It has been 72 hours since a former Arkansas police chief serving decades in prison for murder and rape escaped from prison on Sunday afternoon.

Former Gateway Police Department Chief Grant Hardin, 56, escaped from the North Central Unit on Sunday afternoon in Calico Rock, according to the Arkansas Department of Corrections (ADC).

“We have a pretty good idea of the route that he took and some of those circumstances… and what, if any, lapses happened,” ADC Communications Director Rand Champion said during a Wednesday news conference.

“Based on the information that we have and the experience of our teams, they feel fairly confident that he is still fairly close to this region,” Champion said, noting that “all it takes is one vehicle” for Hardin to use to travel elsewhere, though officials have established a perimeter around the area of Stone County.

MANHUNT UNDERWAY AFTER DISGRACED FORMER POLICE CHIEF CONVICTED OF MURDER, RAPE ESCAPES ARKANSAS PRISON

“As of this time, they are still very confident that he is in the area,” Champion said.

Champion said the public should assume Hardin is “a very dangerous individual,” and there is a risk he may commit more crimes while he is on the run.

It took less than 30 minutes for prison officials to notice that Hardin had disappeared from prison. Photos that the Stone County Sheriff’s Office posted to social media show Hardin wearing an ADC-style uniform during his escape through a sally port, though Champion said the uniform he was wearing was not an official uniform.

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“It had to have either been homemade or brought in somehow,” Champion said of the uniform.

Officials with the Arkansas Department of Corrections are searching for an inmate, who is a former police chief, that they said escaped from its North Central Unit on Sunday. (Arkansas Department of Corrections )

Hardin, who became known as the “Devil in the Ozarks,” was sentenced to 30 years for murder plus additional time for rape. He pleaded guilty to the 2017 murder of James Appleton, 59, a city water employee who was found shot in the face inside his work truck, KNWA reported.

While Hardin was being booked into the state prison, officials submitted his DNA sample into a database. His DNA ended up linking him to the rape cold case of a teacher in 1997, the outlet reported. 

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The victim, a teacher at Frank Tillery Elementary in Rogers, said she was raped by a man with a gun at the school.

“It was proven to be Mr. Hardin beyond all scientific certainty,” Nathan Smith, the prosecuting attorney for Benton County at the time, told the outlet.

Rand Champion said investigators believe Grant Hardin is still in the Arkansas area. (KFSM)

Authorities confirmed Hardin’s DNA matched the DNA linked to the rape suspect. Harrison was ambushed while preparing a lesson plan for the week. The case had been cold for nearly two decades.

Hardin ended up pleading guilty to the rape in 2019.

“Grant Hardin, in my view and in my personal experience, is one of the most dangerous people that I ever seen for the reason that he does not at first appear that way,” Smith previously said. “He is a man capable of a seemingly random, horrific murder as well as a random, horrific rape.”

Hardin is described as a 6′ white male, weighing approximately 259 pounds. 

Fox News’ Stepheny Price and Louis Casiano contributed to this report.

The Detroit Tigers ended their homestand on a high note with three wins over the San Francisco Giants. Celebrate in style by buying the team’s latest gear.

• Buy Tigers gear: Fanatics, Amazon, Lids

The Tigers were feeling a little weathered after dropping three of four to an American League rival, the Cleveland Guardians, last weekend. However, Detroit responded in a big way, beating up one of the best teams in the National League West in the final series of their recent homestand.

The Tigers certainly did not light up the scoreboard in the three meetings with the Giants, but they did enough to grab a sweep, finishing their homestand with a 4-3 record, continuing to prove why the Bengals are one of the best home teams in Major League Baseball.

The Tigers are gearing up for a weekend series against the Kansas City Royals. Detroit is currently atop the AL Central, six games ahead of the Guardians and Minnesota Twins.

You can get the latest Tigers gear at Fanatics. Customers can get free shipping on orders over $29 by using the promo code 29SHIP.

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Every week, the Milwaukee Music Premiere sponsored by Density Studios connects the city’s artists with our listening audience. If you’re an artist with a track you’d like us to debut exclusively on Radio Milwaukee, head over to our Music Submission page to learn how.

As a non-musician, I can only imagine how difficult it is to take the two disparate elements of songwriting — music and lyrics — and make them seamless, as though they burst into existence simultaneously and instantly merged harmoniously.

That’s always been my way of identifying a “good” song. Not even a song I like, necessarily, but one where you give a nod to the artist because the craftsmanship is on point.

To clarify, I do like the track we’re premiering here: “Soft Side” from Milwaukee shoegaze-ish five-piece Standstill. I think you’ll like it, too, because the quintet really nailed the fit between their economical lyrics (48 words in the entire song) and instrumentation that doesn’t rely solely on vibes — a trap easily sprung in the shoegaze/dream pop genre.

As the band put it in their bio, “Standstill believes that a song is an experience and their sound can create an escape — their dream world.” The opening moments of “Soft Side” make that happen by easing you into another realm via gentle synth and Aliya Moore’s beckoning vocals that introduce a relationship living in the middle ground between what is needed and what actually exists:

Open wide, collect the rain
Stay inside, it’s all the same
I will lay this bed I’ve made
Twin-sized frame, I fan your flames 

“There is a tension that happens when we expect more from someone who can’t meet our needs or give us more,” the band explained. “In this song, there is a self-awareness that the protagonist is engaging in something that isn’t good for them, but they do it anyway. This one-sided relationship can make us stretch too far, become jaded, lose our softness and turn us cold.

“This song ends with the protagonist choosing themself and doing what they know they needed to do a long time ago.”

Standstill don’t need a wheelbarrow of lyrics to get the point across because of how the music carries the narrative just as effectively. Moore sings about saying goodbye as the song builds, recedes slightly and then busts loose, led by a tension-relieving guitar part. It’s an emotional pressure valve and satisfying conclusion to a listening experience you can get lost in for a little under four minutes.

Take that time to enjoy “Soft Side” using the player at the top of the page, or catch it on 88Nine throughout today (6:30 and 10:30 a.m.; 2:30 and 6:30 p.m). The track will also be part of Standstill’s self-titled debut EP set for release this Friday, May 30, and they’ll celebrate that same day with a show at The Pocket in Riverwest.