Prison nurse accused of killing guard after escape attempt
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 on Tuesday in a brazen attempt to help her new husband escape.
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson said on Wednesday: "You are left grappling for answers and trying to figure it out. What was she thinking?"
"I guess it is anyone's guess. She married the guy, so you have to assume there is some sort of love connection," she said.
The couple was captured Wednesday night at a Columbus, Ohio, motel without a struggle. Police believe Jennifer Forsyth Hyatte ambushed two guards as they were leading George Hyatte from a courthouse hearing, fatally shooting one of them - 56-year-old Wayne "Cotton" Morgan - and then speeding away with her husband.
Authorities found large amounts of blood in an abandoned vehicle and later found that Jennifer Hyatte had been wounded.
Frank Harvey, the prosecutor who secured a guilty plea from George Hyatte on Tuesday to a robbery charge and may be prosecuting him again, said: "Well, it's like Willie Nelson's song, 'Ladies love outlaws like babies love stray dogs'... or something like that."
Early last year, the then Jennifer Forsyth earned a diploma as a licensed practical nurse and got a job with a state contractor that took her into Northwest Correctional Complex to provide health care to state inmates.
She was fired five months later 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. Forsyth and Hyatte applied on November 30, 2004 to the chaplain at the prison for permission to marry. The two were wed on May 20.
George Hyatte also escaped on four other occasions from local authorities in east Tennessee in 1990, 1991, 1998 and 2002.
During the escape three years ago, Hyatte and another prisoner escaped from a county jail 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 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," Mr 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 nine for school truancy and unruly behaviour. By the time he was 17, he had already been through a treatment programme for alcohol and drug abuse.
After dropping out of school, he racked up charges for burglary, theft, armed robbery and striking an officer. A pre-sentencing report from 1993, when Hyatte was 21, described him as a repeat offender with little work history and "a tendency toward violence."
James Polk, who previously represented Hyatte as a public defender, described him as 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," Mr 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.
A cab driver who picked up a couple said yesterday the two told him they were going to an Amway convention but their story just "didn't really seem to wash". Mike Wagers said he drove George and Jennifer Hyatte about 115 miles, from Erlanger, Kentucky, to Columbus, and dropped them off at a budget motel.
Mr Wagers said he didn't make the connection with the killing until he returned to Kentucky and called local police.
"They didn't strike me as the Amway type because to be honest they weren't very pushy about their product and I've dealt with them before, so that was my only real suspicion," Mr Wagers added.
