The woman who discovered the abandoned getaway car of fugitive prison guard Vicky White and convicted killer Casey White last week says she felt unease after finding the vehicle outside her Tennessee home – mere hours after the duo escaped an Alabama prison.
‘It’s eerie that they were here,’ College Grove resident Jackie Adams told DailyMail.com Saturday after coming across the suspicious vehicle Friday night, roughly 100 miles from the jail the pair had fled earlier that day.
Adams, 41 who drives a school-bus in the rural town, said she was coming home from one of her other jobs when she saw the then-unidentified SUV with tinted windows and no tags, which belongs to former corrections officer White.
‘I went ahead and called the sheriff’s office to have it towed. We know all of our neighbors and I immediately knew it wasn’t anybody’s car.’
The car – which contained contained Whites’ jail radio, handcuffs and keys – was towed later that day, with sheriffs seemingly unaware of the vehicle’s connection to then burgeoning manhunt.
For the past week, the car sat in a Tennessee tow lot.
The pair – who authorities say are romantically involved – have been on the run since, evading thousands of lawmen in the process.
Friday morning, however, Tennessee cops made a breakthrough in their search after realizing the impounded vehicle was White’s, spurring a force of US Marshals, Williamson County Sheriff’s Officers, and SWAT members to circle back to Adam’s property Friday morning – a week after she had reported the vehicle.
‘It was pretty intense yesterday,’ the school bus driver recalled Saturday to DailyMail.com. She said officers searched her property, the properties around her home, and nearby woods relentlessly into the night, for any clues as to the location of the pair – whom police believe are romantically involved.
Speaking to DailyMail.com just hours after drones and helicopters descended on the home – where they remained for hours and into the evening, according to Adams – the homeowner said she hopes that by now the duo are long gone.
‘I would hope that the people aren’t here but I hope that they find them soon so that people around here can sleep peacefully,’ Adams said, adding that the car turning up in the usually quiet neighborhood left her and others feeling on edge.
‘We know everybody on our road and we watch out for each other.’
She added ‘We have children and we like to trust that our kids are safe in their yards but now we can’t trust that.’
Cops say Vicky White, a 57-year-old prison guard at Lauderdale County Jail in Alabama with a spotless record, helped confessed murderer Casey White – no relation – escaped custody the morning of April 29, the day she was scheduled to retire.
White, who was an assistant director of corrections at Lauderdale County, used a police vehicle to ferry Casey out of the maximum-security facility, under the guise that she was taking the con to a scheduled mental health evaluation.
The pair then switched to Vicky’s orange Ford Edge – the car Adams would discover on her property hour later.
Authorities say the pair then drove 100 miles north to Tennessee, dumping the car outside Adam’s domicile. Local officials then impounded the car, unaware of its importance to the case.
Inside the car, sheriffs Friday reportedly recovered Vicky’s jail radio, handcuffs and keys, with A photo released by Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Office showing an apparent attempt to spray paint part of the car green – details initially missed by deputies.
Jimmy Adams, Jackie’s father-in-law, who has lived in College Grove since 1969, said Saturday that he and his family are worried that an escaped killer potentially has been hiding out in the community for the better part of a week.
Adams, 74, said that he was home watching TV when around 10:30 am Friday when the force of at least 20 -25 officers with full SWAT gear and assault rifles showed up at the property.
‘It kind of shook me up a little,’ the elder Adams said.
‘It was a sheriff’s deputy and a yard full of police cars. They asked me if they had seen any suspicious persons or knew anything about the parked and abandoned vehicle at the end of the driveway.’
After telling officer that he did not know anything about the vehicle, the lawmen asked if they could search the property and it surroundings, to which Adams agreed.
‘All evening drones and helicopters were flying over head,’ he recalled of the search that ensued.
‘It made me nervous because an escaped killer was on the loose, then I realized the deal with the car. I thought they must be long gone by now.’
When asked if they had any precautions if they were to run into Casey or Vicky White, Jackie said her and her family are prepared to protect their property.
‘We live in the country, we have coyotes, we have other wild animals that like to attack our farm animals. So we are prepared if need be.’
After discovering the link between the car and the at-large pair, police Friday said they were ‘back to square one’ in their search, which entered its ninth day Saturday.
White, an Alabama prison guard with a spotless record, is suspected of helping long-time criminal Casey White – the two are unrelated – of escaping custody one week ago on her last day of work before retirement.
However, her former employee Tyson Johnson, says that he’s not surprised and that ‘no one’ is that White was capable of this, calling her smart and calculated.
‘That’s a good question, honestly I don’t think she’ll be found. She has calculated enough that she has thought this entire thing out,’ said Johnson, who worked for White for seven years before he claims he was wrongfully terminated, of her whereabouts.
‘She definitely outsmarted the sheriff, she outsmarted the administrator of the jail.’
Johnson also claims that White would often alter her appearance either physically or in photos, which may make pictures police give out to try and locate her ineffective.
‘Vicky used the tanning bed a lot,’ he said. ‘Vicky may have been 57 years old but she looked 75. The photos that they’re releasing of her, there are filters, they’re all bright on the face because it’s not showing the true her. A lot of people, former employees, said if Vicky dyed her hair grey and put on some old lady clothes and glasses, she could walk right by you and you would never know it.’
People reported seeing Vicky at both a department store and an adult store after the escape but employees at both stores refused to comment.