After round-the-clock news coverage, TV movies and specials, and a Hollywood mini-series, this case continues to fascinate.
"Dannemora Prison Break" adds to the mix by enhancing our understanding of the middle-aged wife and mother at the center of a summer 2015 breakout from Clinton Correctional Facility. Perhaps for the first time, we hear Joyce's side of the story.
"I guess they saw my weakness, and that's how it all started," she says of convicted killers Richard Matt and David Sweat, who had jobs in the prison sewing workshop she supervised.
The tiny village of Dannemora, close by dense forest and the Canadian border, is "where the American Dream and the American nightmare come together," we're told. The high walls of New York's largest prison place a boundary around nearly 3,000 inmates at "the end of the road" in the corrections world -- "the most heinous individuals."
An ex-inmate recalls that when welcomed to the lockup he was told, "If you put your hands on one of my officers, or disrespect my officers, we'll kill you. If you want to kill each other, go to the north yard."
It's in this environment that 51-year-old Joyce believed that if "you show respect, you're going to get respect." In the view of her husband, also a prison employee, "she has a heart of gold." Over time, it seemed, Joyce became friendly with wide-eyed Sweat, who, as a criminologist notes, "you look at...and can't believe he's a cop killer."
The author of a book on the case adds, "When you're dealing with guys who are torture killers and cop killers, you can't be their friend."
Joyce apparently was at a difficult juncture in her life, feeling unloved and finding herself responsive to male attention. The inmates "can smell vulnerability in an employee from a mile away," a commentator notes, and Joyce "seems willing to bend the rules for them," says journalist Troy Roberts. The author adds, she had "'mark' written all over her."
In time, it seems that Joyce experienced "limerence," says the criminologist, and the rest is history.
The three-week-long manhunt for Matt and Sweat cost New York taxpayers $23 million. Matt was killed in the track-down, Sweat sustained two bullet wounds, and Joyce took a trip to the other side, sentenced to seven years behind bars.
"Dannemora Prison Break" adds to the mix by enhancing our understanding of the middle-aged wife and mother at the center of a summer 2015 breakout from Clinton Correctional Facility. Perhaps for the first time, we hear Joyce's side of the story.
"I guess they saw my weakness, and that's how it all started," she says of convicted killers Richard Matt and David Sweat, who had jobs in the prison sewing workshop she supervised.
The tiny village of Dannemora, close by dense forest and the Canadian border, is "where the American Dream and the American nightmare come together," we're told. The high walls of New York's largest prison place a boundary around nearly 3,000 inmates at "the end of the road" in the corrections world -- "the most heinous individuals."
An ex-inmate recalls that when welcomed to the lockup he was told, "If you put your hands on one of my officers, or disrespect my officers, we'll kill you. If you want to kill each other, go to the north yard."
It's in this environment that 51-year-old Joyce believed that if "you show respect, you're going to get respect." In the view of her husband, also a prison employee, "she has a heart of gold." Over time, it seemed, Joyce became friendly with wide-eyed Sweat, who, as a criminologist notes, "you look at...and can't believe he's a cop killer."
The author of a book on the case adds, "When you're dealing with guys who are torture killers and cop killers, you can't be their friend."
Joyce apparently was at a difficult juncture in her life, feeling unloved and finding herself responsive to male attention. The inmates "can smell vulnerability in an employee from a mile away," a commentator notes, and Joyce "seems willing to bend the rules for them," says journalist Troy Roberts. The author adds, she had "'mark' written all over her."
In time, it seems that Joyce experienced "limerence," says the criminologist, and the rest is history.
The three-week-long manhunt for Matt and Sweat cost New York taxpayers $23 million. Matt was killed in the track-down, Sweat sustained two bullet wounds, and Joyce took a trip to the other side, sentenced to seven years behind bars.
