Fugitive's Dad Had Hunch

The father of a woman accused of killing a corrections officer to free her inmate husband said he suspected the couple might be planning an escape and asked a Utah probation officer to alert authorities in Tennessee.

However, the information never reached Tennessee because it "didn't appear to raise any red flags," Utah Department of Corrections spokesman Jack Ford said Friday.

He said the Utah officer had planned to contact officials in Tennessee on Tuesday — the day police said Jennifer Hyatte, 31, ambushed two prison guards as her husband, George Hyatte, was being led from a courthouse in Kingston, Tenn.

The Hyattes, now held in a jail in Ohio where they were captured Wednesday, are fighting extradition to Tennessee on warrants of first-degree murder.

Floyd Forsyth, Jennifer Hyatte's father, said that in a phone conversation three weeks ago his daughter asked him if he "had any spare handcuff keys." She was expecting her husband to be released from prison soon and wanted to "handcuff him to the bed," Forsyth said.

That remark and his daughter's frequently changing accounts of her husband's legal status caused the 16-year police veteran to become suspicious.

"I thought, 'OK, now I know.' I thought maybe she was going to pass him a key," Forsyth told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his Huntington home.

"But there was no doubt in my mind that she was going do something. I just didn't know it would be this."

Forsyth said his concerns were buttressed by other remarks his daughter made. He said she planned to let her ex-husband, Eli Gourdin, keep their three children with him in Utah "for a while." And, Forsyth said, his daughter told him she was putting her own possessions in storage.

"She says, 'Dad, my head is screwed up,"' Forsyth said.

Forsyth, who is currently on probation for a drug conviction, shared his suspicions with his probation officer on July 28 and gave him a copy of a letter from George Hyatte that included Hyatte's prison identification information.

In hindsight the department should have tried to act sooner, Ford said.

"We wish we had done it sooner, but even then, you wonder would that have changed anything?" Ford said.

In court Friday, George Hyatte, 34, seemed prepared to waive his right to challenge extradition until his lawyer told him that his wife had decided to fight extradition.

"I don't want to leave without her," said George Hyatte, who had on two sets of handcuffs chained tightly to his waist. "I don't want to. I don't want to."

Jennifer Hyatte's lawyer, John Sproat, said he advised her to fight extradition because of the severity of the charge. Another hearing is set for Sept. 8.

Because the husband-and-wife fugitives, caught in Columbus, Ohio, Wednesday would not waive their extradition to Tennessee, where they are charged with murder, they will be spending at least another month in an Ohio jail.

The Hyattes were arrested Wednesday night after police received a tip from a cab driver who drove them to a budget motel in Columbus, Ohio.

Jennifer Hyatte was a licensed nurse with no criminal record when she allegedly came up behind corrections officer Wayne "Cotton" Morgan with a gun outside the Roane County courthouse. George Hyatte yelled, "Shoot him!" and she started firing, authorities said.

George Hyatte, who had a history of escaping from custody, had just pleaded guilty to a robbery, adding six years to the 35-year sentence he was already serving. As he rose to face the judge in the nearly empty courtroom Tuesday, he glanced at his wife in the front row.

"She got up while he was making the plea," said Larry "Porky" Harris, the other corrections officer guarding Hyatte. "He looked back at her and nodded. And she got up and left, right when it was fixing to end."

Moments later, authorities said Jennifer Hyatte ambushed the two guards as they led her husband to a prison van in the courthouse parking lot, fatally shooting Wayne "Cotton" Morgan in the stomach before the couple escaped.

"It ain't a two-minute walk down to the parking lot where the van was," Harris said. "We just arrived at the van when she started shooting."

Harris returned fire in a two-minute gun battle later described by Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Gwyn as a "'Bonnie and Clyde'-style shootout."

The pair then jumped into Jennifer Hyatte's SUV and fled. Authorities said the vehicle was found a half-mile away at a sandwich shop later that morning. Blood inside suggested the driver had been wounded.

Authorities quickly began searching for a gold van that had been parked at the shop overnight. The van had been stolen from one of Jennifer Hyatte's home-health care clients in suburban Nashville.

As the hours passed, the search expanded. Authorities knew that three years before, George Hyatt and another prisoner had gotten as far as Florida after breaking out of a county jail.

Cabdriver Mike Wagers later picked up the Hyattes outside Cincinnati and drove them to Columbus. He said he didn't recognize the pair or notice a leg wound police said Jennifer Hyatte suffered in the shootings.

Wagers did become suspicious, though, when they told him they were headed to an Amway convention. Their sales pitch didn't seem nearly aggressive enough, he said.

"They didn't strike me as the Amway type, because, to be honest, they weren't very pushy about their product," co-anchor Harry Smith.

Alerted by a friend, the cab driver eventually made the connection to the shootings and called authorities. Officers surrounded the couple's room and ordered them outside. The pair surrendered peacefully.

As Jennifer Hyatte was led from the room, she yelled back to her husband, "Baby, baby. It'll be OK! It'll be OK!"

Morgan was buried Friday in Wartburg, Tenn., in a ceremony attended by more than 1,000 people.

Morgan, 56, a decorated Vietnam veteran, was remembered as a Sunday school teacher and deacon who regularly ministered to patients in the local nursing home and to prisoners in the town jail. He also liked to sing duets with his wife and to tend to his flower and vegetable gardens.

"You always wonder why the good people have to be taken," said his son, Dennis Morgan. "My dad's time on Earth was served as well as he could want it, and I think he did a good job at it."