Procrustus the Psychic
Kidding aside, one wonders how big a deal the escape even is in comparison to the capital murder charge he is still facing. In a state in the execution belt, no less.
I was thinking the same thing. Did he have such power over her that he convinced her to off herself? While he left the car with his hands up? Now he can basically claim he was kidnapped. And unless there’s evidence otherwise, it’s kind of hard to disprove. They were her guns, right?
ETA: The more I think about it, the scenario that she forced him to go with her is about as probable as the more common version that the media is presenting (that they conspired). You wonder how it would be framed if it were an older soon-to-retire male cop and a younger female inmate.
Camo condoms?
I’m sure she was not buying anything for a disguise. She was 56 years old, days away from retirement, and in all the reporting I’ve seen in this story there has been no mention of any husband, ex-husband, wife, ex-wife, or children. No SO at home, nobody. I strongly suspect she was painfully lonely and facing a future life without even the social interaction that her work provided and so when some tall young(er) man gave her attention, she fell for him like a lovelorn teenager. She was likely very sad and very, very lonely if she thought living on the lam with a convicted murderer was preferable to whatever her current lifestyle entailed. Thus the purchases at an “adult store” probably had nothing to do with a disguise but rather something to enhance her new romantic relationship.
And then to choose death over capture.
I feel really bad for her. What an awful story.
Not sure about the shotgun, but she purchased the AR15 just a couple of weeks before the breakout.
I don’t know that I feel bad for her, she helped a crazy murderer escape prison. Of all the things that could have happened, this was probably one of the better outcomes.
You’re right about it being an awful story though. It makes you wonder how many people have such lonely lives and fool everyone into thinking they are doing just fine, but have stuff like this running thru their minds.
All the pics of her I’ve seen in the news, all seem to be just one pic. And she sure doesn’t look like 56 in that pic. I wonder how old that pic is.
She worked for the Corrections Department for 17 years; so she would have been 39 when she started. Could it possibly be a picture of her when she started 17 years ago with her new uniform…
Here’s another picture where she looks 56
And she looks older in the hotel surveillance video too:
I’m sure she was vulnerable, but you don’t have to be lonely to fall for a master manipulator who slowly, meticulously grooms and dupes you. If he convinced her he understood her as no one else had and that he loved her for who she was deep down–the stuff of countless romantic movies–she might well have been convinced he was the love of her life, regardless of how many friends and dates she had.
I don’t know if he manipulated her into killing herself (by, say, holding a gun to his own head and saying, “We’ll see each other in heaven in moments, love,” or some other Hallmark glop). My first thought was that she’d already realized he didn’t love her (because once she was all in and there was no turning back, he treated her like sh*t), and with her own imprisonment looming, she had nothing left.
I understand her mother was very cooperative with police and was simply desperate to get her daughter back alive. The collateral damage of this whole debacle is dreadful.
I can’t find the source for this, but apparently the retirement was somehow part of the escape plan. Vicky’s mother, with whom she’d been living after she sold her house, and who lived next door to the house that was sold, said that she hadn’t heard about the retirement. And someone at the corrections department said that it was unusual for employees there to retire at 56, 6 years before they can collect Social Security.
Here’s info about her previous marriage and divorce:
“I’ve always thought of Vicky as a daughter,” Frances [White] said. “I’ve known her since she was a little girl… But I hate to see her doing it.
“I wish she would call herself or let us know if she’s safe or not…”I’m terribly concerned for her safety.”
Vicky was once married to Frances’ son Tommy, who died in January aged 62 after a battle with Parkinson’s disease. They were married for just over four years but separated 16 years ago when Tommy developed a serious drug addiction."
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
It’s the “slowly and meticulously” that bothers me. Why is an inmate having that much contact with a staff member over an extended period of time? I see no reason for it, and it shouldn’t be allowed. Staff/inmate interactions should be closely monitored and only allowed briefly for specific and valid reasons.
I assume it just depends on the culture (and size) of the institution. A relative of mine is a DOC Guard and will tell work stories that, if you didn’t know he was talking about inmates, just sound like any other work stories. One inmate even mentioned that his [my relative/the guard’s] wife was one of his elementary school teachers.*
Knowing nothing about the inner workings of the prison system, I can only assume that if the same guards tend to interact with the same inmates day in and day out, they get to know each other a bit. If a particularly inmate, through whatever means, happens to be a good manipulator and the guard happens to be the type that will succumb to that manipulation, I could see it happening.
I haven’t really followed the case. Is there any chance the two of them knew each other before he went to jail? That is, is it possible he wasn’t just a random inmate?
*Which I’m guessing has happened more often then he realizes since his wife has been a teacher for 30+ years and typically works at schools in the ‘bad part of town’.
Why would fugitives facing a nationwide manhunt risk being spotted at a car wash?
“Honey, the truck’s kinda dirty, better get it washed.”
Lifetime could already be working on a sequel to "New York Prison Break: The Seduction of Joyce Mitchell” - “Alabama Prison Break: The Regrettably Brief Romance of Vicky White”.
At least it had a happy ending - no innocent people hurt.
My son works in a Florida prison. He routinely catches an inmate with a cellphone and confiscates it. Where do the phones come from?
Prisoners go through a cavity search on arrival at the prison. Other than attorneys, visits are done through a barrier. Guards are not permitted to carry phones onto the property and are subject to unannounced pat downs.
Where do the phones come from?
These phone calls should have raised concerns quite awhile ago. I think the Sheriff will be making some security changes.
I guess it’s easy to fall into routines. Prisoners go back and forth to court for hearings. They have appointments for medical evaluations. It’s easy to focus on the work and not the prisoner.
Except I think the unspoken assumption was that he would kill her, once she was no longer useful.
And yes, he manipulated and seduced her. But don’t corrections workers get training in that sort of thing? I mean, even if you’re a straight guy guarding a straight male prisoner, he might be trying to befriend you.
As for where the cell phones come from, my understanding from watching shows like Oz is that they’re provided by corrupt guards.
My guess is that there was something identifying on it were trying to remove. For example, maybe they were thought someone may have spotted them earlier so they felt this would be a good time to clean the grass/mud off the truck.
It’s like when you see mugshots and the person has half their head shaved or part way through getting their hair braided. It’s not that they thought this was a good time to do that, it’s that they were trying to make sure the cops wouldn’t be able to find ‘the guy with the big hair’ or ‘the guy with the long beard’.
I’m still going to guess it’s guards or other prison staff. It could even be visitors handing them off to guards/staff so the guard doesn’t have to get it into the building, just move it around. If the inmates and visitors never interact (and inmates aren’t allowed in visitor areas/visitors aren’t allowed in inmate areas), that’s the only easy way I can think of. But even that chain could be broken by treating the non-secure side of the visitor area entirely separate from the secure side (ie staff/guards on the non-secure are can’t move to the secure side or even interact with staff/guards on the secure side).
Also, drones. From time to time I hear about drones be used to drop stuff into prison yards.
The final sentence of JJ’s post applies here.
Hard to know exactly “how it would be framed if it were an older soon-to-retire male cop and a younger female inmate”, but one thing you can be absolutely sure of is that nobody would be suggesting with no evidence that the younger female inmate is a “master manipulator who slowly, meticulously groom[ed] and dupe[ed]” the older male official etc. etc.