She ordered her subordinates to prepare Casey White, 38, for transport from the Florence County Jail to a psychiatric court. But such an assessment was not planned.
“All her colleagues are ruined. She was an exemplary employee,” said Lauderdale County Sheriff Rick Singleton. “What in God’s name made her do such a stunt?” The only conclusion we can reach at this point is just romance in prison. “
They dumped the sheriff’s sheriff minutes from jail
After nearly two decades in the department, Vicki White did not spend her last day at work eating cake and hugging her colleagues to celebrate her retirement. Instead, she ran away with a criminal who had already served 75 years in prison for attempted murder and was awaiting trial on a separate murder charge.
Shortly after the two fled, authorities began uncovering a full list of hiding and fabrications.
The transportation of detainees on their own was against the protocol. So Vicki White told a reservation clerk that she was the only replacement available with a certified firearm to transport Casey White. Her colleagues did not question her because of her position as second commander in prison. That was also a plausible explanation – several lawmakers left minutes earlier in two vans carrying a dozen prisoners, Singleton said.
That was probably part of the plan.
“She scheduled the minibus transport that morning, made sure all the other gunmen left the building and were tied up in court … she knew the reservation officer wouldn’t question her when he told her he would take him to court.” and left it with other employees, “Singleton said.
Just 10 minutes after leaving prison, the two dumped the sheriff – with the prison keys, the radio and Vicki White’s handcuffs, still inside – in the parking lot of a shopping center in Florence.
Casey White was unable to return to the detention center that afternoon, and repeated calls to Vicki White’s phone switched to voicemail. Until then, the couple had fled in a copper SUV Ford, which Vicki White had bought under a pseudonym a few days earlier. She parked it in the mall the night before the escape, Singleton said.
It was parked in a section used to sell cars, which helped investigators identify it as the vehicle they were hunting. “We had a witness who saw him there because he was looking at the car for sale, but he noticed there was no sign for sale and thought it was unusual,” Singleton said. When the news came that her patrol car had been found there, he called and said, “Hey, I saw that car there.”
It was the second of four cars to help provide a roadmap for where the fugitives were during the intense chase.
She bought men’s clothes and shopped at an adult store
In the 11 days they fled, they reached 280 miles from Florence. They had tens of thousands of dollars in cash. They used the new clothes, wigs and several vehicles to get investigators out of their tracks.
As authorities worked to track them down, they wondered how a respected law enforcement colleague had become involved with a violent criminal. Why does an employee with exemplary work experience risk his life, pension and impeccable reputation to help a dangerous prisoner? How long had they planned to escape from prison?
“Many of the questions we had may never be answered now,” Singleton said.
But some things seemed clear: Vicki White had prepared carefully for the escape — and it had been going on for some time. “It was very well planned and calculated,” Singleton said.
Surveillance videos made before April 29 support the sheriff’s comments about Vicki White, a widow who has no children. Her actions showed that she had spent the last few weeks preparing and eradicating her life.
For months, she told her colleagues about her plans to retire and move to the beach. In the weeks before her escape, she filed for retirement and sold her home in the small town of Lexington, Alabama, for $ 95,550 – less than half its market value. She moved into the house next door to her mother, Pat Davis, who said she had no idea about her daughter’s plans.
“She went home after work, had dinner at my house and took her dog. “She was walking her dog, and that was her daily routine,” Davis told CNN.
In the days before the escape, Singleton said, Vicki White was shopping for men’s clothing at a department store. She also bought some items at an adult store.
“She was essentially the brain behind the whole plan. He was behind bars. He really couldn’t plan too much behind bars,” Singleton said after his arrest. “She arranged – she bought the escape car, she sold her house, she got cash … She just obviously made the plan. Casey White didn’t run away from the facility; he was just released.”
Their “special relationship” dates back at least 2 years
Not much is known about the extent of Vicki White’s relationship with Casey White. The details appear in the dumb.
Singleton believes the unrelated couple met in 2020, when Casey White was transferred to Lauderdale County Jail on charges of fatally stabbing Connie Ridgeway in 2015.
“As far as we know, this was the earliest physical contact they had,” the sheriff said.
Casey White returned to state prison after the indictment. But Singleton said the officer and the prisoner continued to talk on the phone.
Other inmates revealed details of Casey White’s unusual benefits from Vicki White, including extra food, Singleton said.
Investigators found the two had had a “special relationship” for at least two years, the sheriff said. “We were told that Casey White had special privileges and was treated differently while in the facility than other prisoners,” he said. “We have confirmed through independent sources and other means that there was in fact a relationship between Casey White and Vicki White outside of her normal working hours – not physical contact – but a relationship of a different nature.”
In the summer of 2020, while Casey White was in prison for attempted murder and a series of violent crimes, he asked to speak to an investigator from Lauderdale County. When a police officer arrived, he admitted to killing Ridgeway in Rodgersville, Alabama, authorities said. He later withdrew his confession and pleaded not guilty to insanity.
Casey White was returned to Lauderdale County Jail in February to attend court hearings related to his murder charges.
Lauderdale County Attorney Chris Connelly said he was amazed that Vicki White may have had a romantic relationship with a prisoner. “I would never have thought that for a million years,” said Connelly, who spoke to her almost every day for 17 years.
He described Vicki White as “the strongest man in prison”.
“I would entrust my life to her,” he said.
Stopping in a car wash helped narrow their location
Over time, without any trace of their whereabouts, investigators released photos of the jailer and the fugitive to highlight their large difference in height. Tips were poured on local authorities and the US Marshals Service.
Six days after their escape, the Ford SUV was identified as towing in Williamson County, Tennessee, about two hours north of Florence. But Vicki White and Casey White were nowhere to be found.
After abandoning the SUV – their second car after the cruiser – they had bought a Ford F-150 truck for $ 6,000 in cash in Tennessee, said the commander of US Marshals Chad Hunt.
On Sunday night, investigators received advice that helped increase their whereabouts. The owner of a car wash in Evansville, Indiana, told investigators that the truck was found in his business about 275 miles north of Williamson County.
Video surveillance footage from the business shows that the fugitives got into a Cadillac sedan after abandoning the truck. “Not only did we identify the truck, but when they left the truck in the room, we saw them enter a Cadillac, which made us know what vehicle they might be in at the time,” Vanderburg County Sheriff Dave Wedding said.
Casey White showed no remorse after the arrest, authorities said
An Alabama task force landed in Evansville and joined forces with lawmakers and marshals in Indiana.
There, investigators roamed, exploring motels and parking lots for Cadillac restaurants.
Then, on May 9, Evansville Police Detective Darren Richardson was returning from his shift when he spotted a Cadillac in the parking lot of Motel 41, south of the sheriff’s office.
“I turned around, went through the parking lot and got … the vehicle’s registration number,” Richardson told CNN partner WAAY. Investigators believed the fugitives rented a motel room and paid someone who was homeless to use their identities. The owner of Motel 41, Paul Shah, told CNN that someone had registered in a room and paid for a two-week stay. The person was not registered under any of the missing couple’s names, he said.
Law enforcement officers monitored the motel and saw Vicki White coming out. She wore a wig and went up to the Cadillac. He got out of the parking lot with Casey White behind the wheel and he drove off, said US Marshal Marty Keeley.
Authorities began quietly tracking the fugitives. Shortly afterwards, a car chase ensued. Audio from a call to 911 that Evansville officials say Vicki White made seems to be starting near the end of the chase. Within the first six seconds, a female voice is heard – believed to be hers, saying, “Wait, stop … the airbags will fire and kill us.” She screamed a few times before saying, “The airbags are triggering. Let’s go out and run.”
The chase ended when a law enforcement officer crashed the suspects’ car into a ditch, Weding said.
When authorities reached Cadillac, they found that Vicki White had been shot. She died from a single gunshot wound to the head, and the manner of her death was defined as suicide, …
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