A former northwest Arkansas police chief convicted of rape and murder escapes from an Arkansas prison.

 

Authorities say 56-year-old Grant Hardin escaped from the North Central Unity in Calico Rock, Arkansas, around 3:30 yesterday afternoon. Hardin served as Chief of Police for the City of Gateway in Benton County and has many connections in the northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri areas. Hardin was convicted of first-degree murder in 2017 in the shooting death of 59-year-old James Appleton. When he began his 30-year-prison sentence, his DNA was entered into a database and he was then linked to a cold case rape from 1997. Hardin entered a guilty plea to that crime in 2019.

 

Hardin is described as a white male, six feet tall and 270 pounds.

 

Anyone with information about Hardin is asked to call 9-1-1