Jacob Morley recaptured outside Kansas City after Tennessee prison escape

License plate readers showed Morley traveling through Missouri

State highway patrol officers captured Jacob Morley outside Kansas City, Missouri, before midday on Tuesday, more than a week after he escaped from the Northwest Correctional Complex in Tennessee, authorities said.

State and county officials did not provide many details about how they found Morley. They said automated license plate readers showed that he was traveling through Missouri.

Morley, 28, was serving a life sentence for killing his co-worker Cody Birchfield in 2022. Birchfield’s body was found in a box under Morley’s home after he had been missing for a few weeks. The two men lived in Carter County in eastern Tennessee.

When Morley saw deputies at his home, he led officers on a chase that ended in North Carolina, authorities said. He was convicted of first-degree murder, aggravated burglary, tampering with evidence, vandalism and evading arrest.

Morley escaped on 25 October from the Northwest Correctional Complex, in Tennessee’s far northwestern corner, after slipping through a fence while wearing prison clothes.

Surveillance video showed him stealing a truck from a farm near the prison on 26 October in Lake County, Tennessee. He abandoned the vehicle last week in Marion, Illinois, about 120 miles (193 km) north of the prison.

After the escape, law enforcement agencies searched buildings and other structures near the prison. The Northwest Correctional Complex is in Tiptonville, about 90 miles (145 km) north of Memphis, in flat farmland near a bend in the Mississippi River. Prison officials offered a reward of up to $17,500 for information leading to Morley’s arrest.

Several violent attacks between prisoners and by employees have been reported in recent years at the Northwest Correctional Complex. In July, a grand jury returned dozens of indictments for five prisoner killings and other violent acts.

Following the failed execution of Christa Pike in September, the department of correction’s commissioner, Frank Strada, resigned after less than three years in the job.