Ridge Runner Chronicles: On Hiding Out in the Ozarks

By Editor | June 11, 2025 |

By Bill Hoagland

In April 1987, I was driving late at night on an isolated road in the Missouri Ozarks on my way to turkey hunt. Suddenly, around a bend in the highway, I encountered a roadblock being manned by three state troopers. I stopped, got out of my truck and the police did an exhaustive search of me and my truck. I learned that there was an all-out manhunt going on for a local man named John D. Brown. He was wanted for a recent murder and a variety of other crimes but he had actually been on the run in the Ozarks for over three years for multiple felonies after breaking out of prison in 1984. He was an accomplished outdoorsman and over the years, had somehow evaded bloodhounds, helicopters and over 250 police officers searching on foot in the Mark Twain National Forest. In fact, his ability to evade search teams was making him into a cult figure of sorts. Several songs had been written about him; people just assumed he was living off the land and some, frankly, were hoping he would never get caught.
On June 7, 1987, Brown’s luck finally ran out. He was arrested in Oklahoma chowing down presumably on biscuits and gravy in a roadside diner. After his arrest, he was transported back to Missouri, tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in Missouri’s most secure prison. As it turns out, while on the lam, Brown did not spend all that time in the woods contrary to the legend and what people wanted to believe. He had been traveling around the mid-west and even was able to rent a car in Mississippi, which seems remarkable in itself since he had no drivers license.
Now we have another renegade allegedly hiding in the rugged Ozarks. This time the renegade is described as “The Devil in the Ozarks” and the press is having a click-bait field day with this guy, making him out to be one scary dude and making the locals glad they all have concealed-carry permits. His name is Grant Hardin, a 60 year old man who had been in prison for several years on a 50 year sentence for rape and a 30 year sentence for murder. Prior to his convictions, he had been the chief of police for a small Arkansas town and prior to that, he had been in law enforcement for years in Northwest Arkansas. People who know him describe him as “ruthless”. On May 25, Hardin walked out of the Calico Rock State Prison in Arkansas in a make-shift guard’s uniform and disappeared into the Ozark woods that surround the prison. He has not been seen since despite intense search teams, bloodhounds, helicopters and drone surveillance. The last time I checked (10 days after his disappearance), the police were still concentrated on combing the woods and caves in the immediate area of Calico Rock, convinced he was still close at hand.
The so-called “Devil in the Ozarks” is white, bald, overweight and 60 years old– a “good old boy” except, of course, for the murder and rape convictions. He does not look like a guy who will be hiding out in a cave or lying on a tick invested bed of leaves for very long. He does look like a guy who loves biscuits and gravy. What “good old boy” doesn’t love biscuits and gravy? Maybe instead of spending all that money searching the caves and hollows of the Ozarks, the authorities should just wait him out and instead, offer free biscuits and gravy for all older, fat, white guys with a felony record who show up for the free food. That would seem to be as productive as what is being done to find him right now. It strikes me that if he had sense enough to get a fake uniform into prison, to put it on and walk out of the prison with no questions asked, the “Devil in the Ozarks” had a plan and it did not include swatting mosquitoes on his bald head while sitting in a wet cave. Seems to me this guy is long gone. What do you think? (Oh, by the way, did I mention that his wife had been routinely visiting the “Devil in the Ozarks” in prison for months?)
Note: Two days after writing this, Hardin was captured just a mile and a half from the prison. When writing this column, I had assumed he had help on the outside but obviously he did not.
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■ Bill Hoagland has practiced law in Alton for more than 50 years, but he has spent more than 70 years hunting, fishing and generally being in the great outdoors. His wife, Annie, shares his love of the outdoor life. Much of their spare time is spent on their farm in Calhoun County. Bill can be reached at [email protected].