Joyce 'Tilly' Mitchell's Life In Prison Was Worse Than We Thought

It was a hard knock life for Joyce "Tilly" Mitchell as she spent nearly five years behind bars, an inevitable twist of fate for someone who was found guilty of helping two men escape from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, in 2015. And while much attention has been put on the lengths to which Mitchell went to help prisoners David Sweat and Richard Matt escape, Mitchell's life behind bars appears to have been almost as difficult as their attention-grabbing jail break. Shortly after her arrest, Mitchell's attorney, Stephen Johnston, spoke to People, saying, "She is under enormous pressure." Johnston later told People that Mitchell resorted to relying on her faith to get her through the difficult times. "She tells me that she spends much of her time reading the bible and praying," he said.

Mitchell spoke to the New York Post in 2018 about the lonely life that she lived while serving time at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester. She said, "I cry every day, because I'm in here alone without my family, and I put them through all of this." She spoke through tears as she added, "My granddaughter is 4 years old now. I have only seen her once in three years." 

Mitchell went on to say that she hardly ever left her prison cell and claimed to never have ventured out into the prison yard for a breath of fresh air. "The state hates me," she offered as an explanation for why she was so fearful, adding that she believed she might be framed for doing something wrong. She also was deemed an "escape risk" and was withheld from doing yard work or being a teaching assistant. "They say I can't work in the nursery, because I'm a high media profile," she said of another job she would have liked to do that her unique circumstances precluded her from.

To add to Joyce "Tilly" Mitchell's grief, she was also visited by Jamie Scalise, the daughter of Richard Matt, who, according to the New York Post, came to visit Mitchell in prison in order to find some closure after her father's death. Mitchell was seduced by both Matt and David Sweat and helped them escape, with Sweat being captured alive while Matt was shot and killed by police after 21 days of a manhunt that spanned the state of New York. To have Matt's daughter visit Mitchell in prison was another ironic twist, as the daughter had previously communicated with her imprisoned father through Mitchell when she was an employee at the Clinton Correctional Facility.

At first, when Matt's daughter came to visit, Mitchell could not recognize her, telling the New York Post that the daughter had to ask, "Do you know who I am?" But Mitchell soon realized her visitor was Matt's daughter, saying, "She looks just like him. Their eyes are the same." 

However, Mitchell did not spare too much sympathy when Matt's daughter asked what her father was like in the lead-up to the escape that ultimately led to his death, not mincing words as she simply said, "Controlling." Still, the guilt from helping Matt escape weighed heavily on Mitchell, who told the New York Post, "If it wasn't for me, her dad would still be alive."

While prison life may have been tough for Joyce "Tilly" Mitchell, she did find one fellow inmate who she related to, and that was Pamela Smart. Smart was serving a life sentence at Bedford Hills for the 1990 murder of her husband Greggory Smart, whose case shared a similar seduction element to Joyce's, with Smart having seduced a 15-year-old to help her kill her husband. Joyce told the New York Post that she sympathized with Smart, saying, "Nobody believes her either," referencing Smart's defense that she did not want her husband dead. Joyce has said is the truth about her and her husband's marriage as well, with the plot to kill both women's marital counterparts allegedly being the sole decision of their accomplices.

In Joyce's case, Richard Matt and David Sweat claimed she was the one who wanted her husband, Lyle Mitchell, dead. But Joyce told the New York Post, "Sweat [was] the one who gave my husband that nickname, 'the glitch,'" (seemingly a nickname that implied that he had to go) and was upset people believed that the idea to kill Lyle originated from her. It looks like Lyle may have believed her, because Joyce told the New York Post in 2018, "[Lyle] comes to visit me every two weeks." He was there when she was released too, with the New York Post spotting the two together when Joyce was released from prison and went home in February 2020, where the Mitchells' life today mostly remains out of the public's eye.