A second New York prison employee was arrested on Wednesday for the escape of two convicted murderers who have eluded a massive police manhunt for almost three weeks, police said.
Clinton correctional facility officer Gene Palmer allegedly took frozen hamburger meat embedded with smuggled tools to the inmates, Richard Matt and David Sweat, CNN quoted Clinton county district attorney Andrew Wylie as saying.
New York state police said Palmer has been charged with promoting prison contraband, two counts of tampering with evidence, and one count of official misconduct.
Matt, 48, and Sweat, 35, cut through the steel walls of their adjoining cells, slipped through a steam pipe and emerged from a manhole outside the prison’s fortress-like walls in Dannemora, New York, according to authorities.
They used tools allegedly brought into the prison by Joyce Mitchell, a training supervisor in the prison tailor shop, who is charged with aiding their escape, Wylie has said.
The prison tailor shop instructor has pleaded not guilty and remains in custody.
Court documents alleged that Palmer had supplied Sweat and Matt with a screwdriver and pliers in exchange for paintings from the inmates. He also is alleged to have destroyed or tried to hide the paintings.
Wylie said Mitchell told investigators she smuggled hacksaw blades, a screwdriver and other tools into the prison by placing them in frozen hamburger meat. He said she then placed the meat in a refrigerator in the tailor shop, where she worked.
Palmer then took the meat to Sweat and Matt, who were housed in a section where inmates are allowed to cook their own meals. The district attorney said the guard did not know the tools were inside the meat.
Wylie also said Palmer escorted the men – who had special privileges to use hot plates to cook their own food – into the catwalk area behind their cells, ostensibly to fix electrical breakers. Authorities have said Matt and Sweat used the catwalks during their escape on 6 June.
Palmer appeared in Plattsburgh town court late on Wednesday evening and is set to be formally arraigned on Thursday. He pleaded not guilty and was remanded to Clinton county jail on $25,000 bail. He was also told to hand over his guns to a relative.
Palmer’s lawyer, Andrew Brockway, told CNN that Palmer was cooperating with authorities. “He’s a man of integrity who made some mistakes,” Brockway said.
Police said the escapees may have at least one gun from a cache of weapons in a cabin where they hid about 30km (20 miles) from the maximum security prison.
Major Charles Guess of the New York State Police told a news conference that Sweat and Matt were believed to have been last seen entering woods near the cabin in Owls Head, New York, on Saturday.
A bloody sock and other items found at the cabin, which is reportedly owned by corrections officers, were tested for DNA, and Guess said police had “100% assurance they were in that area.“
More than 1,000 law enforcement officers scoured 194 square km (75 square miles) in rugged Franklin County, east of the prison.
Authorities are focused on the Adirondack Mountains, the largest wilderness area east of the Mississippi River, state department of environmental conservation captain John Streiff said.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report.
