Woman who aided inmates says she feared for family

PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. — The former New York prison employee who helped two killers escape from a maximum-security prison said in an interview that she was depressed at the time and the inmates took advantage of what she called her “weakness.”

In the first of a two-part jailhouse interview aired Monday morning on NBC’s “Today” show, Joyce Mitchell told host Matt Lauer that she cooperated with Richcellblock ard Matt and David Sweat’s demands for help because Matt had threatened members of her family.

“People need to know that I was only trying to save my family,” said Mitchell, 51, who worked in the tailor shop at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, near the Canadian border in northern New York.

Mitchell gave Matt and Sweat chisels and other tools they used to break out of their adjacent cells on June 6.

In a catwalk between the walls they found a toolbox with power tools they used to cut through an underground steam pipe. They crawled through the pipe and reached the street through a manhole.

The escapees prompted a massive manhunt involving more than 1,000 law enforcement officers.

A federal border patrol officer fatally shot Matt on June 26, and a New York state trooper wounded Sweat two days later. He’s incarcerated in another state prison.

Mitchell pleaded guilty in July to promoting prison contraband. She faces 21⁄3 to seven years in prison under a plea deal when she’s sentenced Sept. 28.

Her husband, Lyle, also works at the prison. Mitchell told “Today” that earlier this year she felt that her husband no longer loved her.

“I was going through depression, and I guess they saw my weakness, and that’s how it all started,” she said during the interview at the Clinton County Jail.

Mitchell said she had befriended both men and brought them cookies and brownies. She eventually smuggled tools to them in bags that the prison staff failed to search.

The inmates’ plot included Mitchell picking them up outside the prison, but she had a panic attack, and her husband took her to a hospital.

Mitchell said Matt and Sweat had planned to kill her husband.

Part two of the interview will be aired Friday.

PRESS-REPUBLICAN Joyce Mitchell, who helped the killers escape, said she was depressed at the time.