This is the question that America has been asking since Vicky White’s and Casey White’s manhunts ended: Why would a respected corrections officer risk his life to join an accused killer?
Toby Young understands how this can happen. “I can surmise that she was in love with him, and that love was worth whatever price she felt she had to pay for it,”She spoke.
Young managed a Kansas state prison dog-training program. John Manard, a man serving a life sentence, was John Young’s partner in crime.
“I saw beyond that to the person he really was. It’s just sad that nobody else noticed me or paid attention to me and that an inmate was the one who paid attention,” Young said.
Young was a single mother of two. In 2006, Young escaped Manard’s prison cell in a dog-crate and they fled, prompting a nationwide manhunt.
“It doesn’t make a bit of a sense, but at that moment in time, it seemed like a viable option,” Young said.
“Prison is such a barren landscape, that if you have that kindling feeling, like oh my God, in the least expected of places, I found a new life, it can be intoxicating,” forensic psychiatrist Keith Ablow said.
The similarities between Toby Young and Vicky White are striking.
Both fell in forbidden love with inmates who were more than 20 years younger. Both were on the run for around 11 days. And both were captured after high-speed chases that ended in car wrecks.
“I knew they would get caught. I’m just really sad that Vicky couldn’t see through the darkness to find hope on the other side,” Young said.
Young was sentenced to 27 months in prison. She remarried and has since turned her life around. Manard is still an email friend, and she has visited her husband with his knowledge of her past.
“The woman I am today would never act the way that I did 16 years ago. But at the time, it seemed like a good decision,” Young said.
Young’s memoir, “Living With Conviction,”It will be out next month.
