ARKANSAS (KNWA/KFTA) — Grant Hardin’s 12-day escape ended just 1.5 miles from prison—joining a list of infamous Arkansas escapes, from violent prison breaks to men who vanished without a trace.
Samuel Hartman
Escaped 2022, captured 2023.
A convicted child rapist who escaped from an Arkansas prison in 2022—allegedly using jet skis to flee across the Mississippi River—was captured more than a year later in West Virginia.
Samuel Hartman, now 39, had been serving a life sentence since 2013 for raping his 14-year-old stepdaughter. In August 2022, he escaped from a work detail near the East Arkansas Regional Unit at Brickeys.
According to the U.S. Marshals Service, Hartman’s wife, Misty Hartman, and his mother, Linda White, drove up to the field where he was working and opened fire toward officers while Hartman climbed into their truck. The group then fled to the river, where two jet skis were staged…