Nov. 4, 2026
UPDATE: Escaped Tennessee Convicted Murderer Recaptured In Missouri
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RSS Feed Convicted murderer, 28-year-old Jacob Morely was finally recaptured by authorities after escaping from a Tennessee prison on October 25th. Troopers used roadside cameras and a helicopter to track him down after 9 days on the run. We go over the remarkable details surrounding Morely’s initial escape and his ability to remain undetected for more than a week. Morely managed to steal two vehicles, secure several firearms, all while traveling hundreds of miles before being caught outside of Kansas City after his truck got stuck in the muddy gravel.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Wednesday, November 4th. He escaped to prison in Tennessee, took a 100-mile drive north to Illinois, and now he was just recaptured outside of Kansas City. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Robes. A month, not a month, a week and a half that a convicted murderer serving life in prison has been on the run. This was an intense... manhunting, he seemed to get a little ways and be on the run for a little while.
00:00:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, nine days. And I'm actually so surprised.
00:00:37
Speaker 3: We will get into the details of what we know about Jacob Morley's life on the run. But I am actually shocked at how it ended, given what they found in the latest vehicle he stole. I mean, he was armed. He had found shelter. He apparently was making garlic bread.
00:01:01
Speaker 2: On the run.
00:01:02
Speaker 3: And it's pretty remarkable he got as far as he did for as long as he did. And then it ended without, I guess, not in the spectacular fashion I think many of us expected it to.
00:01:15
Speaker 1: Thank God.
00:01:15
Speaker 2: Thank God.
00:01:16
Speaker 1: Thank God and give authorities credit for this and how they went about capturing this guy. And part of it is that they got him away from populated areas. And he was in a position he knew better. I mean, this could have been a suicide mission, but he knew he wasn't going to survive this. Look, you escape prison. Apparently, you want to live. You want to live better. So maybe he does have enough decent common sense to know he wasn't going to win this one.
00:01:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is interesting.
00:01:42
Speaker 3: We've always talked about this, even when we do plenty of our execution podcasts, Death Row Inmates.
00:01:49
Speaker 2: It's just a human instinct thing.
00:01:52
Speaker 3: That pretty much is universal no matter what your conditions are, no matter where you're being housed, no matter what you're headed to. a.k.a. Jell, people still want to live. Because sure, he could have gone out, suicide by cop. A lot of people might have thought he would.
00:02:08
Speaker 2: Have done that.
00:02:08
Speaker 3: I'd rather be dead than go back to prison. And certainly now, he was already a lifer at this point. But clearly after this latest escapade, not only will he never be getting out of prison, but I imagine his prison accommodations are going to change dramatically.
00:02:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, his life sentence came with possible parole before. That might get tweaked.
00:02:36
Speaker 2: That's one way to put it.
00:02:37
Speaker 1: Possible. A little bit. But this guy is 28 years old. Really young guy. Had a long life ahead to be behind bars. But 28 years old, convicted for a 2022 murder of a co-worker. That co-worker's body was eventually found under this guy's house. Morally fled authorities at the time. He did everything he could to try to cover this up and get away. is what we're saying here, but yes, he was sentenced and convicted. So Robes, this escape, we don't have that many in the country. We have seen some high-profile ones before, even recently, but this was unique, Robes, in that you had a guy this dangerous, right, with this type of conviction that seemed to just walk away.
00:03:23
Speaker 3: And you're right, it's just a bizarre thing to imagine that the way he was able to escape was by just having his cellmate tell the guards when they were doing head counts, yeah, he's in the bathroom, or yeah, there are.
00:03:38
Speaker 2: Two of us in here.
00:03:39
Speaker 1: Is he in trouble? Is that inmate in trouble?
00:03:42
Speaker 3: Obviously, I would think that inmate would be in trouble unless somehow Jacob Morley escaped through the bathroom and unbeknownst to him.
00:03:51
Speaker 2: We don't know how he got out of his cell.
00:03:53
Speaker 1: Is that aiding and abetting a prison escape? I guess that would have to be.
00:03:59
Speaker 2: I would imagine.
00:03:59
Speaker 1: If you're going to do that, but at the same time, that's a really difficult thing as the prison guard to say, well, my fault. He told me it was in there.
00:04:10
Speaker 2: The prisoner lied.
00:04:11
Speaker 3: No.
00:04:11
Speaker 1: That's a tough one.
00:04:12
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the thing.
00:04:13
Speaker 3: Is it really unexpected or even illegal for a prisoner to lie? Because isn't that... Kind of something you should expect as the prison guard. The prison guard, those are the folks who need to and obviously certainly will be held accountable in this situation because as we started to get more details about how long Jacob Morley had, hours it appears, before anyone even knew he was missing in the first place and then there were several more hours before the prison actually notified local authorities that they had a convicted murderer on the run.
00:04:57
Speaker 1: So this is all out of Tiptonville, the correctional facility there in Tennessee, the northwest corner of the state, I guess you could say. So we go back to October 25th, the night you're talking about there in question, Robes. They told us initially they noticed he was unaccounted for somewhere around 10, 11 o'clock at night. This was the initial word we got about the escape. And then they told us, they saw him on surveillance video a couple hours later, two miles away, Stealing this truck. Okay. We hear that and we go, oh, okay. They're hot on his heels.
00:05:34
Speaker 3: Correct.
00:05:34
Speaker 1: But Robes, we determined, like you said, that first time he was found unaccounted for caused the prison to then go into the next step was doing an official head count, which takes some more time. They do the official head count, realize, okay, we are short one. This guy is gone. So they internally start passing this information around through the Tennessee Department of Corrections. They don't, then, Robes, alert anybody till the next morning that this guy's gone. We're talking, Robes, that folks had certainly a couple to a few, but we're talking six to nine hours head start.
00:06:16
Speaker 3: Yes, we got word that basically by the time police were able to be aware of the fact that this inmate was missing, and not just any inmate, again, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence. Then you have to go through all the surveillance videos and try to see where he is and where he could be. And it was only then that they found that 1.30 a.m. video of him stealing a truck two miles later. But they believe by the time police are piecing this all together and are finding this surveillance video, Morley was already in Illinois and had already abandoned the truck.
00:06:50
Speaker 2: At that point.
00:06:51
Speaker 3: So he had a significant head start on police. And from that moment on, it was just a matter of trying to figure out where he could be if any other vehicles were stolen, if any food was stolen, if any clothing was stolen, if any ammunition was stolen. That's what they were looking for. But imagine all those folks were... All those residents in a very wide potential swath of land in the middle of this country were fair game for where he might be.
00:07:21
Speaker 1: And that's why you would have other jurisdictions pissed. Like, you got to let us know there's a murderer in our midst. You're bordering Illinois. You're bordering Missouri. All these places are right in a clump together there. And he made it to us and you didn't let us know for three, six, nine hours. Yeah, those folks were pissed. So Robesie... They start to track this guy. The truck is gone. Excuse me, not the truck is gone. He is gone. The trail seems to have gone cold after the truck. And why wouldn't it, Robes? He could have been gone from the truck for six hours by the time y'all got there. Right?
00:07:56
Speaker 3: They said he was near a wooded area, a state park. And so eventually, look, and they had been canvassing the area, asking all of these local communities for.
00:08:07
Speaker 2: Tips, for help. Eventually, a tip did come in to police.
00:08:10
Speaker 3: Yes. that Jacob Morley may have been hiding in a shed at a hunting camp near Marion, Illinois, which is where his truck was found. So he didn't go very far. He would have been on foot at that point. But yes, they found that a truck was stolen in that area, which obviously seemed to point to one person.
00:08:32
Speaker 1: And that is incredibly helpful these days. If they find the I have a vehicle, a vehicle description. And wait, it's a stolen vehicle that's registered. We can look that sucker up.
00:08:42
Speaker 3: Right.
00:08:43
Speaker 2: And so he stole this truck from a farm.
00:08:45
Speaker 3: No, sorry. This was from a hunting, correct?
00:08:48
Speaker 2: A hunting camp, basically. I thought this was interesting.
00:08:52
Speaker 3: Deputies say that this was a white farm trunk, truck, excuse me. The truck had a full tank of gas, they knew that, and had extra fuel in the truck, so they knew he was going to be able to take this for a while. They also said that they believe he stole clothing from this hunting camp, and there were three firearms from the farm missing. That had to be a very disturbing discovery for police to know. Yes, a truck is missing with.
00:09:19
Speaker 2: A full tank.
00:09:21
Speaker 3: He stole clothing and there are three firearms now missing from this farm just southwest of where this hunting camp was located.
00:09:29
Speaker 1: Not to make this cute, but that reminded me of a video game. When you're going through a video game and all these levels and you're running out of power and then you're looking around for a little power up or something. Rove, he got his supplies. Yes. I got a vehicle. I got more gas. And now I have weapons. Good to go. These are the last things you would want this person to have.
00:09:52
Speaker 2: Correct.
00:09:52
Speaker 3: And again, a convicted murderer with nothing to lose who was serving a life.
00:09:58
Speaker 2: Behind bars prison sentence. at the age of 28. I thought this was an interesting detail.
00:10:03
Speaker 3: Deputies said that next to where the truck had been, where it was stolen, they found an apologetic handwritten note. I don't know what it said. They didn't give any details. But how interesting that this convicted murderer took the time to apologize in a note that he stole the vehicle. And that was also in this area, this little shed. They said it appeared he had prepared garlic bread and other food while he was there. So he was able to steal at least some supplies to eat. But all of that, just fascinating. Why leave an apology note for that? sorry I had to steal your truck?
00:10:45
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know anything about this guy. He killed a co-worker. There were friends and family of that person who passed who call this and talk about him as a monster. And certainly when you hear the description of what he did, the guy was missing for a while and the way he hid the body and he fled. I mean, I don't know. I don't know anything about his personality, what any of this suggested, but that this whole case has been strained. How?
00:11:08
Speaker 2: How bizarre?
00:11:09
Speaker 3: All right, when we come back, we're going to tell you how police were able to then track him once he stole that truck and what happened when he was finally caught. Welcome back, everyone, to Amy and TJ. Convicted murderer, 28-year-old Jacob Morley is finally back in police custody after being on the lam, had to say it once, babe, for nine days after escaping that Tennessee prison and Tennessee, the Tennessee prison system, the Department of Corrections, has a lot of egg on their face with this one, with the Krista Pike situation. And look, now more stories are being written just about the state of this prison that he was escaping from, by the way. I'm sure you read, but I didn't realize this. Apparently, There have been like multiple murders that have taken place over the past couple of years in that particular prison system. And in July, a bunch of indictments were handed down between employees and prisoners for just the unrest, the violence going on in that prison.
00:12:20
Speaker 2: It sounds like it's out of control.
00:12:24
Speaker 1: We'll see how good his lawyers are. Are they going to come back and say, this is such a desperate situation. He had no choice but to break out.
00:12:31
Speaker 2: Seriously.
00:12:31
Speaker 3: I wonder because these indictments just came down a few months ago about these murders that are going on in this prison. So maybe he was literally fleeing for his life.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: But once police... That's not going to plot, by the way.
00:12:43
Speaker 2: I know, I know.
00:12:44
Speaker 3: Ooh, so sad for you, you convicted murderer, you. It's called karma, I think a lot of people might say.
00:12:50
Speaker 2: But once he was.
00:12:52
Speaker 3: It was determined that he stole this truck. Now they've got a truck. Now they know the license plate. And now they turn to... What's been demonized so often in the press and by lots of local jurisdictions, which are removing flock cameras from interstates and from local street corners, it was those very flock cameras that were able to find and track.
00:13:17
Speaker 2: Jacob Morley.
00:13:18
Speaker 1: What's the issue again? It's a privacy issue people come up with. And then of course they've been used- Misuse. Wrongly by authorities, by police officers and whatnot. I get that. But Robes, time after time, how else, what if these weren't available?
00:13:32
Speaker 3: We would not have Jacob Morley in custody. I think, I mean, look, they might possibly find him eventually, but I don't think there's any dispute over the fact that these flock cameras 100% were able to track him and find him and lead police directly to his location.
00:13:49
Speaker 1: Look, this was pretty quick. I give them credit. When they say they identified this truck and had a license, they were able to immediately track this sucker through flat cameras and realize it had traveled some 300-something miles on I-70 between Kansas City and St. Louis. So they see that this thing has traveled straight across the state. They knew an area to then start to target. So sure enough, they found his vehicle. They found it, but they didn't go after him. This is, they're trained to do this and they're supposed to know what they're doing. This is good strategy, I suppose.
00:14:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would imagine.
00:14:29
Speaker 3: Look, I think there was a little bit of luck involved here as well, because can you imagine?
00:14:33
Speaker 2: Police knew.
00:14:34
Speaker 3: They knew he had a couple of firearms with him. They knew he was desperate. They knew he didn't want to be found. They knew he was a lifer. But so they find him, they follow the vehicle to a less populated area.
00:14:45
Speaker 2: They had a helicopter above.
00:14:47
Speaker 3: Morley, I think, probably knew he was being tracked from above and goes off the main highway and literally gets stuck in the mud. His vehicle gets stuck in the mud. I would think that's a stroke of luck.
00:15:03
Speaker 1: Getting stuck in the mud?
00:15:05
Speaker 2: For police, not for him.
00:15:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I... The area it sounds like they were in, I mean, I've seen the pictures they put out of it. It doesn't look like a populated area.
00:15:15
Speaker 3: No, it does not.
00:15:15
Speaker 1: They said they had undercover officers involved. They had to make sure they didn't alert him that he was being followed. They didn't want him to make a panic situation, maybe go use those guns, do a hostage, who knows, type of a thing. And they followed and waited for the vehicle to get far enough away from population centers before they start to zero in on him. He did not put up a fight. He didn't put up a fight. You see him in the, to be honest with you, he looked fairly chill.
00:15:41
Speaker 2: He did.
00:15:41
Speaker 1: In that video, in that picture.
00:15:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, he didn't get rid of his beard. A lot of people thought he might have changed his appearance. Still had his beard, had a new set of clothing on, some camouflage. Didn't make him disappear into any background.
00:15:55
Speaker 1: Oh, it struck me. The front, the decal on the front of his shirt says Marion, Illinois. It's like one of those shirts that you'd pick up at a gift shop somewhere.
00:16:06
Speaker 2: At a gas station.
00:16:07
Speaker 1: Exactly, at a gas station.
00:16:08
Speaker 2: My goodness.
00:16:09
Speaker 1: That's what he's wearing.
00:16:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, so look, the good news is he's behind bars. He did not do any damage from what we understand in terms of any violence while he was out.
00:16:23
Speaker 2: Of prison, which is pretty remarkable.
00:16:25
Speaker 1: No report of interaction with anybody, much less harming somebody, right?
00:16:29
Speaker 2: None whatsoever.
00:16:30
Speaker 3: So look, there is going to be, though, now that they have him, obviously all resources had to be directed solely to bringing Jacob Morley back into state custody. But now that he's back in state custody, now the investigation, and there is going to be a massive demand, a public outcry for answers.
00:16:49
Speaker 2: We need to know how this happened.
00:16:53
Speaker 3: When it actually happened and who is going to get fired or at least face some sort of consequence for allowing this to happen. This jeopardized the safety of potentially.
00:17:06
Speaker 2: Millions of people.
00:17:06
Speaker 3: If you think about how far he traveled, how long he was on the run. I mean, seriously, thank God that he didn't do anything while he was out. Because imagine, imagine the uproar and what folks would be saying and looking at how the Tennessee Department of Corrections allowed this to happen.
00:17:25
Speaker 1: He looked to be committed, thank goodness, to just getting away. He wasn't trying to go carry out a vendetta. He wasn't trying to go see family, the whole girlfriend. He seemed to be, so thank goodness, he just was trying to get away. But Roe, you just said millions of people. How many live in the state of Missouri? He drove clear across that whole state. Everyone in that state along I-70 could have been a target or a threat if he got desperate. Yeah. So, yes, this has to be looked at. And it can't not be. It just cannot be easy enough to escape from prison if all you got to do is ask your cellmate to say, hey, cover for me when he comes by.
00:18:02
Speaker 2: He still had to get out.
00:18:04
Speaker 3: And we haven't seen any surveillance video from the jail about how he left. They've only said he breached the fence. How did he breach the fence?
00:18:12
Speaker 2: Were there no cameras at a certain part of the fence? Why haven't we seen normally?
00:18:16
Speaker 3: Look, when someone escapes, remember when the guy walked out of that Arkansas prison all those years ago when we had the folks walk out of.
00:18:24
Speaker 2: the New Orleans prison.
00:18:24
Speaker 1: Oh, the devil in the Ozarks, that guy.
00:18:26
Speaker 2: Yes, but we.
00:18:26
Speaker 3: Saw all the shots, all the surveillance cameras that are around the prison to show how he did it, when he did it.
00:18:33
Speaker 2: There are time stamps.
00:18:35
Speaker 3: Have you seen one image of Jacob Morley leaving that Tennessee facility?
00:18:40
Speaker 1: Maybe they don't have it. Maybe they don't want people to see how he did it. But Robes, it seems extremely easy to do what he did. I'd love to hear it later. But hey, cover for me, and he walks out. And then conveniently finds a truck.
00:18:55
Speaker 3: He was good at stealing vehicles and securing weapons. That's pretty remarkable. But he is back in police custody.
00:19:03
Speaker 1: He's not up on flock technology.
00:19:05
Speaker 2: He's not.
00:19:05
Speaker 1: He's not. He didn't know. He should have taken the tags off. Or you have to cover the tags. I mean, even I watch enough movies to know this. First thing you do, Jason Statham. And the only move, you change attacks.
00:19:17
Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
00:19:18
Speaker 3: All right.
00:19:18
Speaker 2: Next time. No, there hopefully will never be a next time. But we will follow the story.
00:19:24
Speaker 3: There is certainly going to be more to come in the fallout of that escaped Tennessee inmate back in custody. And with that, everyone, we always appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Robach alongside TJ Holmes.
00:19:35
Speaker 2: We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks. It is Wednesday, November 4th. He escaped to prison in Tennessee, took a 100-mile drive north to Illinois, and now he was just recaptured outside of Kansas City. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Robes. A month, not a month, a week and a half that a convicted murderer serving life in prison has been on the run. This was an intense... manhunting, he seemed to get a little ways and be on the run for a little while.
00:00:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, nine days. And I'm actually so surprised.
00:00:37
Speaker 3: We will get into the details of what we know about Jacob Morley's life on the run. But I am actually shocked at how it ended, given what they found in the latest vehicle he stole. I mean, he was armed. He had found shelter. He apparently was making garlic bread.
00:01:01
Speaker 2: On the run.
00:01:02
Speaker 3: And it's pretty remarkable he got as far as he did for as long as he did. And then it ended without, I guess, not in the spectacular fashion I think many of us expected it to.
00:01:15
Speaker 1: Thank God.
00:01:15
Speaker 2: Thank God.
00:01:16
Speaker 1: Thank God and give authorities credit for this and how they went about capturing this guy. And part of it is that they got him away from populated areas. And he was in a position he knew better. I mean, this could have been a suicide mission, but he knew he wasn't going to survive this. Look, you escape prison. Apparently, you want to live. You want to live better. So maybe he does have enough decent common sense to know he wasn't going to win this one.
00:01:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is interesting.
00:01:42
Speaker 3: We've always talked about this, even when we do plenty of our execution podcasts, Death Row Inmates.
00:01:49
Speaker 2: It's just a human instinct thing.
00:01:52
Speaker 3: That pretty much is universal no matter what your conditions are, no matter where you're being housed, no matter what you're headed to. a.k.a. Jell, people still want to live. Because sure, he could have gone out, suicide by cop. A lot of people might have thought he would.
00:02:08
Speaker 2: Have done that.
00:02:08
Speaker 3: I'd rather be dead than go back to prison. And certainly now, he was already a lifer at this point. But clearly after this latest escapade, not only will he never be getting out of prison, but I imagine his prison accommodations are going to change dramatically.
00:02:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, his life sentence came with possible parole before. That might get tweaked.
00:02:36
Speaker 2: That's one way to put it.
00:02:37
Speaker 1: Possible. A little bit. But this guy is 28 years old. Really young guy. Had a long life ahead to be behind bars. But 28 years old, convicted for a 2022 murder of a co-worker. That co-worker's body was eventually found under this guy's house. Morally fled authorities at the time. He did everything he could to try to cover this up and get away. is what we're saying here, but yes, he was sentenced and convicted. So Robes, this escape, we don't have that many in the country. We have seen some high-profile ones before, even recently, but this was unique, Robes, in that you had a guy this dangerous, right, with this type of conviction that seemed to just walk away.
00:03:23
Speaker 3: And you're right, it's just a bizarre thing to imagine that the way he was able to escape was by just having his cellmate tell the guards when they were doing head counts, yeah, he's in the bathroom, or yeah, there are.
00:03:38
Speaker 2: Two of us in here.
00:03:39
Speaker 1: Is he in trouble? Is that inmate in trouble?
00:03:42
Speaker 3: Obviously, I would think that inmate would be in trouble unless somehow Jacob Morley escaped through the bathroom and unbeknownst to him.
00:03:51
Speaker 2: We don't know how he got out of his cell.
00:03:53
Speaker 1: Is that aiding and abetting a prison escape? I guess that would have to be.
00:03:59
Speaker 2: I would imagine.
00:03:59
Speaker 1: If you're going to do that, but at the same time, that's a really difficult thing as the prison guard to say, well, my fault. He told me it was in there.
00:04:10
Speaker 2: The prisoner lied.
00:04:11
Speaker 3: No.
00:04:11
Speaker 1: That's a tough one.
00:04:12
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the thing.
00:04:13
Speaker 3: Is it really unexpected or even illegal for a prisoner to lie? Because isn't that... Kind of something you should expect as the prison guard. The prison guard, those are the folks who need to and obviously certainly will be held accountable in this situation because as we started to get more details about how long Jacob Morley had, hours it appears, before anyone even knew he was missing in the first place and then there were several more hours before the prison actually notified local authorities that they had a convicted murderer on the run.
00:04:57
Speaker 1: So this is all out of Tiptonville, the correctional facility there in Tennessee, the northwest corner of the state, I guess you could say. So we go back to October 25th, the night you're talking about there in question, Robes. They told us initially they noticed he was unaccounted for somewhere around 10, 11 o'clock at night. This was the initial word we got about the escape. And then they told us, they saw him on surveillance video a couple hours later, two miles away, Stealing this truck. Okay. We hear that and we go, oh, okay. They're hot on his heels.
00:05:34
Speaker 3: Correct.
00:05:34
Speaker 1: But Robes, we determined, like you said, that first time he was found unaccounted for caused the prison to then go into the next step was doing an official head count, which takes some more time. They do the official head count, realize, okay, we are short one. This guy is gone. So they internally start passing this information around through the Tennessee Department of Corrections. They don't, then, Robes, alert anybody till the next morning that this guy's gone. We're talking, Robes, that folks had certainly a couple to a few, but we're talking six to nine hours head start.
00:06:16
Speaker 3: Yes, we got word that basically by the time police were able to be aware of the fact that this inmate was missing, and not just any inmate, again, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence. Then you have to go through all the surveillance videos and try to see where he is and where he could be. And it was only then that they found that 1.30 a.m. video of him stealing a truck two miles later. But they believe by the time police are piecing this all together and are finding this surveillance video, Morley was already in Illinois and had already abandoned the truck.
00:06:50
Speaker 2: At that point.
00:06:51
Speaker 3: So he had a significant head start on police. And from that moment on, it was just a matter of trying to figure out where he could be if any other vehicles were stolen, if any food was stolen, if any clothing was stolen, if any ammunition was stolen. That's what they were looking for. But imagine all those folks were... All those residents in a very wide potential swath of land in the middle of this country were fair game for where he might be.
00:07:21
Speaker 1: And that's why you would have other jurisdictions pissed. Like, you got to let us know there's a murderer in our midst. You're bordering Illinois. You're bordering Missouri. All these places are right in a clump together there. And he made it to us and you didn't let us know for three, six, nine hours. Yeah, those folks were pissed. So Robesie... They start to track this guy. The truck is gone. Excuse me, not the truck is gone. He is gone. The trail seems to have gone cold after the truck. And why wouldn't it, Robes? He could have been gone from the truck for six hours by the time y'all got there. Right?
00:07:56
Speaker 3: They said he was near a wooded area, a state park. And so eventually, look, and they had been canvassing the area, asking all of these local communities for.
00:08:07
Speaker 2: Tips, for help. Eventually, a tip did come in to police.
00:08:10
Speaker 3: Yes. that Jacob Morley may have been hiding in a shed at a hunting camp near Marion, Illinois, which is where his truck was found. So he didn't go very far. He would have been on foot at that point. But yes, they found that a truck was stolen in that area, which obviously seemed to point to one person.
00:08:32
Speaker 1: And that is incredibly helpful these days. If they find the I have a vehicle, a vehicle description. And wait, it's a stolen vehicle that's registered. We can look that sucker up.
00:08:42
Speaker 3: Right.
00:08:43
Speaker 2: And so he stole this truck from a farm.
00:08:45
Speaker 3: No, sorry. This was from a hunting, correct?
00:08:48
Speaker 2: A hunting camp, basically. I thought this was interesting.
00:08:52
Speaker 3: Deputies say that this was a white farm trunk, truck, excuse me. The truck had a full tank of gas, they knew that, and had extra fuel in the truck, so they knew he was going to be able to take this for a while. They also said that they believe he stole clothing from this hunting camp, and there were three firearms from the farm missing. That had to be a very disturbing discovery for police to know. Yes, a truck is missing with.
00:09:19
Speaker 2: A full tank.
00:09:21
Speaker 3: He stole clothing and there are three firearms now missing from this farm just southwest of where this hunting camp was located.
00:09:29
Speaker 1: Not to make this cute, but that reminded me of a video game. When you're going through a video game and all these levels and you're running out of power and then you're looking around for a little power up or something. Rove, he got his supplies. Yes. I got a vehicle. I got more gas. And now I have weapons. Good to go. These are the last things you would want this person to have.
00:09:52
Speaker 2: Correct.
00:09:52
Speaker 3: And again, a convicted murderer with nothing to lose who was serving a life.
00:09:58
Speaker 2: Behind bars prison sentence. at the age of 28. I thought this was an interesting detail.
00:10:03
Speaker 3: Deputies said that next to where the truck had been, where it was stolen, they found an apologetic handwritten note. I don't know what it said. They didn't give any details. But how interesting that this convicted murderer took the time to apologize in a note that he stole the vehicle. And that was also in this area, this little shed. They said it appeared he had prepared garlic bread and other food while he was there. So he was able to steal at least some supplies to eat. But all of that, just fascinating. Why leave an apology note for that? sorry I had to steal your truck?
00:10:45
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know anything about this guy. He killed a co-worker. There were friends and family of that person who passed who call this and talk about him as a monster. And certainly when you hear the description of what he did, the guy was missing for a while and the way he hid the body and he fled. I mean, I don't know. I don't know anything about his personality, what any of this suggested, but that this whole case has been strained. How?
00:11:08
Speaker 2: How bizarre?
00:11:09
Speaker 3: All right, when we come back, we're going to tell you how police were able to then track him once he stole that truck and what happened when he was finally caught. Welcome back, everyone, to Amy and TJ. Convicted murderer, 28-year-old Jacob Morley is finally back in police custody after being on the lam, had to say it once, babe, for nine days after escaping that Tennessee prison and Tennessee, the Tennessee prison system, the Department of Corrections, has a lot of egg on their face with this one, with the Krista Pike situation. And look, now more stories are being written just about the state of this prison that he was escaping from, by the way. I'm sure you read, but I didn't realize this. Apparently, There have been like multiple murders that have taken place over the past couple of years in that particular prison system. And in July, a bunch of indictments were handed down between employees and prisoners for just the unrest, the violence going on in that prison.
00:12:20
Speaker 2: It sounds like it's out of control.
00:12:24
Speaker 1: We'll see how good his lawyers are. Are they going to come back and say, this is such a desperate situation. He had no choice but to break out.
00:12:31
Speaker 2: Seriously.
00:12:31
Speaker 3: I wonder because these indictments just came down a few months ago about these murders that are going on in this prison. So maybe he was literally fleeing for his life.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: But once police... That's not going to plot, by the way.
00:12:43
Speaker 2: I know, I know.
00:12:44
Speaker 3: Ooh, so sad for you, you convicted murderer, you. It's called karma, I think a lot of people might say.
00:12:50
Speaker 2: But once he was.
00:12:52
Speaker 3: It was determined that he stole this truck. Now they've got a truck. Now they know the license plate. And now they turn to... What's been demonized so often in the press and by lots of local jurisdictions, which are removing flock cameras from interstates and from local street corners, it was those very flock cameras that were able to find and track.
00:13:17
Speaker 2: Jacob Morley.
00:13:18
Speaker 1: What's the issue again? It's a privacy issue people come up with. And then of course they've been used- Misuse. Wrongly by authorities, by police officers and whatnot. I get that. But Robes, time after time, how else, what if these weren't available?
00:13:32
Speaker 3: We would not have Jacob Morley in custody. I think, I mean, look, they might possibly find him eventually, but I don't think there's any dispute over the fact that these flock cameras 100% were able to track him and find him and lead police directly to his location.
00:13:49
Speaker 1: Look, this was pretty quick. I give them credit. When they say they identified this truck and had a license, they were able to immediately track this sucker through flat cameras and realize it had traveled some 300-something miles on I-70 between Kansas City and St. Louis. So they see that this thing has traveled straight across the state. They knew an area to then start to target. So sure enough, they found his vehicle. They found it, but they didn't go after him. This is, they're trained to do this and they're supposed to know what they're doing. This is good strategy, I suppose.
00:14:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would imagine.
00:14:29
Speaker 3: Look, I think there was a little bit of luck involved here as well, because can you imagine?
00:14:33
Speaker 2: Police knew.
00:14:34
Speaker 3: They knew he had a couple of firearms with him. They knew he was desperate. They knew he didn't want to be found. They knew he was a lifer. But so they find him, they follow the vehicle to a less populated area.
00:14:45
Speaker 2: They had a helicopter above.
00:14:47
Speaker 3: Morley, I think, probably knew he was being tracked from above and goes off the main highway and literally gets stuck in the mud. His vehicle gets stuck in the mud. I would think that's a stroke of luck.
00:15:03
Speaker 1: Getting stuck in the mud?
00:15:05
Speaker 2: For police, not for him.
00:15:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I... The area it sounds like they were in, I mean, I've seen the pictures they put out of it. It doesn't look like a populated area.
00:15:15
Speaker 3: No, it does not.
00:15:15
Speaker 1: They said they had undercover officers involved. They had to make sure they didn't alert him that he was being followed. They didn't want him to make a panic situation, maybe go use those guns, do a hostage, who knows, type of a thing. And they followed and waited for the vehicle to get far enough away from population centers before they start to zero in on him. He did not put up a fight. He didn't put up a fight. You see him in the, to be honest with you, he looked fairly chill.
00:15:41
Speaker 2: He did.
00:15:41
Speaker 1: In that video, in that picture.
00:15:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, he didn't get rid of his beard. A lot of people thought he might have changed his appearance. Still had his beard, had a new set of clothing on, some camouflage. Didn't make him disappear into any background.
00:15:55
Speaker 1: Oh, it struck me. The front, the decal on the front of his shirt says Marion, Illinois. It's like one of those shirts that you'd pick up at a gift shop somewhere.
00:16:06
Speaker 2: At a gas station.
00:16:07
Speaker 1: Exactly, at a gas station.
00:16:08
Speaker 2: My goodness.
00:16:09
Speaker 1: That's what he's wearing.
00:16:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, so look, the good news is he's behind bars. He did not do any damage from what we understand in terms of any violence while he was out.
00:16:23
Speaker 2: Of prison, which is pretty remarkable.
00:16:25
Speaker 1: No report of interaction with anybody, much less harming somebody, right?
00:16:29
Speaker 2: None whatsoever.
00:16:30
Speaker 3: So look, there is going to be, though, now that they have him, obviously all resources had to be directed solely to bringing Jacob Morley back into state custody. But now that he's back in state custody, now the investigation, and there is going to be a massive demand, a public outcry for answers.
00:16:49
Speaker 2: We need to know how this happened.
00:16:53
Speaker 3: When it actually happened and who is going to get fired or at least face some sort of consequence for allowing this to happen. This jeopardized the safety of potentially.
00:17:06
Speaker 2: Millions of people.
00:17:06
Speaker 3: If you think about how far he traveled, how long he was on the run. I mean, seriously, thank God that he didn't do anything while he was out. Because imagine, imagine the uproar and what folks would be saying and looking at how the Tennessee Department of Corrections allowed this to happen.
00:17:25
Speaker 1: He looked to be committed, thank goodness, to just getting away. He wasn't trying to go carry out a vendetta. He wasn't trying to go see family, the whole girlfriend. He seemed to be, so thank goodness, he just was trying to get away. But Roe, you just said millions of people. How many live in the state of Missouri? He drove clear across that whole state. Everyone in that state along I-70 could have been a target or a threat if he got desperate. Yeah. So, yes, this has to be looked at. And it can't not be. It just cannot be easy enough to escape from prison if all you got to do is ask your cellmate to say, hey, cover for me when he comes by.
00:18:02
Speaker 2: He still had to get out.
00:18:04
Speaker 3: And we haven't seen any surveillance video from the jail about how he left. They've only said he breached the fence. How did he breach the fence?
00:18:12
Speaker 2: Were there no cameras at a certain part of the fence? Why haven't we seen normally?
00:18:16
Speaker 3: Look, when someone escapes, remember when the guy walked out of that Arkansas prison all those years ago when we had the folks walk out of.
00:18:24
Speaker 2: the New Orleans prison.
00:18:24
Speaker 1: Oh, the devil in the Ozarks, that guy.
00:18:26
Speaker 2: Yes, but we.
00:18:26
Speaker 3: Saw all the shots, all the surveillance cameras that are around the prison to show how he did it, when he did it.
00:18:33
Speaker 2: There are time stamps.
00:18:35
Speaker 3: Have you seen one image of Jacob Morley leaving that Tennessee facility?
00:18:40
Speaker 1: Maybe they don't have it. Maybe they don't want people to see how he did it. But Robes, it seems extremely easy to do what he did. I'd love to hear it later. But hey, cover for me, and he walks out. And then conveniently finds a truck.
00:18:55
Speaker 3: He was good at stealing vehicles and securing weapons. That's pretty remarkable. But he is back in police custody.
00:19:03
Speaker 1: He's not up on flock technology.
00:19:05
Speaker 2: He's not.
00:19:05
Speaker 1: He's not. He didn't know. He should have taken the tags off. Or you have to cover the tags. I mean, even I watch enough movies to know this. First thing you do, Jason Statham. And the only move, you change attacks.
00:19:17
Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
00:19:18
Speaker 3: All right.
00:19:18
Speaker 2: Next time. No, there hopefully will never be a next time. But we will follow the story.
00:19:24
Speaker 3: There is certainly going to be more to come in the fallout of that escaped Tennessee inmate back in custody. And with that, everyone, we always appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Robach alongside TJ Holmes.
00:19:35
Speaker 2: We'll talk to you soon.