Convicted murderer Casey White was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday for busting out of jail and going on the run for 11 days with a female corrections officer.
White, 38, escaped from the Lauderdale County Detention Center in Alabama in April 2022 with help from Alabama guard Vicky White, leading US Marshalls on a cross-country manhunt.
When authorities caught up with the convicted felon and the senior jail official in Indiana nearly two weeks later, Vicky White turned the gun on herself.
Casey White was charged with the 17-year veteran officer’s murder, but pled guilty in exchange for a lesser charge of first-degree escape.
Under Alabama law, murder charges can be laid when a person is killed during the commission of a felony.
“I feel like the most hated man in the world,” Casey White told the hearing at the Lauderdale County Courthouse in Florence, Alabama, according to WHNT.
“I loved Vicky and I wouldn’t drag her name through the mud for anyone in this courtroom.
“Vicky took me out because she said, ‘right was right. Wrong is wrong.’ First person to show me affection. First person to give me a hug in six years.”
Vicky White’s mother had planned to read out a victim impact statement at the hearing, but became too emotional, Lauderdale County District Attorney Chris Connolly told the court.
He called for Casey White not to be able to earn money from interviews, movies or books relating to the escape.
On the eve of the sentencing, NewsNation reporter Brian Entin told how he had received a phone call from Casey White in which he claimed he had killed a woman and a child while on the run in Indiana.
Police reportedly believe that the convicted felon was lying, and Mr Entin said he couldn’t find any evidence of a missing person case that matched the description.
Casey White just arrived for his sentencing in Florence, Alabama, pic.twitter.com/DOqy0S4A5i
— Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) June 8, 2023
Casey White was initially thought to have kidnapped Vicky White when he escaped from the Lauderdale County jail in April last year.
But surveillance footage from 29 April last year showed the pair, who were not related, leaving in a patrol car which was ditched near by.
Law enforcement officials later discovered the pair were in a romantic relationship, and shared thousands of phone calls in the months leading up to the jailbreak.
Casey White was serving a 75-year sentence for committing an attempted murder during a violent crime spree in 2015 at the time of his escape.
He is due to go on trial this year for capital murder in the 2015 stabbing death of Connie Ridgeway in Rogersville.
