New York governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday that if the escape of two murderers from a maximum security prison “was in a movie script you would have said it was overdone”, as the criminals remained on the loose more than two days after guards discovered them missing from the jail near the Canadian border.
Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 34, used power tools to saw a path through an elaborate system of heating pipes and utility tunnels and make their way out of the Clinton Correctional Facility. They eventually climbed through a padlocked manhole cover in a street in the village of Dannemora.
The effort is believed to have taken days and to have required power tools to which inmates should not have had access.
“This was a really elaborate plot, if it was in a movie script you would have said it was overdone,” said Cuomo on Fox5’s Good Morning New York, calling the men dangerous and desperate.
“These are really desperate individuals with long backgrounds and terrible crimes,” Cuomo said. “They’ll be desperate because they do not want to go back.”
A $50,000 reward was issued for information leading to the whereabouts of each. More than 250 law enforcement officers were searching for the men.
Cuomo appeared on four shows in an hour. The killers may have had as much as a six-hour head start. They were last counted at the prison on Friday night, and were discovered missing early on Saturday.
Offering no concrete answers about where the men may be, Cuomo speculated that they may have fled to Canada, Mexico or another state – or perhaps stayed in the surrounding area.
Search continues for Dannemora prison escapees. Please call 1-800-GIVETIP if you have any information. pic.twitter.com/VnWN8wov6k
— NewYorkStatePolice (@nyspolice) June 8, 2015
Sweat is about 5ft 11in, with brown hair and green eyes. He has tattoos on his left biceps and right fingers.
He was convicted of murder after shooting a sheriff’s deputy in the early hours of 4 July 2002. The deputy reportedly approached Sweat in a park while he was dividing the spoils of a burglary among two other men. He has lived at Clinton Correctional since 2003, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Matt was sentenced to 25 years to life on three counts of murder and kidnapping and two counts of robbery, after he killed and dismembered his boss in 1997 before fleeing to Mexico. He transferred to Clinton in 2008.
Matt is described as 6ft and weighing 210lbs with black hair and hazel eyes. “Mexico Forever” is tattooed on his back, a heart is tattooed on his chest and left shoulder, and a Marine Corps insignia is tattooed on his right shoulder.
The two began their escape by cutting a through a steel plate at the back of their adjoining cells. They entered a catwalk used by utility workers, shimmied six stories down utility pipes and broke through a 2ft-thick wall.
That led to another series of tunnels near the prison’s power station, where they cut through a 2ft-wide steam pipe, which they squeezed through before reaching another set of tunnels below manhole covers on the street. There, they cut through a chain and padlocked manhole cover, said Cuomo on Monday morning. The governor walked the escape route at the weekend.
The men also left a message – a sticky note that said “Have a nice day” with a smiley face.
One more close up of the note left on pipe that 2 inmates used to escape Clinton Correctional in #Dannemora pic.twitter.com/GFYqFOOE8e
— Gareth Rhodes (@garethtrhodes) June 7, 2015
The effort is believed to have taken at least days, during which the men placed dummies made out of clothes in their beds, duping guards.
Dannemora, a village with a population of 1,100 according to its clerk, is about an hour and 45 minutes south of Montreal, Canada, by car. Clinton Correctional Facility houses about 2,800 inmates, the clerk said.
