FNC: Tennessee Authorities discuss prison break and murder

Now, I see why he said that. Up to Kaintuck.

OrangeDaisy,

I meant to type "she borrowed the van, then failed to return it back so it was reported stolen later."

I had to go and cook supper (dinner as some call it) and was in a hurry.

Local TV News just cut in and said they found the van near Cincy. So the earlier poster was on to something, even before the MSM reported it. Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is not confirming yet, but it looks like they are there.

And please, don't criticize my speling now, I'm typing fast.

Aint FR great, I keep telling my hubby I get news LONG before it's on the news, from this site.

Never even had to hit I-40. Straight under the overpass puts you on the backroads.

I thought about that. They were seen headed toward I-40, and it wasn't clear they got on. Still, if they went north, it is straight to Clinton (I-75 then north to Ky) or right toward Knoxville (surely not) or left to... Petros, where Brushy Mountain is. Other than the fact that it is away from his home in Dayton, it is hard to figure how they would realistically escape by going north past I-40. But, they went somewhere.

I assume the police are finding everyone she talked to in the last week.

I would have stayed on the back roads - north to Clinton, then from Clinton to Lake City. Lake City gets you onto 75, and head north. It's backroads, avoids the main routes, and the LEO's likely didn't know they had changed to the other vehicle immediately. Can get from Kingston to Clinton in a little under an hour, Lake City in another 15 minutes, then onto 75, while everyone is still scrambling through the lockdowns, and looking towards his home. There's more than one route back through there - could have gone from Kingston to Lake City without going to Clinton, and it's a tangle of roads back through there, but it can be done. The backroads are harder to choke off than the mains are - and I'm sure they had every LEO called in off duty and watching - but once you get back there, unless they've got you tailed right off the bat, you disappear.

Richard Conte as the breakout guy...

girlangler,

I wasn't criticizing you. I just wanted to make sure folks knew the van was considered stolen. They dumped the van in Erlanger, KY, so I wonder if law enforcement officers know what kind of vehicle they're in now? I'll bet the van's owners in Hendersonville don't want their ven back!

Seems like the TBI and the Roane County Sheriff's department disagree on whether they know where the Hyattes are right now. It's all kinda strange.

Authorities were searching for 34 year-old George Hyatte and his wife Jennifer at the Econo-Lodge in Erlanger, Kentucky Wednesday after a van the couple was driving was found in the hotel's parking lot. U.S. Marshals said the two had rented a room at the hotel, which is just south of Cincinnati.

http://www.wkrn.com/Global/story.asp?S=3705041&nav=1ugBdAcP

This story from a Nashville TV Station website has some interesting background info.

KINGSTON, Tenn. (AP) - Prison nurse Jennifer Forsyth got fired last year for sneaking food to an inmate. A few months later, she got permission from the warden to marry that inmate, George Hyatte, a man with a long and violent criminal record.

Now the 31-year-old woman from Utah who had never been in trouble with the law is charged with gunning down a correctional officer Tuesday in a brazen attempt to help her new husband escape. Both are now being sought in a nationwide manhunt.

Federal authorities recovered the van the couple used to escape in outside an Econo Lodge motel in Erlanger, Ky., on Wednesday. The couple had been in the motel, but were gone when a SWAT team arrived, said Rich Knighten, spokesman for the U.S. Marshal for the Western District of Kentucky.

Another car has been reported stolen in the area of the hotel, but officials aren't yet saying if it is related to the couple or what type of car it is.

"You are left grappling for answers and trying to figure it out. What was she thinking?" Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson said Wednesday. >> "I guess it is anyone's guess," Johnson said. "She married the guy, so you have to assume there is some sort of love connection."

Police believe Jennifer Forsyth Hyatte came to this town of about 5,500 on Monday with two getaway cars - a Ford Explorer in her name that was later dumped and a gold Chevrolet Venture van stolen from one of her home-nursing clients in Hendersonville. TBI agents declined to say whether an accomplice helped her transport one of the cars.

With no criminal record, she is believed to have ambushed two guards as they were leading George Hyatte from a courthouse hearing Tuesday morning, fatally shooting one of them - veteran Wayne "Cotton" Morgan, 56 - and then speeding away with her husband.

Authorities found large amounts of blood in the abandoned vehicle and believe she was wounded.

Frank Harvey, the assistant district attorney who secured a guilty plea from George Hyatte on Tuesday to a robbery charge and may be prosecuting him again if he is caught, said, "Well, it's like Willie Nelson's song, 'Ladies love outlaws like babies love stray dogs' ... or something like that."

By Wednesday, the TBI was processing 35 to 45 leads an hour in a manhunt that involved the FBI, federal marshals, the Tennessee Highway Patrol and local law enforcement.

"We're getting information from all kinds of places, and we're running every lead. We've got state and federal agencies assisting in the manhunt," TBI Director Mark Gwyn said. "I don't recall in my 20 years ever being in this type of escape."

An officer with the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department said there was a sighting Wednesday of an interracial couple north of Chattanooga, where George Hyatte has family. Dogs were used to search the area, but no one was found. George Hyatte is black; Jennifer Hyatte is white.

In March 2004, Jennifer Forsyth, a 31-year-old native of Utah, earned a diploma as a licensed practical nurse from a state technology center in western Tennessee and then got a job with a state contractor that took her into Northwest Correctional Complex to provide health care to state inmates.

She was fired in August 2004 after sneaking food into the prison for Hyatte, a 34-year-old inmate with a record of robberies and escapes stretching back more than a decade. He was transferred the next month to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. But that didn't end the relationship that was born in prison.

Forsyth followed Hyatte and began working at a home health care agency in the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Amanda Sluss said.

Forsyth and Hyatte applied on Nov. 30, 2004, to the chaplain at Riverbend for permission to marry. The warden granted that permission about a week later. The two were wed in the prison May 20, Sluss said.

"There are few grounds to deny an inmate marriage, even to a former employee or contractor," Sluss said.

She had previously been married to Eli Gourdin of Smithfield, Utah. A woman who answered the telephone at Gourdin's home Wednesday declined to answer questions. Other family members couldn't be located and it was unknown why or when she came to Tennessee.

Authorities said she was also using another last name, Taylor, from another marriage.

George Hyatte was transferred July 14 from the Nashville prison to Brushy Mountain Correctional Complex in advance of his court appearance Tuesday in Kingston, Sluss said.

Most of what is known about George Hyatte comes from court and criminal records.

His escape Tuesday was at least the fifth time has gotten way from law enforcement officials. The other escapes were from local authorities in east Tennessee in 1990, 1991, 1998 and 2002.

During the escape three years ago, Hyatte and another prisoner escaped from the Rhea County Jail in Dayton, where Hyatte grew up, after threatening guards with a homemade knife made out of toothbrushes and a razor blade.

When one guard turned over keys to the armed inmates, they then used them to beat another officer until he was unconscious. The escape ended a few days later when the two were captured in Florida.

Danny Wright, head of the Tennessee Highway Patrol's criminal investigation division, recalled assisting in a search for Hyatte a few years ago after he escaped from a Kingston patrol car, with another woman's help, after a convenience store robbery. Hyatte was found the next day at a home outside town, buried under a pile of clothes.

"He's pretty good at hiding," Wright said.

Hyatte's parents divorced when he was young, and he moved between the homes of relatives and state custody for years. He first entered the court system when he was 9 for school truancy and unruly behavior.

He had an eighth-grade education when he dropped out in 1987. By the time he was 17 he had already been through a treatment program for alcohol and drug abuse, but he later told authorities he was still using cocaine, marijuana, Valium and painkillers.

After dropping out, he racked up more serious charges: burglary, theft, armed robbery and striking an officer. He was acquitted of aggravated rape. A presentencing report from 1993, when Hyatte was 21, described him as a repeat offender with little work history and "a tendency toward violence."

Assistant District Attorney James W. Polk in Dayton, who previously represented Hyatte as a public defender, said he had amassed one of the worst criminal records from Rhea County.

"He is a smooth talker. In court he is 'Yes sir,' 'no sir' and 'please.' He always had this look about him of `Who me?' - as if he was wrongly accused," Polk said.

The lawyer also recalled that Hyatte had a previous relationship with another nurse.

"He is kind of a ladies man, too," he said.

George Hyatte's sister in law, Heather Hyatte, said Wednesday the family knew little about the marriage except that it was his first and happened at the prison in Nashville. She said the family has not had any contact with the fugitive couple. She said the killing and George's escape was "overwhelming" his mother, who is afflicted with cancer.

"This is taking everything she has got in her out of her," Heather Hyatte said.

Couple caught in Columbus, OH!! Just reported on the local FOX 9 pm news.