Jacob Allen Morley, an escaped Tennessee inmate serving a life sentence for murder, was taken into custody near Kansas City on Tuesday after a nine-day, three-state manhunt that ended with investigators tracking a stolen pickup truck across two states using automated license-plate readers.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said Morley slipped out of the Northwest Correctional Complex in Tiptonville in late October, touching off a search that spanned Tennessee, Illinois and Missouri. He had been serving a life sentence for the 2022 murder of Cody Birchfield in Carter County, and the TBI had placed him on the state's "Most Wanted" list with a $15,000 reward for information leading to his capture.
Investigators got their first solid lead early Tuesday, when a tip placed Morley in a shed at a hunting camp near Marion, Illinois — and property owners there reported a truck stolen. Checking the truck's plate against automated license-plate reader networks showed it had traveled roughly 340 miles west along Interstate 70 between St. Louis and Kansas City. A Kansas City police helicopter helped spot the vehicle, and Missouri Highway Patrol troopers, also relying on plate-reader cameras, tracked it into rural Carroll County before arresting Morley without incident at 11:34 a.m. near Norborne.
Investigators recovered a note Morley had left on the stolen truck, according to a Missouri sheriff cited by the TBI's Nashville affiliate WSMV. In it, he apologized to the truck's owner, wrote that he never wanted to hurt anyone, and said he intended to keep running rather than fight if cornered. The note has not been publicly released in full.
The TBI thanked the public for tips that helped narrow the search and said additional details on the arrest would follow. Multi-state manhunts for escaped Tennessee inmates have drawn heavy regional media attention in recent years, and the case is likely to renew scrutiny of security at the Northwest Correctional Complex, which officials have not yet addressed publicly.
