While sitting beside her husband, Toby Dorr received the shocking news of her lover’s demise.

A message from the man’s girlfriend on Facebook revealed that the 45-year-old, whom Dorr had assisted in escaping from prison amidst their passionate relationship, was discovered lifeless in his Arizona prison cell.

Her husband’s response was a sincere “Oh no,” reflecting his genuine sorrow, while Dorr herself felt utterly heartbroken.

The narrative is both complex and hardly believable. Dorr, at 68, with her unassuming appearance as a web designer, seems an unlikely figure for such a dramatic and adventurous past.

However, two decades ago, Dorr was at the center of a sensational prison escape and a heated romance that captured public attention.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, she described it as “a beautiful love story,” acknowledging its elements of both deep affection and personal renewal.

‘I think so many women can relate to starting over. It’s really not uncommon to kind of come adrift at the midpoint of your life, when you realize you’ve been doing all these things, and you’re kind of invisible.

‘That’s how I felt. You’re just taken for granted, and you think, what can I do with the rest of my life to really make it matter?’

Toby Dorr, now 68, fell in love 20 years ago with a convicted murderer and helped him escape

Toby Dorr (left) went on the run with her convict lover John Manard, then 26, in 2006, sparking a nationwide manhunt. He was 21 years her junior

Married to her childhood sweetheart, the mother to two adult sons, she had grown restless and aged 48 began volunteering at the local prison, taking dogs behind bars to allow the inmates to help train them.

It was there she met John Manard, a 26-year-old convicted of felony murder.

‘Hi, I’m John and I want to be your next handler,’ he said by way of introduction.

The pair became smitten and hatched a far-fetched plot to smuggle Manard out of Lansing Correctional Facility in Kansas, hiding him inside a dog crate when she drove out.

They went on the run for 12 passionate days until police tracked them down to rural Tennessee and, after a high-speed car chase, they were both arrested.

Manard was given an additional 30 years; Dorr sentenced to 27 months.

She walked free in May 2008, divorced, and moved to Boston where she met the man who in 2009 would become her second husband, Chris Dorr.

‘It was about two years after I got out before John started reaching out to me and writing to me,’ said Dorr, who has updated her memoir, Living with Conviction, for the 20-year anniversary.

‘A reporter called me and said they’d been talking to John, and that John asked them for my phone number. They said: “I don’t want to give it to him unless I have your permission.”

‘I had the reporter on speakerphone and Chris said: “Toby, give him your number. He needs a friend. We can be his friends. And I think you two need to talk. You need to get closure.”‘

Remarkably, Dorr and her new husband would end up traveling to the New Hampshire prison where Manard was held and visiting him together.

The Associated Press came to do an article about Lansing’s ‘Dog Lady,’ Dorr. The pair were pictured less than two weeks before his escape and the plan was already set

Manard was given a digital tablet behind bars, which enabled him to send emails.

‘John was an important part of my life,’ said Dorr. ‘And, you know, my husband liked him, too. We wanted to make his life easier. It wasn’t easy being in prison, so we were always open to talking to him on the phone, or emailing him, or whatever he needed.

‘And there’d be times when John and I might be talking every day by email, and then all of a sudden there’d be no email and he’d be gone for a year or two.

‘I just let it be, because the point of our being in his life was to help him get through whatever he was going through and if he needed to step away from me at that moment, then that’s okay.

‘But he always came back. It was just kind of a cycle.’

Was she not worried about the impact continued contact would have on her own mental health and her own efforts to put the past behind her? Dorr insists she was not.

‘By the time that John reached out to me, Chris and I were married, and Chris really is my rock. He is what steadies me and he’s what gives me strength. And so, I knew with him next to me that I could navigate that water.’

Yet over time, Manard’s messages got more concerning.

He had met a girl – she was visiting another inmate in New Hampshire and then began visiting him instead. When he was transferred to an Arizona prison, she moved to be near him. Dorr and the new girlfriend are indeed firm friends and remain in constant contact.

But Manard showed signs, Dorr says, of losing hope.

‘Been thinking about building me a guitar neck outta cardboard…,’ he wrote in June 2024. ‘GOTTA START SOMETHIN OR IMA BREAK… FOR GOOD THIS TIME I THINK!!!!!’

Several days later, he emailed: ‘I’ve been in MAAANY dark times and places in my mind and prayed and WISHED for aaall those things…mainly strength and death to be honest… both seemed like the best thing, or something like that….’

Dorr pictured after she was captured and arrested for helping Manard escape

Dorr and Manard went on the run for 12 passionate days until police tracked them down to rural Tennessee and, after a high-speed car chase, they were both arrested

Dorr said Manard asked her and Chris to send him a Bible, which they did, and they began to discuss the texts.

‘A lot of our conversations would revolve around things he’d read in the Bible, and what he thought about it,’ she said. ‘That was another thing I should have picked up on, because John wasn’t a Bible reader up until then. So, you know, there were just some different things going on.’

Dorr and her husband were producing a podcast, discussing the crime of felony murder – for which Manard was convicted when he was 17.

A person can be convicted of felony murder if they are in the vicinity of a felony and a person is killed. In Manard’s case it was a carjacking he and his friend carried out. It was Manard’s friend who pulled the trigger, shooting dead the occupant, but both teenagers were convicted of the murder.

The United States is one of the few countries to keep felony murder on the books – in Britain it was repealed as a crime back in the 1950s.

‘They said it was inhumane and unjust,’ Toby said. ‘And that’s what every other civilized country has ruled that you can’t sentence someone to murder, and sentence them to life in prison, if they didn’t kill anybody.

‘I mean, it’s the stupidest rule ever. It’s a 12th Century English law, from when they couldn’t figure out who did something. Now we have modern investigative techniques. And it’s just not fair. You just destroy people’s lives.’

Manard was due to appear on her podcast on Monday August 26, 2024.

Instead, on the Sunday, August 25, he was found unresponsive in his cell. His death was ruled a suicide.

Dorr said: ‘It was a shock, but at the same time I went back and I re-read all of our texts and emails for the last five months and I could see that he was struggling – now that I knew the ending.

‘And I thought, why didn’t I see this? Why didn’t I see something? But you know, you just… you just don’t. It takes you by surprise.

‘I don’t blame him. He didn’t have anything to look forward to, and in one of his messages to me he said: ‘Another year, I will have been in prison for two-thirds of my life.’

Dorr was not worried about the impact of being in touch with Manard. She said: ‘By the time that John reached out to me, Chris and I were married, and Chris really is my rock’

Manard was serving a life sentence for the felony murder. Even if he were granted parole for the 1996 killing, he would have to serve his additional 30 years for the prison escape before walking free.

‘What was there to hope for? What was there to live for?’ she said. ‘It just becomes too much to bear.’

Dorr’s biggest regret, she says, is that her actions in helping Manard escape caused him to have additional time added to his sentence.

Yet Manard told her and Chris, during their prison visit, that he had no regrets about their escapade.

Now, all these years later, and with the heartache of his suicide, does she have any regrets about remaining in contact with him?

‘No, no, not at all,’ she said. ‘Not at all. I just wish I could have done more.’