24:43
and we'll take off and go get something good to eat." He goes back outside presumably to work in the yard. But then
00:24:50
then the wife and kid later say, "Well, at some point he comes back into the home and now he's completely changed.
00:25:00
He's he seems to be, you know, sweating. He seems to be nervous. He seems to be rushed. And he's like, "Hey, let's go."
00:25:06
I said, you know, let's we it's been too long. We need to get out of here. Let's
00:25:10
go. Let's go get something to eat. Hurry up. Hurry up. He's rushing them. He's rushing them at this time. Now, the
00:25:15
reason why he is unemployed is because he he was removed as the chief of police of Gateway,
00:25:24
Arkansas. This was by the city council, which of course is made up by the mayor and several other people, but one of the
00:25:33
people that is on the city council from my understanding here, Captain, is James
00:25:38
Appleton. So, right, Grant Harden loses his job. Yeah, Grant Harden loses his job because
00:25:47
the city council says you you cannot be our police of our chief of police. You cannot work for our police department.
00:25:55
You're unfit because he was doing some very strange stuff. There was a lot of people that said that once he got that
00:26:01
chief of police job that the power went to his head and he just thought he was the the king of Gateway
00:26:10
and that he could do whatever he wanted. Everybody had to listen to him. Everybody had to bow down to him. And he
00:26:16
was driving around and randomly pulling over vehicles for apparently no reason. He would do this even when he was not on
00:26:25
patrol, not on the clock. He was policing the town at all hours of the day, just whenever he felt like it. And
00:26:31
at times, yeah, he's Batman. At times he was pulling up his vehicle, his cop car, and and aiming
00:26:40
a gun at the driver of the vehicle that he ordered over. He did this multiple multiple times. So, it's not too
00:26:47
difficult to believe. Yeah. Not too difficult to believe that on this day when he saw the guy that he he didn't
00:26:54
like, the guy that he despised, that he pulled up alongside of him and he did the same thing with a shotgun.
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[Music] All right, we are back. Cheers, mates. Cheers to you, Captain. Cheers to the
00:28:59
people in the back. But like you were saying, this is a small community, and that lends itself to a different type of
00:29:06
investigation here. Yeah. I I also think that it amplifies his bad behavior when
00:29:12
he was the chief of police. Yeah. Because who's going to stop him? From my understanding, man, he one officer that
00:29:19
is that he's in charge of. He was the chief for like four months now. He did work as an officer for this outfit on
00:29:27
and off for a good period of time. And he worked for different law enforcement agencies during his law enforcement
00:29:34
career. But there as described by the mayor of Gateway, now keep in mind the mayor is
00:29:42
the brother-in-law of the victim, but he said that when his brother-in-law, James
00:29:50
Appleton, was out doing some work somewhere, he works for the city, you know, he's out doing work that is
00:29:57
approved and authorized by the city that old Chief Grant Harden pulls up to talk
00:30:03
to him or bully him or force him out of the area and I believe he had to take his cop car off road to get to wherever
00:30:11
this work was being done and it tore up the car and tore up the mechanics of the
00:30:16
vehicle. And so Grant Harden comes in to city council and says to James Appleton, "Hey, you you got to fix my
00:30:28
cop car because it got all damaged because I Yeah. He came out there to talk to him and and James Appleton's
00:30:34
like, "I'm not I'm not I'm refused to work on your car and nobody could make Appleton do it." And so that is when my
00:30:45
understanding is when the beef started between these two guys. Now, maybe they didn't like each other for any number of
00:30:50
reasons before this, but the mayor is on record saying they got up in each other's faces. They look like they were
00:30:57
about to be in a fist fight, and that's where he believes that this all started.
00:31:01
this this hatred between the two. The mayor speculates that Harden was probably out in his front yard working
00:31:09
as his family would later state and happened to everybody knows everybody. Everybody knows each other's vehicles
00:31:16
and he probably saw James Appleton drive by and he hops in his car to either chase him down or maybe even Appleton
00:31:24
pulled into the driveway and said something nasty to Harden. But whatever took place, I do believe that before he
00:31:32
shot James Apple, I do believe that Grant Harden had every intention of going out to dinner with his family and
00:31:38
not for it to be a last meal situation. I think it was just another day. And I think that something happened that
00:31:45
caused James Harden to lose his damn mind. And anger and rage took him over. And even though his cop sense told him
00:31:54
he would get caught for this and arrested for this, he couldn't he couldn't stop it. He couldn't he
00:31:59
couldn't stop. Yeah. But also, there's a problem in law enforcement and and people that work in law enforcement will
00:32:05
tell you this. The worst thing you can do is hire somebody that is power hungry, that wants to have this job, not
00:32:14
to serve and protect, but because it's it's a a power move. It's the It's the reason why uh guys with small dicks buy
00:32:23
giant trucks and they want to feel a little bit powerful. I would like to point out that I have a medium-sized
00:32:28
truck. Thank you very much. So, let's look into his background a little bit. So, Grant Harden becomes the
00:32:37
chief of police for Gateway in 2016. 4 months later, city council forces him to resign. Nine months after
00:32:47
his resignation, Grant Harden kills James Appleton. I don't think I don't know why there's such a mystery as to
00:32:54
the motive here. Now, we end up, as said, with James Appleton's blood on Grant Harden's vehicle. There was a
00:33:02
number of other items that they were going to use as evidence against this guy should this thing go to trial, but
00:33:08
it doesn't have to go to trial because, you know, we have the eyewitness, we have the blood. I imagine you're gonna
00:33:16
have gunpowder residue. A shotgun is going to put off an alarming amount of GSR. Yeah. And that would be present in
00:33:24
the vehicle itself. Now, as you said, Grant Harden is no dummy. He's he's brought in very quickly. And he simply
00:33:31
tells the police like, "Look, I have the right to remain silent. I'm going to remain silent. I'm not talking to you
00:33:38
guys. I'm getting a lawyer. I'm not talking to you guys. I don't care what you have." They charge him with this
00:33:43
murder and he does fight back. He gets an attorney. He fights back. One of the things they were trying to get removed
00:33:50
was the blood evidence. So, they did a search warrant. They issued a search warrant on Harden's property and
00:33:57
vehicles and they they came out and they executed that search warrant that very night at like 4:30 in the morning. And
00:34:05
there's something on the Arkansas books that says that search warrants are to be
00:34:10
executed during this time frame of day, like this window of time, and the the search that they executed didn't fall
00:34:19
within that window. So, they were trying to get all of that evidence tossed out because they showed up a little early.
00:34:27
Well, my guess is when you have a prime suspect who has a history of pulling guns on people and a history of law
00:34:38
enforcement that you're you don't really want to be showing up when this guy could be armed to the teeth ready for a
00:34:46
gun battle. So, they may have had to step outside of the box a bit on serving. But I would assume that because
00:34:55
of the evidence, they would be able to charge him and he would be locked up during the time of the search. It's just
00:35:01
my thought. Right. And and that's what I'm saying. He may have still been at the police station. He still may have
00:35:07
been at the sheriff's department when they were executing that search warrant. Yeah. and
00:35:15
and the judge him there. If I'm the judge, I might be throwing out this evidence because when you're doing an
00:35:22
investigation, you need to make sure you're crossing your tees and dotting your eyes and your lowercase J. The part
00:35:28
of this is a judge signed off on this warrant and they're going to execute it. Um, so you will have some hoops to jump
00:35:35
through. The short of it though, Captain, is it doesn't even end up going to trial because he Grant Harden pleads
00:35:41
guilty to the murder charge. I was going to say I think some of that is because of his law enforcement background. Hey,
00:35:48
get them to make a deal. I'm not going to spend the whole time in prison anyways. If I can get a a 15-year
00:35:55
sentence, I might be out in seven. Yes, that could be the case. If you can get a
00:36:00
a lenient sentence, but the the issue is going to be it's firstdegree murder, which we know carries a heftier
00:36:08
sentence. He gets 30 years even though he plead guilty. Uh he does not give a reason in court for why he killed James
00:36:16
Appleton. Maybe that's why everybody circles around the motiveless murder. Yeah, this guy's a real piece of [ __ ]
00:36:22
Yeah, 30 years. And from my understanding, he was going to have to do a minimum of 25 years before he would
00:36:30
be even eligible for parole. But not good. You're going to prison and you are ex law enforcement and these
00:36:41
guys in prison, they they figure this stuff out pretty quickly and then it becomes an issue of are you in there for
00:36:49
real because you did a really bad thing or are you in there? Are you like a spy?
00:36:56
Are you legitimately a prisoner? If if not, but this prison sentence is not going to go well for old Grant. They
00:37:04
enter his DNA into the Cotus database, and when they do so, they get a hit on an old cold case. Now, this cold case
00:37:12
dates all the way back to November of 1997. This is an old cold case from Rogers, Arkansas. It's a rape case, a
00:37:22
sexual assault case, very violent one. and the case had gone cold. It's 20 years between this sexual
00:37:32
assault case and the murder of James Appleton, right? And it's another year removed because it wasn't until 2018
00:37:41
when this was working its way through the court system before he plead guilty. Grant Harden would have been 28 back in
00:37:47
1997. We have a school teacher who is working at the Frank Tillery Elementary School. She arrived early. This is a
00:37:56
Sunday, so there's no class on Sunday. She's in there. She's doing extra work. She says that she even locked because
00:38:03
the building was practically empty. The school was practically empty. It was like her and the janitor that she locked
00:38:10
her classroom door. She was busy in there working for quite some time. And it's around 11 a.m. when she decides to
00:38:18
go to the restroom. Now, prior to this, she says that she thought she heard someone at some point jiggle the handle,
00:38:24
like check the door, but because it's locked, the door didn't open, obviously. Now, she probably, even if she
00:38:32
recognized this, she probably assumed it was the janitor or maybe another teacher
00:38:36
or what have you. She certainly didn't anticipate this. Around 11:00 a.m., she leaves her classroom to go out to the
00:38:45
teachers lounge to use the restroom. She would later tell police that when she enters this area, there's a man there.
00:38:53
She encounters a man there with a gun. And at gunpoint, this man forces her back into the teachers lounge where he
00:39:01
assaulted her and then he takes her to another portion of the building. I believe it was another classroom, not
00:39:08
hers, and then assaults her again there. And she described the man as wearing a stocking cap, like a ski mask, but he
00:39:18
It was sort of Golden State Killer style where remember all the composite sketches we saw of Golden State where
00:39:26
he's always wearing some kind of mask or or disguise and in some of them he's he's wearing the when I hear the words
00:39:36
ski mask or see the word ski mask, I assumed it's it's like a bank robber or home invasion and the thing is pulled
00:39:43
down and all you're seeing is eyes and the mouth. This is more of he had it tucked up so
00:39:51
it's only covering the top of his head down to some sunglasses so she can only see the asalent's nose and mouth and
00:40:02
chin and he's dressed in black. One thing that was very strange she thought was he was shoeless. He was wearing only
00:40:10
socks. He assaults her. Strange. And well, and what's even more strange, at one point he says to her, "Do you
00:40:18
recognize my voice?" And she says, "No." And she even told the police, "I didn't
00:40:24
recognize his voice, but him asking me that makes me wonder if it was somebody that I know somehow." Had to be. Yeah,
00:40:32
it had to be. This case goes unsolved for a very long time. They they actually had some leads early on. In fact, one
00:40:39
lead they had was that there was a a witness who said that they believed that they saw the rapist when fleeing the
00:40:45
school hop into a blue pickup truck and later that truck they believed they had located it. And when they speak to the
00:40:54
owner of that vehicle, it they said we figured out very quickly that this wasn't our suspect because the guy was
00:41:02
significantly older than the what our suspect was. And so this case goes cold, not for a lack of effort or for a lack
00:41:13
of of of persons working the case. I don't think they had any really great leads here or any great suspects,
00:41:24
let's say. But this DNA evidence would change all of that. Now, the here's where we need to give the the officers
00:41:33
and the investigators a big kudos here. So, they did something that was kind of unprecedented at the time in Arkansas.
00:41:44
Now, unfortunately, back in 1997, the laws were different back then. There was a six-year statute of
00:41:53
limitations on rape cases. It was rape back then was declared to be a class one felony. So all class one felonies
00:42:02
regardless of the specifics of the charge, it's 6 years from the report date to make an arrest or to issue an
00:42:11
arrest warrant for a suspect. So you have six years to do one of those two things. Make an arrest or get an arrest
00:42:18
warrant for a suspect. I'm just going to say this is so stupid. So stupid that we put a time limit on
00:42:28
anything. You commit a crime, you should be held responsible for the rest of your damn life. If it
00:42:36
takes them 30 years to solve it, so what? Yes. I mean, regard I'm I'm fine with statute of limitations on on
00:42:44
crimes. I mean, that I mean, somebody shouldn't be picked up for shoplifting 45 years after the fact, right? But
00:42:51
right but that's way different than a sexual assault but well no duh but what I'm saying is that
00:42:59
men were being raped if men look if men were being mad but but this has changed this has been changed throughout every
00:43:07
state in the United States and at one time there was a statute of limitations on murder. What I'm saying is societies
00:43:13
get smarter, communities get smarter, and then when they do, they band together and they push these laws and
00:43:21
change laws and make change for good happen. And that certainly has happened with rape cases. I think it was in the
00:43:29
'9s here in the state of Ohio where they removed the statute of limitations on rape cases. Now in this situation they
00:43:38
are running out of time as this case goes cold and these good officers they come up they they see what another state
00:43:45
had done that was a what was called a John Doe warrant and so they go and they get issued a John Doe warrant for an
00:43:57
arrest of the perpetrator of this rape before it could reach the deadline of the statute of limitations. And I I mean
00:44:05
they did this days before it would have expired. Very smart. Now this this is very smart and and this is very
00:44:14
interesting here the way that this plays out. This was something I was familiar with John Doe warrants but I wasn't
00:44:21
familiar with how it all came about. So, a John Doe warrant simply, to put it in
00:44:28
its most simple form, is a warrant that is issued by a judge for the arrest of a
00:44:33
person who committed a specific crime on this date against this victim committed
00:44:38
this crime. And we know the person who did it. We just don't know their name. Well, how do we know the person that did
00:44:43
it? Well, in this case, we have the DNA of the perpetrator. So whatever person, whatever man John
00:44:51
Doe out there matches this DNA is the perpetrator. So you know who the individual is in a sense, you just
00:45:01
don't know their name. So they get this John Doe warrant for whoever committed this rape in 1997
00:45:09
in Rogers, Arkansas. A John Doe warrant comes from the state of Wisconsin. This was Wisconsin
00:45:18
in 2003. They they actually had a John a John Doe warrant issued prior years prior and then it
00:45:32
held up in court in in 2003. Now, the way that this goes, this is pretty fascinating because much of the genesis
00:45:39
of the John Doe warrant stems from a case out of Wisconsin. Bless him for coming up with this very smart legal
00:45:45
maneuver. So, this takes place in Wisconsin 1994. On December 7th, 1994, an unknown male costed a 15year-old girl
00:45:55
at a bus stop in Milwaukee. He forced her at gunpoint into a nearby lot. There, he tied her hands behind her
00:46:02
back, covered her eyes, and led her to a car. He pushes her into the car, drives
00:46:07
a short distance, stops and threatens her life, and sexually assaults the girl. the young girl. Then this is a
00:46:14
horrible, horrible crime, but he did let the victim go. The victim runs home and
00:46:20
a family member calls the police. The victim was taken immediately to a sexual assault treatment center and the state
00:46:27
crime lab was able to develop a DNA profile for the unknown male suspect. Now, Wisconsin was facing the same
00:46:35
thing, only earlier than what the folks in Arkansas would later be experiencing with the statute of limitations on a
00:46:42
class one felony. So on December 4th, 2000, 3 days before the opportunity to get a conviction would expire, the state
00:46:54
of Wisconsin charged a person that they named as John Doe, number 12, with kidnapping and four counts of
00:47:00
firstdegree sexual assault. The DNA profile was included in the arrest warrant. Right. So eventually this would
00:47:10
lead them to a person named Bobby Dabney who they later arrested based off of the
00:47:15
DNA evidence on that particular case in Wisconsin. And then as I had already said in
00:47:21
2003 the court of appeals decision was instrumental in establishing the use of DNA profiles in John Doe warrants
00:47:30
because it upheld in court. Right. his his attorneys were saying thi this is this bothers me maybe as much as the
00:47:37
statute of limitations bothers you I don't know but this bothers me because his defense wasn't oh I didn't commit
00:47:44
the sexual assault I didn't commit the kidnapping his defense was that it was against his rights that they were
00:47:51
charging him you know that they had this actual John Doe warrant for him right it
00:47:56
it's not hey I'm innocent and oh you know by the way that don't use this this instrument to convict me. No, it's like
00:48:05
I don't know how much he even challenged it. He's just his attorneys are just saying you can't use this instrument.
00:48:10
Toss it out of court. And and the judge didn't see it that way. So this leads to
00:48:16
additional charges for Grant Harden who now gets an additional I believe it was an additional 20 years for the cold case
00:48:24
rape charge. And this was a big deal in Rogers and it was a big deal for that school and that
00:48:30
community and and it should be this was a case that uh sexual assault case that had haunted the community and and nobody
00:48:37
had knew and interestingly enough though when you apply hindsight to that case you can go okay well yeah this guy the
00:48:45
removing purposely going into the school with no shoes on because she told the detective she's like one thing that was
00:48:51
really odd was I noticed he wasn't wearing shoes and His his socks were covered in dirt. So he this guy took off
00:49:00
his shoes before entering the building. Yeah. I mean he did there was a way to get shoe prints and he didn't want to
00:49:07
leave shoe prints. Also distorts your height. Shoe prints are great evidence and it's it's something that's often
00:49:16
overlooked or forgotten about by the perpetrators of these crimes, but that's something that a cop would know. So, why
00:49:24
is this case we keep referencing at the start of the show that this case is in the news again? And it's in the news not
00:49:34
because they solve another cold case with his DNA evidence, but it probably will one day. You know, he's that's a
00:49:43
good question to ponder because he lives so close to to the border of two other states, right? and he did commit this
00:49:54
sexual assault at gunpoint on this poor teacher. Have they run, you know, the COTUS is, from my understanding, a
00:50:02
national database, but there's a lot of databases out there and I I I don't know. I I'm with you based off of the
00:50:08
murder and the sexual assault. I'm curious I if there would be anything that they could tie him to in
00:50:15
Missouri or Oklahoma, but the reasons for this to be back in the news is because Grant Harden has recently
00:50:26
escaped from prison. So he was in he was imprisoned at the facility in Calico Rock, Arkansas. As we said, this is
00:50:35
about a 3hour drive east of the location that we've been discussing so far here today. The way that this played out is
00:50:44
he's 56 years old this year and he was being held at the North Central unit in Calico Rock, Arkansas. On May
00:50:55
25th, he slipped out. He managed to get out of this prison. And his nickname is the
00:51:05
devil in the Ozarks. And that is a name that Max gave him when they Max being HBO when they did a 1-hour documentary
00:51:17
about this guy's crimes. Now, this documentary came out a couple years ago before he escaped in
00:51:24
May of 2025. But the way that this plays out is he he was in this area. It's basically
00:51:33
like a sallyport area where you have a double gate, right? Where one gate opens up, you walk in, the gate closes behind
00:51:40
you before the next gate opens up. So this guy is on the run. We don't have to spend any time
00:51:49
telling you how dangerous he is. He's got a law enforcement background. He's committed murder. He's committed sexual
00:51:55
assault. And he's desperate. He's desperate. It seems it seems like this guy because you can
00:52:03
sometimes get jobs within the prison that he got a job. I believe um he had a kitchen job. Yeah, he had a kitchen job.
00:52:11
And they think that maybe because of that job and maybe because of his interaction with um some of the staff
00:52:19
that he was able to to basically create like a makeshift uniform. So when he, like you said, these double gates, he
00:52:28
basically was carrying something out and they didn't bother to identify him, you
00:52:34
know, you know, facially identify him. They just identified the person with a uniform and and let him out. And um, as
00:52:42
of today, I mean, again, guy's very dangerous and like you said, desperate. Um, but they're searching
00:52:51
that that that area still. within uh you know couple I'm sure what I'm sure they're searching within a couple miles
00:53:03
of the prison but statewide manhunt statewide manhunt was issued that same day but I just saw a report where the US
00:53:12
marshalss or one of the US marshalss that's working on the case is like based on all the evidence that he sees or the
00:53:19
type of individual he believes Grant Harden to be he's like It's most likely that he's not in this state anymore.
00:53:28
Yes. And so here, do you want do you want to get into my speculation or my what I'm fearful of?
00:53:36
Uh start with the speculation. Okay. So speculation oftent times, more times than not, prison escapes that I've
00:53:44
reviewed, they have some kind of help. And I'm not saying that that that happened in this case. It could just be
00:53:52
malfeasants or it could just be that somebody dropped the ball and didn't, you know, really effed up, but often
00:54:00
times they have some kind of help and and so that's where you kind of have to analyze this kitchen job. I can't speak
00:54:07
to that. I can say that from my general knowledge of prisons, usually if you have a kitchen job, you do have access
00:54:14
to certain areas and certain utensils and tools that that other inmates may not have access to. But what we do know
00:54:22
is just like the captain said, he's spotted Harden is spotted leaving the prison nonchalantly.
00:54:31
And the outfit that he is wearing, without seeing a close-up on this, it appears to me that he is in a police
00:54:39
officer's uniform or a correction officer's uniform. That's what it looks like to me. And so the thought is, and
00:54:46
he's wheeling like a little utility cart. And so the thought is that he simply put on this get up. He has this
00:54:54
disguise on, walks up, and whoever was in charge of gate A and gate B that he walked
00:55:00
through must have at a glance identified this guy as law enforcement or corrections officer and simply opened up
00:55:08
the gates and then he left. Now, one good thing is it they seem to recognize that he was
00:55:14
missing rather quickly. So, he only had about 30 minutes from from the reports that are coming out. I want to say from
00:55:21
the underline that from the reports that are coming out because there'll be a full investigation on this escape and
00:55:28
regardless if it's somebody who dropped the ball or somebody who who assisted this guy, they need to be there there
00:55:35
needs to be disciplinary action that takes place. We can all agree on that. Now, he walks out of there if he had
00:55:42
help on the inside, which is not too far-fetched. Again, we've seen it in many prison escapes. It's also not too
00:55:49
far-fetched to believe that he may have had help on the outside. Now, if he had help on the outside, I'm talking about
00:55:56
things with provisions, right? Transportation, money, food, what have you, housing, shelter, what have you.
00:56:02
I'm a little less fearful of of what I think could be a very horrible situation if he has help on the outside because he
00:56:11
would be a little less desperate and he would be able to distance himself further from the prison. And look, the
00:56:17
further he gets out of this away from this prison doesn't necessarily mean that it it shrinks the likelihood that
00:56:24
he's apprehended at some point. These escapees, the apprehension rate is very very high. They're almost always caught
00:56:33
eventually on a long enough timeline. They are almost almost always caught. What scares the hell out of me is that
00:56:39
he didn't have any help and he got out and he was desperate. They only He's got 30 minutes. The average male and look
00:56:47
he's he's an older guy. He's bigger. The The average male running away. He's walking away. Yeah. And And the average
00:56:56
male walking I believe I think it's like 13 minutes a mile. So he's not if he's just on foot, he's not that far away
00:57:05
when they are aware that he's missing. Now, that doesn't mean they're going to find him right away, obviously. But what
00:57:10
I'm getting at is that they didn't find him. So, I'm worried that because that uniform that he's wearing or that outfit
00:57:18
that he's wearing looks enough like a police officer's uniform that he could have knocked on a
00:57:25
door, somebody would have opened up their door and he could have forced his way in. That is what terrifies me
00:57:31
because that's going to be a very horrible situation if that is what in fact took place. Now, with in regard to
00:57:39
the idea that he might still be in the state of Arkansas, he's he's been gone for days, right? We don't know exactly
00:57:46
where this guy is. He could be out of the state. If he is still in the state, one thing that the searchers and law
00:57:53
enforcement and the marshals keep pointing out that there are at least 2,000 registered or known caves in the
00:58:03
state of Arkansas. So, it seems to be that there there is a lot of thought and consideration that he may be hiding out
00:58:09
in these different caves, maybe moving about or or has selected one and has hunkered down there. But, if that's
00:58:18
2,000 registered or known caves, that means that there's more caves out there than just the the 2,00. So, yeah, we're
00:58:25
keeping an eye on this. But, law enforcement also did release um because he'd be on the run. We we don't know
00:58:34
what he has access to. So, chances are his appearance would be changing. So, his hair would have grown out a little
00:58:42
bit. His his beard might start growing out. So, they did release um here here's a picture of Grant Harden as we know
00:58:50
him. And here's what he possibly could look like. Doesn't look much different, obviously, with a beard and a little bit
00:58:57
of hair on the side. Yeah, he's a bald white man. He's he's a large white man. And as we're talk, you know, as the
00:59:05
captain's pointing out here, yeah, we're getting multiple pictures of him that's
00:59:10
being released. And some are with facial hair, some are without. It's possible that that he gets caught before
00:59:19
we release this episode. Hopefully. I I would like for him to be caught while these microphones are still hot. Now,
00:59:27
but but here's the problem, though, is a lot of the people that are reporting on
00:59:31
this, they're they're just saying some silly [ __ ] Does this guy have some insider information because he worked
00:59:38
for law enforcement? Yes. Is he going to view life differently because he's coming from it from a go back to the the
00:59:47
rape case, removes his shoes, so there's no footprints. Okay. Yeah, he has some insider
00:59:54
information, but some of these news stations are going he he must have extensive knowledge of uh how they
01:00:03
search databases and and and drones. Extensive knowledge on drones. He he was a chief of police of a, like
01:00:11
you said, a twoman department. I'm sure they didn't have a whole drones unit. Well, that's why they only had two men
01:00:19
because they had so many drones that they didn't Well, so to go back, let's we can review his uh law enforcement
01:00:27
career here real quick. He he did work for the Fagatville Police Department, which is a large police department that
01:00:33
he started working with them in 1990, but he's he's fired. This is one thing we should point out here because a lot
01:00:39
of the news outlets are saying the speculation is that he's got help on the outside. Okay, that's fair speculation.
01:00:46
However, I'll say this. If he's if he does have help on the outside, it's coming from family or friends. And he's
01:00:54
not described as a very nice guy. So, I can't believe that he has a whole lot of
01:00:57
friends. And I agree. The the thing here is that would be easy to pick up on by law enforcement. They are certainly
01:01:05
vetting all those people. That is not a problem. I think that if a friend or a family member had assisted him in any
01:01:12
way, they are on that breadcrumb trail like flies on [ __ ] my friend. Now, the thing that I want to make sure that I
01:01:20
point out here that when we go through his law enforcement career, this is not a guy that was liked by his fellow
01:01:26
officers. So, he's not getting help from anybody in law enforcement. I will say that and wager Franklin on that right
01:01:33
away. As said, he worked for the Fagatville Police Department in 1990. He was fired in 1991. To keep it nice and
01:01:41
short and sweet, he was determined to be unfit to be an officer. He was then hired by the Huntsville Police
01:01:48
Department in 1991. He left. The thing here is some of these jobs he leaves voluntarily. Now, we need to point out
01:01:57
that he's a lot of times it's because they're giving him the opportunity. Hey, we're going to be we're going to play
01:02:03
nice here and you can resign now or we can fire you later. So, he works for Huntsville Police Department again for
01:02:11
only for less than one year's time. Then a year after that in 1993 after he leaves Huntsville, he is hired by the
01:02:19
Springs Police Department where he's fired three years later. He made it a full three years at that one. He was
01:02:26
fired for excessive force and for lying on a police report. It's around this time shortly after this, about a year
01:02:34
after this in fact, that he commits the sexual assault at the school. And then he begins a job as a constable for the
01:02:44
Benton County District 1 Sheriff's Office. That's in 2009. He is then hired in 2016 to be the
01:02:55
police chief in Gateway, Arkansas. That constable job, while he held that for a considerable amount of time, I believe
01:03:04
it was for close to six or seven years. I think that I think that it's titled constable for one that that term can
01:03:13
mean a lot of different things in different areas and different lines of work. But here in Benton County, I
01:03:19
believe that it's kind of a for the most part like a voluntary job or or it's a a
01:03:26
term job and I don't think the pay is real great. So, I'm pointing that out only to to suggest what I believe is
01:03:35
that he was able to actually hold this job down considerably longer than the other jobs. Because if you're if you're
01:03:41
not paying the guy a whole lot of money, you're probably not going to force him out unless he does something really
01:03:46
terrible, right? Like unless he does something that that fully warrants getting rid of a guy that's
01:03:53
doing a job for for peanuts, probably a position that's hard to fill. But as said, he takes the police chief job that
01:04:00
only lasts like four years. And then he is unemployed up until the time that he kills James Appleton. And then he goes
01:04:08
away to prison. And unfortunately, it wasn't forever because we now know that he is out. He's currently on the run as
01:04:16
of this recording. And we are hoping and praying that he is caught, located, and
01:04:21
apprehended very, very soon. Update. Victed murderer and former Arkansas police chief Grant Harden is back in
01:04:33
police custody. This after a 13-day manhunt. Shortly after he was captured, Harden's former boss at the Eureka
01:04:41
Springs Police Department, Earl Hyatt, told NewsNation, "It's a good thing authorities caught him when they did.
01:04:47
He's a violent individual and and you know, my fear was that if he felt like it would be in his best interest to help
01:04:57
him escape, he would have hurt somebody." News Nation's Mills Hayes has been following this story closely. Joins
01:05:03
us now on the ground in Arkansas with the very latest. bills. Hey, Kelly. Well, people here in Calico Rock are
01:05:10
breathing somewhat of a sigh of relief, but remember this is a small community and one person even told me that it's
01:05:16
not a matter of if people here have guns, but whether or not how many or what kind they have. And so, a lot of
01:05:23
people we spoke with throughout the week said that they weren't that concerned. Uh, but they are really grateful that he
01:05:29
has been captured. Now you guys can see the first images of him being apprehended by law enforcement. He was
01:05:36
taken into custody by border patrol, their tactical unit out of uh West Texas. And this is a group that is uh
01:05:45
taught and trained to search and find individuals like this. And we spoke to some people who live here who say that
01:05:51
they are somewhat frustrated though because they feel like they were telling local police and local sheriff's
01:05:56
deputies uh that something was off in certain uh uh certain areas of town and they don't feel uh like they were
01:06:04
listened to until uh Border Patrol came in. Now, we did speak one of our local affiliates with uh one of the women who
01:06:12
lives right next to where they found Harden. And this is what she had to say last
01:06:16
night after the border patrol showed up today. All of a sudden, trucks came from
01:06:22
everywhere and SUVs. There was I want to say there was 20 or 30 of them. I don't
01:06:28
know for sure, but they all took off down this way and next thing we know they're hauling Grant Harden out from
01:06:36
back here out of the woods. And Harden has a long past in law enforcement throughout the years,
01:06:45
especially in northwest Arkansas. I spoke with uh some people who live in the communities where he used to be uh a
01:06:52
constable, Benton County, and they tell me that he was the kind of person who was supposed to be preventing crime, but
01:06:58
instead he was creating crime. Uh and so a lot of frustration there, but as you guys can see, that capture by border
01:07:06
patrol yesterday uh is definitely a welcome sign for the people who live here in this community, Kelly. Yeah, you
01:07:12
would certainly imagine so. What happens Mills to Harden now? Well, he's been transferred to another
01:07:21
Arkansas Department of Corrections unit. He's in the Varnner unit and I'm told that he is in the Super Max unit of that
01:07:28
specific uh prison and that's about 30 miles south of Pineluff. For those of you who don't know the area, it's a
01:07:34
couple hours south of where we are right now. But he is going to be in a supermax
01:07:39
facility. So a much more uh guarded uh area than where he was here in the North Central unit just a couple of miles
01:07:47
away. [Music] Kelly want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage each and
01:08:03
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Subscribe to us on Apple Podcast. There's so many ways to support the show. And until next week, be good, be
01:08:17
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