PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. – The plot has thickened in the prison breakout that has law enforcement officers from Canada to Mexico hunting for two convicted killers who escaped from New York State’s maximum security facility 12 days ago.

District Attorney David Wylie said Joyce Mitchell, the prison worker charged with helping the convicts escape, admits she freely discussed the killing of her husband with them and then fleeing to parts unknown.

Her husband, Lyle Mitchell, who also worked at the prison, said through his attorney that he was completely surprised by the disclosure and had no intention of supporting his wife despite a jailhouse visit with her Tuesday.

She is jailed on charges of providing contraband tools used by Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 35, to escape June 6.  But she got cold feet and did not show up with a getaway car to pick up the killers when they emerged from the prison in Dannemora, N.Y., in the middle of the night.

Her husband had a change of heart in coming to her defense upon learning that she had conspired with the convicts to kill him after they escaped so the three of them could flee in a Bonnie and Clyde-type adventure.

Peter Dumas, Lyle Mitchell’s attorney, said there’s “no way his client in standing behind” his wife given the latest revelations of her plotting with the killers.

Dumas said Lyle Mitchell has been interviewed by authorities about the circumstances of the escape and cleared of any involvement. He worked in the same tailoring shop section of the prison where his wife befriended Matt and Sweat.

Meanwhile, authorities reduced from 800 to 600 the army of law enforcement officers searching for the killers within a wide radius of the prison. They said they don’t have evidence that they have eluded the dragnet but fewer searchers are needed now that much of the terrain has been combed.

Wanted posters have been circulated via the Internet to police offices throughout the country, in Canada and in Mexico, where escapee Matt once evaded a U.S. murder warrant for several years.

District Attorney Wylie said Mrs. Mitchell continues to provide details of her part in the escape, including telling investigators that she provided the convicts with a pair of speed-bag boxing gloves as well as hacksaw blades, chisels, screwdrivers and other small tools.

He said the pair used the contraband along with power tools stored at the prison to cut holes in their adjacent cells, break through a thick brick wall and cut an escape hatch in a steam pipe leading to a manhole outside the prison.

The convicts are described by authorities as extremely dangerous and desperate.

Sweat, 35, was serving a life sentence without parole in the killing of a sheriff’s deputy. Matt, 48, was doing 25 years to life for the kidnap, torture and hacksaw dismemberment of his former boss.