Mitchell knew duo planned to kill her husband.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Prison seamstress Joyce Mitchell, who pleaded guilty Tuesday to helping two inmates escape, told investigators that she performed sexual acts on one of the men and sent X-rated selfies to the other and knew the duo planned to kill her husband, police documents show.
Mitchell told investigators that inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat nicknamed her husband, Lyle, “the glitch” and gave her small round pills to drug him with, according to documents obtained by NBC News.
The 51-year-old seamstress at Clinton Correctional Facility was previously charged with smuggling hacksaw blades, other tools, and a screwdriver to the inmates, who used power tools to slice through a slew of piping and subsequently traversed a series of catwalks to escape to the neighboring town, where they emerged from a manhole on June 6.
After three weeks on the run near the Canadian border, Matt was shot and killed by a tactical team of law enforcement officers in Malone on June 26, while Sweat was shot and captured in nearby Constable on June 28.
District Attorney Andrew Wylie said a grand jury could have considered other counts against Mitchell, including conspiracy to commit murder and sexual-related charges based on allegations involving the inmates.
However, he said he accepted pleas on two clearly provable charges — first-degree promoting prison contraband, a felony, and fourth-degree criminal facilitation, a misdemeanor — “in the interest of justice.”
The deal requires Mitchell to cooperate with a probe by the state inspector general, according to the Associated Press.
After Mitchell entered her guilty plea, her lawyer, Stephen Johnston, said that she realizes she made a “horrible mistake” by getting involved with Matt and Sweat.
“She got in over her head into something that she never should have started. But she did, and she’s paying the price now,” Johnston told reporters outside court. “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. … And then when she realized who she was dealing with, everything changed.”