The Arkansas Department of Corrections has shared an image of a former police chief, who was found guilty of murder and rape, and recently escaped from prison. This photo is described as a “possible updated headshot that may represent his current appearance.”
ADOC representative Rand Champion informed CBS News that their team “used the last headshot taken of Grant Hardin to create a projection of his potential appearance after a week on the run.”
“This included a week’s worth of hair growth, as well as being slightly slimmer due to the expected limited supply of food available,” Champion said.
Now that more than a week has passed since Hardin’s escape from the North Central Unit, we are issuing this potential updated headshot to suggest what he might currently look like. pic.twitter.com/2p20sKUHXG
— Arkansas Department of Corrections (@ADCPIO) June 3, 2025
The “projected” image shows Hardin with a neatly trimmed beard.
Hardin, 56, escaped from the North Central Unit in Calico Rock on May 25, as CrimeOnline reported. He pleaded guilty in 2018 to shooting a water company employee in the back of the head and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. A year after the murder, investigators matched his DNA to the rape of a school teacher in 1997. He pleaded guilty to that crime as well, and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
He served as Gateway’s police chief for about four months in early 2016 and had been a Eureka Springs police officer in the mid-1990s, resigning when he was reportedly told he was going to be fired for lying in a police report. He also served as a Benton County constable from 2009-2010 and 2013-2014 and a corrections officer in Fayetteville.
Hardin, known as “the devil in the Ozarks,” wore a costume resembling a corrections officer’s uniform during his apparently easy escape, but officials don’t yet know how he obtained it or if he manufactured it himself. Investigators are working “to help determine any assistance he may have had.” The costume was not a standard DOC uniform, the department said, but it still fooled the prison officer who opened a secure gate for him and let him out.
The search for Hardin is focused on north central Arkansas. A reward of $25,000 for information leading to his recapture is being offered by the FBI and the US Marshals Service.
