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Authorities in Tennessee are searching for a convicted murderer serving a life sentence after he escaped from prison.
Jacob Allen Morley, 28, fled the Northwest Correctional Complex in Tiptonville on Sunday, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction. Morley was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted in 2025 of killing Cody Birchfield, who disappeared three years earlier.
Correctional officers realized Morley was missing at approximately 11:30 p.m. Sunday, then launched an emergency inmate count and searched the facility, the department said in a statement provided to News Media.
Security footage captured convicted murderer Jacob Allen Morley inside the Northwest Correctional Complex before his escape Sunday. Officials said the video shows him breaking through a prison fence. (Tennessee Department of Correction)
Video from the prison showed Morley climbing through a breached section of fencing while dressed in inmate clothing.
Morley is 5 feet, 11 inches tall, weighs about 240 pounds and has brown hair and green eyes. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation warned that he should be regarded as dangerous and added him to the state’s most wanted list.
His convictions also include burglary, vandalism, evidence tampering and evading arrest, in addition to first-degree murder.
Correction officials said Jacob Allen Morley, 28, was serving a life sentence for the 2022 killing of Cody Birchfield when he escaped from a Tennessee prison Sunday. (Tennessee Department of Correction)
State and federal law enforcement agencies are working together in the search, officials said.
Birchfield vanished in early February 2022 after he was last seen in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Investigators with the Carter County Sheriff’s Office found signs inside his home suggesting that a “violent crime” had taken place, according to WJHL.
Morley was arrested on March 2, 2022, following a police pursuit that ended near the North Carolina border. After his arrest, authorities discovered Birchfield’s body beneath Morley’s home.
Surveillance video shows Jacob Allen Morley, 28, inside the Northwest Correctional Complex in Tiptonville, Tennessee, before his escape Sunday. The Tennessee Department of Correction said he was serving a life sentence for murder. (Tennessee Department of Correction)
Landree Sheperd, Morley’s former girlfriend, testified during his trial that he once told her, “he f—ing killed him.”
Anyone who has information about Morley’s location is asked to call 844-832-3463.