The Real-Life Bonnie and Clyde Whose Love Ended in Disaster

Love can make people do reckless and stupid things, as it did to Vicky White, an Alabama assistant director of corrections at Lauderdale County Detention Center who, in 2022, broke a violent inmate out of jail and fled with him in the hopes of achieving a happily-ever-after together.

Jailbreak: Love on the Run is an up-close-and-personal recap of Vicky’s saga, enhanced by copious security camera footage that depicts her carrying out this daring scheme, and audio recordings of her phone calls with her incarcerated beau. Netflix’s latest true-crime documentary (Sept. 25) flails in trying to cast itself as a heartening story about seizing happiness, but as a snapshot of the foolhardy acts that amour can drive sane individuals to commit, it plays as an eye-opening cautionary tale.

In 2020, Casey White (no relation) was transferred to the Lauderdale County Detention Center, a temporary holding facility that’s described as a “very intimidating environment” where parking-ticket violators and capital murder suspects coexist side by side. Casey was in the process of serving 75 years behind bars for attempted murder and other felonies. Moreover, he was facing an additional capital murder charge that was still under investigation and to which he had confessed. While awaiting trial for that latest slaying, he had been moved to Lauderdale, and it was there that he met Vicky.

Casey stood 6’ 9’’ and was covered in tattoos, and pictures and video of him in Jailbreak: Love on the Run verify that he was a man few would want to antagonize. Former police officer Tyler Purser, who at the time was incarcerated in the facility on domestic violence and assault charges, says that Casey was a wonderful human being when you were on his good side, and a terrifying brute if you rubbed him the wrong way.

Vicky, on the other hand, was beloved by all. Purser and inmate Georgineo Lopez saw her as a kind and generous mother figure, and former hall officer Joyce Brawley says Vicky “was always doing for somebody else.” In one of her numerous calls with Casey, even Vicky herself admits, “I’m stressed because I don’t put myself first ever in my life. I always put everybody else first. It’s just the way I is.”

On April 29, 2022, Vicky took Casey out of his cell to transport him to the nearby courthouse. Or, rather, that’s what she claimed she was doing; instead, she and Casey got into her vehicle and vanished. By the time her fellow corrections officers realized what was going on, the duo was long gone. This was stunning to everyone, including Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Office investigator Sgt. Matt Burbank, who had known Vicky for years and, like everyone else, immediately feared she might be in danger. However, upon finding her abandoned car and searching her home, he quickly deduced that she wasn’t a victim but an accomplice. Before long, Lauderdale County Sheriff Rick Singleton was appearing on television to spread the word about this crime to the public, all as a U.S. Marshals team led by commander Chad Hunt initiated an urgent manhunt.

Jailbreak: Love on the Run features interviews with many of Vicky’s coworkers, including field training officer Sgt. Renee Lewis, nightshift officer Sgt. Dylan Elrod, correctional nurse Kylie O’Bryant, and administrative assistants Sherry Marks and Chantelle Brown, who uniformly describe Vicky as a selfless friend and dedicated detail-oriented manager who was tough enough to handle her trying job. Vicky was divorced and had lost a subsequent boyfriend in a car accident, and by all accounts, she seemed married to her profession. Nonetheless, she had recently announced her decision to retire on April 29, 2022, and in the weeks leading up to that fateful date, her behavior became more distant, edgy, and “off,” complete with her joining Marks, Brown and others at a grand-opening party for a local sex shop.

Courtesy of Netflix

Such weird conduct proved, in hindsight, to be hints about her plans with Casey, which were initially successful. Despite identifying the orange Ford Edge that the couple was driving, law enforcement had difficulty following their trail, and Jailbreak: Love on the Run complements its step-by-step breakdown of that operation with snippets from Vicky’s burner-phone chats with Casey. During those conversations, Casey proclaims his passionate love for (and attractiveness to) Vicky, she dreams of their blissful future life together, and the two engage in panting, moaning phone sex.

As was eventually discovered, Vicky and Casey had also been physically intimate on multiple occasions thanks to Vicky’s workplace ruses. Though this was news to those who knew her best, it struck Tyler as both sweet and beneficial, since it meant that Casey (and, by extension, his cellmates) received special privileges from Vicky.

Vicky and Casey had the harebrained idea of absconding to the middle of rural nowhere to indefinitely lay low, and the most astonishing thing about Jailbreak: Love on the Run is that Vicky—a seasoned corrections director—actually believed this was feasible. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t, and less than two weeks after hitting the road, they were tracked to an Indiana motel. A furious car chase ensued, and like the rest of this doomed endeavor, it concluded catastrophically, with a wreck in a ditch. Casey was captured, and Vicky, realizing that she was about to wind up back at her place of employment, albeit this time as an inmate, opted to take her own life before she could be apprehended.

At the scene of the crash, Casey repeatedly, fearfully asked about the condition of his “wife” Vicky, and Tyler states at the end that she wasn’t a “fool” and he wasn’t a “monster;” they were just two people from different walks of life who fell in love. Others, predictably, view things differently, pointing the finger at Casey for manipulating the lonely Vicky, whom he never really loved. Vicky herself has no explanation for this unlikely and ultimately destructive romance, telling Casey on the phone, “How this happened, I still don’t know. Don’t have an answer for it. But it did, and I’m glad it did.”