Joyce Mitchell is the woman who confessed to helping two inmates, David Sweat and Richard Matt, escape from an upstate New York prison. During an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer, she says she did so to protect her family. “Mister Matt said he was going to kill my husband,” she tells Lauer. “Mister Matt even asked where my mother lived. Where my son lived,” she says. “He could have done anything to me, but I wasn’t going to let him hurt my husband, or my family.”
[Joyce Mitchell Reveals Respect For Escaped Inmates on ‘Dateline’]
The two-hour interview will air on Dateline NBC on Friday at 9pm. Even before seeing the full interview, Dateline viewers aren’t buying Mitchell’s story. “I have no sympathy for her and don’t believe she was forced into committing the escape,” wrote Deborah Oblak. Chloe Dubois agrees, “I can’t believe she was conned into helping those two devils.” Suzanne Simpson brings it home with this comment: “She feared for her family, what about my family and all the innocent families she was putting at risk by helping these killers escape!!!”
