Casey White charged with murder of jailbreak accomplice Vicky White
The pair were the subject of a nationwide manhunt during their 11 days on the run
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Alabama prison escapee Casey White has been charged with the murder of his prison guard accomplice Vicky White.
Lauderdale County District Attorney Chris Connolly announced White, 36, had been indicted on felony murder charges on Tuesday.
Ms White, a corrections officer who was in a romantic relationship with the convicted felon, helped him escape from a jail in Florence, Alabama, on 29 April.
The pair spent 11 days on the run before Casey White was arrested by authorities in Evansville, Indiana, on 9 May.
At the time, police said Vicky White had died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a pursuit.
Though Casey White has been charged with her death, the indictment does not say that he killed her.
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AL.com reported that Casey White is also charged with first-degree escape “and in the course and furtherance of committing escape in the first degree, caused the death of Vicky White, who died from a gunshot wound to the head.”
Casey White’s attorney Mark McDaniel said on Tuesday his client would plead not guilty to the felony murder charge.
The felon had been serving a 75-year prison sentence for attempted murder and other crimes as well as awaiting trial on a murder charge when he escaped.
The pair of Whites, who were not related or married, led officials on a nationwide manhunt when the 56-year-old corrections officer picked the inmate up from the jail where she worked, claiming that she was taking him for a mental health evaluation.
She told her coworkers that once she had escorted him to court, she was going to seek medical attention for herself as she felt unwell.
The pair never arrived at the courthouse and Casey White had no scheduled court appearance or appointments that day.
Several hours later, the alarm was raised when Ms White failed to return to the jail and could not be reached by her colleagues.
Investigators later learned that the couple had been having a “jailhouse romance” for the last two years and that Ms White had sold her home, withdrawn $90,000 in cash from her bank accounts and filed for retirement in the days and weeks before the pair vanished.
The couple were finally tracked down 11 days later to Evansville, Indiana, after they switched vehicles four times and travelled across at least four states to try to evade capture.
Following a brief police chase, officers rammed the couple’s getaway car off the road into a ditch.
White surrendered to authorities while the 56-year-old corrections officer shot herself in the head, officials said.
She died from her injuries hours later.
Recorded jailhouse phone calls between Vicky White and Casey White help prove the prison guard was having a relationship with the Alabama inmate before the two went on the run, authorities said.