Any prison employees who helped two convicted murderers escape from a maximum-security jail will face the full force of the law, New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said on Thursday, as suspicions mounted that a female worker there assisted the breakout.
“If you do it, you will be convicted, and then you’ll be on the other side of the prison that you’ve been policing, and that is not a pleasant place to be,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo added that investigators are “talking to several people who may have facilitated the escape”.
More than 500 state and federal investigators have swarmed across upstate New York and western Vermont since Sunday morning, when officers at the Clinton correctional facility realized that Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 34, had burrowed out of the prison with power tools.
One of the people being interviewed is a 51-year-old civilian who worked as an instructor in the prison’s tailor shop and who “befriended the inmates, and may have had some sort of role in assisting them”, said police superintendent Joseph D’Amico. He declined to provide more details.
The woman has been widely named in the media as Joyce Mitchell. Her surname was confirmed by the Clinton County district attorney, Andrew Wylie, on Friday.
Wylie said Mitchell faced felony charges of accessory to escape and promoting prison contraband. “It’s my intent at the conclusion of proceedings” to charge her, he said.
Mitchell is “aware of the charges”, he added, and “fully cooperating”. “She voluntarily seeks us out, comes in, and each day has been providing more additional information that’s assisted the investigators,” he said.
The district attorney also said that there was an investigation into prior complaints about a relationship between Mitchell and an inmate, but that “it was unfounded. There wasn’t enough evidence to support a finding within the department.”
Wylie said as far as he knew, “I don’t believe the information was that there was absolutely no relationship.
“As a result of [the investigation] one of the inmates, David Sweat, was removed from the tailor shop,” he said. “Disciplinary action was taken but probably not to the extent where Ms Mitchell could be removed from the facility.”
On the night of the escape, Mitchell sought treatment at the nearby Alice Hyde medical center, a hospital spokesperson confirmed. Her son and daughter-in-law have said she had suffered from a nervous attack and chest pains, but also defended her and said she would not have helped the inmates.
Mitchell has not been charged, but numerous unidentified law enforcement sources have claimed to reporters that they believe she had agreed to drive Matt and Sweat away from the prison but panicked.
Possible charges for any suspected accomplice include promoting prison contraband and accessory to escape.
Police searched with renewed energy near the prison town of Dannemora and the town of Cadyville, prompted in part by dogs who picked up the convicts’ scent in the rural region of swampy fields and forests. Investigators speculated that Matt and Sweat, growing desperate, may have tried to forage for food in a Subway garbage bin.
Authorities closed schools and certain roads, and warned residents to lock their doors, close windows and leave the lights on. Residents of the area have been rattled, with one telling the Guardian the experience was surreal and “nerve-racking”. Others have armed themselves despite police warnings not to confront the murderers.
The new search area is located about 20 miles from the Canadian border.
Despite the excitement of the dogs and a new round of searching through houses, Cuomo admitted that police do not know where Matt and Sweat are. “Look, they could either be four miles from the prison or they could be in Mexico,” he said. “You just don’t know.”
Shumlin agreed: “We really have no idea where they are.”
Sheriff David Favro said there had been no reports of stolen or abandoned vehicles, break-ins or abductions.
“Most escapees go back to their home areas, but they commit crimes,” said Martin Tankleff, who spent more than a decade in Clinton correctional until his exoneration for murder and release in 2004. “The fact that they haven’t robbed a vehicle or kidnapped somebody is the minute they commit a crime obviously police will swarm in.”
But while Matt and Sweat have cause to lie low, Tankleff said they probably won’t go down quietly: “There’s no incentive for them to come back voluntarily.
“They’ve embarrassed Corrections, they face new criminal charges and disciplinary charges and were basically facing life sentences, and because of their actions I’m sure prisons will change procedures,” he said.
“As much as inmates are rooting that they got out, they’re also despising them because they’re going to change their lives.”
Tankleff said that even if police pin down an accomplice, it does not necessarily solve some of the mysteries of how Matt and Sweat managed to escape. He suggested that the inmates may have had long access to the catwalks behind the cells, perhaps as part of a work crew or thanks to careless contractors, and that they could have cut through the cell wall from the catwalk side to muffle sound.
“Tools could have been readily available in the jail, depending on inmates’ jobs,” he said. “All tools are accounted for really doesn’t mean much because they are signed out during the day, utilized and brought back, so obviously there would be no loss of tools.
“Or a contractor could have brought in an extra tool and lost or sold it, but who’s going to admit that?”
Rather than working at night, Tankleff said the convicts could have used the clamor of daytime life in the honor block to disguise their work. He found it more puzzling that Matt and Sweat knew precisely which pipe could lead them out into the sewer and street, and how men of their size could have fit in such a small steam shaft.
They may have acquired a cellphone and had someone relay them the plans, he suggested. “Maybe they’ve done it, but somebody should go to the county clerk’s office to see if anybody in the last year or two pulled the blueprints.”
Finally, he echoed the remarks of Vermont’s Governor Peter Shumlin, who said that Matt and Sweat may have tried to slip across the New York border. “Their second gameplan had to be to get out of New York as quickly as possible,” Tankleff said, “because the level of law enforcement would be surely insurmountable so quickly.”
Matt was serving a sentence of 25 years to life for the killing and dismemberment of a former employer. Sweat was serving life without parole for the murder of a sheriff’s deputy, who was shot 15 times and run over after finding Sweat with stolen guns.
