The New York correctional worker who has been charged with helping two convicted murderers escape from a maximum-security prison may be headed to television.
Investigators say Joyce Mitchell admitted to having sex with escapee Richard Matt prior to his June 6 escape with fellow prisoner Davis Sweat from Clinton Correction Facility in upstate New York.
Mitchell had previously been investigated for having a suspected relationship with Sweat, and, although the ongoing drama is far from over, one production company is already planning to pull the story from the front pages and air it in primetime, according to TMZ.
Johnson Production Group, the entertainment company behind Baby Bootcamp, Double Daddy, and Teenage Bank Heist, has an established relationship with the Lifetime network and is planning to film a program chronicling the escape, manhunt, and hopefully eventual capture of Matt and Sweat from Mitchell’s vantage point.
A rep for JPG told TMZ Friday the female crime thriller market is starving for material, and a story told from Mitchell’s perspective is more likely to pique interest, rather than one told from that of the escapees’s.
As an instructor at the tailor shop where the inmates worked, Mitchell, 51, is accused of befriending them and providing them with contraband, including hacksaws and other tools, which they later used to cut through their cell walls and a steam pipe during the brazen escape.
Authorities say Mitchell also planned to be the inmates’s getaway driver, but backed out, and had discussed having them kill her husband Lyle Mitchell, who also worked at Clinton.
Joyce Mitchell remains jailed on charges of first-degree promoting prison contraband and fourth-degree criminal facilitation, while a manhunt for Matt and Sweat continues.
JPG said the company is confident the proposed show could debut within 5 months, and the story could be easily adaptable as the events unfold.
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