A man who once escaped a Kansas prison with the help of a dog trainer and later inspired a made-for-TV movie has died back behind bars.
John Manard’s cause of death will be determined by an autopsy, a spokesperson for the Kansas Department of Corrections told The Associated Press.
Manard, 45, was serving a life sentence for a deadly carjacking in the Kansas City area in 1996, when he met Toby Young at the Lansing Correctional Facility. Young was a mother of two who worked with prisoners training animals.
The two soon began a romantic relationship. On Feb. 12, 2006, Young, 47 at the time, hid Manard, then 27, in a dog crate to assist in his escape from the facility. Before she drove away from the jail, a guard failed to thoroughly search her cargo van and didn’t find Manard hidden among the dogs.
The two were captured 12 days later in Tennessee following a high-speed chase on Interstate 75 between Knoxville and Chattanooga, a few hours away from a remote cabin where they had been staying.
Young’s husband filed for divorce after she was arrested.
Young faced state and federal charges related to the escape. After serving nearly two years in prison, she wrote a memoir about the experience titled “Living With Conviction.”
Their story was also featured on “Dateline” and served as the inspiration for the 2022 Lifetime original movie “Jailbreak Lovers,” starring Catherine Bell and Tom Stevens as Toby and John, respectively.
Manard died Sunday at the La Palma Correctional Facility, a private prison in Eloy, Ariz., where he had been since 2017, the spokesperson said.
No other details about his death were given, though his ex-lover said he was found unresponsive in his cell.
“John is finally free. But I am crushed,” Young, who remarried and goes by Toby Dorr, wrote in a Facebook post this week. “I pray you have at last found the peace you were searching for, John.”