Seriously? 51-year-old prison seamstress planned to go on the lam with murderers she helped escape?

So they still haven't caught those two escaped prisoners, and that's all the more curious given what we've learned about the apparent escape plot. According to the charges against 51-year-old prison seamstress Joyce Mitchell, she not only helped them plan the escape but was supposed to show up when they emerged in the daylight and serve as the getaway driver. The fact that she never showed up for that job meant that they were left - at least at the outset - without a means for getting as far from the scene as possible, which you'd think would be one of three key fundamentals for pulling off the escape successfully (the other two being 1) split up; and 2) change your appearance).

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You have to wonder what was going on in Mitchell's life that would make her decide going on the lam with these two sounded better than sticking around with her job and her husband - especially when you realize what they did to land themSelves in the joint in the first place:

Within the last year, officials looked into whether Mitchell had improper ties to the 34-year-old Sweat, who was serving a life sentence for killing a sheriff’s deputy, Wylie said. The investigation didn’t turn up enough to warrant disciplinary charges against her. Matt was serving 25 years to life for the 1997 kidnap, torture and hacksaw dismemberment of Matt's 76-year-old former boss, whose body was found in pieces in a river. On Thursday, a person close to the investigation said Mitchell had befriended the two men and agreed to be the getaway driver but never showed up. The person was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity. A former slipper-factory employee who won three terms as tax collector in her town near Dannemora, Mitchell has worked at the prison for at least five years, according to a neighbor, Sharon Currier. Mitchell's husband, Lyle, also works in industrial training there. "She's a good, good person," Currier said. "She's not somebody who's off the wall."

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Yeah, well, you know the neighbors always say the psychopaths were quiet and kept to themselves. I suppose it's possible that Sweat and Matt had a certain charisma about them, and that Mitchell was naive and credulous in buying whatever tales they wove about themselves and their lives. I've never set foot in a prison, let alone worked in one every day, so I'm sure it's possible the prisoners could start to become a bit more humanized to a person who gets to know them. Maybe Mitchell just really got sucked into a narrative they crafted very convincingly about why they absolutely had to make it to the outside. It's not entirely inconceivable that she is a good person but let herself get led really badly in this situation. As for the authorities seeking to recapture Sweat and Matt, they insist they're "closer" to them, but I don't see how they could possibly know that. If you don't know where they are, you don't know if you're near or far. It seems to me that in previous prison escapes in which you figured the guys would be far away from the scene after a few days, it's not been uncommon for them to be captured less than a mile from the prison. Something goes wrong - like, oh, say, your getaway driver doesn't show - and all you can do is keep a low profile and try to figure something out. It's not like you can walk into Avis and rent a car. (Try doing that without a credit card and see what happens.) You could steal one, of course, but that's the biggest BOLO alert imaginable. In the meantime, let's not forget that these guys are very dangerous and will do anything - including kill people - to get what they want. The romance of the prison escape makes for a tempting story, but we need to pray that these guys are back behind bars as soon as possible before someone else ends up dead.

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