Fugitive's Dad Had Hunch

The couple accused of killing a Tennessee corrections officer in a brazen escape said Friday they would fight efforts to send them back to face charges, with the husband declaring: "I don't want to leave without her."

Jennifer Hyatte's father also told The Associated Press on Friday that he had warned a corrections officer in his home state of Utah that his daughter and her jailed husband might be up to something, but the information never reached Tennessee.

At the time, it "didn't appear to raise any red flags," said Utah Department of Corrections spokesman Jack Ford. He said the Utah officer planned to contact officials in Tennessee on Tuesday, the day of the shooting.

In hindsight, the department should have acted sooner, he said.

Floyd Forsyth, a former sheriff's deputy, said he suspected his daughter was planning to help free her husband after she asked him during a phone call if he had any spare handcuff keys. She also said she was putting things in storage and planned to let her ex-husband keep their three children for a while.

"I thought maybe she was going to pass him a key," Forsyth said. "There was no doubt in my mind that she was going do something. I just didn't know it would be this."

Meanwhile, Jennifer Hyatte's mother learned that her daughter was a fugitive while searching the Internet Tuesday afternoon at work.

"Their pictures just popped up and I totally freaked out," Sally Lambson said Thursday. "My whole life has changed."

In Utah, her mother said in a statement that Jennifer was a good kid who never got in trouble, but she had a "gullibility for men."

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

While waiting for a warrant from the governor to allow extradition, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Jennifer Brunner has ordered them jailed without bond.

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. They faced extradition back to Tennessee Friday on warrants of first-degree murder.

Jennifer Hyatte, 31, was a licensed nurse with no criminal record when Harris said she came up behind Morgan with a gun outside the Roane County courthouse. George Hyatte yelled, "Shoot him!" and she started firing, authorities said.

Dressed in pastel jail-issue clothing and wrapped at the waist, wrist and ankles in metal chains, Jennifer Hyatte sat silently as her lawyer asked the judge for reasonable bond and discussed extradition.

Hyatte's return to authorities in Tennessee could be delayed because of an injury.

"She does have a gunshot wound to one of her legs in the upper thigh area," John Bolen of the U.S. Marshal's Service told CBS News' The Early Show.

Neither the husband nor the wife desired to appear in court, but each of their lawyers' requests to forego their appearance.

George Hyatte appeared after his wife, and almost immediately expressed his frustration at the prospect of multiple court appearances in Ohio in order to fight his extradition to Tennessee, where he is charged with murder.

"I'm not going through this every day. I can't f---ing feel my hands," Hyatte said, glaring at his thickly bound wrists.

But Hyatte did not seem to understand the rules of extradition as clearly as his wife did. The judge asked him if he would be willing to waive his rights to fight extradition.

"Whatever my wife did, that's what I'm doin'," Hyatte said.

The next court date for the couple is Sept. 8, 2005.

Before the Hyattes pulled what is being called a classic "Bonnie and Clyde" getaway, George Hyatte must have been thinking about freedom as he was led away in shackles, handcuffs and chains from the old red-brick courthouse in this little Southern town.

The 34-year-old inmate, 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, one of two corrections officers 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."

Morgan was fatally wounded, but 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 said the Hyattes gave him two $100 bills for the $185 fare. 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.

After arriving in Columbus, Jennifer Hyatte, who by now had colored her dark blond hair to black, and her husband checked into a Best Value Inn for a three-night stay.

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!"