The relationship between Vicky White, assistant director of amendments for Lauderdale County, northwest Alabama, and now-escaped Casey White was somewhat confirmed by prisoner tips at the District Detention Center, Sheriff Rick Singleton told CNN.
“We have confirmed through independent sources and other means that there was a relationship between Casey White and Vicky White outside of her normal working hours – not physical contact, but a relationship of a different nature,” Singleton said.
“We were told that Casey White was receiving special privileges and was being treated differently than other inmates,” Singleton said.
Authorities are searching for Corrections Officer Vicky White and Casey White, who were handcuffed to a 38-year-old inmate at the Lauderdale County Detention Center Friday morning while handcuffed to his patrol car. Said.
Vicky White said she would take Casey White to court for a mental assessment and then receive medical treatment for her illness. Authorities later discovered that no investigation or evaluation had been planned for Casey White that day, and that Vicky White had never been to a medical facility. His patrol car was found abandoned in the parking lot of a shopping center about a mile from the detention center Friday morning.
This situation has shocked Vicky White’s colleagues. The day she went missing after nearly two decades at the department was the last day at work, Singleton said. He submitted his retirement papers last week and had been thinking about selling his house a month ago and moving to the beach, he added.
“If she had done this willingly, if there were all indications that she did … I think we’re trying to have the last hope that she might have been intimidated for some reason and done this under duress, but I totally feel like you ‘betrayed,'” Singleton said.
Pat Davis said he was pessimistic about the situation and wanted his daughter to come home.
Sheriff: ‘I wonder if they’re still in Alabama’
At the intersection of two blocks from the shopping center parking lot, about eight minutes after leaving the jail – the video shows Vicky White’s patrol car being parked, where it was abandoned, Singleton said.
This indicates that the car was driven straight into the parking lot, and the driver never tried to go to court, the sheriff said.
But the video did not show what happened after the car arrived at the parking lot.
He told Singleton CNN that he believes the couple left the space in a second vehicle – perhaps moving to the vehicle that was staged there or being taken away by someone.
The sheriff said Monday that tests of surveillance video from the area did not immediately lead investigators to identify a second vehicle.
“I wonder if they’re still in Alabama,” the sheriff said. He said authorities on the Mexican-Canadian border had been notified of the search.
Vicky White will have money from the recent sale of her home, but her pension funding documents have not yet been processed, Singleton said.
The U.S. Marshals Service is offering a reward of up to $ 10,000 for information leading to the whereabouts of a missing prisoner and officer.
Casey White may have changed his appearance since he was 6-feet-9 and out of prison, and his height will make him stand out even more, U.S. Marshal Marty Keeley said Monday.
Fugitive prisoner ‘dangerous’
Casey White said Singleton was “a very dangerous person.”
According to the Marshalls Service, he was sentenced in 2015 to 75 years in prison for a series of crimes, including burglary of a home, car theft and police chase.
The Marshalls Service said he was transferred from state prison to the Lauderdale County Detention Center on Feb. 25 to attend court hearings on two murder charges he faces in connection with the stabbing death of 58-year-old Connie Ridgeway in 2015.
According to Lauderdale County District Attorney Chris Connolly, he pleaded guilty in 2020 and later pleaded guilty.
“We think he’s armed because she’s armed,” Singleton said of Casey White. The sheriff warned people not to approach him if they saw the prisoner and to call the police instead.
In 2020, when Casey White was detained at a detention center in Lauderdale County, authorities learned he was planning to escape from prison and take a hostage, Singleton said.
“We shook him down and found he had a shank in his hand – a shank was a prison knife. We recovered it. We immediately sent him to the Corrections Department,” Singleton said Monday.
There were already two incumbents in prison with the inmates at all times, including when going to court, but there was a policy of compulsion – but “we insisted with him on that policy,” Singleton said.
Vicky White violated the policy by getting out of jail alone with Casey White, but other officers did not back down because he was a second-in-command at the facility, Singleton said. “Despite being the boss, she told the booking officer that she was going to take him to court and drop him off because he was over traffic. This is a blatant violation of policy. But I firmly believe it was her boss. The booking officer did not question it,” he noted.
As part of his work, Vicky White “was often across cell blocks, interacting with all prisoners at one time or another,” Singleton said. “But as far as a romantic relationship or something like that is possible, we have no evidence that it was so,” he added.
CNN’s Chuck Johnston, Elizabeth Wolfe, Laine Mackey, Nadia Romero and Maria Cartaya contributed to the report.
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