Speaker 1: H a wall street line, shackle change, Oh we someome gird,
it's calling my name. There is no mercy and it's
been a tentery juice as the huge stream game Rango three.
Speaker 2: Come in by Meda dies.
Speaker 1: Inside these walls, inside the wild.
Speaker 2: Hadn't went no girls? I hey one, and welcome back
to Bloody Angola, a podcast one hundred and forty two
years in the making, the complete story of America's bloodiest prison.
I'm Jim Chapman, and today I am continuing with another
episode from the High Bristophilia series and the subject of
today's episode is Joyce Mitchell, the Department of Corrections employee
who in twenty fifteen was convicted of providing material support
to Clinton Correctional Facility prisoners Richard Matt and David Sweat
in the way of hacksaw blades, chisels and other tools
during their escape of prison. And you will not believe
how she got that contraband in there, which I will
cover later on in the story. So let's get into
it and I'll give you a little background on Joyce Mitchell, who,
by the way, went by Tilly. She was fifty one
years old when everything I'm about to tell you went down.
She was married, she was a mother to three children.
She was on her second marriage, and according to her
first husband, she was a serial cheater. Now, her first
husband worked in a stitching factory with her that was
located inside of Clinton Correctional Facility in New York, and
they didn't work directly for the prison. They were kind
of contracted by the prison. So, according to him, she
started having an affair with another worker in that factory.
His name was Lyle Mitchell. Her first husband. He finds
out about it because Lyle's girlfriend had caught the two
having sex, and she told Tilly's first husband about it,
and it wasn't long before they divorced, and eventually she
ended up marrying Lyle Mitchell. So, on June sixth of
twenty fifteen, two inmates, Richard Matt and David Sweat, they
escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility and they remained on the
run for nearly a month. Now, how did they manage
to escape one of the toughest prisons in the United States?
That in and of itself is pretty shocking. That's what
we're going to talk about today, And we're going to
start off telling you about Richard Matt, whose prison nickname
was conveniently Hacksaw, so he was known as Rick on
the outside. He was born in nineteen sixty six and
he was raised in a suburb of Buffalo, New York.
He had a daughter, but he abandoned her when she
was still an infant, and at that time they didn't
have any relationship. Now, in nineteen eighty six, while serving
a one year sentence for assault, Matt climbed a fence
and escaped Erie County Correctional Center. He was on the
lamb for about four days. He actually hopped a train,
made his way to his brother's house, and was eventually apprehended. Then,
in nineteen ninety one, Matt convinced a fellow prisoner by
the name of David Tesler to pay fifteen thousand dollars
bailed to get him released while awaiting trial on a
rape charge. Now, the way he taught this guy into
paying that fifteen grand was upon his bail, he said
he would kill the witnesses in Tesler's trial. Those witnesses
included Tesler's then wife and her parents. So Tesler he
bails Rick Matt out of jail, and rather than doing
what he said he would do. Rick Matt actually goes
to Tesler's wife, who incidentally was the grandfather of the
founder of Warner Brothers Studio and heiress to an enormous fortune,
and he tells her about the plan, the murder for
higher plan that he had with that prisoner. The two
of them then go to the police and he said
in exchange for that information, he wanted a reduction in
his prison sentence, which he actually got. So in nineteen
ninety five he goes up for parole and he said,
quote when I got out, I told his wife, Look,
this guy bailed me out of jail and he has
a hit out on you unquote. So he gets parole,
but a piece of shit like this, you know, he
can't stay on the straight and narrow for law. In
nineteen ninety seven, Rack Matt in an accomplice named Lee Bates,
they kidnapped a seventy six year old man by the
name of William Rickerson, who was Matt's former boss. Now,
Matt believed that Rickerson had a large sum of money
hidden and at gunpoint, he demanded to know where that
money was. And this is a seventy six year old
man y'all. The two ended up driving this seventy six
year old man to Ohio and back. It was a
total of twenty seven hours, and the whole time they
had this seventy six year old in the trunk of
the car. They would even stop periodically several times back
and forth on this trip just to open the trunk
and beat the shit out of this guy. So Matt
eventually kills the man by breaking his neck before dismembering
him with a hacksaw and throwing his body parts into
the Niagara River. That's how he got the nickname in
prison Hacksaw. The entire robbery netted less than one hundred
dollars cash, a wedding ring, in some credit cards. That's it.
And it was at this point that Matt committed this
crime that he flees and he goes to Mexico, and
it's when he's in Mexico on February twentieth of nineteen
ninety eight, that Rick Matt isn't done killing people. He
kills a second man in the border town of Mattamorro.
The man known as Charles Perrault was an engineer working
in that area, and Matt attempted to rob him. He
follows into a bathroom, he pulls a knife on him,
but he couldn't resist ends up stabbing this guy to
death in the restroom of a local bar. And he
was soon arrested and he was sentenced to twenty three
years in a Mexican prison for that martyr. Now, even
being in a Mexican prison did not stop Matt from
trying to escape, and he nearly accomplishes that when he
climbs the roof of the prison in Mexico before being
shot by guards. Now he wasn't shot one time or
even six times. He was shot nine times. However, he
would still survive, and in two thousand and seven he
found his way back into the United States to face
trial for the murder of that seventy six year old
I told you about. William Rickerson, his accomplice that murder,
ended up testifying against him and Rick Matt received a
sentence of twenty five to life for a second degree murder,
with no chance of parole until twenty thirty two. Now,
the interesting thing about all of this is that when
he was released from that Mexican prison and extradited to
the United States, it wasn't because the United States asked
for Matt. It was because he was such a difficult prisoner.
That the Mexican government was extraditing a drug kingpin to
the United States who had some charges, and they kind
of threw Rick Matt on that same plane because he
had been such a difficult prisoner to control. That tells
you how bad this guy is. The Mexican prisons didn't
want him. So he shows up in the United States
and US authorities they hold that trial, and during that
trial for the ricor murder, authority suspected he was hatching
a plan to escape from the Niagara County jail where
he was being held. He had at this point a
major escape reputation, so in order to avoid this, they
started making him where a stun belt and snipers were
actually posted outside the courtroom at all times to prevent
an escape should he try to do so. A former
police officer actually said of Matt during that time that
he has quote the most vicious, evil person I've ever
come across in my thirty eight years as a police officer.
So he gets convicted, as I told you, and it's
off to Clinton Correctional Center for Rick Matt. Now he's
one of the two escapees that you're going to learn
about today. The other one was a guy by the
name of David Sweat. And David Sweat was born in
nineteen eighty and raised in New York by a single
mother named Pamela, and he also had two sisters. And
Sweat had a troubled childhood. As a matter of fact,
he was so bad that by the time he was
a teenager, his mother sent him to Florida to be
raised by his uncle. However, he couldn't even act right
then and stole and wrecked his aunt's car, which gave
him a one way ticket into teenage foster care. Now,
by the time he was in his late teens, Sweat
was homeless and he began selling drugs, and much like
Rick Matt, he was in and out of prison often
in the nineties, and it was two thousand and two
that he would make a mistake that would land him
in prison for the rest of his life. In the
early morning hours of July fourth of two thousand and two,
Sweat and two accomplices burglarized a fireworks store in Pennsylvania,
and upon returning to New York, they were spotted by
a sheriff's deputy who had noticed them transporting fireworks from
one car to another, and he attempted to intervene and
see what was going on. Immediately, upon seeing that sheriff's deputy,
Sweat opened fire, shooting the officer fifteen times before running
over him with a car. Now, this officer, miraculously at
this point was still alive, and one of the accomplices
with Matt shoots him two more times in the face,
killing him. A few days later, the three men involved
were arrested. So during the trial, Sweat in one of
the accomplices, they plead guilty to first degree murder and
they receive life without barral, and they did this to
avoid the death penalty. The third accomplice he cooperated with authorities.
He cut some kind of deal and he was only
sentenced to five years in prison for his role in
that murder. And it's off to the Clinton Correctional Facility
for Sweat to serve the rest of his life. And
let me tell you a little bit about Clinton Correctional
It was built in eighteen forty five. It occupies just
over one square mile in New York and it has
a white perimeter wall that scans the entire length and
width of the prison, and that wall is topped with
a ton of guard towers. The facility is actually named
Little Siberia because it stays cold below freezing actually one
hundred and fifty five days per year on average. The
prison also houses mostly inmates that have been convicted of
very serious violent felonies. That makes up about ninety percent
of the three thousand inmates, and Clinton Correctional has about
one thousand guards, so a guard for every three inmates,
which isn't too bad in the prison world. So with
what is seemingly aca cure prison by all accounts, how
do two lifers not only manage to escape but also
manage to escape with assistance? Let's get into it. So
in April of twenty fifteen, Rick Matt and Joyce Mitchell
were alone together in the tailor shop and Rick Matt
grabs Joyce and kisses her for the first time. Now,
Mitchell says, quote, it startled me. He kissed me with
an open mouth. I didn't say anything because I was
scared for my husband, who also works at the facility. Unquote.
In May of twenty fifteen, Rick Matt asked Mitchell to
perform oral sex on him. And she did so, in
her words, out of fear. On two or three other occasions,
Rick Matt would come to her desk wearing a large
coat in which he had cut a hole in it
so that Mitchell could fondle him. Now, it was during
this time she was also having a sexual relationship with Sweat,
and Mitchell said she took photos of her breast and
her genitals and gave them to both Rick Matt and Sweat.
This goes on for a while, and she's in a
love triangle with these two guys, right, and she's got
some serious high bristophilia going on by this point. And
in June of twenty fifteen, actually June fifth, Matt approaches
Mitchell and he tells her they plan to escape that night.
So what I didn't tell you about was in between
these few moss that they were having this affair, the
three of them, they were hatching an escape plan. Of course,
she's getting totally manipulated, right. These guys ain't interested in her,
They're just wanting to get the hell out of prison. Look,
one of them dismembered somebody. I mean, she knows how
to pick them. Now, keep in mind, her husband still
works at the prison with her. So she's trying to
be slick. But people noticed. They always do, and this
situation was no different. Of course, prisoners talk and they notice,
and they're very nosy, and they would ask swet and
they would ask mad about it. They wouldn't admit to it,
but the prisoners and even the staff knew something wasn't right.
So on June sixth, twenty fifteen, two inmates, Richard Matt
and David Sweat, they escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility.
Now they were discovered missing during a five seventeen am bedcheck.
The two inmates have been seen at the ten thirty
pm count the night before and they filled their bed
with clothes to make it appear as if someone was
sleeping in the bed and the guards would make their
overnight rounds. So how did they escape, Well, the two
prisoners cut a hole in their cell walls which gained
access to the utility areas behind and above their cells.
Eventually they cut holes in a steam pipe and they
use that steam pipe to escape the prison by shimming
down six floors of those pipes. Picture them just sliding
down these pipes from one catwalk to another catwalk, all
the way down to the ground level. There they were
able to find a main steam pipe and they followed
that through some subterranean tunnels. In New York, there's a
lot of things underground, and they had a lot of
tunnels under that prison, and so they start following it.
They have no idea where it leads. They're hoping it
leads to the outside of those walls, right, And at
one point they reach a wall and they were able
to pass through after knocking out a few bricks. Now,
the next wall they hit was a massive prison wall,
which they couldn't knock the bricks out of that thing,
so they tried to drill through it. They couldn't do that,
so they moved on to a plan beat. Now, in
the summer, the steam pipes weren't used, and they knew that,
so they cut one opening into a twenty four inch
diameter steel pipe at the base of the wall. Then
they cut another opening from inside the pipe on the
other side of the wall. And get this, they actually
left a yellow sticky note with a Asian smiley face
on it wearing a triangle hat, and it said have
a nice day, and they stuck that to the pipe.
So once they got beyond that wall. They followed the
pipe through the public sewer system until they found a
man hole that was well beyond the prison. The man
hole was locked and chained from the inside. So Sweat
and Matt used some tools they had stashed in a
guitar case that they brought with them to get past
the barrier, and they cut those chains, pushed the man
hole aside, and it's just like on Shawshank right. Freedom
for these two.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: It was not clear how long the escape had been planned,
but officials at this time said it appeared to have
taken a lot of labor to power the tools that
actually hot wired the electrical junction boxes that were in
that tunnel, and then strong extension cord. It's just crazy
they were able to get all this equipment down there,
but they were. Governor Andrew Quomo declared Matt in Sweat quote,
definitely had help. I don't believe they could have acquired
the equipment to do this without the help. If alreadyes
believe Matt used his con man ways to convince some
civilian to help him escape, and they already thought that
that civilian maybe Joyce Mitchell. So the prison goes on lockdown,
and of course one of the first things that occurs
is employee interviews and one of the first people that
they interview is Joyce Mitchell. Now, at the time they
were interviewing Mitchell, they were also going through her trash
at her house, and the neighbors saw this and they
all knew something was up, and a lot of them
were featured on the news at that time. And it
was also interesting that police found out when they interviewed
her that the same day of the escape, she checked
herself into the hospital and when they looked at the records,
it was for a quote case of nerves. I bet
she was nervous. So they talked to her and initially
it's just a scare tactic. They're trying to figure out
if they can get to confess to anything. That initial
conversation didn't go anywhere. On day two, nothing really happens
day two of the escape. Then on day three, June
eighth of twenty fifteen, Matt's daughter receives a letter in
the mail from her father saying that he had quote
always promised you I would see you from the outside.
I'm a man of my word unquote, And later on
police would find out that months before, Joyce Mitchell contacted
Matt's daughter at his urging, and even a couple times
after that she would contact her via text just to
update her on her father's medical condition. So on June
ninth and tenth, which would be day's four and five
of that escape, authority search the farms and fields around
New York after receiving a tip that Matt and Sweat
may have been spotted there. Around two am, police get
a report from a man who said he saw the
escapees walking on a highway road and then officer said, quote,
a resident was driving down the road. He sees two
suspicious residents walking up the road. The second is car
lights hit them. They ran off into the woods. Atf
even the Canadian Royal Minor police were called in that
obviously New York being close to the border of Canada,
they wanted to alert them. You may have a couple
of inmates crossing the border. And the Governor of New
York comes out with a fifty thousand dollars bounty for
each inmate. If you give us information as to their capture,
you get fifty thousand dollars. They then increased that to
seventy five thousand dollars when the US Marshals said, hey,
we'll kick in another twenty five grand per inmate. Then
on June eleventh of twenty fifteen, this is day six
photo of Matt surface wearing a correctional officer's uniform shirt
and holding a nightstick. Matt had written on the bottom
of the picture quote who said, I can't escape this place.
Unbelievable Now. The picture itself was taken in nineteen eighty
six when Matt was imprisoned at Elmira Correctional Facility, and
Matt mailed the picture to a retired detective David Bentley,
who knew Matt as a kid. And although the picture
was taken in nineteen eighty six, it was mailed after
they escaped this New York prison to that detective. Pretty
fucked up, shows you this guy's mine process, right, Matt
wrote to Bentley and said, I know what you did
and I'm not gonna forget it. So Bentley was the
lead detective who got Matt convicted in two thousand and
eight for killing and dismembering that former boss of his,
and so he's threatening him. Right, I'm out now, I've
escaped and I'm coming for you, And it wasn't uncommon
for Matt to send Bentley letters. In two thousand, he
sent him a letter fifteen years before the escape when
he predicted he would one day get the death penalty,
and he wrote, I'm not scared to die anymore. I'm
the most going to welcome death. So pretty bold stuff.
Here and everywhere around this prison was on lockdown. There
were no schools going on, the highways were closed until
they caught these guys. They didn't feel comfortable with anyone
being anywhere outside of their home, and rightfully so, very
dangerous individuals on the run here. So on the seventh
day of the search, still no confirmed sightings of the escapees.
It's like they disappeared into thin air. This whole time.
They've been gathering evidence against it's Joyce Mitchell since that
first discussion. And later that day Joyce Mitchell gets arrested
and she's charged with aiding the escapees. Police had discovered
she'd allegedly supplied Matt in sweat with hacks, all blades, chisels,
two pairs of special lighted glasses, and screwdriver bits more
than a month before the escape. And she gets held
on ae hundred thousand dollars bond. June thirteenth of twenty fifteen,
on day eight, two men fitting matt in sweats descriptions
were seen walking near rail yard. And look, they've got
all the search vehicles out there, helicopters, all terrain vehicles,
search dogs. They can't find these guys. They've only had
a couple of sightings. And also during this time, they're
applying more and more pressure to Joyce Mitchell to get
her to confess. And on June sixteenth of twenty fifteen,
the eleventh day of the search, Joyce Mitchell confesses to
her involvement with the prisoners that escaped that prison. She
confirmed she supplied him with hacks, all blades, chisels, and
other tools. And according to the district attorney whoever saw
the prosecution of Mitchell, he said that she had agreed
to be the getaway driver, but backed out because she
still loved her husband and felt guilty about participating. He
went on to say, basically, when it was go time,
it was the actual day of the event, I think
she got cold feet and realized what am I doing?
Reality struck She realized that really the grass wasn't greener
on the other side, and it was revealed that Mitchell
had discussed having her husband Lyle killed in a potential
murder for hire deal with Matt. According to Joyce Mitchell's confession,
Matt referred to her husband Lyle as the quote glitch
in his plan and planning to kill him after the escape.
The DA also went on to say Joyce Mitchell tells
us there was a discussion between her and Matt that
upon the escape, they were going to return back to
Joyce Mitchell's home, at which time Matt and Sweat were
gonna kill her husband. And police asked her, you know,
why did you get tied in with these guys? You
got a guy that dismembered somebody, you got another guy
that killed a police officer. Why did you get what's
the attraction here? And she just said they showered her
with attention, and she didn't get attention at home and
all those sorts of things, and just kind of fell
in love and short order with both of them. So
on the thirteenth day of this man hunt, Matt and
Sweat they get added to the US Marshall Services fifteen
most Wanted Fugitives. Lest A twenty five thousand dollars reward
gets added to that big reward for information to capture them.
A few days later, on the fifteenth day of the search,
the police get a great tip when someone calls in
and says two men were spotted in a New York
county who fit the description of Matt and Sweat. Police
said the witness spotted the men along a railroad line
that runs along a highway, and so they get canines,
they get aviation out there. They start searching, and they
come across an old cabin in the woods, and they
scrubbed that sucker down for DNA, and sure enough, they
get a match. And they move into the seventeenth day
of the escape. And while all this is going on,
they're still looking for these guys. Of course, they're trying
to figure out not only how they escape, but how
could that happen in general? Where was the security fallout
that allowed these men to escape. They found out the
investigators that no one was inside the thirty five foot
high guard towers when the two men climbed out of
a manhole right outside of that prison, or they would
have seen them. They found out that catwalks and the
underground tunnels had not been inspected in forever before these
men escaped, or they might have caught the fact that
those bricks were chipping and falling apart and easy to
knock out of the wall. In nineteen days into this ordeal,
someone named Jeane Palmer surfaces. He was also a correction
officer and he was charged with supplying tools hidden in
frozen meat to Matt in Sweat before the escape. Palmer
also was the one to show them where the catwalk
areas were behind their cells. And he had worked for
the prison for more than twenty seven years and he
had known Matt and Sweat for about five of those years.
And not only did this guy do all that, he
showed them how to wire the electrical boxes, but he
claimed that it was to cook food in their cells,
not to escape. So police followed up on that lead,
and they approached Mitchell when they say, is what we're
thinking true with this guy aiding into bedding, And she
confirmed that and not only was that true, she was
the one that actually delivered that frozen meat with the hacks,
all blades and all that to Sweat and Matt. So
after twenty one days on the run, police get another lead,
but not in the way you would expect. Someone actually
calls and says that he was shot at while he
was towing his camper trailer. Police respawn and they find
a bullet hole from a twenty gauge shotgun in this
camper trailer. They're able to trace that back to a
twenty gage shotgun that was stolen from that hunting camp
that Matt was hiding out in. So they start searching
around the area and lo and behold, they hear some
coughing and they could see some brush moving in some woods.
So police go to investigate this coughing and they come
across Richard Matt, who was armed with that twenty gage shotgun.
They raised their guns, drop the weapon. He wouldn't do it.
He points the weapon at police and they shoot and
kill Richard Matt. And what about Sweat. Well, two days
after Richard Matt was killed, a New York State trooper
named Jay Cook, he's traveling down the highway and he
passes an individual walking and that was David's. Sweat circles
back and he's pretty sure that's him, but he's definitely
gonna question him, make sure it's him, And of course
Sweat sees the officer circle back and he takes off.
He starts running across the hayfield toward a tree line. Now,
this state trooper, much to David Sweat's chagrin, is a
expert firearms instructor, so he gives chase, and when it
became evident that Sweat might escape, he fires two rounds
from his forty five caliber block and hits Sweat twice
in the right shoulder and the left arm, and he
was about seventy three yards away. That's one hell of
a shot with a pistol. So Sweat falls to the
ground and he's taken under a rest and he had
on him a map, he had insect repellent, pop tarts
of all things, and a few other items, some matches,
et cetera. But he didn't have any weapons on him
at the time. So he gets transported to the hospital
for those gunshot wounds, and it's all over the news
that one was killed and the other one was captured.
And police, now that one of them is captured alive,
they're able to get a detailed kind of plan. He
said that the original plan was for Mitchell to pick
them up and they were gonna go kill her husband
and then drive to Mexico, but Joyce Mitchell backed out
at the last minute, so when she failed to pick
them up, they didn't have a plan Beast, so they
just started heading north on foot. They knew Canada was
north and they knew that's where they wanted to get to. Now.
Sweet said that he and Matt had split up about
five days prior to Matt getting killed. He said that
Matt had blisters all over his feet, and Sweat felt
like Matt was slowing him down, so he just basically said,
I'm leaving. I'm gone. So we're going to fast forward
to July twenty eighth of twenty fifteen, and Mitchell appears
in court pleads guilty to what's not his first degree
promoting prison contraband and fourth degree criminal facilitation, and she's
got to await sentencing, and that occurred. That was on
September twenty eighth of twenty fifteen, and she was sentenced
to two and a half to seven years in prison
and a six thousand dollars fine, which when you help
two lifers arrested for murder escape, I think that's way
too light of a sentence. Sweat also eventually pleaded guilty
and he really had nothing to lose. He was already
in jail for life. So time went on. In February
of twenty seventeen, Joyce Mitchell gets denied her first big
for early release. And look at this time, TV shows
are everywhere, you know, forty eight hours twenty twenty, there's
all there. Even an episode of Law and Order covered
this case. In twenty seventeen, a Lifetime movie came out
called New York Prison Break The Seduction of Joyce Mitchell.
Too much fanfare, And I mentioned Gene Palmer earlier and
he ended up only getting six months in jail for
his role in that escape. And on February six of
twenty twenty, after serving a little over four years in prison,
Joyce Mitchell gets released. And she has been released for
the last five years. And another movie has Showtime mini
series actually came out just a couple of years prior
to her release. It was called Escape at Dana Mora,
which is the county where all this took place. And
Patricia Arquette actually played the role of Joyce Mitchell. And
I have a lot of interesting photos and I'm gonna
put up on the Patreon for this episode so you
can see put faces with names here, but I'll tell
you what these guys look like. Bad fucking news. I
hope you enjoyed this edition of the High Bristophilia series
Joyce Mitchell, I appreciate you listening. Patreon for commercial, free
early releases and more. Patreon dot com slash Bloody Angola
podcast and until next time, I'm your host, Jim Chapman
for Bloody Angola, a podcast one hundred and forty two
years in the making, the complete story of America's bloodiest
present him peace.
Speaker 1: M a Wall Street line, shackle Chaine, Oh, bluesome girdie,
it's calling my name. There is no mercy and this
being a tentery juice as the hill Stream game Wrangle three,
I'm here, be by mere, to die inside these walls,
inside the wild and when more gods, I'm no, it's
abody Angola.
Speaker 2: Ohbody anged