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KINGSTON - On the morning of Aug. 9, 2005, Jennifer
Hyatte sat in a blue Ford Explorer watching the columned portico of
the Roane County Courthouse. When she saw her shackled husband George
descend the steps, flanked by guards poised to take him back to
prison, she pulled up to the Tennessee Department of Correction
transport van.
"I jumped out and had the gun in my hand and George
seen what I did and said, 'Oh, s---, Jen,' and the officer grabbed at
the gun and I shot him," Jennifer Hyatte wrote in a letter to
relatives.
Witnesses said at the time they'd heard George
Hyatte say, "Shoot him." Either way, when the shooting stopped,
correction officer Wayne "Cotton" Morgan lay dying, and Jennifer
Hyatte sped off, bleeding from a gunshot wound to her backside but
reunited with the man she loved.
Jennifer Hyatte's matter-of-fact account of
Morgan's killing comes from a letter she wrote while in an Ohio jail
cell. The News Sentinel obtained copies of her never-sent letters,
which were confiscated before her extradition to Tennessee, after a
public records request to prosecutors.
Jennifer Hyatte pleaded guilty to first-degree
murder and attempted first-degree murder in the shooting. Her husband
pleaded guilty, too, though last week he filed a motion to withdraw
the plea. Both have been sentenced to life in prison without parole.
After the shooting, the Hyattes fled to Columbus,
Ohio, where they were captured two days later in a motel by a law
enforcement team led by U.S. Marshals.
Taking antibiotics and pain medication, Jennifer
Hyatte wrote that she spent her days awaiting extradition "reading and
eating and sleeping" when not thinking about George Hyatte.
"I love you so damn much, and still nobody can
understand why," Jennifer Hyatte wrote to her husband.
Records show George Hyatte has an extensive record
of violent crimes dating back to 1990, but a prosecutor in Rhea
County, where George Hyatte began his criminal career as a thief, also
described him as a smooth-talking ladies' man.
Correction officials said Jennifer Hyatte was fired
from her job as a nurse at Northwest Correctional Complex in
Tiptonville because of her relationship with George Hyatte. They were
married in a prison service in May 2005.
Jennifer Hyatte described their relationship as
"celestial love," a term she appropriated from a counselor/minister
who interviewed her in the Franklin County (Ohio) Jail. The upshot,
according to Jennifer Hyatte, was that she and her husband were more
than soulmates - they were two halves of the same soul.
At the time of his escape, George Hyatte was
serving sentences totaling 41 years for a variety of offenses. In her
confiscated letter to him, Jennifer Hyatte refers to the Star of
David, which is a symbol of the Gangster Disciples, a Chicago-based
gang. She was, evidently, willing to be recruited.
"I hope that you got my letter about going active
again and making me part too," she wrote.
In letters to friends and family, her tone is
typically breezy and light, even asking relatives jokingly how her
recently dyed hair looked on television.
"Hello from up here in Ohio, how is everybody
doing?" she wrote to an aunt. To another aunt, she wrote: "How is
everybody doing on this fine evening? Wonderful, I hope. As for me, I
am doing very well."
She seems bemused by her notoriety, signing some of
the letters "Bonnie" and calling her husband "Clyde," references to
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the Depression-era gangsters. At the
bottom of one letter, she scribbled: "The whole Bonnie and Clyde thing
kills me!!!"
Remorse for killing Morgan was in short supply.
Though in one letter she wrote that she was "sorry that people got
hurt," Jennifer Hyatte also referred to the two days she spent on the
lam with her husband as "the best two days of my life."
At her sentencing hearing Sept. 17, 2008, Jennifer
Hyatte sobbed as she read from a statement: "I can't ask you to
forgive me, because what I've done is unforgivable and I don't deserve
it. I just want to tell you all how truly sorry I am for what
happened. It will live in the core of my heart and soul for eternity."
Throughout the letters, Jennifer Hyatte talks about
being pregnant at the time of the shooting and describes her battles
with morning sickness. What happened to the fetus, if there was one,
isn't known.
"Jennifer Hyatt has not delivered a baby since
she's been at the Tennessee Prison for Women," Department of
Correction spokeswoman Dorinda Carter said.
Conjugal visits aren't allowed in Tennessee
prisons, Carter said, so if Jennifer Hyatte was pregnant and her
husband the father, then any tryst they might have arranged prior to
the escape would have been illegal.
Jennifer Hyatte in her letters repeatedly insisted
she wasn't "brainwashed." She wrote that her husband tried to talk her
out of the breakout, but she took control of the situation. She
apparently looked at her actions as liberating. Being able to make her
own choices, she wrote, was "an awesome, peaceful and serene feeling."
"My mom thinks that I shouldn't be held responsible
and that I'm crazy and that I've been 'brainwashed,' " she complained
in one letter. "She just doesn't want to face the fact that I killed
someone and did it in cold blood."
Jennifer Hyatte pleads guilty to officer's
murder
By Adam Longo - 6 News Anchor
September 17, 2007
KINGSTON (WATE) -- Jennifer Hyatte
pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree murder in the
fatal shooting of
a corrections officer as she helped her husband escape after a hearing
at the Roane County Court House in August 2005.
In a deal with the prosecution, Jennifer Hyatte
also pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder and
facilitating the escape of her husband, George Hyatte, in the death of
Officer Wayne "Cotton" Morgan.
The deal allows Hyatte to avoid the death
penalty. Instead, she'll spend the rest of her life in prison without
the possibility of parole. The plea agreement also states that
Jennifer Hyatte must testify against her husband if his case makes it
to trial.
Hyatte did not allocute to her crime.
Instead, District Attorney General Russell Johnson read a statement of
facts in the case agreed upon by the defense.
Two people took the stand today to read family
impact statements to Hyatte. Dean Harris, wife of corrections officer
Larry Harris, asked Hyatte repeatedly if 36 hours of freedom was worth
it. Hyatte sat still, choking back tears and noddding her head back
and forth as if to say it wasn't.
Officer Wayne "Cotton" Morgan's son, Dennis
Morgan, took the stand next.
"Your choices caused my sister and I to be
without a father," he said to Hyatte. "Your choices caused my mom to
be without her companion."
Hyatte herself prepared a statement to read. Her
hair covered half of her face and she continued to cry as she
addressed the victim's families.
"Most of all, I want to give my deepest
apologies to the families," Hyatte said. "I just want you to know that
I am truly sorry. There's no way to make up for what I've done. I
can't ask you to forgive me because what I've done is unforgivable. I
don't deserve it.
"We just hope that she meant she was really
sorry," said Cotton Morgan's widow, Viann, after the court proceedings
had ended.
District Attorney General Russell Johnson told 6
News the plea agreement was agreed upon by the families involved.
"After a couple of days mulling it over with the
extended family, they met as a group and decided that's what they
wanted to do," said Johnson.
"We know she's going to be locked up. But yet,
daily life go on for us," said Viann Morgan.
Her husband, George Hyatte, is scheduled to go
on trial on March 25, 2008.
George Hyatte is also facing first-degree murder
charges in Officer Morgan's death.
In August, a judge ruled the jury for George
Hyatte's trial will be selected from another county.
Jennifer and George Hyatte were arrested in a
Columbus, Ohio, motel about 36 hours after the shooting. Police got a
call from a cab driver who took them there from the Cincinnati area.
A judge had denied
a defense attorney's motion to suppress Jennifer Hyatte's
diary titled "A Modern Day Bonnie and Clyde." She left it in her Ohio
jail cell.
Instead, the diary would have been used as
evidence against her in trial.
Jennifer met George Hyatte in prison. She's a
former prison nurse. She begins serving her sentence immediately at
the Tennesseee Women's Correctional Facility in Nashville.
Ex-prison nurse pleads guilty to murder
By Beth Rucker - Associated Press
September 17, 2007
Jennifer Hyatte, 33, appeared in white prison overalls with handcuffs
and ankle shackles at the same Roane County courthouse where she was
accused of killing Correction Officer Wayne "Cotton" Morgan.
She apologized as she stood
near an enlarged photo of Morgan that his family set up near the front
of the gallery. Fifteen uniformed correction officers attended the
hearing.
"I can't ask for you to forgive
me because what I've done is unforgivable, and I don't deserve it,"
she said. "I would take it all back if I could, and I would still
accept the punishment."
Criminal Court Judge Eugene
Eblen sentenced Hyatte to life for first-degree murder, 15 years for
the attempted first-degree murder of another guard that she wounded
and three years for facilitating her husband's escape. The sentences
will run concurrently.
Hyatte shot Morgan and the
other guard Aug. 9, 2005, as they escorted her husband George Hyatte
from a court appearance back to van waiting to return him to prison.
The couple fled the state, but were captured 36 hours later at a motel
in Columbus, Ohio.
George Hyatte, 36, remains in
jail, serving a 41-year sentence for robbery and related offenses.
Jennifer Hyatte got a job with
a state contractor in 2004 that took her into a prison to provide
health care to state inmates. She was fired five months later after
sneaking food into the prison for George Hyatte. He was transferred to
a prison in Nashville, but that didn't end the relationship.
The couple applied to the
chaplain at the prison for permission to marry and were wed May 20,
2005.
Jennifer Hyatte wrote about her
crime in a 34-page diary that she titled "A Modern Day Bonnie and
Clyde." In it, she calls George Hyatte the love of her life.
Authorities found the collection of letters and notes in her Ohio jail
cell after she was sent back to Tennessee.
As part of the plea agreement
to avoid the death penalty, Hyatte must testify in her husband's
murder trial.
Prosecutors consulted the
Morgan family, who approved the deal.
"Your choice has caused my
sister and I to be without our father," Morgan's son, Dennis Harris,
told Hyatte. "Your choice has caused our mother to be without her
companion."
Dean Harris, the wife of
injured deputy Larry Harris, also spoke to Hyatte: "For 36 hours of
freedom? 36 hours? I can't get my mind around that. For 36 hours with
George, you murder and attempt murder. Was it worth it?"
Couple back at scene of
slaying
Former Utah woman,
husband brought to Tennessee courthouse
DeseretNews.com
August 23, 2005
KINGSTON, Tenn. (AP) — A couple charged in the killing of a
corrections officer during a getaway outside a small-town courthouse
returned to the same building Monday under heavy security.
U.S. marshals brought prison
inmate George Hyatte and his wife, Jennifer, to Tennessee from
Columbus, Ohio, where they had been held since their arrests Aug. 10.
They were caught some 36
hours after authorities say Jennifer Hyatte, a former prison nurse and
Utah resident, fatally wounded a guard while helping her husband
escape. George Hyatte had been at the courthouse for a hearing.
"Dirty dogs. Sorry dogs,"
Sandra Brackett, one of a handful of onlookers, said as the couple was
escorted to the county jail for fingerprinting and booking.
More than 40 officers, some
with shotguns and several wearing bulletproof vests, surrounded the
county jail as marshals pulled up with the Hyattes and several police
cruiser escorts.
The nearby Roane County
Courthouse was closed to the public while the Hyattes were arraigned
separately. They then were whisked away to maximum-security prisons
until their next scheduled court appearances Aug. 31.
"It is a relief to have
those people back and in custody, because where they are at now they
are not going to cause anybody any trouble," Sheriff David Haggard
said.
Authorities accuse Jennifer
Hyatte of ambushing the guards who were transporting her husband.
Corrections officer Wayne "Cotton" Morgan, 56, was killed and Jennifer
Hyatte was shot in the leg by a guard.
The Hyattes were captured
late the next day at a budget motel in Columbus after the cab driver
who drove them to the city called police.
George Hyatte, 34, has a
long criminal record of robberies, assault and escape and already is
serving a 41-year sentence. Jennifer Hyatte, 31, had been fired from
her prison job because of her relationship with Hyatte, whom she
married this year.
Ambush suspect asked father
for handcuff key
Tip might
have thwarted the courthouse shooting
By Joseph M. Dougherty - Deseret News
August 13, 2005
WEST JORDAN —
About a month ago, Floyd Forsyth received a call from his daughter in
Tennessee, Jennifer Hyatte.
Hyatte asked her father, a
former police officer, about getting a handcuff key. She told him her
husband, George Hyatte, was about to get out of prison.
Little did Forsyth know how
ominous that conversation really was.
Tuesday, Jennifer Hyatte,
31, is alleged to have planned an armed ambush on two corrections
officers — killing one and injuring the other — while they escorted
her husband, George Hyatte, 34, from a Kingston, Tenn., courthouse.
George Hyatte, indeed, got
out of prison. But his freedom was short- lived.
The couple fled in a gold
minivan to north-central Kentucky and took a cab to Columbus, Ohio. It
was there that U.S. marshals converged on a motel and arrested the
Hyattes, now called a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde.
Forsyth is devastated over
the turn of events Tuesday and Wednesday, said Sally Lambson,
Forsyth's ex-wife and Jennifer Hyatte's mother.
When Jennifer called him a
month ago, he thought the request for a handcuff key sounded
suspicious. So Forsyth, who is on probation for possession of a
controlled substance within 1,000 feet of a drug-free zone, got in
touch with his probation officer, Lambson said.
"I thought maybe she was
going to pass him a key," Forsyth, now a diesel mechanic, told the
Associated Press in a telephone interview from his Huntington home.
"But there was no doubt in
my mind that she was going to do something. I just didn't know it
would be this."
Forsyth shared his
suspicions with his probation officer on July 28, but that information
never got to authorities in Tennessee.
Utah Department of
Corrections spokesman Jack Ford said information was being gathered to
send to Tennessee, but a request for a handcuff key didn't sound too
serious at the time.
Ford said the probation
officer could have sent the information sooner, but there also was no
way to know how the tip might have been received.
But Lambson believes the
information was vital.
"A life would have been
saved if the state had done what they were supposed to do," she said.
Forsyth told Lambson he
would have contacted author ities in Tennessee himself, but he felt he
should go through the proper channels.
Ford said Forsyth is a model
probationer and has been since being put under the department's
jurisdiction. Ford also said Forsyth never sent his daughter the
requested handcuff key and in fact didn't have one.
In Ohio, the Hyattes
objected Friday to being sent back to Tennessee to face charges.
George Hyatte seemingly was
prepared to waive his right to challenge extradition and return to
Tennessee, according to the Associated Press, but when his lawyer
leaned in and explained that Jennifer Hyatte had decided to fight
extradition, he sighed deeply and argued briefly with his lawyer.
"I don't want to leave
without her," said Hyatte, who had on two sets of handcuffs chained
tightly to his waist. "I don't want to. I don't want to."
His wife had appeared only
moments earlier. Jennifer Hyatte appeared dazed and did not talk
during the hearing. She showed almost no emotion until the judge
informed her that the charge carries a possible death penalty. She
then sighed and leaned back in her chair, AP reported.
Another hearing has been set
for Sept. 8. The couple can be held in Ohio for up to 90 days.
Lambson said she has not had
contact with her daughter since before she was arrested.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 people, including 200
uniformed officers, attended the funeral for the dead guard Friday in
Tennessee. A decorated Vietnam veteran, Wayne "Cotton" Morgan, 56, was
buried with full military honors.
Death sentence talk stuns
Jennifer Hyatte
By Scott
Barker and Tom Chester - Knoxville News Sentinel
August 13, 2005
COLUMBUS, Ohio - If Jennifer Hyatte
stopped during her flight to Ohio this week to read a paper or watch
the news, she would have seen her face on front pages and television
screens.
Authorities had accused her of murder. With a
nationwide manhunt for her and her husband, she must have known she
was in a world of trouble.
She switched cars, dyed her hair and lied to a
cabbie about her travels.
Still, when Common Pleas Court Judge Jennifer
Brunner told her on Friday she could get the death penalty if
convicted in Tennessee, she slumped back in her chair.
Her court-appointed lawyer, John Sproat, when asked
afterward if she'd been aware of the death penalty risk, said, "I
don't think so - probably not."
Hyatte, 31, and her husband, George Hyatte, 34,
will stay in an Ohio jail for at least another month as they fight
extradition to Tennessee, where they face first-degree murder charges
in Tuesday morning's shooting death of correction officer Wayne
"Cotton" Morgan, 56, in Kingston.
Brunner set a Sept. 8 hearing date. In the
meantime, Gov. Phil Bredesen must issue a warrant to Ohio Gov. Bob
Taft for the couple's interstate transfer. Ohio authorities can hold
the Hyattes for up to 90 days, and it's up to Tennessee officials to
prove to an Ohio judge's satisfaction that the Hyattes are, indeed,
the people wanted by authorities in connection with Morgan's slaying.
During a trip to Wartburg for Morgan's funeral
three hours after the hearings, Bredesen did not comment on the
Hyattes' first court appearance since being arrested at a Columbus
motel Wednesday night.
After the back-to-back hearings, which together
lasted less than 15 minutes, the former prison nurse and her career
criminal husband went back to the Franklin County jail. Brunner
refused them bail.
Five deputies escorted Jennifer Hyatte into the
courtroom at 10:27 a.m. She limped from the gunshot wound she
sustained in her left leg during Tuesday's gun battle at the Roane
County Courthouse. She wore green pants and a tan smock.
A mother of three who doesn't have a criminal
record, Hyatte appeared dazed, her wide eyes shifting from the judge
to the journalists sitting in the jury box. Shackled around her waist
and ankles, she held her cuffed hands before her chest in an attitude
of prayer.
After Brunner explained the extradition process,
Jennifer Hyatte talked briefly with her lawyer before returning to her
cell.
A few minutes later, the deputies returned with
George Hyatte. A slightly built man with a history of
sometimes-violent escapes, he, too, was shackled at the waist and
ankles. He wore two sets of handcuffs and complained about the
discomfort when he entered.
At first, the agitated Hyatte argued with his
attorney, public defender Robert Essex, and told Brunner he wanted to
waive his right to an extradition hearing.
"I don't want to leave without her," he said. "I
don't want to. I don't want to."
However, upon learning from his lawyer that his
wife had opted to fight extradition, he changed his mind.
"Whatever my wife did, that's what I want to do,"
he said.
Brunner said the in-court exchange added an unusual
twist to the already rare decision to fight extradition.
"That's the first time in 4 1/2 years I've seen a
dialogue on extradition between an attorney and his client in the
courtroom," Brunner said afterward.
Authorities allege Jennifer Hyatte shot Morgan as
the 28-year veteran prison guard and a partner were escorting her
husband out of the Roane County Courthouse following a hearing on an
aggravated burglary charge.
According to a complaint filed by the lead
investigator in Roane County General Sessions Court, George Hyatte
yelled at the defendant to shoot Morgan. She did, Kingston Police
Department Investigator Randy Heidle wrote, before exchanging shots
with the other correction officer, Larry Harris.
Though wounded in the gunfight, Jennifer Hyatte
allegedly drove her husband to a nearby Subway sandwich shop, where
they abandoned her Ford Explorer in favor of a gold Chevrolet minivan
reported stolen from one of her patients in Hendersonville, Tenn.
About four hours later they stopped at a Lowe's in
the Cincinnati suburb of Florence, Ky., where they bought a hacksaw,
apparently to cut off his shackles. They rented a room in the Econo
Lodge about a mile away in the adjacent town of Erlanger.
After spending the night in Erlanger, the couple
took a $185 cab ride to Columbus, where they checked into America's
Best Value Inn. Once settled in, they ordered Mexican food and smoked
Marlboros.
Meanwhile, authorities in Kentucky had found the
gold minivan and the cab driver had reported his unusual passengers,
who told him they had wrecked their car while going to an Amway
convention, to police.
A hastily formed task force of U.S. marshals and
Columbus Police Department SWAT team members converged on the motel.
Deputy U.S. Marshal Nikki Ralston phoned room 236B and convinced a
weary Jennifer Hyatte to surrender.
Once in custody, she told Ralston she thought the
justice system was unfair and didn't want more time added to her
husband's already lengthy sentence.
George Hyatte, who gave up immediately after she
did, has served two years of a 35-year sentence for aggravated assault
and aggravated burglary. Minutes before his escape in Kingston he had
pleaded guilty to another burglary.
Ralston said Jennifer Hyatte was "very apologetic"
during their conversation before a trip to the hospital for treatment
of the gunshot wound.
"She didn't want anybody to get hurt," Ralston
said. "She just wanted to be with him."
The Hyattes' flight captivated a nation for a few
days and left its mark on communities in three states.
In Wartburg, a family buried a husband and father.
Law enforcement officers from as far away as Canada paid their
respects to a fallen brother.
The television trucks are gone from Kingston, and
people again are going to the courthouse to renew their license tags
and pay property taxes.
At the Econo Lodge in Erlanger, the only place the
Hyattes spent an entire night together since George Hyatte went back
to prison in 2003, the staff on Friday cleaned up room 111.
The Hyattes left behind four bags of chips, three
cans of Pepsi, two packs of cherry turnovers and a box of Buffalo
chicken wings.
On one of the beds sat a good-as-new teddy bear,
about 3 feet tall with shaggy, cinnamon fur and a plaid bow around its
neck. It looks like just the kind of present someone would give a
sweetheart at a county fair in a more innocent time.
Amway claim gave fugitives away, cabbie says
'They weren't very pushy about their product'
Msnbc.msn.com
August 11, 2005
The cabbie who picked up the couple
suspected in a deadly courthouse escape in Tennessee said Thursday he
did not buy their story that they needed to get to Ohio for an Amway
convention.
A tip from cabdriver Mike Wagers led police to
George and Jennifer Hyatte, who were arrested without a struggle
Wednesday night at a budget motel in Columbus, Ohio, authorities said.
Wagers said the pair told him they were headed to
an Amway convention and that he became suspicious because they didn't
act like Amway representatives.
"Amway people are all about Amway, and when they
didn't try any conversation further about it, that's when I pretty
much thought, 'Well, they're not with Amway; they're doing something
else.'"
But, he told reporters, "they gave me no cause for
suspicion other than the Amway thing didn't really stick."
Wagers said he drove the Hyattes about 115 miles
from Erlanger, Ky., to Columbus, and dropped them off at a budget
motel. The fare was $185 and the couple handed him two $100 bills at
the start of the trip, he said.
'Little bit light on the tip'
"In the cab business, technically that might've
been a little bit light on the tip but when you're getting a $185 cash
trip, when they only throw in another $15, you're not going to think
anything bad. You're going to say you appreciate it and you're going
to go on your way," Wagers said.
Jennifer Hyatte is accused of ambushing two prison
guards Tuesday as they were leading her husband — a convicted robber —
from a hearing in Kingston, Tenn., fatally shooting one before the
couple sped away, authorities said.
Wagers said he did not realize during the trip that
Jennifer Hyatte had been shot in the leg by one of the guards.
He said she favored one side when she got out of
the cab, and told him she had hurt herself in a car accident in
northern Kentucky. She had colored her hair black from light brown.
Motel manager Kundan Desai said Wagers checked the
couple in around lunchtime, paying cash for a three-night stay in a
room that runs $52.99 a night.
Connection came later
Wagers said he didn't make the connection with the
killing until he returned to Kentucky and a friend told him the
fugitive couple's van had been found near where he had picked up his
passengers.
"I was at home relaxing, playing video games, when
I heard I might be the one," he said.
The Hyattes were arrested at the America's Best
Value Inn in Columbus after at least 25 officers surrounded their
room, ending a more than 300-mile manhunt, authorities said.
When police finally tracked the couple down at the
motel, Deputy U.S. Marshal Nikki Ralston called their second-floor
room and told them they were surrounded.
"A female answered the phone," Ralston said. "And I
said, 'Hey, Jennifer.' She said, 'Yes,' and I knew it was her."
"I said you need to get George, both of you need to
exit the hotel room and follow the directions of the officers who will
be to your immediate right," Ralston said.
Witness: Fugitives showed no emotion
Motel guest Robin Penn, who was watching from
across the parking lot, said Jennifer Hyatte was limping as she left
the room with her hands up.
John Bolen, a supervisor for the U.S. Marshals
Service in Columbus, said Jennifer Hyatte was concerned for her
husband and asked officers not to hurt him.
"She was hollering in to him, 'Baby, baby, it'll be
OK! It'll be OK!'" Bolen said.