Friendly fiends

Escapees & their inside gal popular in stir: con

ESCAPED CONVICT Richard Matt and the prison worker accused of helping him break out of the big house had this in common — they were popular with other inmates.

Matt was an “an outgoing guy,” newly released prisoner Jeremiah Calkins said Thursday after he was sprung from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora.

“We passed each other in the yard, say hi, stuff like that,” Calkins told the Daily News. “He talked to a lot of people. Everybody seemed to like him.”

Calkins’ account came as the desperate search for Matt and fellow escapee David Sweat entered a 13th day — and as prison employee Joyce Mitchell was grilled again by investigators.

“Matt seemed like an all right person,” said Calkins, 28, who served one year in Clinton.

Calkins said that Matt made extra money by doing drawings for inmates. He said the rumor was that Matt used some of that dough to buy tools and pay a guard on his floor “to look the other way.”

Investigators have not implicated correction officers in the June 6 escapes, but Mitchell (left) is charged with providing tools to the killers.

“She was friendly to everybody,” Calkins said. “A lot of the COs and some civilians in there, they look at us like we’re scum.”

Investigators say Mitchell admitted to engaging in oral sex with Matt, and was being probed for a “sexual incident” with Sweat.

Calkins, a convicted rapist, according to state prison records, said cellblock scuttlebutt was that Matt and Sweat had a “relationship at different times” with Mitchell. But nobody had a clue she was in on the escape, he said.

Meanwhile, Mitchell’s hoodwinked husband said he was done with his wife and doesn’t want her prison lover’s drawings hanging in his house.

Lyle Mitchell, who worked with his wife at the maximum-security prison, was stunned by reports she wanted the convicts to kill him, attorney Peter Dumas said.

“I don’t expect that he’s going to get on the stand and testify on her behalf,” his lawyer said.