Cheerful chatter, then flirting. The next day, June 7, Mitchell delivered her first statement under oath to police. He said there’s overwhelming evidence that she’s guilty.
Advertisement
Investigators also said Mitchell had discussed killing her husband, Lyle Mitchell, as part of the plot.
Mitchell wept as she pleaded guilty on Tuesday to helping Richard Matt and David Sweat break out of the Clinton Correctional Facility on 6 June. What could possibly have compelled her to conspire with such brutal men?
Mitchell said she got caught up in the “fantasy” of the situation. Matt was killed by police days before Sweat was captured. In her statement, Mitchell said, “After I picked them up, the plan was to drive to my home …” for Matt to “kill ‘the glitch.'” Matt called Mitchell’s husband “the glitch”. “We became close but never had a physical relationship…”
Matt agreed, but asked Mitchell to buy him gloves with protection for his knuckles.
“Inmate Matt told me they had found a tool box with power tools under the facility”.
The relationship escalated from there, Mitchell recounted. Asked why Mitchell helped with the escape, Johnston said Richard Matt made her feel good about herself, and she was, quote, “swept off her feet”.
“Matt grabbed me and kissed me”. It also frightened her – her husband worked at the facility as well. She also said he forced her to aggressively touch his penis. John Money, a prominent sexologist who was one of the few people to study the phenomenon, wrote that hybristophiles often encourage their lovers to commit crimes because they’re turned on by the idea of violence against another.
He mentioned her alleged sexual relations with one or both of the convicts, which under US law would be classified as rape. Matt told Mitchell that he and Sweat would be painting at night. “Admiration can develop”. She gave the inmate things as payment.
But, after the two escaped, Mitchell lost her nerve.
In Mitchell’s case, by the time her relationship with Matt and Sweat lost its rose-tinted hue, she was in too deep to back out. But she realizes that she made a terrible mistake.
“I really do love my husband and he’s the reason I didn’t meet” Matt and Sweat, she said. The New York prison worker accused of smuggling hacksaw blades in frozen hamburger meat to two killers who later broke out and spent more than two weeks on the run will face charges in court and will be arraigned on Tuesday, July 28, 2015.
Advertisement
Her sentencing is set for September 28.
