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Cuomo Admits Officials Have No Idea Where To Find Escaped Murderers
By
Ben Yakas
Published Jun 12, 2015
Modified Jun 12, 2015
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Jun 12, 2015
Modified Jun 12, 2015
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The manhunt for the two convicted murderers who escaped from an upstate prison last weekend is continuing today, with officials focusing on the five mile area around the Clinton Correctional in Dannemora. Despite reports yesterday that dogs had picked up the scent of the two men—Richard Matt and David Sweat—near the prison (and that they may have separated), police are basically in the same befuddled boat they have been in since the dramatic escape.
"We had tips today that they were in Vermont," said a frustrated Gov. Cuomo. "We had tips today that they were in the immediate area. We're following every tip. That's all I can say. They could either be four miles from the prison, or they could be in Mexico. You just don't know."Cuomo was asked whether he felt embarrassed that the search had stretched into nearly a week now: "You know this was the first escape in the prison’s history, from the maximum security portion of it? So, you can't really say — there's nothing to be embarrassed about, first escape since 1865, it's not a bad record, you know."
It has now been revealed that Cuomo was warned that neither guards nor inmates felt safe at Clinton Correctional. Assembly Correction Committee Chairman Daniel O’Donnell wrote a letter to Cuomo on Dec. 19th expressing his concerns about the facility, and asking the governor to equip guards with body cameras. “It is also one of the prisons with the highest number of unusual incident reports involving assaults,” O’Donnell wrote in the letter.
"The proposal was to put cameras on guards, not inmates, so this wouldn’t have changed anything," an administration official explained to the News. “This is a serious situation and shouldn't be used as an opportunity to push an agenda.”
Sweat, 34, was imprisoned for life for killing a sheriff's deputy in Broome County, and Matt, 48, was serving a 25-year sentence for killing and dismembering an upstate businessman. During their escape, they managed to cut through their cell's steel walls, traverse the catwalks in the prison's infrastructure, hack into a steam pipe that wasn't in use, and finally climb out through a manhole on the other side of the prison walls.
The prison realized they were missing after a 5:30 a.m. bed check this past Saturday when guards realized the bodies in their beds were actually dummies made out of sweatshirts. The pair are reportedly in civilian clothes, not prison clothes, because they were in the "Honor Block" at Clinton Correctional.
Experts say that the daring escape—which involved cutting through a cell wall and a steam pipe—was done with a high degree of professionalism. "It tells me either they are very good at what they do, with a lot of good training. Or they had very good equipment. Or somebody else cut the hole for them," Larry Jeffords, owner of Jeffords Steel and Engineering in upstate New York, told AP. "I'm in the steel business and I've said before I could have sent my best man up there with an acetylene torch or a plasma cutter and I couldn't have a better hole," Jeffords added.
Tagged
clinton correctional
david sweat
police
prison break
richard matt
upstate ny
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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