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Employee questioned in New York prison escape

CNN)An employee at the Clinton Correctional Facility in New York is being questioned as a possible accomplice in the escape of two convicted killers over the weekend, a law enforcement source briefed on the investigation confirmed to CNN.

The source would not comment on the extent of the woman's involvement or the kind of help she may have provided.

The development comes after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the inmates -- Richard Matt and David Sweat -- must have had help in carrying out the intricate plot. The pair, who were in side-by-side cells, used power tools to cut through the cells' steel walls and clambered through a maze of underground pipes, according to authorities.

"They wouldn't have had the equipment on their own, that's for sure,"[one would certainly hope...]Cuomo told CNN of the convicted killers, who escaped sometime after they were last seen at bed check Friday night.

In their place, the pair left decoys to trick guards into thinking they were asleep in their bunks -- and a yellow sticky note with a smiley face. It read, "Have a Nice Day!"

Despite a $100,000 reward and a manhunt involving some 250 law enforcement officials, Matt and Sweat -- both serving lengthy sentences -- were still on the loose Monday.

"They could be literally anywhere," said Maj. Charles E. Guess of the New York State Police, which is leading the search.

Cuomo said residents of Dannemora, where the prison is located, should feel safe because of the presence of hundreds of law enforcement officers there.

Still, students returned to schools Monday amid heightened security after police thoroughly searched every building and bus, Saranac Central School District Superintendent Jonathan Parks said in an email to parents. Police officers were scheduled to be at every school throughout the day, he said.

Tricking the guards

People call the Clinton Correctional Facility "Little Siberia."

That's in part because of its remote location -- in the sparsely populated northeast corner of New York, about 25 miles from the Canadian border.

And also because it's in a region where wintry weather can persist more than half the year.

The facility has 2,689 inmates, and two of its most notorious inhabitants were Matt, 49, and Sweat, 35.

They apparently were last seen at 10:30 p.m. Friday during a standing count -- head counts that are performed every two hours throughout the night when guards visually check to see whether inmates are in their bunks.

The pair tricked the guards by arranging things in the bunks to look "like people were sleeping ... with these sweatshirt hoodies on," Cuomo said.[How did they trick them into not hearing power drills cutting through steel?]

Once they were out of their cells, they then followed a catwalk down an elaborate maze of pipes until they emerged from a manhole outside the prison walls.

They evaded detection for some seven hours, until the inmate count at 5:30 a.m. Saturday.

Unanswered questions

Along with the taunting sticky note, the pair also left a host of unanswered, and uncomfortable, questions for law enforcement.

How did they get the power tools? How could they have known the layout of the bowels of the old prison? Did they have help from the inside? [Actually the question is "who helped them?" not whether they had help; this simply could not have been carried out without help.]
Cuomo, who toured the escape route and announced the $100,000 reward Sunday, said it was possible the tools came from contractors working on the 170-year-old prison. Authorities are also looking at civilian prison employees, he said. But he seemed to rule out the involvement of the prison's certified employees.

"I'd be shocked if a guard was involved, and that's putting it mildly," he said.

'Dangerous people'

The danger the two men pose can't be overstated, officials said.

Sweat was serving a life sentence without parole in the killing of Kevin Tarsia, a sheriff's deputy, in 2002.

Matt was convicted on three counts of murder, three counts of kidnapping and two counts of robbery after he kidnapped a man and beat him to death in December 1997, state police said. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

"He has a history," said Gabriel DiBernardo, who led the investigation into the murder for which Matt was convicted. "He broke out of jail before. He is a cunning individual, no question about it, and a vicious individual."

Sweat is white, 5 feet, 11 inches tall and weighs 165 pounds. He has brown hair, green eyes and tattoos on his left bicep and his right fingers.

Matt is white, 6 feet tall and weighs 210 pounds. He has black hair, hazel eyes and several tattoos: "Mexico Forever" on his back, a heart on his chest and left shoulder, and a Marine Corps insignia on his right shoulder.

"These are dangerous people," Cuomo said. "And they're nothing to be trifled with."

Matt is also well-known to Mexican authorities. In 2007, he was extradited from Mexico back to New York on a decade-old murder charge, documents show.

With the facility's proximity to Canada, and with Matt's ties to Mexico, authorities on both international borders have been alerted.

'No stone unturned'

Officers used roadblocks and bloodhounds and went door to door in their search for the men. They scoured the woods and sifted through the dozens and dozens of tips that came in.

But so far, no luck.

They don't know if the pair is still together, had help on the outside, or if the men had access to a vehicle.

Jonathan Gilliam, a former Navy SEAL, FBI agent, air marshal and police officer, told CNN's "New Day" on Monday that the inmates might have been able to pull off part of the escape by themselves. But he said the presence of power tools and the complicated escape route suggest that they weren't working alone.

"The combination of all those things is very worrisome for me because that spells help," he said.

On Sunday, the U.S. Marshals Service issued federal arrest warrants for the escapees. The warrants clear the way for the federal government to involve its considerable resources in the manhunt.

"Every resource available to us will be used in bringing these two men to justice," said William O'Toole, a U.S. Marshals Service spokesman.

"We're leaving no stone unturned," Guess of the New York State Police said Sunday.

Long Run wrote:I don't know whether to blame the Clintons or Cuomo. I'll get back to you on that.

Hunt for Escaped New York Prisoners Centers on Willsboro

Law-enforcement officials converged Tuesday on the tiny upstate New York town of Willsboro to investigate a lead into the escape of two convicted murderers from a nearby high-security prison.

The police flooded the town to check on a report called in to police late Monday night from a driver who saw two men walking in the rain on a country road, according to Shaun Gillilland, the town supervisor of Willsboro.

“A report was called in by a citizen of two suspicious men walking down a very rural road in the southern part of our town in the middle of a driving rain storm,” Mr. Gillilland said. “When the car this person was in approached, they took off into the fields.”

Mr. Gillilland said it would be unusual for anyone to be walking along these roads late at night.

“It’s very rural, sparsely populated, agricultural and there’s no sidewalk,” he said.

Willsboro is about 35 miles south of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., from which Richard Matt, 48 years old, and David Sweat, 34, escaped.

Mr. Matt was serving a sentence of 25 years to life for the 1997 murder of his former boss. Mr. Sweat was serving a life sentence for the murder of a sheriff’s deputy in 2002.

By early Tuesday morning, a heavy law-enforcement presence had settled in the town, including New York State Police, U.S. Marshals and the New York State Department of Corrections, Mr. Gillilland said.

Two people say they have seen the two convicts who escaped from a maximum-security prison in New York over the weekend.

A man and his friend told ABC News that they saw 48-year-old Richard Matt and 34-year-old David Sweat in their backyard with what looked like a guitar case. The witnesses' identities are being withheld because of safety concerns.

Sources told the New York Daily News that the convicts were carrying the tools they used to break out of the prison in a guitar case one of the inmates had in his cell.

The witnesses spotted the men at about 12:30 a.m. near the manhole they reportedly escaped from after breaking out of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora about 20 miles from the Canadian border.

When the witnesses confronted the men, one of them reportedly said: "We're just lost. We don't know where we are. We're on the wrong street." They then both took off running, the witnesses said.

The man added to ABC that he was "lucky to be alive."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/eyewitne ... z3cbd8pmY0

I blame Obama.

Lord Jim wrote: “A report was called in by a citizen of two suspicious men walking down a very rural road in the southern part of our town in the middle of a driving rain storm,” Mr. Gillilland said. “When the car this person was in approached, they took off into the fields.”

Escaped killers' driver went to hospital instead, source says

(CNN)Investigators think a woman who worked with Richard Matt and David Sweat at the Clinton Correctional Facility planned to pick up the convicted killers after they escaped but changed her mind at the last minute, a source familiar with the investigation tells CNN.

Joyce Mitchell went to a hospital this weekend because of panic attacks, the source said.

Mitchell is one of several prison employees who has been questioned in the case, but she has not been charged. She has given a statement and is being "somewhat cooperative," a source said.

Her cell phone was used to call several people connected to Matt, another source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. It's unclear who made the calls or when the calls were made.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/10/us/new-york-prison-break/

District Attorney: Husband of NY prison employee ‘could’ve been involved’ in murderers’ escape

(CNN) –The husband of an upstate New York prison employee who may have helped a pair of convicted murderers escape is being investigated and “could’ve been involved or at least had knowledge” of the breakout, Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie told CNN on Friday.

Lyle Mitchell, husband of prison seamstress Joyce Mitchell, worked in the maintenance department at the same tailoring shop where his wife worked at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, officials said.

I don't quite buy the "charmed" defense...

The Latest on prison escape: No new leads in manhunt

Eight days into the massive manhunt in upstate New York for two convicted killers, state police say they have no new leads.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers blanketed a wooded area Saturday southeast of the maximum-security prison where David Sweat and Richard Matt escaped using power tools and leaving dummies under covers on their prison cots.

New York Escaped Prisoner Richard Matt Is Reported Killed

Richard W. Matt, one of the convicted murderers who staged an elaborate escape from New York’s largest prison nearly three weeks ago, was shot and killed on Friday by federal agents, two people with knowledge of the situation said.

There was a report of a second episode of gunfire as law enforcement officers pursued David Sweat, the other inmate, according to the two people. Mr. Sweat’s fate was unclear.

The shots were reported as law enforcement officers zeroed in on an area of remote terrain in Franklin County, near where investigators discovered evidence in two hunting cabins that indicated the missing inmates had been there.

It marked a violent turn in a sprawling manhunt that began in Dannemora, N.Y., a village near the Canadian border, and soon spread to large swaths of the state after Mr. Sweat and Mr. Matt engineered a daring breakout from Clinton Correctional Facility.