The funeral was being held on Saturday afternoon for Vicky White, an Alabama corrections official who helped inmate and boyfriend Casey White escape a county jail, leading police on an 11-day manhunt where Ms White died – apparently by suicide – as police closed in.
The service was taking place at Center Hill Cemetery in Lexington, Alabama, about 24 miles away from the jail where the couple made their dramatic escape.
The memorial is the final chapter in a dramatic search for the fugitives involving police from Alabama to Indiana, where the couple was found in a motel.
Vicky White, who is unrelated to Casey White, helped engineer the prisoner’s eventual escape on 29 April, stunning her colleagues.
This week, Ms White, who was close to retirement and had a spotless record as part of Lauderdale County Corrections, was set to receive her fifth Employee of the Year award.
However, unbeknownst to her coworkers, in 2020 she began a friendship and correspondence that turned into a relationship with White, who was serving a 75-year sentence for a crime spree where he shot one woman, tried to murder his ex-girlfriend, killed a dog and held several victims at gunpoint.
“With the situation he was in, I was glad,’’ his mother Connie Moore told AL.com. “Everybody needs a pen pal and someone to talk to. I thought it was good.”
A 911 call captured some of Vicky’s final words as police cars chased the couple.
“The airbags are going to go off and kill us,” she cries, sounding panicked.
“Airbags are going off. Let’s get out and run,” she says.
She then appears to say: “You had to stay in some f***ing motel.”
White, 38, has been distraught following Vicky’s death, Ms Moore added in an interview with The Daily Mail, noting that her son often referred to Vicky as his “wife.”
“I spoke to him yesterday and he was crying and saying he couldn’t believe she was gone,” she said.
Now, Casey White is in Alabama state prison, where he faces prison escape charges, as well as awaiting a capital murder trial for the 2015 death of a 58-year-old Alabama woman named Connie Ridgeway, a crime to which he has already confessed.
His dramatic escape inspired investigators in Limestone County, Alabama, to re-examine the case of another of White’s girlfriends who met a tragic end, in what authorities ruled at the time was a self-inflicted gunshot to the chest while staying in White’s trailer.
Police at the time found no blood on Casey’s clothing, and noted he appeared distraught over the death.
“It was just all too much – a woman killing herself with a sawed-off shotgun?’’ the woman’s brother, Tyler Rolin, told AL.com.
“The police said he was crying and very hysterical and I don’t doubt that one bit because I know he can turn it on,’’ he added. “He’s a master manipulator.”
