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Former Gateway police chief Grant Hardin pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the 2017 shooting death of James Appleton in Benton County, Arkansas, and later pleaded guilty to two counts of rape stemming from a 1997 attack.

Hardin spent his working life in law enforcement in northwest Arkansas and was hired in 2016 as police chief of Gateway, a small town in Benton County. His tenure was brief. Appleton, 59, worked for the Gateway water department and was found shot in the head inside his work truck near Garfield on February 23, 2017. There was no robbery, struggle or apparent motive.

Hardin, who lived in the area, encountered a police roadblock while driving home that evening and was taken to the Benton County sheriff's office. During the recorded interview, a detective read Hardin his rights and stated the time as 9:17 p.m. Hardin, who had conducted interviews himself for years, said he felt he should remain silent now that his rights had been read and declined to account for his day.

Detectives told Hardin that witnesses in two vehicles that passed the scene had physically identified him. He did not ask what they meant or dispute it. For most of the next hour and a half, the conversation turned to chickens, television, allergies, grass seed, his daughter's driving and his wife's medication. Near the end, Hardin asked for a lawyer, questioning stopped, and he was told he was under arrest for capital murder. He made no admission in the recording.

The 1997 case was not known to anyone in the room at the time. After Hardin pleaded guilty to Appleton's murder and entered the state prison system, his DNA sample was submitted to the national database and matched evidence from the 1997 rape of Amy Harrison. Harrison, a teacher at Frank Tillery Elementary School, was attacked at the school on a Sunday while preparing her classroom. Hardin was charged in Benton County Circuit Court in April 2018 with three counts of rape and one count each of kidnapping and sexual abuse. He pleaded not guilty.

Hardin pleaded guilty in October 2017 to first-degree murder in Appleton's death and was sentenced to 30 years. In February 2019, he pleaded guilty in Benton County Circuit Court to two counts of rape and received 25 years on each count, 50 years in total, bringing his sentence to 80 years.

On May 25, 2025, Hardin walked out of the Arkansas Department of Corrections North Central Unit at Calico Rock through a sally port. He wore a makeshift law enforcement style outfit assembled from kitchen items, including clothing darkened with a black marker, and staff mistook him for an officer and let him through. He was recaptured June 6, 2025, about 1.5 miles from the prison near Moccasin Creek after a search of nearly two weeks, then moved to the Varner supermax unit at Gould. On February 17, 2026, he pleaded guilty in Izard County Circuit Court to second-degree escape. Judge Tim Weaver of the 16th Judicial Circuit sentenced him to 13 years consecutive to the 80 years he was already serving. A corrections spokesman said the sentence pushes his parole eligibility past February 19, 2054.

The video is a police interview-room recording running about 95 to 96 minutes. It presents the interview itself, beginning with a short narrated introduction naming the people involved and returning briefly to narration at the close.

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Part 2 of 2 of the recording described above.