Prison escapee still cooperating month after capture

Still, her attorney is court-appointed and local authorities are investigating whether taxpayers must pay her legal bills. Her lawyer, Stephen Johnston, advised her to accept the plea agreement. Mitchell, an instructor in the tailor shop at the Clinton Correctional Fac…

Mitchell had initially agreed to pick up the two prisoners in a getaway auto but changed her mind at the last minute.

David Sweat detailed his escape plan earlier this month. The objects were hidden in hamburger meat, and it was physically handed over to the inmates by another prison worker.

“They’re both cunning individuals”, Guess said.

The saga of the manhunt finally over – Matt was shot and killed by federal agents on June 27, three weeks into the search, and Sweat was captured two days later – attention has now turned to Mitchell’s involvement in the brazen escape. “I didn’t say anything because I was scared for my husband, who also works for the facility”.

Cook immediately recognized Sweat and shot him twice after the escapee fled toward a stand of trees.

After accepting a plea deal that could put her in prison for up to seven years, more details of upstate prison worker Joyce Mitchell’s statements to authorities were released.

“I think that to a certain extent, Matt got her to feeling good about herself, better than she had for a period of time, and she was swept off her feet a bit…. I was to drive my Jeep and bring my cellphone, gps, clothes, a gun, tents, sleeping bags, hatchet, fishing poles and money from a package I never picked up”, she told investigators.

Guess said David Sweat is still talking to them about the escape, giving information that will eventually lead to a broader review of corrections practices inside prisons around the state.

For months, that’s pretty much all they did, until November 2014, when Mitchell asked Matt – reportedly an accomplished artist – to paint a portrait of her three kids as an anniversary gift for her husband. “I really do love my husband and he’s the reason”. He said there’s overwhelming evidence that she’s guilty.

During the time she was being questioned by state police, she flushed the pills down a toilet.

The two men escaped in audacious fashion – they used power tools to cut through cell walls, then crawled through pipes to emerge from a manhole in the village of Dannemora, home to the sprawling prison.

“At this time, there are no other individuals who have been identified through the investigation as being involved directly or indirectly” with the escape, Wylie said.