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

This is the first 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 — The first ping came in the dark tranquility of a motel parking lot at midnight, from a police officer with time on his hands. It could have exploded into violence right there.

But Alabama fugitives Casey White and Vicky White — they were not related — didn't see Evansville Police Department officer Nathan Cooper standing at the windshield of their truck at Motel 41, checking the VIN number. The plate didn't match.

And Cooper didn't know he had a tiger by the tail. A 32-year-old motor patrol officer with five years on the force, he wasn't looking for fugitives when he stopped behind the Whites' Ford F-150 at 12:24 a.m. on May 3. He was looking for stolen cars. He was being proactive.

"I had just taken somebody to the (nearby Vanderburgh County) jail," Cooper said. "A lot of times, if we're slow at night and you don't have calls or cars to stop, I would run through hotels and run plates because I've caught numerous stolen vehicles that way. I've gotten two at the Motel 41."

The Whites' truck didn't get any hits on police databases for stolen vehicles or stolen license plates. They had purchased the vehicle without tags in Tennessee for $6,000 in cash shortly after Vicky, assistant director at the Lauderdale County Detention Center in Florence, Alabama, helped Casey escape on the morning of April 29. It was the third of four known vehicles they used while on the run.

More: A $6,000 truck: How U.S. marshals found Casey and Vicky White in Evansville

Evansville wouldn't learn for another week what manner of fugitives Alabama had wrought.

Casey White was serving a 75-year prison sentence for a 2015 violent crime spree when he came to the Lauderdale County jail in February 2022 to await trial on an unrelated capital murder charge. About 14 hours before Cooper happened upon the Whites' truck in Evansville, authorities in Alabama issued an arrest warrant for Vicky White on charges including permitting or aiding Casey's escape.

The Whites were the subjects of a multi-state manhunt and a national media frenzy, their photos beamed all over the world. They had an arsenal of weapons, including an AR-15-style rifle, at least four handguns and a Taser.

Casey would later tell the FBI and Vanderburgh County sheriff's officers that he and Vicky were grimly determined not to be captured alive. If cornered, he had planned to come out guns blazing. Vicky White wanted him to shoot her if it came to that, he said.

Urban legends

A popular mythology has grown up around the week, one year ago, that Casey White and Vicky White spent in Evansville. Casey, 6-foot-9 and well-decorated with tattoos, his mug all over the news, had every reason to hide — but some locals insist they saw the fugitive couple in public places. Casey shot Vicky after the car chase that ended it all, others say — even though Vanderburgh County Coroner Steve Lockyear labeled her death a "self-inflicted" gunshot wound.

But the gap between what is thought and what is known is far deeper than that.

In a seven-part series that begins with this story, the Courier & Press will report important new details never before publicly disclosed, answer lingering questions about the case and challenge accounts of the facts ingrained in the public consciousness for a year.

'He might be calling for backup'

At Motel 41, officer Cooper rolled off to run another vehicle's plates, unaware how close he had come to danger.

Cooper knew he was signing up to put himself in harm's way when he joined EPD at age 27 in 2017. In fact, the Evansville native knew all about police work. His stepfather, Tim Nussmeier, was with the department for nearly three decades. Cooper would center school projects around Nussmeier and his work with police dogs. He eagerly lapped up shows like COPS and Citizens Academy.

There was never really any question that Cooper would be a cop himself one day.

"I was just infatuated with police officers," he said.

More: Crank callers and more dollars — Evansville's Motel 41 wants to profit from Casey and Vicky White

But the scene at Motel 41 wasn't a TV show. Cooper's marked patrol car had been positioned right behind the Whites' parked F-150. He was even more exposed when he got out of the car and approached the truck's windshield. Knowing that now chills him to the bone.

"(The Whites) didn't know if that truck's been reported or not," the young officer said. "They could have thought, 'Now's our time. We've got to do something, because he might be calling for backup.'

"I thought about that after. I was like, 'Well, damn, I was literally outside their door."

Back in Alabama, the arrest warrant for Vicky White marked an ending of sorts for her dumbfounded and heartbroken co-workers, who had hoped she wasn't involved in Casey's escape. But the Whites' Evansville story was just beginning.

The clock starts ticking

The Whites' earliest days in Evansville are popularly symbolized in their most indelible image: video footage showing Casey White loitering beside the F-150 in a wash bay at Weinbach Car Wash as he waits for Vicky to pick him up in a charcoal gray 2007 Cadillac sedan. The footage, widely publicized by car wash manager James Stinson, shows the Whites abandoning the truck and driving off in the Cadillac on May 3.

More: It's been a wild few weeks for Evansville car wash manager who helped spot Alabama fugitives

But there is reason to believe the Whites were in Evansville two days earlier than that.

Winding the clock backward, EPD officer Cooper's account proves the Whites were still driving the truck when he saw it at Motel 41 just after May 2 turned to May 3.

Using the register at Motel 41, Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office investigators later identified Shawn Eugene Gardner, a 51-year-old homeless sex offender, as the man who rented a room for the Whites there. The fugitives needed Gardner's help. Being an escaped convict on the run, Casey White didn't have the required ID. His and Vicky's names and photos were being published all over the nation.

Gardner had to show a driver's license to rent the room, which he told investigators he did in exchange for $100 cash from the fugitives. The motel said last month that management knew Gardner from previous stays.

More: Courier & Press tracked down man who helped Alabama fugitives rent Evansville motel room

When did Gardner rent the room? The motel wouldn't say, but there are clues.

Gardner told investigators Casey White approached him with the unusual $100 offer as he was leaving the Royal Inn on Fares Avenue on May 3. The Whites, whom Gardner said he did not know or recognize, were driving a truck. Gardner recalled Vicky White had helped load his bicycle into the back of the truck before he got into the vehicle.

But Gardner was likely mistaken about the room rental happening on May 3, as Cooper had already spotted the Whites' truck at Motel 41 the night before.

According to Casey White, he and Vicky spent a night — presumably May 1, the Sunday after their escape from Alabama on Friday — in a Walmart parking lot in Evansville.

Sheriff Noah Robinson declined to release video of a four-hour interview of Casey White conducted by the FBI and local investigators after White was apprehended on May 9. White had been expected to stand trial in Lauderdale County in June on a charge of felony murder in connection to Vicky White's death, but he pleaded guilty Thursday to a first-degree escape charge in exchange for the murder charge being dropped.

Robinson said Alabama authorities had asked him not to release the video before the trial, but after Thursday's guilty plea he said he would consult them again. Under Alabama's felony murder statute, White could be charged because Vicky White’s death occurred during the commission of a felony – the escape from jail.

More: Alabama jail escapee Casey White faces felony murder charge in death of jailer Vicky White

White's interview is summarized in a written report released by the Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office at the request of the Courier & Press.

After buying a blue truck — the extended cab Ford F-150 — in Tennessee, White said, he and Vicky "stayed at a Quality Inn in Kentucky for two or three nights."

The summary doesn't say where in Kentucky.

"A picture of them was on the news and one of the (hotel) workers stared hard at (Casey)," it says. "They left the next day."

That's when the fugitives drove to Evansville, Casey White said. He gave no specific dates nor any reason.

"They asked a homeless guy at a Walmart (likely not Gardner, who is identified by name later in the summary) where a place to stay was," the document states. "The homeless guy suggested they stay at Fares Avenue. They stayed that night in the Walmart parking lot."

With EPD officer Cooper's report putting the Whites at Motel 41 as May 2 turned to May 3, Casey White's statement suggests the night he and Vicky spent in the Walmart parking lot was May 1.

Which Walmart? Bob McCarty says Casey White personally told him which one.

'Renee Marie Williams'

The voice on the other end of the line sounded like money to McCarty, owner of McCarty's Diamonds & Fine Jewelry on South Red Bank Road — across the street from the West Side Walmart. The call came from north Alabama area code 256. The time: 1:34 p.m. on May 3.

"This gentleman calls me and he says, ‘Hey, I live here in Evansville, I’m handicapped, my sister’s moving from Alabama and we need a car,'" McCarty told the Courier & Press. "(He said), 'We were at Walmart, we seen your car, she liked it, and I wanted to buy it for her because she’s helping me out with being handicapped.'"

The elderly mother of one of McCarty's buddies had passed away, McCarty said. The woman — a former Evansville resident, her family told the Courier & Press — had a really nice gray 2007 Cadillac DTS with chrome wheels and just 75,000 miles on it. The buddy lived in Texas and he needed to get rid of the Caddy, so McCarty bought it and put it in front of his store in hopes of making some extra cash.

It had been there for several weeks. McCarty said he almost sold it 10 times, but he hadn't yet gotten the title. Now he had it. The man on the phone asked a few questions, they settled on a price, and the man said his "sister" would be there in 30 minutes to close the deal.

McCarty's store video surveillance, provided by the Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office, captures the moment a dark Ford F-150 rolled up at 2:09 p.m. Nearly a full minute passed before a white female wearing large dark sunglasses and what looks like a long, dark wig emerged carrying a yellow bag. McCarty went outside to greet her, and they spent a few minutes walking around and sitting in the car.

McCarty kept stealing glances in the direction of the parked F-150, wondering who was inside.

"It had really dark tinted windows," he said. "I couldn't see no one in it. It had an extended cab with, I think, a toolbox in the back. I was curious."

About four minutes later, store video shows McCarty and the woman entering the jewelry store to do business at the front counter. The woman keeps her sunglasses on, tends fussily to the wig partially covering her face and takes a long look all around the store as if searching for cameras.

McCarty said she paid for the car — investigative documents show the price was $9,000 — with cash from her purse. The bills came in $2,000 increments with bank bands around them. That didn't faze McCarty, who said it's not unusual in the jewelry business for people to pay that way.

The woman signed a handwritten bill of sale, her signature reading, "Renee Marie Williams." McCarty gave her the title and other paperwork. The whole thing took 11 minutes from beginning to end.

Sheriff's Office investigators would later report the paperwork had been left inside the Cadillac driven by the Whites.

McCarty watched the woman with the wig and large sunglasses leave his store and go first to the F-150, not to the Cadillac she had just bought with big rolls of cash. The man inside — Casey, the same man who called him, McCarty swears — rolled his window down but just barely, "just so he could talk to her enough where no one seen them."

McCarty had not told his story publicly before the Courier & Press approached him after receiving a tip. He didn't want any attention, he said, so he asked the sheriff's office not to disclose where the Whites got their Cadillac.

Knowing what he knows now, McCarty still can't quite believe it happened.

“I will say one thing: She was very nice to me," he said. "She talked to me, she looked at me right in the face and told me, this is what we’re doing. She even explained to me the whole thing — that he was handicapped and she needed (the Cadillac) to get around, to get him stuff."

McCarty cursed himself for not removing the plates from the Cadillac. He remembers Vicky eyeballing those plates.

"I know now that’s really what they were after. They were after a car that had good plates on it," he said. "I was like, 'Man, I should have got them plates.' But that might have started World War III, who knows?"

The deal done, the F-150 and the Cadillac left McCarty's lot and headed back to the West Side Walmart. Now the Whites had two cars — and they needed to get rid of one of them.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Why did Casey White and Vicki White hide in Evansville, Indiana?