Diksha Sundriyal
When Vicky White, a corrections officer at Lauderdale County Detention Center, helped a convicted felon, Casey White, escape, the entire department was shaken to its core. Netflix’s ‘Jailbreak: Love on the Run’ focuses on the accounts of the people who worked with Vicky for several and knew her very well. They express their shock at her actions while also trying to understand why she may have done it. Two of the people to appear in the documentary, Matt Burbank and Rick Singleton, are also the ones who were involved in the eleven-day manhunt that ensued following the unexpected escape. Since the incident, their lives have taken quite a turn.
Matt Burbank Has Been Promoted to the Post of Director
Matt Burbank joined the sheriff’s office as a reserve officer and quickly became a lead investigator, a post he served while Casey and Vicky White’s case unfolded. In May 2024, he was promoted to the post of director of the detention center, which is just a decade after his joining the sheriff’s office. His promotion follows the untimely death of Burbank’s predecessor, David Terry, whose retirement was just a few months away. Burbank was appointed based on his stellar track record, with him being called “fully capable of fulfilling” the challenging position. Citing the Casey and Vicky White case, Burbank has stated that working on it gave him a better understanding of a corrections officer’s work and struggles. With his new job, he hopes to bring about positive changes to make things better for the officers.
Burbank’s success at the sheriff’s officer mirrors his journey in the US Army, which he joined when he was eighteen. He served in the military police units for about twenty-three years, with his job taking him to places like Bosnia, Africa, and Iraq. Following his retirement from the Army, he joined law enforcement, where he flourished in different settings. Since the Casey and Vicky White case, Burbank has been busy with several other cases, the most notable of them being the missing persons case of Bradley Lard, who went missing in 2019 and whose remains weren’t discovered until 2023. Apart from this, Burbank has also acknowledged drug use and addiction as a major problem plaguing society today. To counter this, apart from his work at the sheriff’s office, he co-founded Lauderdale County Veterans Treatment Court.
Rick Singleton is Now Enjoying Retirement
Rick Singleton retired from his post of Lauderdale County Sheriff in January 2023, bringing his career, which started in 1972, of about five decades in law enforcement to an end. After getting a degree in law enforcement and a master’s in criminal justice, Singleton graduated from the FBI National Academy. He joined the Florence Police Department and quickly rose the ranks. First, he was promoted to captain, and in 1996, he became the chief of police, a role he held for more than sixteen years. In 2014, he was elected and later re-elected as Lauderdale County Sheriff.
Now, Rick Singleton lives a laid-back life in Florence, Alabama, with his wife of 46 years, Peggy, with whom he has two daughters, Scarlett Nokes and Stephane Bolton. The couple also has a dog they adore. The former sheriff, who has lost quite a few pounds since his time in the law enforcement, spends his days working on his Sweetwater modeling project while remaining an active part of the community. In August 2024, he was invited to throw the first pitch to kick off the Cal Ripken World Series. He has also exhibited an interest in wrestling. Interestingly, during his free time, while working in law enforcement, he was a professional wrestler in the National Wrestling Alliance under the name of Dr. Death. Considering his love for wrestling, the employees at the sheriff’s office gave him a championship belt as a parting gift. Furthermore, Singleton also owned and operated Singleton’s Bar-B-Que with his wife. The couple had started the business in 1993 and closed it in 2015.
Apart from this, he also appears on several platforms to talk about his experience on the force, especially the eleven days he spent chasing after Casey and Vicky White. In 2023, he published a book about it, titled ‘Manhunt: The Search for Vicky and Casey White,’ in which he talks about “the most difficult eleven days of [his] career” while also giving the readers a complete picture of who Vicky was before the infamous jailbreak. He doesn’t wish for her to be remembered for the one bad thing she did.
Read More: Did Casey White Love Vicky White? Did They Get Married?
