Casey White, the dangerous murder inmate who bolted from an Alabama prison with his jailer, has told detectives that the lovebirds spent most of their time on the run holed up in a cheap Indiana motel and plotting where to go next.
Casey White, 38, and Lauderdale County assistant director of corrections Vicky White, 56, were captured on Monday night after a dramatic police chase in Evansville, Indiana, just a five-hour drive from the Florence prison they absconded from 11 days earlier.
The pair initially drove 100 miles north through Tennessee where they dumped Vicky’s rust-colored Ford Edge and transferred into a black Ford pickup truck and headed farther north. The truck was spotted on May 3, four days after they escaped, abandoned at a car wash another 200 miles north in Evansville. Surveillance video from the car wash showed Casey White hopping into a grey Cadillac, which a sharp-eyed cop then spotted parked outside Evansville’s Motel 41 on Monday, police said.
Cops lay in wait for the pair to leave the motel and when they eventually did on Monday afternoon, a chase began. Vicky White fatally shot herself as cops closed in but Casey White surrendered without incident when their Cadillac crashed, authorities said.
While a coroner will have to confirm that she died by suicide, Vicky was found with a gun in her hand. She was also on the phone to 911 mid-chase, saying she had a gun to her head, Vanderburgh County Sheriff Dave Wedding told CNN.
Wedding, whose county includes Evansville, seemed incredulous that the fugitives decided to camp out in the small city of 110,000 located along the Ohio River.
“After six days [since the car wash sighting] it was just hard to believe that they were here. I wouldn’t think that somebody on the run would stay in a community like Evansville for six days,” he said at a Tuesday morning briefing.
He said detectives have since interviewed Casey White, who allegedly told them he planned to get into a shootout with law enforcement but was stymied when the Cadillac hit a grass ditch and was rammed by police.
Wedding said White also explained what they had spent their time on the run doing, and what their plan was.
“He said he was just trying to find a place to hide out and lay low and they thought they’d driven long enough that they wanted to stop for a while, get their bearings straight, and then figure out the next place to travel,” he said.
Wedding said the pair had paid for a 14-day stay at the Motel 41, a $50-a-night joint with unflattering online reviews about bedbugs and moldy walls.
“[He] said they were trying to contemplate where they could go and be discretely away from the public eye,” he added.
Cops found multiple red and blonde wigs the pair used as disguises as well as a stash of guns and $29,000 in cash. They appear to have blown through money as Vicky White reportedly withdrew $90,000 in cash—the proceeds of selling her house—before they escaped. The pair legally purchased the Ford pickup truck but it’s unclear how they obtained the Cadillac, Wedding said.
“Their plan was pretty faulty,” Wedding said. “They’re criminals, their plan was faulty and it failed, thank God.”
Casey White will be extradited back to Alabama under heavy security at an undisclosed time on Tuesday. In his interview with detectives, he didn’t express any remorse or reveal why Vicky shot herself. While Vicky’s family initially told The Daily Beast that Casey must have “brainwashed” her, Wedding said there were no signs that she had been acting under duress.
“He was not forcing her, it was a mutual relationship,” Wedding said.
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