For months before he and another convicted killer broke free from their maximum security prison in upstate New York, David Sweat explored the recesses behind his cell and diligently chiselled his way toward freedom, according to a new report based on interrogations of the recaptured inmate.
New details of Sweat and Richard Matt’s spectacular 6 June escape from Clinton correctional facility in Dannemora, New York, come from Sweat’s own account to investigators, according to the New York Times, which anonymous officials with knowledge of the conversations published in a report on Monday.
That report matches accounts provided to local media sources, also by sources speaking on condition of anonymity. No official report has yet been made public.
An escape plan had gestated in Sweat’s mind for months, he allegedly told investigators, but took off when he became neighbors with Matt in late January. He then is said to have used rags to handle hacksaw blades – allegedly smuggled inside hamburger meat by prison employee Joyce Mitchell – and sawed holes in the back of his and Matt’s cells.
Mitchell was later charged with helping the inmates escape. Police said she had “befriended” the inmates; Mitchell’s husband said she admitted having shown “a little affection” for them.
Mitchell is also said to have given brownies and cookies to other prison staffers to convince them to give Matt and Sweat more freedoms, a law enforcement official told the Buffalo News: “It’s almost nonsensical.”
The inmates also appear to have benefited from complacency by prison staff, the reports say. Sweat said that he waited for guards to fall asleep on the night shift, the Times reported, and guard Gene Palmer was eventually charged with bringing contraband to the inmates. Palmer has admitted giving a screwdriver and pliers to Matt in exchange for art that the inmate painted, and even helped Matt sell a portrait of Tony Soprano for $2,000 to a Florida woman.
When another inmate on the “honor block” heard sawing at night, sources told the Times, Matt explained away the sound by saying he was stretching canvas or constructing a frame.
The pair encountered a dark maze of catwalks, pipes, walls and electrical work behind their cells, Sweat allegedly told investigators. Always back in bed for the 5.30am count by the guards, investigators said he searched the guts of the prison by night, probing for a passage out; he explored a dead-end sewer pipe, transplanted a fan to battle the heat from steam pipes, and brought a second set of clothes to work in.
Finally, the investigators told the Times, he chiselled his way into the right pipe at the right time, when the prison shut down certain steam pipes for spring. Over a month he cut out a hole that he and Matt could crawl through, and Matt lost 40 to 50 pounds to fit in the pipe, according to prison officials.
They then used a sledgehammer, probably left underground by a construction worker, an official told CNN, to bash their way out of a manhole beyond the prison walls.
Outside, their arranged getaway driver – Mitchell – was nowhere to be seen, having checked herself into a hospital in a panic. Sweat and Matt took off into the woods.
The three-week manhunt that followed led more than a thousand federal and state investigators through swampy forests, over mountains, to the shores of Lake Champlain across state lines into Pennsylvania and Vermont. Ultimately, clues from burglarized cabins and forest trails brought officers swarming around the original search area.
While trampling through the forest, the pair smoked marijuana and listened to stories about the manhunt on a radio, a police source with knowledge of the interrogations told ABC.
Sweat, who turned 35 on the lam, told investigators that he felt Matt, 14 years his senior, was holding him back, according to CNN. They argued about the older man’s stamina and predilection for drink, and eventually parted ways.
Armed with a stolen shotgun and apparently growing desperate after weeks of little food in soggy, rural terrain, Matt shot at an RV on the road. Nearby he broke into a cabin and left its contents, including a bottle of gin, conspicuously out of place.
“Every hunting camp they broke into, he would be looking for alcohol,” a law enforcement source told the Buffalo News.
Between the bullet and the bottle investigators had enough to close in. Officers shot Matt three times in the head after he refused to drop the gun. He died on 26 June.
Two days later and only a few miles from the Canadian border, a solitary state policeman met Sweat out on the road. Sweat took flight, and the officer shot him twice. Sweat is now in solitary confinement at a different prison in Romulus, New York.
Matt was serving 25 years to life in prison for the murder and dismemberment of a former employer. Sweat was given a life sentence for the murder of a sheriff’s deputy in 2002. The pair is said to have intended to slip across the border into Mexico, as Matt had done years earlier to escape charges in the US.
According to the law enforcement sources quoted by the Times, braggadocio creeps into Sweat’s account of his escape, and he is said to have joked that it was more impressive than the fictional escape depicted in The Shawshank Redemption. Mitchell’s lawyer said she was “ecstatic” to hear of Sweat’s capture.
“The nightmare is finally over,” Governor Andrew Cuomo declared after Sweat’s capture, but the embarrassing escape has left unfinished business for the state and prison. The prison’s superintendent, a 36-year veteran of the department of corrections, has filed for retirement at the end of the month, and 11 other prison staffers were placed on leave.
The FBI is also investigating the prison for possible corruption and drug trafficking.
