New York State corrections officials investigated whether a female prison worker and one of the escaped murderers who is currently on the lam had a relationship before the duo made their daring escape, according to two sources briefed on the probe. 
 
 But the investigation ultimately concluded that there was not enough evidence to take any action against Joyce Mitchell, the sources said. 
 
 Two sources said that Mitchell, a supervisor at the Clinton Correctional Facility tailor shop, was quizzed within the past year over an alleged relationship with David Sweat, one of the two escapees who broke out of the lockup in Dannemora in a plot straight out of "Shawshank Redemption." 
 
 A spokeswoman for the DOC declined to comment. 
 
 State Police told reporters Wednesday Mitchell “was befriended or she befriended the inmates and may have had some sort of role in assisting them.” He would not elaborate. 
 
 Sources said that Mitchell, who has not been charged, was cooperating with investigators. They are probing whether she played a role in getting the inmates the tools they needed to escape. 
 
 “You’ll be on the other side of the prison you’ve been policing and that is not a pleasant place to be," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said of any prison worker who may have participated in the escape. 
 
 Sweat, 34, and fellow convicted murderer Richard Matt, 48, escaped sometime in the early morning hours of Saturday June 6 using power tools. 
 
 New York State Police 
 
 Sources familiar with the case previously told ABC News that authorities had questioned Mitchell over whether she was supposed to drive a getaway car Saturday night. 
 
 If so, she never showed, instead checking into a hospital 40 minutes away complaining of a panic attack. 
 
 The sources say the inmates didn’t appear to have any other getaway plan which may be why Sen. Chuck Schumer said it seems “a very real possibility” Matt and Sweat are on foot and remain local. ||||| Joyce Mitchell, the New York prison worker being questioned in the escape of two murderers, was charmed by one of the inmates and planned to be their getaway driver until she got cold feet, sources familiar with the case told NBC News. 
 
 One of the inmates, Richard Matt, established a relationship with Mitchell over a couple of months, the sources said. 
 
 “She thought it was love,” one said. 
 
 Instead of being the getaway driver, Mitchell went to the hospital and checked herself in, the sources said. As NBC News has previously reported, Mitchell checked in on Saturday, the day the inmates were reported missing, with “a case of nerves.” 
 
 Authorities in New York, Vermont and elsewhere were still searching on Thursday for Matt and David Sweat, who cut through the steel walls of their cells, crawled through a pipe and emerged from a manhole near the prison. 
 
 Richard Matt, 48, escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y. Uncredited / AP 
 
 Two sources told NBC News that Mitchell will be charged, although the exact charges were not immediately known. 
 
 Mitchell works in the tailor shop at the prison, Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. On Wednesday, the superintendent of the New York state police said that she had “befriended” the inmates. 
 
 Her son, Tobey, told NBC News exclusively on Tuesday that his mother never would have helped the two escape. 
 
 “She is not the kind of person that's going to risk her life or other people's lives to let these guys escape from prison,” he said. 
 
 Asked whether his mother might have been taken advantage of, he said: “I don't know. I mean, they both are convicted murderers. I mean, you have an inmate that is in prison for life, you really don't have anything to lose.” 
 
 Former inmates at Clinton told NBC News they were shocked that such a relationship could develop. Over time, prison workers can become friendly with inmates — offering a spare cigarette, say — but most keep a cool distance, they said. 
 
 As the hunt entered its sixth day on Thursday, a state road near the prison was closed, and at least one helicopter hovered nearby. Authorities warned a day earlier that the escapees might have headed for Vermont, and Canadian authorities were expanding their search. 
 
 Matt, 48, was doing 25 years to life for killing a businessman for whom he had worked. Sweat, 34, was sentenced to life without parole for the 2002 killing of a sheriff’s deputy. 
 
 The suggestion that Mitchell might have helped the men escape calls to mind a case from Oklahoma: Bobbi Parker, a prison warden’s wife, was found guilty of helping a convicted killer escape in 1994. 
 
 Prosecutors said Parker fell in love with the killer, Randolph Franklin Dial, while they worked together in a prison pottery program. They were found living together on a Texas chicken farm in 2005. Parker served six months in prison. Dial died in prison in 2007. ||||| A female prison worker was interrogated Sunday as a possible accomplice in the Hollywood-style escape of two killers from an upstate penitentiary, sources told The Post. 
 
 “It’s an employee being questioned,’’ a high-level source said, adding that the worker, who is not a guard, had already been yanked from her post. 
 
 Sources said the worker may have been wooed by one of the escaped cons, Richard Matt, 48, an infamous lady killer. 
 
 “He has a way with the ladies,” the source said. 
 
 Another source, retired Detective David Bentley, who helped put away Matt for the 1997 murder of a North Tonawanda businessman, added, “When [Matt’s] cleaned up, he’s very handsome and, in all frankness, very well endowed. He gets girlfriends any place he goes.” 
 
 Authorities said Matt and David Sweat, 34, escaped late Friday or early Saturday, by using power tools from one of several construction sites at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, 20 miles from the Canadian border. 
 
 They cut through a steel wall, broke through two feet of brick and mortar and sliced open a metal pipe before escaping through a street manhole over a mile away. 
 
 They even “had to cut through a steel lock and a steel chain to open up the manhole cover,” Gov. Cuomo said, adding that it could not be opened from the outside. 
 
 Authorities are not dismissing the possibility that there may have been more than one person who helped them, sources said. 
 
 Investigators have divided prison employees into three categories — guards, civilian workers and private contractors, Gov. Cuomo told NBC’s “Today” show on Monday. 
 
 “We’re going through [interviewing] all the civilians and contractors first. I’d be shocked if a corrections guard was involved in this,” Cuomo said. 
 
 “But they definitely had help, otherwise they couldn’t have done this on their own.” 
 
 All of the prison’s tools have been accounted for “so far,” said acting state Corrections Commissioner Anthony Annucci. 
 
 “That seems to point to a contractor leaving their tools,” he said. 
 
 A source said, “There was major construction at the prison — a bunch of work crews for a variety of projects. They are looking into every aspect of these crews, any connections they might have to these two prisoners. Was it a relative or a friend? 
 
 “Look at the cuts that they made in the pipes. They are perfect, clean. That’s not normal — they had some help.” 
 
 The source likened the breakout to Clint Eastwood’s “Escape from Alcatraz,’’ in which his character leaves a dummy in his bed, just as Matt and Sweat did. 
 
 Another source added that the pair “had help on the inside, and they could just have easily had help on the outside.” 
 
 “To do all that, it would have to take weeks, if not months. This was well- planned and thought out for some time.’’ 
 
 The jailbreak occurred Friday into Saturday, when a “family day’’ had been scheduled at the prison, a source noted. 
 
 In a parting shot to prison officials, Matt and Sweat left behind a note with a smiley face that read, “Have a nice day.’’ 
 
 “A little bit of a comedian in them [the escaped cons] but I plan on giving them back that note, ” Cuomo told “Today” on Monday. 
 
 Cuomo, who inspected the escape route, said officials are doing everything possible to prevent another escape but said the first priority is to apprehend the fugitives. 
 
 
 
 “This is a crisis situation for the state,” the governor said Sunday. “These are dangerous men. They’re capable of committing grave crimes once again. We will not rest until we have these two individuals back in custody.” 
 
 The state is offering $100,000 for info leading to the capture of the inmates, or $50,000 for tips leading to each one. 
 
 Cuomo said investigators were sifting through more than 150 leads. Among them, sources said, was a report that men believed to be Matt and Sweat were spotted at 12:30 a.m. Saturday in the backyard of a house near the manhole where they emerged. 
 
 “Hey, what are you doing here?” a man called out before the duo fled. 
 
 The witness did not report the incident to police, but later gave a description that closely resembled the missing men. 
 
 Matt and Sweat were logged as present at the prison Friday night but discovered missing at a 5:30 a.m. bed check Saturday. 
 
 Cuomo said he confronted a couple of inmates about how no one supposedly heard anything while the cons were drilling out. 
 
 “I chatted with a couple of the inmates myself and said, ‘You must be a very heavy sleeper.’ They heard, they had to be heard,” he said on “Good Morning America.’’ 
 
 Sweat, 34, was serving life without parole for the 2002 killing of Kevin Tarsia, a Broome County sheriff’s deputy. Matt, 48, had been sentenced to 25 years to life for kidnapping, killing and dismembering his former boss in 1997. 
 
 Tarsia’s brother, Steven, said the escape has turned his world “upside-down all over again.” 
 
 Additional reporting by Leonard Greene and David K. Li
– Authorities are investigating whether a female accomplice was involved in the escape of two prisoners from a New York penitentiary on Friday or Saturday, police tell Reuters. Officials are talking to a woman who worked at the maximum-security Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemor, NY; she was an employee, not a guard, and has since been fired, the New York Post reports. Sources tell the Post that one of the convicts, 48-year-old Richard Matt, "has a way with the ladies" and "gets girlfriends any place he goes." Earlier today, Gov. Andrew Cuomo told CNN that police were talking to "civilian employees" and "private contractors" to see if anyone aided in the escape, which involved power tools: "They wouldn’t have equipment on their own, that's for sure," he says. Authorities are still searching for Matt and his fellow escapee, 34-year-old David Sweat.