Alabama jail guard Vicky White fatally shot herself as she and escaped murder suspect Casey White were being chased by law enforcement in Indiana on Monday, ending an extraordinary 11 days on the run that captivated the nation.
“We’ve captured them,” Vanderburgh County Sheriff Dave Wedding said in Evansville, Indiana, a five-hour drive from the Florence, Alabama, lockup the pair had vanished from.
Lauderdale County Sheriff Rick Singleton, Vicky White’s former boss, told reporters: “We got a dangerous man off the street today. He is never going to see the light of day again. That is a good thing—for not just our community. That’s a good thing for our country.”
After Vicky White signed Casey White out of jail for a phantom court appointment, the duo kept a step ahead of investigators—fleeing Alabama for parts unknown.
It appears they were eventually undone by a stolen car. Late last week, investigators found Vicky White’s rust-colored SUV in a tow yard after the Whites abandoned it off an interstate near Bethesda, Tennessee. Authorities said another car, a black Ford pickup truck, was reported stolen in the same area around the same time.
Investigators tracked the truck to Evansville, about 100 miles north of Bethesda, on Monday. A man who resembled Casey White was spotted exiting the vehicle at the car wash, officials said, citing surveillance images.
A Sunday night tip led federal marshals and police to a hotel, where they set up surveillance. On Monday, Vicky White came out wearing a wig and got into a gray vehicle with Casey White, Northern District of Alabama U.S. Marshal Marty Keely told CNN.
Investigators tailed the Whites—who are not related—and a chase ensued. It ended with the fugitives’ vehicle in a rollover crash.
“U.S. Marshals task force officers intercepted them—actually collided with them to end the pursuit,” Wedding said.
“We got Casey White out who immediately announced that his wife had shot herself in the head and that he didn’t do it,’’ Keely said, adding that the Whites were not married.
Vicky White, 56, was taken to a hospital with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, while 38-year-old Casey White was taken into custody. Several outlets later reports that Vicky White had died.
When asked if it was surprising that Vicky White had pulled the trigger, rather than her road-trip buddy, a hardened criminal with a reported death wish, Wedding mused: “With criminals and criminal minds, they are very unpredictable. We don’t take anything they say with merit and they can change on a dime.”
Vicky White, the Lauderdale County jail’s assistant director of corrections, was by all accounts a model employee for the first 25 years she worked at the facility. Then, on April 29, she told co-workers she was taking Casey White to a mental health appointment at the courthouse. They never arrived.
“You don’t know who you can trust,” Singleton told reporters. “You know, I had every bit of trust in Vicky White. She had been an exemplary employee. And what in the world provoked her, or prompted her, to pull something like this, I don’t know. I don’t know if we’ll ever know.”
Instead of the courthouse, Vicky and Casey White were said to have driven her patrol car to a nearby shopping mall. There, they jumped into the Ford Edge SUV that she had bought days earlier using a fake identity, and took off running.
“This escape was obviously well-planned and calculated,” Singleton said. “A lot of preparation went into this. They had plenty of resources, had cash, had vehicles. Had everything they needed to pull this off.”
Investigators concluded shortly after the inmate and guard’s initial disappearance that the two had had a “special relationship.” Inmates reported that Vicky White had given Casey White his trays laden with “extra food,” Singleton said last week.
“He was getting special privileges,” the sheriff told WAAY 31. “She was doing special things for him that other inmates didn’t get. That he was getting treated special.”
There was no immediate evidence suggesting that anyone else had been involved in the escape, according to authorities.
Casey White, a hulking 6-foot-9 inmate decorated with white supremacist tattoos, was serving 75 years for a 2015 “crime spree” that included, but was not limited to, a home invasion, carjacking, killing a dog, and attempting to kill an ex-girlfriend. In September 2020, he was charged with capital murder over the “brutal” stabbing of a 58-year-old woman, the U.S. Marshals Service said. Shortly after the indictment, he had been moved to the Lauderdale County jail to await trial for the woman’s murder.
During his pre-sentencing proceedings in 2015, Casey White allegedly threatened to kill the ex-girlfriend, as well as his sister, if he ever escaped from jail, the Marshals Service said last Wednesday. The inmate also said “that he wanted police to kill him,” according to the agency. Investigators had taken “appropriate protective actions” to ensure the two women’s safety while Casey White was on the run, the agency said in a statement.
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