LANSING, Kan. — The search for a missing Alabama inmate and the prison officer accused of helping him escape entered its seventh day.
While no one knows where Casey White and Vicky White (no relation) are, Toby Dorr said he knows exactly what that correctional officer is going through.
“People were saying we really didn’t know what happened and I thought I knew exactly what happened,” said Dorr, formerly known as Toby Young.
That’s because Dorr did the exact same thing in 2006. She was married and running a volunteer dog training program at the Lansing Correctional Institution when she met John Manard, who was serving a life sentence for a deadly carjacking.
“When you create a situation with female officers or volunteers with male inmates, all it takes is for that officer or volunteer to be a little nicer in that moment to an inmate and things just take off from there,” Dorr explained.
He broke Manard out of prison in a dog cage and they went on the run in hopes of creating a life together.
“I fell in love with John and I know he had a crush on me, but we didn’t really know each other,” Dorr said.
She said red flags began to appear, including Manard’s temper, but that he never considered turning the inmate over. She said that she now fears for Vicky White’s safety.
“When you live on the run like that, it’s like a powder keg. “You’re always looking over your shoulder expecting something to happen every minute, so you’re on edge all the time.”
They lived in a cabin in Tennessee for most of their 12 days on the run, but said she wasn’t ready for their time together to end when it came to a dramatic end.
“When we got to a hill, the entire interstate was full of police vehicles,” Dorr recalled.
A chase that exceeded 100 miles per hour ended with the couple crashing into a tree. Dorr was sentenced to 27 months in prison for aiding in the escape.
He spent most of his time in the area after his release, recently moving out of state. She has remarried and she and her husband have visited her former lover in prison, where she is serving a life sentence, plus an additional 10 years for the escape.
“Chris is my husband, Chris and I consider John a friend to this day,” Dorr said.
He has taken to writing books about escaping from prisons of a different kind in a series called “Unleashed.”
“When you’re in an emotional prison, you don’t make good decisions. The goal of these workbooks is to help women escape their emotional prisons,” she said.
Lessons he thinks Vicky White could benefit from, as he prays for the safe capture of the guard and inmate.
Dorr said he would now never help an inmate escape again, but said the lessons he learned in prison and rebuilding his life were priceless. It’s part of the story he tells in his memoir to be published next month, “Living With Conviction.”
Reference-fox4kc.com