Escaped Tennessee Murderer Jacob Morley Captured Near Kansas City After Week-Long Manhunt

 It was close to 11:30 on a Sunday night when correctional officers at the Northwest Correctional Complex in Tiptonville, Tennessee, realized that one of their inmates was gone. Security video would soon show how: he had breached a perimeter fence and walked into the dark.

The man was Jacob Allen Morley, 28. He was not an ordinary inmate. He was serving a life sentence for murder, and by Monday the Tennessee Department of Correction had put him on the state's Most Wanted list with a plain warning: he should be considered dangerous.

The crime behind the sentence

Morley was convicted of killing Cody Birchfield in 2022. Birchfield was his former coworker. According to court documents, Birchfield's body was found in a large metal box under Morley's home in northeast Tennessee. He was convicted, sentenced to life in prison, and held at the Tiptonville facility.

How he got out

Officials have been tight-lipped about the escape itself. Investigators have said only that he cut through the perimeter fences after hiding among pallets and a trash cart behind the prison's main kitchen. They have not explained how he got that far unseen, or whether anyone helped him.

A stolen truck and a trail that went cold

Within hours, a white Ford F-350 was reported stolen. Police believe Morley took it. It passed the Hornbeak Fire Department in the nearby town of Hornbeak early Monday and was later found abandoned behind a business.

After that, almost nothing was made public. For days, Tennessee officials, the U.S. Marshals Service and their partners searched while the public heard little about where he might be. The state offered a $15,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

A second theft, hundreds of miles away

The silence broke on Tuesday morning, November 3. Deputies in Williamson County, Illinois, answered a report of a stolen vehicle southwest of Marion. It was a white 2005 Ford pickup used as a farm vehicle. Investigators later determined Morley had taken it.

That discovery restarted the manhunt. Authorities then received word that the truck might be traveling west on Interstate 70 near Independence, Missouri, close to Kansas City.

The chase ends

Missouri State Highway Patrol found the truck with the help of Flock Safety license plate cameras, which read plates and flag them to law enforcement. A Kansas City Police Department helicopter then picked up the vehicle and followed it from above while officers on the ground closed in.

At about 11:34 a.m., troopers took Morley into custody in Carroll County, Missouri, near the small city of Norborne, roughly an hour's drive east of Kansas City. It ended without further incident.

A U.S. Marshals official described it as the end of a relentless pursuit. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation thanked the public for the tips and vigilance that helped.

The questions that remain

Morley is back in custody, but several questions are still open. Officials have not said exactly how he got through the prison's fences, what happened in the days between the first stolen truck and the second, or whether anyone gave him help along the way. The TBI said more details about the arrest will come as they are released.

For Tennessee's prison system, the escape raises a harder question: how a man serving life for murder was able to leave a secure facility unseen on a Sunday night.

Sources: ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, KCTV, WBBJ, Heartland News and Gray News reports, November 3, 2026. Details may be updated as officials release more information.