Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - She Keeps Sleeping With The Prisoners - The Dannemora Prison Escape

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

The 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility escape was a high-profile jailbreak in which two convicted murderers, Richard Matt and David Sweat, escaped from a maximum-security prison in Dannemora, New York. On June 6, 2015, the inmates used power tools to cut through the backs of their cells, accessed a network of tunnels, and emerged through a manhole cover approximately 500 feet outside the prison walls. Their escape was facilitated by Joyce Mitchell, a prison seamstress who smuggled in tools and had planned to assist them in their getaway.

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Anyway, this story starts with this guy, Richard. And Richard, he's about 46 when all this starts, and the dude is just not a good guy. He's actually in prison for murdering a few people. He's at this correctional facility in New York. Here's a picture of it. Here's the thing about Richard, though. He doesn't really like prison. Because who would?

I guess you're not really supposed to like prison. But Richard wants to break out really bad, even if he has to seduce a prison employee to do that. And one day in 2013, he gets the perfect opportunity when he meets this woman, Joyce. And Joyce, she's around 48, and she works at the prison. She's a supervisor in the prison tailor shop. I guess it's where they make the clothes. And Richard thinks that Joyce is foin, and Joyce thinks Richard is foin right back. And so they start chatting and they hit it off.

and they low-key start flirting. Pretty soon, they start hooking up right there in the prison. They would allegedly sneak away and she would, like, give him a handy when no one was looking. Oh, but it gets worse. It's already crazy enough that Joyce and Richard are hooking up, which is, of course, against the prison rules. But also, Joyce is married. And her husband also happens to work at the prison. Of course, he has no idea any of this is going on.

And if that isn't bad enough, she's also rumored to be hooking up with this other inmate, David. David's 32 and he's also in prison for murder. So allegedly, Joyce is hooking up with him too, but that's never been confirmed because she denies that. Regardless, it is confirmed that she's hooking up with Richard. And two years pass, and it's now 2015. And she's still low-key hooking up with him, giving him secret handies or whatever. And by this point, she's legit falling in love with him. And it's around this time that both inmates, Richard and his friend David,

they decide that they've had enough of this prison life. They are ready to bust out and escape to Mexico. And so they come up with a plan. They're each going to tunnel through the walls in their respective cells. Because right behind those walls, there's a narrow crawl space filled with steam pipes and electrical lines. And if they can get to that crawl space, they can snake their way through the area and come out through a manhole outside the prison walls.

It's a little bit like that prison escape scene in Shawshank Redemption, if you've seen that. Now, this plan sounds great and all, but Richard and David immediately have a problem. They need to tunnel through the walls in their cells, but they don't have any tools to do that. I mean, they're in a maximum security prison. They're not allowed to have tools. But luckily, they just happen to know someone who can help them. Joyce. Because, you know, Joyce will do anything for Richard because she's in love with him. And she thinks that maybe if he breaks out, they could finally be together for good. No more sneak it away to give him awkward handies in the broom closet or whatever they were doing.

And so Joyce gets to work. Now, lucky for her, along with working in the prison tailor shop, she also works with the cafeteria food. So she hides a bunch of tools in the frozen hamburger meat and she smuggles them in, and she sneaks in like a hacksaw blades and chisels and a, punch and a screwdriver. Then she hands them off to a corrections officer who's helping her. Now this corrections officer has access to the cell blocks and so he delivers the tools straight to Richard and David. Once Richard and David have the tools, they get to work. Day after day. They're quietly cutting and drilling the wall in each of their cells and little by little

they're making progress. Meanwhile, they get Joyce to agree to pick them up in her car and be their getaway driver once they're on the outside. And I guess from there they plan to flee and Richard and Joyce can live happily ever after. However, here's where the story gets dark. On the night, they plan to escape, Joyce's husband isn't scheduled to work, which means he's going to be at home, which means Joyce can't take their car to pick up Richard and David because husband would notice the car is gone and he might report it and that would throw off their whole escape plan. And so Richard's Like, that's all right, I got another plan. And he tells her that before she leaves the house, that she needs to drug her husband so that he's

knocked out, and then she can leave without him and come pick them up. And after that, Richard is going to personally come back to her house and unalive her husband. And Joyce hears this plan, and she's like, all right. Now, after 85 nights of digging and chipping away, Richard and David have both successfully chipped through the walls in both their cells and they've mapped out their entire escape route through the crawl space and it's time to actually bust out of this place. And so in the middle of the night while everyone is asleep, they each go through the wall in their cell and they snake their way through the crawl space and they crawl their way out of the prison building and soon they come out

of the manhole outside the walls. So they are officially out and free. And from there they go to where Joyce is supposed to meet them with the car. But strangely, she's not there. She didn't show up. Apparently, a few hours before, Joyce had a sudden panic attack out of nowhere. And the attack is so bad that she ends up needing to go to the hospital, which of course means she doesn't show up for the getaway. But Richard and David, they don't know this. And so I guess they think that she just like gave up and bailed on them. And so they decide to take off and escape on foot. And a few hours go by, and it's now morning. And everyone's waking up, and the prison guards, they do a normal headcount of the inmates like they always do, and they notice that Richard and David are gone. And when

the guard opens their cells and they search them, they finally see the holes that the inmates had carved out. Here's actually a picture of one of the holes they carved. It's right underneath the bed, which is how they were able to hide it. So anyway, pretty quickly, state police are involved. And soon, the whole surrounding town is on lockdown. Because remember, these guys are convicted murderers. So this becomes a manhunt. Police block off the roads and they get helicopters in the sky and thousands of officers flood the streets, all trying to find them. There's even a hundred thousand dollar reward for anyone who has information on them. And three weeks go by. And David and Richard are still on the run. And they're hiding out in the woods,

going from place to place. And now eventually the two of them, they get into an argument. And this argument gets so bad that they split up and they go their separate ways. Four days later, Richard somehow gets a shotgun. I guess he stole it from somewhere. And he ends up shooting at an RV that's driving along the road. I don't know, maybe he was trying to steal that RV. Who knows? Regardless, the driver doesn't stop, but he does end up calling the police.

And so police arrive, and they begin searching the woods in that area. And boom, they find Richard. And they're like, get your hands up, Richard. But Richard refuses. And so, blam, blam, blam, they shoot him. And that's it for him. He's unalived. Two days later, they end up finding David, too.

And just like with Richard, the police yell for him to freeze, but he doesn't. And so, blam, blam, they shoot him too. However, he actually survives. And so, bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And also, bam, Joyce was arrested in her role for the prison escape. escape, here's her mugshot, and also, bam, that corrections officer who helped her is arrested too, here's his mugshot. And Joyce ends up taking a plea deal and she sentenced for two to seven

years in prison and the corrections officer, he gets six months in prison, while David, he already had life in prison. So I guess he's just going to stay there.