The Alabama fugitives in Evansville, Part 4: 'Does she walk with a waddle?'

This is the fourth in a series of seven stories chronicling the days that escaped Alabama prison inmate Casey White and jail officer Vicky White spent hiding in Evansville one year ago this week.

EVANSVILLE — U.S. marshals hunting for Alabama fugitives Casey White and Vicky White in Evansville had inside knowledge — a secret — that put them on high alert for danger.

Before she helped inmate and accused murderer Casey White escape the Lauderdale County Detention Center in Florence, Alabama, Vicky White — assistant director and a highly decorated employee at the jail — left behind a letter. The letter made it clear that Vicky knew before she walked Casey out of the jail on April 29, 2022 that he would resort to violence if cornered.

The letter written by Vicky White was recovered at her last known residence — her parents' house in Lexington, Alabama — after a search warrant was served there, said Justin Bean, lead local investigator for the U.S. Marshals Service.

More: The stories you've never heard about Casey and Vicky White's time in Evansville. Here's Part 1.

Bean told the Courier & Press that marshals from Alabama warned the local marshals about the letter at the outset of their investigation. It was an early warning. Casey White would not tell FBI and Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office investigators that he and Vicky were prepared for violence until after his capture and Vicky's death by her own hand.

"From what we were told, (Vicky White's letter) explained that Casey was not going to go back to jail, and that he was going to shoot it out with law enforcement when it came that he was cornered," Bean said. "So we knew the severity of the situation."

Vicky White, a 56-year-old divorcee with no children, was in line to win her fifth "employee of the year" award for administrators at the Lauderdale County jail, her supervisor there told the Courier & Press. Since her death one year ago, White's co-workers at the jail have consistently described her as an outstanding leader and detention officer.

The letter she left behind has not been reported until now.

It was the reason U.S. marshals and Vanderburgh County sheriff's investigators were prepared to deploy a 24,000-pound bulletproof armored rescue vehicle against the fugitives at Motel 41 on May 9, Bean said.

But first they had to make sure they had the right suspects.

A step back, to examine the evidence

As marshals task force member Sgt. Kurt Althoff set up surveillance on the gray 2007 Cadillac sedan linked to the Whites at Motel 41, he and Bean and a contingent of Alabama marshals and local officers took a step back to look at every piece of evidence they had. Bean and the others were tracking Althoff's surveillance from a conference room at the sheriff's office's operations center a mile or so away.

They had just received from a Flock automatic license plate reading camera an image of the Ford F-150 truck Casey had abandoned at Weinbach Car Wash on May 3 and the Cadillac following closely behind.

That gave them the Caddy's plate number.

Using binoculars and sitting in a parking lot at High Spirits liquor store a little more than a football field away from Motel 41, Althoff read off to Bean the plate number he was looking at.

More: The stories you've never heard about Casey, Vicky White's time in Evansville. Here's Part 2.

Bean already had the plate number that Evansville Police Department auto theft detective Darren Richardson had retrieved from the Cadillac at the motel. It was the same plate Althoff was seeing. It was the same plate they had seen on the Flock camera image.

They had the right car. But did they have the right people?

The Cadillac's heavily tinted windows were still a concern. The Caddy on the car wash video hadn't been tinted. The Whites could have sold the car and left Evansville days earlier, for all the marshals knew.

That wasn't all they didn't know.

U.S. marshals show up at Motel 41's front desk

Shortly after 3 p.m., the Cadillac was still just sitting there outside Room 150. No one was coming in or out. The curtains didn't stir. Althoff was accompanied at High Spirits by sheriff's detective Mike Robinson. Neither they nor any of those at the sheriff's office operations center could be sure someone was inside the room — or even whether this was the right room.

Some of the marshals from Alabama started out for the surveillance area from their nearby perch at the sheriff's office complex. Althoff remembers Jeremy Stilwell, a marshals inspector from the Southern District of Mississippi, warning them off.

"He said, 'Hey, let (Althoff) have the eye so we didn’t burn it,'" Althoff said. "Typically in surveillance, if you get too many cars looking at something, it sticks out and that (fugitive) might get scared and run off."

Bean left the sheriff's operations center, bound for the front desk at Motel 41 — but he didn't get cute by trying to slip in unnoticed like some kind of ninja assassin. He pulled up at the front office in an unmarked truck and walked in like any other motel guest checking in.

More: The Evansville fugitives, Part 3: How one cop's different drive home changed the manhunt

There was no time for pleasantries.

Bean identified himself to the owners and began firing off a series of penetrating questions. Who was staying at the motel? Which rooms were they in? Did the owners recognize photos of Casey and Vicky White? They denied any knowledge of the Whites, but they did tell Bean that Shawn Eugene Gardner had rented Room 150. Investigators would later learn that the Whites had paid Gardner, a homeless sex offender, to rent the room for them.

The marshals now had a piece of high-value intelligence. Just two rooms on the Whites' side of the motel were occupied — 150 and the one a few feet to its right, 151.

Whatever happened, it was going to happen there.

Fugitive hunters zero in on Room 150

From his perch at High Spirits, Althoff watched a Domino's pizza delivery driver knock on the door at 151. He couldn't see whoever answered.

Althoff gave the driver enough time to get back to Domino's, then called. The driver's description of his customer didn't match either of the Whites. Two rooms occupied, one of them definitely not by the Whites. If the fugitives were here, they had to be in Room 150.

Members of the team at the operations center decided to position themselves closer to the action in unmarked vehicles out of the Whites' view. They had put together actionable intelligence. It seemed increasingly clear that something was going to happen. Whatever it was, they wanted to bottle it up quickly and avert the shootout Casey White seemed hellbent on having.

Knowing it would take time, the marshals put out a call for the sheriff's office's armored rescue vehicle. They planned to position the ARV — basically a tank — behind the Cadillac outside Room 150 to pin it in.

They never got the chance.

'Does she walk with a waddle?'

Just like in the movies, real-life surveillance can get tedious, Kurt Althoff said. As the hours wear on without any action, the temptation to look away or at your phone can be strong.

But the multi-state manhunt for Casey White and Vicky White wasn't some run-of-the-mill narcotics case.

"When it came to a case of this magnitude, basically our eyes were just locked on that hotel," Althoff said.

Shortly before 4 p.m., about an hour after he and Robinson had begun surveilling Room 150, Althoff saw something that gave him an adrenaline surge.

An older woman — Vicky White was 56 — walked out of Room 150, put some bags in the Cadillac and walked back in. It seemed obvious to Althoff that she was wearing a wig — a bad one, one he would alternately describe as "reddish brown with blonde streaks" and "dyed."

Was this Vicky White? The Cadillac was the right car. The woman's frame looked right. But Althoff had to be sure if he was going to call in the marked cars that would be needed for a possible pursuit. Two already had been called to the vicinity, ready to spring into action if needed.

Speaking on an encrypted radio channel, Althoff struggled to describe the disguised woman he saw to the Alabama marshals and local officers who were listening from positions nearby. A voice cut through the fog of uncertainty with a question.

"One of the Alabama guys said, 'Does she walk with a waddle?'" Althoff said.

The answer was yes. Those who knew and worked with White back in Alabama knew about her distinctive gait. They said it was more of a habit than some kind of infirmity.

"When he said that, I knew it was her," Althoff said.

Casey appeared in the doorway with Vicky about five minutes later, his hair tinted a sort of light red and his hulking body bent over a crutch under his right arm. It was a prop — a poor substitute for a real disguise, Althoff thought. Not to mention that Casey White stood 6-foot-9 anyway.

"You could tell it was him," Althoff said.

So where were Casey and Vicky White going?

Were the Whites leaving town or simply going somewhere?

Casey would later tell FBI and Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office investigators that he and Vicky paid Motel 41 $400 on May 9 — the day they were apprehended — to stay another week there. The motel confirmed that, saying the payment happened on May 8 or May 9.

Vicky White had not been averse to showing her face in public — albeit in disguise. Two motel employees told the Courier & Press she was seen in the parking lot, heavily disguised, asking questions about a cell phone she was trying to use. Casey White told investigators she answered the door for pizza deliveries to Room 150. She went into McCarty's Diamonds & Fine Jewelry to buy the Cadillac wearing a wig and large sunglasses partially obscuring her face.

The Whites could have seen or heard local and Alabama media reports about their possible presence in Evansville and mobilized to hightail it out of town — but they didn't emerge from Room 150 until more than three hours after those initial reports. And when they finally did get moving, their movements were leisurely. Casey came out of Room 150 five minutes after Vicky, slowed by the prop crutch under his right arm. The fugitives didn't pull away for "a couple of minutes," according to a report filed by Althoff.

Bean later suggested the Whites had simply become too comfortable for their own good.

"Remember, they had been here for (at least) five days," he said.

The items later found in Room 150 suggested the Whites were indeed leaving town. There was nothing they couldn't walk away from if the heat came around the corner. A search warrant turned up a pair of jeans, sandals, a room key, a road map, socks and room receipts. The Cadillac held everything else — bags, some $29,000 in cash, wigs, weapons, phones, documents.

The U.S. marshals and local officers tracking Casey and Vicky White had a more immediate concern as the fugitive couple ambled out of Room 150. The heavy-duty armored rescue vehicle they had requested to pin the Whites into the parking lot at Motel 41 hadn't arrived yet.

Casey got into Cadillac's driver's seat and Vicky the front passenger's seat. The marshals would have to go now, ready or not.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: The Alabama fugitives, Part 4: 'Does she walk with a waddle?'