The former Alabama corrections officer and a murder suspect who sparked a national manhunt evaded capture for more than a week by ditching and buying multiple vehicles, officials said Tuesday.
Vicky White and Casey White used at least three different vehicles in the days after the former corrections officer helped the inmate escape late last month and before a police pursuit in Indiana on Monday ended the fugitives’ run, officials said.
The search for Vicky White, former assistant director of corrections at the Lauderdale County Jail in Alabama, and Casey White, who is no relation, ended in Vanderburgh County, Indiana, when authorities rammed and tipped a Cadillac sedan on its side that Casey White drove.
Vicky White, 56, was later pronounced dead from a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Officials have said that the pair, who left the Alabama jail together April 29, had a relationship for at least two years.
Investigators believe the Cadillac was purchased in Indiana, Vanderburgh County Sheriff Dave Wedding said Tuesday. The duo had abandoned a Ford F-150 pickup at an Evansville, Indiana, car wash May 3. They swapped the pickup for the Cadillac, which had been purchased in Tennessee, Wedding said.
“The truck and the Cadillac, they purchased,” Wedding said, noting, that neither had been reported stolen.
Lauderdale, Ala., County Sheriff Rick Singleton confirmed Tuesday the pickup was purchased in Tennessee.
“That truck came from Tennessee. My understanding is they purchased that truck there, somewhere around the Bethesda area. … We know that’s the truck they left in, it wasn’t stolen,” Singleton said.
The sheriff said Vicky White had about $90,000 at her disposal from the recent sale of her home and other assets, he said.
She purchased a copper-colored Ford Edge shortly before April 29, authorities said.
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That car was abandoned in Williamson County, Tennessee, the day the ex-jail supervisor and inmate went missing, but authorities didn’t realize it had been towed and was a getaway vehicle until nearly a week later, officials have said.
The couple had stayed at Motel 41 in Evansville, Indiana, for a week, and planned to stay there another week, according to a front-desk employee. The pair secured a room on May 2 by paying a transient man to check in for them, the employee said.
The employee’s account was confirmed by Wedding.
“He reserved the room, and then they paid him,” Wedding said. “They sought him out. … They didn’t know each other.”
Casey White, 38, is charged with capital murder in 2020 in the stabbing death of 58-year-old Connie Ridgeway in Alabama.
He told authorities that he had planned to engage in a shootout with law enforcement, an official said Tuesday.
“He said that he was probably going to have a shootout at the stake of both of them losing their lives,” Wedding told reporters.
The U.S. Marshals Service said when Casey White came out of the Cadillac on Monday, he exclaimed: “Please help my wife. She just shot herself in the head, and I didn’t do it.”
Investigators found a cache of weapons. The pair had four handguns and several semiautomatic weapons, including an AR-15, that were recovered from their car, the sheriff said. Officials also discovered about $29,000 in the car.
Multiple wigs were also found. The employee at the Motel 41 said Vicky White wore a long, blonde wig.
Elisha Fieldstadt and Tim Stelloh contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
