At the age of 47, Toby Dorr fell in love with a murderer and helped him escape from the federal prison where she worked.
“Jailbreak Lovers,” a Lifetime film based on her life, made its debut on July 2.
Dorr claimed that before she became involved with a criminal and ultimately turned into one herself, she never broke any laws or rules.
She married the first man she dated, prioritised childcare, attended church, and worked at a corporate job. When Dorr met John Manard, a convicted criminal, everything changed.
When Dorr first met Manard, her feelings of unimportance, loneliness, and confusion had reached an all-time high, according to her interview with Insider.
He joined the group of prisoners at Kansas’ Lansing Correctional Facility who trained dogs as a result of her programme. Manard approached Dorr about personal matters after a year on the job.
“What’s going on in your life,” he asked me? as you appear to be unhappy.
My husband was the only person who hadn’t even inquired about how I was doing. I was having a lot of trouble with a lot of things, “Dorr spoke to Insider.
She claimed that he listened as she spoke about her dying father, empty marriage, miscarriage, and thyroid cancer diagnosis. Dorr claims that the 25-year-confidence old’s caused her to be drawn to him. Two years after they first met, in February 2006, Dorr assisted Manard in escaping from jail. Prior to being apprehended and detained by authorities, the two had been on the run for 12 days.
Dorr served 27 months in federal prison after being arrested for assisting John in escaping in a dog box. She entered a guilty plea to both a federal charge of knowingly giving a handgun to a criminal and a state charge of aiding and abetting a prisoner’s escape.
Dorr revealed to Insider that her tragic love affair with Manard and her subsequent incarceration sparked her quest for recovery.
When Manard mentioned Dorr’s husband, she at last accepted the reality of her troubled marriage.
When Manard inquired about her marriage and then declared his love for her, according to Dorr, she felt an emotional connection to him.
One day, according to Dorr, she went directly to work from the hospital where she had been seeing her father, who was being treated for stage 4 bladder cancer. Manard saw her every day since he was a frequent dog trainer in her programme at the time.
She must have seemed upset since Manard enquired as to what was wrong, according to Dorr. Dorr said that at the conclusion of their discussion, she had persistent, significant questions about her marriage.
They were together for many hours each day for weeks until Manard confessed his feelings to Dorr and said he wanted to flee with her.
They came up with a strategy together that included Dorr withdrawing $40,000 from her retirement funds, spending $5,000 on a secondhand vehicle, and using a van to transport the dog crate Manard was hiding in.
Dorr said that since she could only think about how much she wanted to be with him, she didn’t question Manard or their strategy.
When they were escaping, Dorr recognised that their relationship’s sex was its “strongest” aspect.
According to Dorr, Manard and her had only ever connected emotionally, not sexually, up until that time.
However, the sexual tension remained there, and after they got to the cabin in Tennessee where they were going to hide out, they decided to act on it. Dorr had her first kiss and bedtime since her spouse with Manard.
According to Dorr, Manard gave her bubble baths and sang to her at night in front of the fire. They also went on day outings together while disguising their identities by donning wigs.
But their brief relationship, which ended 12 days before the police found them, also demonstrated how it was never meant to stay.
According to Dorr, “the sexual aspect was definitely the strongest aspect of our relationship.”
Dorr claims that being imprisoned alone forced her to deal with her grief and move on.
Dorr said that after becoming aware of her misdeeds, her husband filed for divorce and her sisters and kids broke off communication, leaving her completely alone.
According to Dorr, she was placed in an all-female jail with limited opportunities for convicts to pass the time. She then started writing and claims to have filled 27 notebooks, one for each month she was there.
According to her interview with Insider, the writing process enabled her to relive the agony of her loss and lament the daughter she never had. She learned the value of friendship via making friends with other prisoners, and it also helped her discover her identity.
Dorr remarried in 2009 and is happy to be a grandma. Her new husband is Chris. She is especially proud of the workbooks she created for other women in jail who experience similar feelings of disorientation.
Despite still having trouble with thoughts of shame, Dorr is mostly pleased of letting go and moving forward.
Even though I believe my mental wounds are all healed and I am capable of handling anything, she admitted that there will be times when she would need to dig deep, summon her bravery, and go on.