Three years ago, police discovered the body of 18-year-old Teenisha Griffin in Springfield. Investigators believe that Daniel Corbett, 33, killed her, but he had left town by the time charges were filed.

More than a year later, he turned up in a New York City jail after he was picked up for a probation violation.

Channel 4 investigator Jennifer Waugh reports that New York officials called their counterparts in Jacksonville, who told the Florida state attorney's office that their murder suspect was in jail and needed to be returned to Jacksonville to face murder charges.

New York state law says Corbett (pictured, right) can only be held for 90 days, so the clock was ticking for the state attorney's office to get extradition papers in place -- a multistep process that goes from the local office to the governor's office in Tallahassee for approval, then to New York.

Channel 4 has learned it took the state attorney's office more than 50 days to send that paperwork to Gov. Jeb Bush's office.

"This wasn't an unusual amount of time in extradition," assistant state attorney George Bateh said.

Bateh said his office did everything it was supposed to do, and provided the governor more than three weeks to sign the request and get it to New York.

"Based on our experience, that was more than sufficient time for governor's warrants to be delivered to New York," Bateh said.

But a governor's office spokeswoman said that no one from the state attorney's office told them that Corbett's case was a high priority.

A letter sent to the governor obtained by the EWN investigators says "the defendant was arrested on March 15, 2000, and is presently in the custody of the Manhattan Detention Center in New York City, and has refused to waive extradition."

The governor's office says that wasn't enough. She says that the governor's office usually receives a call or a hand-written note from state attorneys around Florida to make sure that they know the request needs to be sent off immediately.

Bateh disagrees. "That's not a normal practice. We send a formal, signed cover letter setting forth when the arrest was made," Bateh said.

The request finally got to New York too late -- a few hours after Corbett was released.

Six months later -- January 2001 -- police say Corbitt kidnapped, raped and sodomized a woman in the Bronx, then killed her and another man, and set their bodies on fire.

Corbitt was convicted in the New York murders and was sentenced to a term of 25 years to life. Local officials are still seeking his extradition to prosecute him for Griffin's 1999 murder.

The state attorney's office calls what happened in New York a tragedy, but says it did everything it could to keep Corbett locked up.

Local prosecutors and the governor's office both told Channel 4 that they have made changes in their extradition procedures to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.