Kansas prison escape story to air on ‘Dateline’: A dog crate, romance and a manhunt
A Kansas prison escape that made international headlines after a convicted murderer quietly left Lansing Correctional Facility in a dog crate will be the subject of a segment on NBC’s Dateline this Friday.
Fifteen years ago, Toby Dorr — then known as Toby Young — helped inmate John Manard break out of jail after a romance blossomed between them while she was working as the head of the prison’s dog training program. She drove him off the grounds on Feb. 12, 2006, as he hid in the back of her white cargo van alongside several stray dogs.
The event baffled authorities at the time and sparked a federal manhunt. Dorr and Manard later told The Star they had fallen in love with one another. The plot was hatched after they had grown close over many months. Manard lost 25 pounds to fit inside the crate, and they planned the escape for a Sunday when security would be more relaxed.
“I think at that point in my life, I was just desperate to be loved, to feel like somebody loved me,” Dorr told The Star during an interview in 2018. “Maybe John was wearing his inmate hat and he was perceptive enough to notice a need in me and capitalized on it. But I do think that he cared for me.
“I do think that John Manard loved me to the best of his ability to love anybody at that time. Because he was pretty broken, too.”
Manard was serving a life sentence after being convicted for his role in a 1996 fatal carjacking in Overland Park. In a letter to The Star, he called himself a “17-year-old child” and said he made a huge mistake that led to his life sentence. But he also said he was “100 percent committed” in his relationship with Dorr despite characterizations that labeled him a master manipulator.
After the escape, Dorr and Manard shacked up in a Tennessee cabin for 12 days where authorities would later discover books, sex toys, a blue parakeet, a guitar and sheet music to the jailbreak film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
The law caught up with them in the Chattanooga area. The pair was on an outing, seeing a movie and shopping, when they were spotted by U.S. Marshals. They fled in a high-speed highway pursuit, crashed into a tree and were arrested.
Dorr was sentenced to spend 21 months in jail for her role in the escape. She was released from a federal prison in Houston in 2008 before marrying and settling down back in the Kansas City area. Manard faced fresh federal charges for the escape and remains incarcerated.
The upcoming Dateline story — titled “Breakout” — features interviews with Dorr and David McKune, who was the warden at Lansing Correctional Facility when the escape happened. It is scheduled to air Friday at 9 p.m..
The Star’s Luke Nozicka contributed to this report.
This story was originally published June 9, 2021 at 4:57 PM.
