Jacob Morley, who was serving a life sentence for killing a co-worker four years ago, was apprehended at around noon, officials said.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol says it learned Tuesday morning that Morley was possibly traveling west on Interstate 70 in the Kansas City area. The vehicle was located using automated license plate readers and undercover officers traveling on a state highway in western Missouri.
Morley was driving a “metal flatbed work truck” with a white cab, said Sgt. Justin Ewing, a spokesperson for the Missouri State Highway Patrol. It's unclear how Morley acquired the vehicle or where he was going. Morley may have had connections in the Kansas City area, but authorities don't think that he stopped at any residences, Ewing added.
A Kansas City police helicopter also followed the vehicle, which made it into Carroll County, a small county in northwest Missouri. Morley drove off the road and got stuck in mud, according to Ewing, and a Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper took him into custody without incident, ending a weeklong hunt. Morley was “compliant” when he was arrested, Ewing said.
Morley, 28, escaped from the Northwest Correctional Complex in Tennessee’s far northwestern corner on Oct. 25, after he slipped through a fence in his prison clothes.
Surveillance video showed him stealing a truck from a farm near the prison, which he abandoned last week in Marion, Illinois. That is about 120 miles north of the prison.
Morley was serving a life sentence for killing 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 lived in Carter County, in eastern Tennessee.
