Clarke County Democrat

Editor’s Notes

Looking for love in all the wrong places

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It was a sad and tragic ending to a story that has intrigued Alabama and the nation for nearly two weeks.

Jailer Vicky White was a model worker at the Lawrence County Jail in Florence. On the morning of April 29 she checked capital murder suspect Casey White (no relation) out of the jail on the pretense of taking him to the courthouse, just a few minutes away, for a mental health evaluation. Then, she told her co-workers, she was going for a doctor’s appointment. She said she hadn’t been feeling well.

But there was no mental evaluation and no doctor’s appointment. When she didn’t return or answer her radio, everyone got concerned. Then her patrol car was found parked at a shopping center. Vicky and Casey were gone.

At first there was worry that she had been forced to go with Casey. But how could that be? She put him in the car, in shackles, and drove away.

Lawrence County Sheriff Rick Singleton said as the situation became clearer he realized that Vicky White was acting on her own free will and actually helped Casey White escape.

The sheriff and the other jailers apparently didn’t realize what was going on but the inmates did. They told investigators that the two Whites “had a thing going on.”‘

An investigation learned that she had been corresponding and having contact with him for years since he first came to the Lawrence County Jail from a state institution. He was later moved there.

Casey White is serving a 75-year sentence for a 2015 crime spree that is separate from the capital murder he is charged with.

The 56-year-old Vicky White, a divorcee with no children, was apparently a poster child to be manipulated by a murderous thug who knew how to sweet talk and cater to her.

The words of Johnny Lee’s 1980 hit country music single come to mind:

Looking for love in all the wrong places.

She had sold her home for $95,000, less than market value and had been living with her mother. She had also given notice that she was retiring.

Vicky White, 5 ft., 5 in., 145 lbs., walked with a noticeable bobble. Sheriff Singleton told a reporter she was a “very private person” with no social life. She was a workaholic and her job was her life.

Casey White, 38, was 6 ft., 9 in. and weighed 330 lbs. She was apparently infatuated with him. He likely planted the seed of them running off together and living a blissful life together. Or maybe he considered her just his ticket out of jail.

They left Florence in a Ford Edge, ditched it near Columbia, Tenn. for another vehicle, a Ford pickup, and continued north.

Looking for love in all the wrong places.

They apparently spent six days in an Evansville, Indiana motel. They may not have been caught had they not gone to a car wash Monday where Casey White was recorded on a surveillance camera. His height was pretty much a dead giveaway.

They abandoned the pickup and left in a Cadillac (Vicky White apparently bought all three of the getaway vehicles). Federal and local lawmen gave chase. The Cadillac wrecked. Casey White jumped out and told lawmen that his “wife” had shot herself and that he didn’t do it. Vicky White wasn’t his wife but she was found with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. She later died at a local hospital.

Why did she do it? Maybe she realized her mistake and was too embarrassed to have to go back and face her family and law enforcement co-workers. Maybe she was saddened that a life she had envisioned with Casey White wasn’t to be. Who knows?

Looking for love in all the wrong places.

Casey White had apparently planned to engage in a shootout” in a “suicide by cop” style but that may have only been a coward talking. Vicky White is the one who shot herself as he jumped out of the car crying to lawmen.

In the end, Casey White has been extradited back to Alabama. Sheriff Singleton said he would go straight back to prison, not to his jail.

Some $29,000 in cash, an AR-15 and other weapons were found in the car as well as a duty belt equipped with handcuffs and a TASER and camping/survival gear.

After an autopsy, Vicky White’s body will come home, too, to a distraught mother and shaken co-workers who were her family and can’t believe this horrible nightmare.

Sheriff Singleton still can’t find it in his heart to condemn her but said he would like some answers. We all would.

Looking for love in all the wrong places.

So sad.

Jim Cox is editor and publisher of The Clarke County Democrat. Email him at jimcox@tds.net.

Jim Cox

Jim Cox

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