The man whose wife is accused of helping two killers escape a prison in upstate New York says the men planned to kill him.
Lyle Mitchell told NBC’s “Today” show that his wife, Joyce Mitchell, revealed the prisoners’ alleged plan to harm him shortly after their escape. Escapee Richard Matt originally told Joyce he would give her pills that would knock her husband out, so she would have no problem leaving their home to come meet him.
“She told me that Matt wanted her to pick him up,” Lyle Mitchell said. But Joyce Mitchell refused to drug her husband, so the convicts got tough on her, she told him. “(Matt) started threatening her, (saying) someone inside the facility was going to do something to me, to harm me, or kill me, or somebody outside of the jail, if she didn’t stay with this,” Lyle Mitchell told NBC’s Matt Lauer in an exclusive interview that aired Tuesday.
But not staying with the plan is precisely what authorities say happened: Joyce Mitchell didn’t show up for the planned rendezvous with Matt and David Sweat on June 6. Instead, she checked herself into a hospital with panic attacks. “I was in over my head,” Lyle Mitchell said his wife told him. “She said she loved me but she was in too deep.”
Had she kept the date, she’d be dead now, Lyle Mitchell believes. And he might be, too.
He still loves his wife, though he’s mad at her, Mitchell said. But support her? “As of right now, I don’t know what to think,” he said.
Both of the Mitchells worked at the prison in its tailoring block, and investigators said Joyce Mitchell, 51, had a sexual relationship with Matt. Lyle Mitchell didn’t know about that relationship, Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie said.
DNA in cabin
Meanwhile, authorities are combing an area west of the prison after DNA from Sweat and Matt was found inside a burglarized cabin, a law enforcement source told CNN.
Another law enforcement source briefed on the investigation told CNN’s Deborah Feyerick that a number of personal items, including a pair of boots, were discovered Saturday inside the cabin in Mountain View, New York, some 30 miles west of the Clinton Correctional Facility. The items left behind, and the manner in which they were left, suggest the pair were surprised and left in a hurry, according to the source.
The boots left in the cabin suggest one of the fugitives may be barefoot, the source said, possibly hindering his ability to move through the dense brush. But there may have been other boots and shoes in the cabin that were taken by the pair.
The discovery re-energized the search for the convicted killers, now in its 18th day. The men haven’t been seen since their escape worthy of a movie script — at least not by authorities.
Rugged search perimeter
Franklin County Sheriff Kevin Mulverhill told CNN on Tuesday that the current search area in Franklin County is about the size of the town of Bellmont, New York, which is about 170 square miles. Authorities have flooded the area with helicopters, cruisers and all-terrain vehicles.
“It’s very rough terrain,” said Mulverhill. “It’s not easy to get to, it’s not easy to traverse.”
So rugged, in fact, that the law enforcement source said it’s slowing down search teams. But, unlike the inmates — one of whom may now be barefoot — searchers are rotating in and out, getting rest and food, and are better equipped to handle the punishing underbrush.
Franklin County District Attorney Glenn MacNeill urged residents of Franklin County to be on alert. “Be inside with the doors locked and very diligent,” he said.
Were escape tools smuggled inside meat?
Matt and Sweat cut holes through steel cell walls, then shimmied along catwalks and through pipes before emerging from a manhole outside the prison gates and disappearing.
The tools they used may have been smuggled inside a frozen chunk of hamburger meat, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN on Monday.
Investigators are looking into whether Joyce Mitchell convinced a prison guard to pass the meat to the inmates in a way that bypassed a metal detector, the source said. The two escapees were housed in an honor block where they were allowed to cook their own food.
Their escape set off a massive search for them and an investigation of employees and practices at the prison.
Mitchell has been charged with aiding the escapees, and a corrections officer has been placed on paid leave, authorities have said.
Accused of helping the fugitives by supplying tools like chisels and drill bits, Mitchell is in jail and has pleaded not guilty to the charges against her.
Corrections officer used killers as ‘sources’
The corrections officer placed on leave is Gene Palmer, a 28-year veteran of Clinton Correctional Facility who is cooperating fully with the investigation, his attorney Andrew Brockway told CNN.
Palmer knew Matt and Sweat for years at the prison and had received a painting done by Matt, Brockway said. But he wasn’t aware the inmates were planning an escape, the attorney stressed.
Palmer used Matt and Sweat as “sources” for information that he would “use to ensure the safety of his coworkers and of the facility, and of other inmates,” Brockway told CNN.
“He wants these two individuals to be caught, and anything that he can do to help law enforcement do their job, he’s willing to cooperate,” Brockway said Monday.
