Sewing teacher charmed by killer?
Accused of aiding in Clinton, N.Y., prison break
• With handcuffs on her wrists and eyes downcast, Joyce Mitchell looks less like a plotter in one of America’s most audacious jail breaks and more like a woman who has realized she has made a terrible mistake.
Prosecutors allege that the 51-year-old prison sewing instructor fell under the charms of Richard Matt, a killer serving a life sentence for dismembering his former boss with a hacksaw.
The two met in the prison tailoring shop, where Mitchell taught convicts how to use sewing machines. Here, police believe that Matt “made her feel special” and coaxed her into providing the tools that he needed to dig his way out of Clinton Correction Facility in New York state.
More than a week after Matt, 48, and his accomplice David Sweat, another killer, made their escape, police appear no closer to finding the fugitives.
But investigators have gathered enough evidence to charge Mitchell with aiding the escape, telling a court that she had provided “hacksaw blades, chisels, a punch and a screwdriver bit” to the two murderers.
She pleaded not guilty to charges which could see her imprisoned for eight years.
Her second husband, Lyle Mitchell, who also works at the prison, is said to be under investigation but has not been arrested or charged.
Richard Matt should be an easy man to dislike. In 1997, he kidnapped a 76-year-old man and beat him savagely before driving him around in the trunk of his car for 27 hours.
Eventually he snapped his victim’s neck with his bare hands and chopped his body into pieces before throwing it into the Niagara River, where it was discovered by a fisherman. “He is the most vicious, evil person I’ve ever come across in 38 years as a police officer,” Gabriel DiBernardo, a retired police detective who led the murder probe, told The New York Times.
But despite his viciousness, Matt is said to possess a certain cunning charm. He impressed prison staff with his artistic abilities and liked to sketch pictures of Oprah Winfrey, according to the Daily Beast.
He is believed to have worked his powers of persuasion on Mitchell and befriended her.
It is not clear if Mitchell fell in love with the convicted killer, whose body is covered in tattoos, or if she was just won over by his charisma.
Either way, prosecutors say, she supplied the tools which Matt and Sweat used to cut through the steel walls of their cells and into a pipe that led to the outside world. In addition, they say that her cellphone was used to call people related to Matt.
Mitchell may also have agreed to give the two killers a lift in her car, but she appears to have lost her nerve and backed out at the last minute. She spent part of last weekend in hospital for a panic attack.
Mitchell’s son, Tobey, insisted that his mother loved her work and would never betray her colleagues by helping inmates escape.