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

This is the third 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 — In the commotion that followed the revelation of James Stinson's car wash video, U.S. marshals hunting Casey and Vicky White in Evansville were going in dozens of different directions at once.

Tips came in raging torrents, some more credible than others. But that was nothing new in the high-profile saga of a star-crossed romance between Alabama desperados. Casey White was an accused murderer behind bars, and Vicky White was a high-ranking jail officer who had sacrificed everything to help him escape. Running down tips just added more work to all the new questions that were piling up on May 9, 2022.

The Weinbach Car Wash video showed the Whites had been in Evansville late on the afternoon of May 3. That was election day in Vanderburgh County, with voters in both parties choosing nominees for sheriff and prosecutor. The May 3 video — the last known visual of the fugitives — was also six days old.

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

U.S. Marshals Task Force members Justin Bean and Kurt Althoff half-thought the idea that the Whites could still be in Evansville was nuts.

Who goes on the run and doesn't run?

But they were tantalized and energized by the possibility that the fugitives just might have stuck around.

More importantly on the morning of May 9, the marshals had work to do.

"At this point we’re trying to figure out what’s going on in Evansville," said lead investigator Bean. "Are they still possibly here or did they get a new car? Did they get rid of the Cadillac? Did they get a white Dodge Caliber?"

The bit about the Caliber had seemed like a credible sighting. It had the right elements: A tall man, a short woman standing behind him as if to hide, reportedly parking a Caliber somewhere near Seymour, Indiana. Casey White stands 6-foot-9, and Vicky White was 5-foot-5. But marshals in Indianapolis debunked the Seymour sighting that Monday. Likewise, a search warrant for the Ford F-150 the Whites had abandoned at Weinbach Car Wash turned up little useful information.

The full team — investigators assigned to the U.S. Marshals Great Lakes Fugitive Task Force, marshals who had come up from Alabama, Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office and Indiana State Police officers — decided to meet at the sheriff's operations center. No more than 10 people, by Bean's recollection, now knew the Whites were connected to a 2007 charcoal gray Cadillac sedan.

The marshals had downloaded the car wash footage and created still images from it. Cadillac is a General Motors brand, so they contacted GM to get the year of the Caddy in their video. They reached out to the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles to find out how many people in Vanderburgh and surrounding counties had registered such vehicles.

They had another trick up their sleeves, too.

'A stolen vehicle hound'

Bean and Althoff read in Detective Sgt. Todd Mattingly of the Evansville Police Department's Adult Investigations Unit. They told Mattingly about the gray Cadillac and their suspicions that Casey and Vicky White were involved. Could Mattingly discreetly put that out to his guys and get back to the marshals if something turned up?

Some EPD officers would privately complain to the Courier & Press afterward that their department had been kept in the dark for too long. But Althoff said there's a good reason he and Bean gave what they knew to just one EPD unit.

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

"You don’t want chaos. You don’t want people going all over the place, rampant," Althoff said. "It’s not being secretive; it’s just being smart about it."

Mattingly, who is also an FBI Task Force officer, passed on Bean and Althoff's information to FBI agents in Evansville. Then he called his ace: EPD auto theft detective Darren Richardson.

"Darren Richardson is kind of like a stolen vehicle hound," Mattingly told the Courier & Press. "He just has a knack for finding stolen vehicles or vehicles that are involved in crimes."

A 23-year veteran of the force, Richardson started on motor patrol like everybody else at EPD. Over his eight years working auto theft, he had helped return hundreds of stolen vehicles to their owners.

The call from Mattingly came at about 11:30 a.m., Richardson said. He was eating lunch alone at Chava's Mexican Grill. No, he told Mattingly, he didn't think any gray Cadillacs had been reported stolen over the weekend, but he would check.

Richardson called Mattingly back in a few minutes. Mattingly didn't usually reach out to him. What's going on? he asked.

Mattingly laid it out for him: The marshals think this Cadillac might be connected to Casey and Vicky White.

Richardson remembers having to look at his phone to find pictures of the Cadillac model he was supposed to be hunting. He swung by the cluster of low-rent motels on Fares Avenue, saw nothing and headed back to work. He was back at his desk by 12:30 p.m.

The news was beginning to leak out.

Local news outlets posted reports after noon that marshals were confirming a vehicle found at a local business was being investigated in connection to the Whites. An Alabama TV station reported that marshals based there were in Evansville.

A random trip up a road less traveled

It had been more than two years since the state-maintained U.S. 41 bridge over Pigeon Creek was struck by a semi hauling an oversized load. The collision damaged the trusses so badly that construction crews — just weeks after finishing an extensive refurbishment — had to tear the bridge down.

The Indiana Department of Transportation took the opportunity to address any road work on that part of U.S. 41 that it believed needed to be done.

"While we were wanting to work on that bridge, we did a lot of work in the entire area," an INDOT spokesman told the Courier & Press. "We did have restrictions on the northbound area (of 41) too."

By early May, Detective Darren Richardson was sick of it. Richardson, who lived near Evansville Regional Airport, usually took 41 north to get home.

"Traffic had been getting backed up for such a long time that I’d been going up 41 and I would take Morgan Avenue over to Green River Road, and then I would go up Green River and go home," Richardson told the Courier & Press.

"For whatever reason, that day I decided, ‘You know, I’m going to go up 41 and see how bad the traffic is.'"

It wasn't about looking for the gray Cadillac, Richardson said. He had taken a shot at that on Fares Avenue. If Casey and Vicky White really had been in Evansville, he figured, they probably had moved on by now. The Whites were probably switching vehicles as often as they could.

Then the Cadillac at Motel 41 caught his eye as he drove past. It was about 2:30 p.m.

The car was just a shade left of Room 150. A woman — not Vicky White, Richardson said — sat outside the room next door.

Richardson called Mattingly as he continued up 41. Turn back around and get the Caddy's plate number, Mattingly said.

A real-life auto theft detective doesn't gawk, and he doesn't stop to scribble down license plate numbers. That's an amateur move, Richardson said. He cooly glided by the Cadillac in Motel 41's parking lot, still on the phone with Mattingly. He glanced over and scanned the digits into his brain, reading them off on his way to the rear of the motel.

"What (Mattingly) read back wasn’t what I told him," Richardson said. "I was like, ‘No, that’s not it, but now I can’t remember what I told you.' So I circled the building and drove back by the car a second time."

If he was going to go by the Cadillac again in his distinctive police-issue, bright blue Ford Fusion, Richardson knew he would have to be nonchalant about it. Had he shifted his gaze to Room 150's window — and had one of the Whites been glancing outside at that moment — all hell could have broken loose.

Richardson was on "light" duty that day, thanks to one of several shoulder surgeries. It meant, among other things, that he couldn't carry his gun.

This time Mattingly and Richardson got their numbers straight. Mattingly said he'd pass it on to the marshals, and Richardson continued home. Neither man was quite sure this Cadillac really was linked to the Whites. They also had no clue yet about the car wash video.

A random twist of fate would help decide everything.

Room 150 is on the southwest end of Motel 41's parking lot, visible to motorists surveying the landscape on 41. Had the Whites been given a room at the rear of the motel, out of sight of traffic, Richardson wouldn't have seen their Cadillac and would not have stopped. He was driving home, not hunting for stolen cars.

"You bring cars back here and nobody ever sees them," Richardson told the Courier & Press behind the motel. "Sometimes when we’re out looking for stolen cars, we’ll come back here and just kind of look. But I wouldn't have that day. I would have just kept on going."

An a-ha moment

As the afternoon wore on, things — some things — started falling into place.

Mattingly told Bean about the Cadillac that Richardson had seen at Motel 41 and gave him the plate number — but Bean didn't react as if it was the final confirmation marshals needed.

"I gave him the plate, and he goes, 'OK, thanks, I'll get back with you,'" Mattingly said. "I called Darren (Richardson) back and said, 'Hey, I gave them the plate. It didn't seem like it piqued their interest by any means.'"

That's because marshals hadn't yet gotten their real a-ha moment.

The car wash video had shown Casey White clearly enough for marshals to identify him, but the Cadillac driven by Vicky White had been shadowy and too far out of range to read a plate number. That changed soon after the conversation with Mattingly.

From a Flock automatic license plate reading camera somewhere in Vanderburgh County, the marshals received an image of the F-150 truck Casey had abandoned at the car wash on May 3 with the Cadillac following closely behind. Flock cameras, which take pictures of license plates and vehicles, have been increasingly used in Southwest Indiana as a tool to help detectives in criminal cases.

Now the marshals had something to match to the plate number Richardson had provided. It could help them connect the vehicle to the Whites and find out more about the fugitives' movements even if they had driven it out of town and ditched it. They hadn't.

Setting up

Something still wasn't adding up for the marshals.

The Cadillac that Richardson saw at Motel 41 had dark, tinted windows. The Cadillac at Weinbach Car Wash didn't. It was a mystery that would not be solved for nearly a year, as a result of a Courier & Press investigation.

The Whites, or one of them, took the Cadillac to Classic Shades Window Tinting on North Burkhardt Road on the morning of May 6, paying $259 in cash for the job. They left an Alabama phone number — the same number that had been given to jewelry store owner Bob McCarty when he sold the Caddy to the fugitives. They also offered an alias, "Tim Evans." The VIN number Classic Shades recorded matched the VIN on the Whites' Cadillac.

Classic Shades no longer has video of the transaction. Employees there said they don't remember the job, but their records confirm it happened.

When Mattingly gave the marshals the license plate number Richardson had extracted, it came back to an elderly woman. Nobody yet knew about the deceased elderly woman who had owned the Cadillac before McCarty sold it to the Whites.

At High Spirits liquor store, located some 100-150 yards south of Motel 41, owner Pawan Sooch and manager Jonny Meehan were setting up shelving for the store that afternoon. High Spirits was being converted from an old fast food joint, and wasn't due to open for two or three weeks. Sooch and Meehan had been working for several days.

They couldn't see Althoff slide into their rear parking lot in his Silver Dodge Ram, using their vehicles as camouflage to set up surveillance.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: The stories you've never heard about Casey, Vicky White's time in Evansville. Here's Part 3.