KINGSTON, Tenn. – Prison nurse Jennifer Forsyth was fired last year for sneaking food to an inmate. A few months later, she got permission from the warden to marry that inmate, George Hyatte, a man with a long and violent criminal record.

Now the 31-year-old woman from Utah who had never been in trouble with the law is charged with gunning down a correctional officer Tuesday in a brazen attempt to help her new husband escape.

“You are left grappling for answers and trying to figure it out. What was she thinking?” a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman, Jennifer Johnson, said yesterday “I guess it is anyone’s guess,” Ms. Johnson said. “She married the guy, so you have to assume there is some sort of love connection.”

The couple was captured last night at a Columbus, Ohio, motel without a struggle.

Police believe Jennifer Forsyth Hyatte came to this town of 5,500 on Monday with two getaway cars – a Ford Explorer in her name that was later dumped and a gold Chevrolet van stolen from one of her home-nursing clients near Nashville.

She is believed to have ambushed two guards as they were leading Hyatte from a courthouse hearing, fatally shooting one of them – veteran Wayne “Cotton” Morgan, 56 – and then speeding away with her husband.

Authorities found large amounts of blood in the abandoned vehicle and later found that Ms. Hyatte had been wounded.

Frank Harvey, the prosecutor who secured a guilty plea from Hyatte on Tuesday to a robbery charge and may be prosecuting him again, said: “Well, it’s like Willie Nelson’s song, ‘Ladies love outlaws like babies love stray dogs’ … or something like that.”

Early last year, Ms. Hyatte, 31, earned a diploma as a licensed practical nurse and got a job with a state contractor that took her into Northwest Correctional Complex to provide health care to state inmates.

She was fired five months later after sneaking food into the prison for Hyatte, a 34-year-old inmate with a record of robberies and escapes stretching back more than a decade. He was transferred the next month to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

But that didn’t end the relationship.

The couple applied on November 30, 2004, to the chaplain at the prison for permission to marry. The two were wed May 20.

Hyatte’s escape Tuesday was at least the fifth time he has gotten away from law enforcement officials. The other escapes were from local authorities in east Tennessee in 1990, 1991, 1998, and 2002.

During the escape three years ago, Hyatte and another prisoner escaped from a county jail after threatening guards with a homemade knife made out of toothbrushes and a razor blade.

When one guard turned over keys to the armed inmates, they then used them to beat another officer until he was unconscious. The escape ended a few days later when the two were captured in Florida.

Hyatte’s parents divorced when he was young, and he moved between the homes of relatives and state custody for years. He first entered the court system when he was 9 for school truancy and unruly behavior. By the time he was 17, he had already been through a treatment program for alcohol and drug abuse.

After dropping out of school, he racked up charges for burglary, theft, armed robbery, and striking an officer. He was acquitted of aggravated rape.

James Polk, who previously represented Hyatte as a public defender, described him as a smooth talker. “In court he is ‘Yes sir,’ ‘no sir,’ and ‘please.’ He always had this look about him of ‘Who, me?’ – as if he was wrongly accused,” Mr. Polk said.

“He is kind of a ladies man, too,” he said.