The Dog Lady of Lansing Prison: Toby Young Dorr

0:05 H a Wall Street line, shackle change, Oh weesome, Girdie, it's calling my name. There is no mercy and it's been a tentery juice as the huge stream game Wrangle three. Come here by.

0:46 Me to die inside these walls, inside the wild hadn't went no girl as I.

1:31 Hey everyone, and welcome back to Bloody and Gola, a podcast of one and forty two years in the making, the complete story of America's bloodiest present. I'm Jim Chapman and Luck. Before we get into today's episode, just a couple of announcements. First, one that is really somber in nature. Woody Everton, who I started this podcast with and is still to this day a partner in this podcast, is father. As of this recording, looks like he is going to be passing away. I'm just gonna read this Facebook post quickly that what he made says my dad, woodrow Leo Overton Senior, my mentor, my best friend. Thank you for everything you have done for me, including making me the man I am today. I will miss you every day.

2:24 Go us with Jesus now you certainly have earned it. I know you will continue to be with me until we meet again. In Heaven. Huge prayers for my mom, who is the strongest and most loving wife anyone could wish for fifty eight years of marriage, seven children, nineteen grandchildren and two great grandchildren. Dad, you and Mom have definitely left your mark in the world. Y'all. My dad is home in his bedroom, surrounded by love. Last rites have been given and now we wait for the angels to bring him home. Thank you for everyone who has helped us get to the point, and thank you Hospice for helping us keep him home. And of course, many prayers to Woody Everton as he and his family go through this very difficult time. And I'll tell you a quick little story about mister Lee Overton. Funny to me that I remember, you know, bits and pieces of your childhood.

3:25 And one of the things I do remember is Lee Overton's commercials that were run on TV back when I was nine ten years old somewhere around there. He just dominated. He was an attorney in Baton Rouge, very successful attorney for many, many, many years in addition to other things that he did, and he ran more commercials than any other attorney in town by far. And many years later. Who knew I would cross path with Woody Everton, and he mentioned his dad was an attorney and I said, wait, is your dad Lee Overton And he said yeah, and I said, I don't know him, but I know his commercials well. I did have the pleasure of meeting mister Overton only one time, and that was at a Marti Gras event in which Woody was He was like the Master of Ceremonies or whatever you call him, the King of the Monti Graus Parade or something like that. And we were on Woody's float and his dad was there, and look, even at his age then he was still quite the charmer. So many many prayers to all who knew in all who loved Lee Overton. And I have one more announcement today, and that is the Livingston Pair Sheriff's Office, which both Woody and I have talked about many times on Bloody Angla. They have kicked off their own podcast. It's called Behind the Scenes with Sheriff Jason Ard.

4:59 My company Vision is consulting on that project. And I'll tell you what, it's pretty damn good. So if you're interested in seeing behind the scenes what these sheriff's office do to catch bad guys, this will be a great one for you if you're a true crime fanatic, great podcast for you to check out. You can just search on YouTube. Behind the scenes we shareff Jason Orden. It'll pull it up, go check it out. We just dropped the second episode of that podcast, and let's get into today's episode. And I'm gonna call this episode the Dog Lady of Lancing Prison. And in two thousand and six, Toby Door formerly Toby Young when this was going down, she made headlines after she helped convicted murderer John Maynard escape from Lancing Correctional Facility in Kansas, and she did this by sneaking him out in a dog crate. Now, Door had been helping inmates train dogs to prepare the dogs for adoption. This was part of a program she founded called Safe Harbor Prison Dogs. So let's get into it, and I'm a start off by telling you a little bit about Toby. She came from a large family of seven kids, and she was the oldest sibling. And when you're the oldest sibling of a large family, you are typically the one who is the most mature. You get the honor of helping mom and dad with all those

6:31 kids that were born behind you, right, and Toby was no exception. She was the straight arrow in her family, the rule follower, and even in high school when her parents didn't require her necessarily to be home at a certain time, she really didn't have like what you would call a curfew. She come home early anyway. She was just a model child and a model young adult. So she graduates from Bishop Ward High School in Kansas City, Kansas, and from there she attended college. She gets her bachelor's degree in business administration. And she was very smart, graduating near the top of her class. Now, when she graduated college, Toby was already married. She had tied the knot at just twenty years old to her high school sweetheart, and he was a firefighter in Kansas and actually the only guy she had ever dated. And she was a spunky lady, very short, five feet tall, one hundred and thirty pounds, just an everyday lady. And as the years went on, on the outside everything seemed fine, but her life in her marriage was not without the challenges. Toby and her husband they had a daughter who sadly died at birth.

7:54 Following that, they did have two sons who grew up happy and healthy. And it was in two two thousand and four that Toby gets diagnosed with thyroid cancer, so she had to have her thyroid removed, and later on she would say, this is the moment she realized that there had to be more out there for her. She was married, but she wasn't in love and she described her marriage as very quote hollow. Now, at the time of her diagnosis, she had been married twenty six years. So during her recovery from thyroid cancer, she saw a TV show and that TV show focused on dog training inside of prisons, and at this time in her life, she was working at a vet clinic and she had a huge affinity for dogs in particular and dog rescues, so she decided she wanted to start a dog rescue program where she would train the dogs and then she would offer those dogs up for a She named the new business quote Safe Harbor. And it was just shortly later that a warden for Lancing Correctional Facility in Kansas City contacted her about the program. I'm talking within days of her getting it started, and he asked her if she would like to use inmates at his facility to train those dogs. Lancing had been considering a similar program

9:28 like that, so the inmates that would eventually be released from the facility would have something they could use upon release as it relates to training. And they also felt like it would help these guys on the inside not buck up so much, if you will. And this sounded like a great idea to Toby obviously, so she made an appointment to pitch the board at that prison on her new business and they absolutely loved the idea, and the next thing you know, Safe Harbor has a prison contract. Now, this was in January of two thousand and five. Now, this was an extremely successful program. In the eighteen months that Toby was involved in the program before what would happen happened. Toby rescued over one thousand dogs by having them trained by convicts, and at that point those dogs would get adopted by families. They figured out the formula was if the dogs were already trained, it was easier to get people to adopt these dogs. And in addition to all of that, people wanted to support something like prisoner reform.

10:40 Now. Eventually it became the largest dog program in the country, over one hundred convict dog handlers and eighty to one hundred dogs were being trained at any given time. The dogs were even allowed to stay with the handlers in their cells during training, which made the program I am very sought after among the convicts. Sadly, about a year into the program, Toby's dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer, which took over quickly and he sadly passes away. And it was around that time that a convict by the name of John Maynor. He noticed that something was off with Toby and he showed some concern, which, due to everything that was falling apart at this time for Toby, her dad dying, her marriage was just routine at best, it didn't take a crystal ball to see that attention would possibly be something that could create an issue. Now this time, Toby was forty eight years old and John was twenty eight. So let's talk quickly about John Maynard. Now.

11:52 Growing up, you could say John Maynord was the total opposite of Toby. While Toby was a straight arrow, John, by the age of thirteen, was already causing trouble. He had been arrested for trespassing, burglary, vandalism, and at sixteen he was charged with aggravated assault, allegedly pulling a saught off shotgun on a group of people. This was in nineteen eighty five, and because of his lengthy record, Maynard was automatically waved to adult court, where he faced three counts of aggravated assault in one count of illegally possessing a firearm. These are all felonies. However, the aggravated assault charge was eventually dismissed when a witness did not show up in court, but Maynard was still found guilty of illegally possessing assault off shotgun. So he does do some jail time. Now he gets released from jails following a short stant for possessing that shotgun, and that's where his life would take a dramatic turn. On June thirteenth of nineteen ninety six, a guy by the name of Donald England was shot at six point thirty five PM while sitting in his park car outside a haircut shop in Kansas.

13:10 He was waiting for his ex wife to get her haircut. Now. Witnesses said that England was sitting in the passenger seat two young white males. They walk up and they actually get in the car. England then gets shot with a stolen small caliber semi automatic handgun. He gets out of the car, and witnesses said he may have tried to kick one of the assailants before he got shot in the chest. After the shooting, the assailants sped away in the car of the guy they just shot, and witnesses who saw this they actually started pursuing the vehicle, but they backed off after at least one shot was fired at them. The abandoned car was found a few hours later behind a school, and about a week later a comes in and the tipster actually named two individuals who had been seen in the vicinity of the homicide. Within hours, the police pull over a truck with Tennessee plates and four white males get out. One of them takes off running as soon as he gets out of the vehicle, and that man was John Maynard. The other occupants they get hauled into jail. They write out Maynard and eventually he gets caught and when it was all sudden done, Maynard was charged and convicted of first gree murder and he gets sentenced to life in prison, no parole. That's

14:41 in April of nineteen ninety nine, and Maynard looked the part of a convict. He was five foot nine one hundred and ninety pounds, very muscular, and had the word hooligan in three inch letters tattooed across his stomach. So in October of tw two thousand and five, Toby meets John Maynard and he actually becomes somewhat of her convict bodyguard. And Toby explained this in an interview, saying, quote, there came a time when I was inside the prison when I heard some I mean I would just walk around the prison by myself, not accompanied by an officer at all, and I heard some inmates make sexual comments under their breath as I walk by, their kind of cat calling her, right.

15:30 It made me a little bit nervous. I looked around and I realized, this is a huge prison. There's a million, maybe not a million, but it seemed like a million inmates in there, and I was vulnerable. So I shared this with the warden's office, that I wasn't comfortable just walking around inside the prison without an officer or some protection. So they told me to always be sure I was accompanied by one of my dog handlers, because the dog handlers wouldn't let anyone say anything to me or cost me in any way. So just don't walk through the prison alone. Just make sure when you come to the gate you meet up with one of your dog handlers and ask someone to walk with you the whole time, the warden's office told her, and she goes on to say I did that for about a year and it worked fine until one day I was walking with two of my dog handlers and I came upon another dog handler who wanted his girlfriend to adopt his dog. And I ran into this inmate, and it had been about eight weeks since he asked me if he could adopt his dog, and I said to him, hey, when is your girlfriend gonna pick up your dog? Because I've got a lot of dogs lined up waiting to come in here and I need that space. And he got mad at me and started screaming at me, and he put his fist up and he was in my face and he was yelling at me and cussing at me and saying, you know, you let everyone else wait for their dogs.

16:57 I don't know why you're being this way with me. And so I looked over at my two dog handlers for help, and they were just looking at their feet because they didn't want to confront this guy. And I just knew I was gonna get hit, and this guy outweighed me by one hundred and fifty pounds. I didn't know what to do. And so then I looked past this guy who was confronting me, and I saw John Maynard kind of swaggering his way in the yard, and he walked up and I just heaved a sigh of relief because I knew now was safe, because nobody was gonna mess with John Maynard. And Maynard said to him, go on back to yourself, Toby, let me walk you to the gate. When I got outside the prison, I just fell apart and I called my contact at the Warden's office and said, I'm never going back in that prison again. There's no way I will do this. This isn't safe. And I'll run Boom, I'll run the prison dog program, but I'm not going in the prison. I'll run it from the outside. She goes on to say, on Monday morning, this part Erson, my contact in the Warden's office called me back and said, now, when you come up to the prison, you just Paige Maynard. So when I got to the prison, I call and I'd say Paige Maynard to the gate, and he'd come to the gate and meet me, and he'd walk me to every dog I needed to visit and just stay there through my training sessions. That was too much time to be spending together with John Maynard. And I can see how that would create quite the problem, and I'm sure

18:28 you can too. Now, this is not a woman who did not know better as it relates to manipulation. Toby was actually required to take classes at the prison specifically tailored toward convict manipulation. Now, in addition to being a bodyguard to Toby, John was also one hell of a dog trainer. He had trained over twenty five dogs personally by this point in time, and Maynard was well respected even by the correctional officers, who would describe him as someone who was very charismatic. So John is around Toby all the time. They talked constantly, and John at some point starts flirting and Toby at some point starts flirting back, and this goes on for several weeks. And it's at this point of time that, according to Toby, she falls in love with John Maynard and vice versa. And it's during this love affair that the two decide that in order to be together John Maynard needs to escape prison, which is convenient for him, right, So they hatch a plan and in an interview, Toby was asked about the night prior to that escape, and she said this quote, Well, the night before the escape was so tense. There was so much riding on every single thing falling into place the next morning, and I did a prison Dog news

20:00 letter every week for the Prison Dog program. I emailed it out and it went to thousands of people all across the country, and I felt so compelled to finish that task. The escape was on a Sunday, and Sunday is the day I sent out the newsletter. So I stayed up late on Saturday night writing the newsletter for that week, and I sent the newsletter out. So I didn't finish that job until after midnight that night, and my husband went to bed. He said to me, well, I'm going to bed. And he walked up the stairs to go to bed, and I looked at him and said goodbye, and I thought, oh, crap, I said goodbye. He's gonna pick up on that. He's gonna ask me.

20:42 Why would I say goodbye, He's just going to bed. I should have said goodnight, but I said goodbye, but he never said anything. He just went up and went to bed, and then I thought, Okay, I'm doing the right thing. Then I can't even believe he did not notice that slip of the tongue. She goes on to say, that's all I said was goodbye. Then I got up the next morning and it was snowing and the van was sliding in the snow. And on any other normal day, I would have canceled the adoption event because it wasn't worth getting out in that weather. But I couldn't cancel this adoption, so I got there early because I was nervous and I didn't know what else to do. So I got there and my dog handlers were all lined up behind the fence with their dogs, and it was a cold day. The winm was blowing. Nobody wanted to be outside, and they were all standing behind the fence with their dogs, and they were just kind of stomping their feet and looking at the gate and waving at me, like, hurry up, open the gate and get these dogs and let us go back to our rooms and be warm.

21:50 But I couldn't open the gate until I saw the farm wagon there because if I lighted all the dogs, and then we just brought the farm wagon. It would be under more scrutiny because it would be the only thing happening, and we needed to have the chaos of all the dogs getting loaded in the crates and jumping around and barking, and then this crate gets loaded in at the same time. And I'm gonna get to what crate that is. And while I'm waiting there, I'm thinking, where's that farm wagon? Why isn't it here? Why is he late? He knows how important his timing is. I had just about decided I was just going to open the gate, load the dogs, and I was gonna leave and go to this dog adoption. And he was on his own. Whatever was gonna happen, he was gonna have to deal with it, because I couldn't wait anymore. Just as I thought that, I looked up and that farm wagon came around the corner. And when I saw it, I gasp out loud because the weight on it was so heavy. The tires were nearly flat, and I thought, how does no one notice that? I mean, a couple of dog dishes and some leashes aren't gonna make enough weight to make those tires flat like that, but nobody nutted, nobody said anything. So I opened the gate, told the inmates to start putting their dogs in the crates, and I went around and opened the side door of the van, and two or three guys had pulled the wagon down and they picked up the crate, slid it in, shut the side door. I walked around to the back of the van to make sure all the dogs were in the crates and the crate doors were shut, closed the

23:22 back doors to the van, and I took the adoption papers from the handlers, got in the truck and left. So to tell you what happened, on February twelfth of two thousand and six, Toby showed up the prison in a usual white cargo van. She was going to pick up these dogs that were trained to bring them to go get adopted right and as luck would have it, there was a metal dog crate that the prison wanted to get rid of. And she had this conversation with the staff a few days before this incident, which is how her and Toby planned it. To get rid of the metal crate because you could take it apart and use the metal as shanks. The problem was it was very heavy, and so Toby said, well, why don't I get John to carry the crate to my vehicle, And that gave John a reason to be there when she left the prison, and guess what, he just got inside the crate, and that's how they made their escape. They drove right out of the front of the prison, and it's not too long before the prison figures out John had escaped, or how he escaped, or who he escaped with, and they start digging into Toby Young's life and they discover that she had gathered up at least ten thousand dollars in cash. And keep in mind, she's still married at this point, so no doubt her husband helped them

24:55 discover that. They also discovered that Toby had taken two guns from her home, she had bought a vehicle, and she had rented a storage space in the area, all without her family's knowledge. She even bought hair dye and an electric razor prior to the escape, and obviously that is to alter appearances, right, And they're on the run, Bulletins go out everything you would expect, and they make it to Tennessee, and as Toby described it later, they drove all night to get to a lakeside cabin in Tennessee, and Toby had reserved that cabin under a made up name.

25:37 John hadn't been outside the prison at this point since he was nineteen years old. She was quoted as saying John was really interested in eating fried chicken and a lot of foods. He wasn't able to get inside of prison. And he played the guitar, and I brought my mandolin with me, and so he played music and we just talk a lot. And that lasted for a day or two, and then John said, you know, I don't just want to stay in this cabin. I want to get out and go see things. Let's go do stuff. And I thought to myself, well, you told me we had to stay hidden. We couldn't be out doing things. And he said, well, nobody's gonna find us. They aren't going to have any idea where we are. I want to go to Nashville.

26:22 Let's go to Nashville and look at some guitars. And so after that first day, almost every day we went somewhere and did something, kind of like we were on vacation. So Toby vnaged them like hiding out this whole time, and John who had been locked up since he was nineteen. He's wanted to experience freedom. They would actually find out later the police that they even went to an Imax movie in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and wore wigs when they went. It's around this point that they decide they want to go to Barnes and Noble bookstore, and it's at that bookstore that Toby buys John a buck and it's actually called where the Red fer Graves have read that book.

27:08 Amazing book, it's a classic. So she buys that form and they leave the bookstore and at this point they knew what kind of vehicle that the two were in, and the way they knew that was they found out she had bought another vehicle and they had that description. So they leave the Barnes and Noble get in the vehicle, and it just so happened sheer luck. Two marshals were also at Barnes and Noble, US marshals that were hunting them, and they noticed the vehicle pulling out, so they radio and police set up a roadblock. And it's on a highway and there's a big hill. The way Toby described it, they came up this hill and as they were going down the hill. Right in front of them are a hundred police carps of all different types. So it's at that time that John turns to Toby and he says, what do we do? And Toby says, you need to pull over, So he's gonna do that, and at the same time he's decided I'm gonna pull over. This is according to Toby. A police car gets in front of them and like slams the brakes to try to stop the couple. This in turn pisses John off, allegedly, and he says, fuck that, I'm not pulling over, and he decides to make a run for it. The cops pursue and the chase is on and police are trying to box them in. Eventually, John loses control of the vehicle

28:39 and they crash into a tree, and while they're knocked out, they're not hurt. Beyond that, they're very fortunate in that way. And when the dust settled, the two were taken into custody by police, and the police learned more details, obviously regarding the escape. They learned the two had been planning it for months and that John had actually lost twenty five pounds to fit inside that dog CRP. They learned about the cabin that the couple had stayed in and it was inside a campground between Chattanooga, Tennessee and Knoxville, Tennessee. And they go ahead and they charge Maynard with aggravated escape and Young is charged with aiding and a betting a felon. This is on February twenty fourth of two thousand and six, and they were on the run for a total of twelve days, actually a long time to be on the run. So on February twenty seventh, Toby Young she makes her first court appearance along with Maynard.

29:42 This is in Athens, Tennessee, and they waive extradition to Kansas, and in Kansas they have separate hearings, and she told reporters outside of the courtroom that she was sorry, and she said she had always been a law abiding citizen. She couldn't explain why she helped Maynard escape in the dog and she said, I haven't even figured it all out yet. My whole life, I've always done good things. I've never even had a speeding ticket. I don't know anything about this court stuff. She went on to tell reporters she enjoyed the two weeks with Maynard. She declined to say she had a romantic relationship with Maynard, but Camp Grind employees that the police interviewed said they were routinely sitting close in the truck, and incidentally they did find sex toys in that cabin as well, so apparently they were romanic, even though she didn't necessarily want to say that. So long story short, Toby Young gets sentenced to twenty seven months in jail, which she eventually serves her time. Now in the meantime, her husband, of course, files for divorce, and her oldest son he chooses to keep his distance from her and their relationship is just shot.

30:56 She would say about prison, quote, you know, I was teen arified to go into prison. I had spent a lot of time on the inside of men's prisons, and I knew how violent it could be. But I discovered the woman's prison is a lot different. It just isn't nearly as violent. It's more like high school drama on steroids. But there were times inside prison where I found relationships with other inmates to be the strongest relationships I've ever had in my life. People that really cared what happened to me. And people that tried to help me in any way they could, so she had like a good run in prison. She actually also said in an interview that I saw that prison was like a break for her.

31:40 She said, my whole life, I had to take care of other people, my entire life, and in there I had no responsibility, and she said I felt like I needed that. So on May twenty third of two thousand and eight, she does get released from prison, and after she was released, she goes to live with her mother back in cans A City, but everyone knew what she had done, and she said that other people would point at her in restaurants. So she eventually finds a job in Boston and she moves to Boston. It was there that she met her future husband, Chris, and sadly, her youngest son. He died from cancer about a year after her release. And what about John, So he ended up with an additional ten years added to his sentence, which means absolutely nothing happened to him because he was already serving life without parole. So it's been nearly twenty years since Toby's release from prison, and since that time that she's been released, she's now a public speaker an author and a podcast host. Believe it or not, as I told you, she did remarry and about ten years ago her and her husband actually went to visit John in prison. Now, in twenty twenty four, John Maynard actually died in prison, and try as I might, I cannot find any information on how John Maynard died. But life definitely meant life

33:16 to John Maynor because he died inside of that prison. And that is what I have for you today. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you so much for listening. Again. Prayers to wood he Overton and his family as they go through a very difficult time. And until next time. For Bloody Angola, a podcast one hundred and forty two years in the making, the complete story of America's bloodiest prison. I'm Jim Chapman, Peace.

34:03 A wall Street line, shackle change, Oh gesome girdie. It's calling by the name, there is no. Mercy and this being a tentery juice as the hill Stream game rangold of three. I'm here behind. By me or die inside these walls, inside the wild and when no girls I know, it's so bloody angle, ohbody bl