Convicted killers David Sweat and Richard Matt used their prison tailor shop as a lurid sex den for their escapades with “Shawskank” supervisor Joyce “Tillie” Mitchell and proved to be “master manipulators” by having her coordinate their escape.
The illicit workshop affairs were cited in a scathing report on the escape. The report also said the inmates left behind a picture of “Sopranos” star James Gandolfini with a mocking message to guards — “Time to go, Kid!” — when they broke out of the upstate Clinton Correctional Facility last year.
Mitchell is portrayed in the report as a sex-crazed rube who sought attention from the prisoners and got taken advantage of.
“She always flirted around the shop and laughed and stood close to all inmates,” prison worker Vicki-Lynn Safford testified. “But it was more so with Sweat and Matt.”
Mitchell began her affair with Matt by offering him “cookies, cakes” and even a Big Mac.
Eventually, the relationship became physical, as Mitchell described their first sexual encounter.
“Matt grabbed me . . . and he kissed me . . . I was scared sh-tless,” she told an investigator.
When asked if she was “scared but excited?,” Mitchell responded, “Yeah.”
The kiss led to “almost daily” sex acts in the tailor shop between the two.
But Sweat and Matt had ulterior motives, luring Mitchell into a trap to help them escape.
The report, by state Inspector General Catherine Leahy Scott, was issued Monday — on the anniversary of the escape’s detection — and concluded that “myriad failures” provided the cunning cons with a route to freedom.
Sweat and Matt were well aware of the “long-standing” safety lapses and negligence at the prison, allowing them to meticulously plot their escape “almost in plain sight,” said the IG report.
“The extent of complacency and failure to adhere to the most basic security standards uncovered by my investigation was egregious and inexcusable,” Scott added.
“These systemic deficiencies led to the escape of two convicted murderers, striking fear in communities and placing brave law enforcement personnel at risk, at a high cost to the state.”
A three-week manhunt involving 1,300 officers cost the state $22.8 million in overtime alone.
Matt was shot and killed 20 days after the escape, and Sweat was shot and captured two days later.
As an example of the slipshod security, the IG report said an unannounced cell search on March 21, 2015, failed to detect a gaping, 18½-by-14½-inch hole in a rear wall of a convict’s cell.
Among the other findings:
- Regular nighttime sweeps of inmates were not conducted, allowing Sweat to build tunnels underneath his cell undetected for 85 nights.
- Officers violated safety rules by failing to properly screen employees entering and leaving the prison.
Mitchell pleaded guilty to smuggling hacksaw blades in a shipment of frozen hamburger meat to Matt.
She was sentenced to 2¹/₃ to seven years in prison. A guard, Gene Palmer, was sentenced to six months in prison for bringing in tools used in the escape.
