By Denise Raymo, Joe LoTemplio and Ashleigh Livingston
Press-Republican
MOUNTAIN VIEW — An intrusion and possible sighting at a remote hunting camp prompted the search for two escaped killers to focus on the small community of Mountain View.
Richard Matt, 48, and Sweat, 35, escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora on June 6, launching a massive manhunt that has had area residents living on edge for more than two weeks.
No capture had been made as of early today, but this is a strong lead, sources told the Press-Republican on Sunday night.
POLICE SWARM AREA
Mountain View, a hamlet of the Town of Bellmont with a population of 2,444, was abuzz with action throughout the night.
Surplus military trucks and four-wheelers rolled in, and light towers were set up at intersections all along routes 26 and 27, with trooper cars at each crossroad.
Terry Bellinger, owner of Belly’s Mountain View Inn in nearby Owls Head, said police had been combing the area for the past few days, he said but their presence definitely increased Sunday.
HUNTING CAMP
Bellinger told the Press-Republican that a string of several seasonal camps are located off Wolf Pond Road on Black Cat Mountain.
He said a man, armed with a handgun, went to check on his camp on Saturday and saw a jug of water and a jar of peanut butter on the table.
Bellinger said the camp owner yelled for whoever was inside to come out.
The person saw a man run out the back but could not tell whether it was one of the fugitives, said Bellinger, who noted the camps in that area are empty most of the year and often have canned goods in them.
LONG NIGHT
Press-Republican reporters watched the buildup of law-enforcement personnel from early evening through late night, operated from a command post at Owls Head Fire Station.
State Police officer Fred Atkinson Jr. told the Press-Republican late Sunday that it was going to be a long night.
“Everything is fluid,” he said. “We had to move a lot of assets very fast.”
Black Cat Mountain is located between Mountain View and Standish, according to Roger Livernois, a longtime member of the Owls Head Fire Department. Firefighters from his department were not called into service during the search but did lend use of their station.
Standish, a hamlet in the Town of Saranac, is about 17 miles from Clinton Correctional in the Village of Dannemora and not far from the Clinton County border with Franklin County.
HEAVY RAIN
It was raining hard Sunday night, and flashes of lightning split the sky.
State Police troopers and other searchers headed out wearing yellow slickers and carrying maps and bottled water.
Upstate Correctional and Franklin Correctional, prisons located in nearby Malone, towed in more portable lights as darkness descended. A busload of officers from Coxsackie Correctional Facility rolled up to join the search, which involved many correction officers from the North Country and other prisons as well.
State Department of Environmental Conservation forest rangers, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Marshals Service and a SWAT unit from Vermont were among many teams on site, with about two dozen police cars parked at nearby Owls Head Fire Station.
Sheriff’s departments from Clinton and Franklin counties were using armored vehicles to search logging roads in that area.
The State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision had a mobile unit there, as well.
Bellinger, who watched State Police vehicles whiz by his business all night, said he wasn’t bothered by the influx of law-enforcement officers, who, he said, are just doing their jobs and are trained to deal with this sort of situation.
“I’m not going to let two criminals change my life,” he added.
Late Sunday night, a new wave of State Police was arriving at the command center, to give a break to those who had been out all day.
The intense search continues this morning.
THE BREAKOUT
Matt and Sweat used power tools, over time, to cut a hole in the back of each of their adjacent cells, authorities say.
Sometime between the 10:30 p.m. standing check on June 5 and morning bed check at 5:30 a.m. June 6, they went through the holes and climbed down a six-story catwalk in the innards of the prison.
They broke through a wall, cut through a steam pipe, shimmied to a manhole and cut the lock that held the cover in place.
They climbed out to freedom on Bouck Street, within sight of the prison.
KILLERS
Sweat, originally from Binghamton, killed Broome County Sheriff’s Deputy Kevin Tarsia on July 4, 2002. The officer was shot 15 times and run over by a car as Sweat and his accomplices tried to flee after stealing guns from a shop.
He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life with no possibility of parole. He had been at Clinton County Correctional since Oct. 30, 2003.
Matt was sentenced to 25 years to life after his conviction in Niagara County on three counts of murder, three counts of kidnapping and two counts of robbery.
He kidnapped, tortured and killed North Tonawanda businessman William Rickerson, 76, his former boss, on Dec. 3, 1997. Matt fled to Mexico.
There, in 1998, he was imprisoned for the stabbing death of an American businessman.
Matt was eventually extradited to the United States and convicted in Rickerson’s murder. He had been at Clinton since July 10, 2008.
Only one other time in New York in the past 25 years has a maximum-security escapee remained on the loose longer than Matt and Sweat.
On March 26, 1991, four inmates went over the wall at Eastern Correctional in Napanoch. Two were captured an hour later, one was rounded up after three days and 10 hours, and the final man, George Gatto, eluded capture for 20 days.