By Tom Precious
The Buffalo News
ALBANY — The two convicted murderers on the loose after a daring weekend escape from a northern New York prison had been assigned to a special honor housing block, which may have increased their opportunities to break out of the maximum-security facility.
Investigators are looking at outside construction contractors and civilian employees, including a woman who may have known at least one of the escapees, as they search for answers in a manhunt across the United States and into Mexico and Canada.
A review Monday of state records shows at least a dozen open contracts for construction work at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, Clinton County, where Richard W. Matt, 49, and David P. Sweat, 35, escaped sometime late Friday night or early Saturday. The contractors’ work could be significant because investigators are trying to determine how the inmates got hold of power tools they used to cut their way out of their cells and into the bowels of the prison before emerging outside the facility’s walls through a manhole.
Matt was convicted of torturing and dismembering a North Tonawanda businessman who was his boss and, later, killed a man in a Mexico bar while he was on the lam.
It is uncertain when Matt and Sweat were assigned to the honor block, according to two sources with knowledge of the special privileges. Officials said the two likely had been working on the escape route for some time, making their preparations at night.
No one had ever escaped from the maximum-security unit since it was opened in 1865.
State prison officials would not disclose where the two convicts lived in the facility, nor would they confirm an Albany Times Union report that they both worked in a prison tailor shop.
The construction contracts range from relatively minor work, such as a $50,000 tower rehabilitation project, to $1.1 million in shower construction in various housing units. There is a $270,000 contract for lighting and ceiling work, a $2 million water main replacement project, window rehabilitation and a $471,000 rehabilitation of E Block in Building 2, along with a $1.8 million replacement of roof systems on several buildings.
It is uncertain how many employees of private contractors may have worked in and around the prison grounds.
A State Police spokesman said Monday that the agency was pursing 300 leads about the whereabouts of the two escapees – doubled from Sunday when Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced a reward of $100,000 for information leading to the arrest of the two men.
In 1986, Matt escaped from the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden by scaling a fence. He then lived for a time in Mexico while on the run, leading Cuomo to say Monday that the fugitives could be south or north of the border or anywhere in between. They had at least six hours on the run before prison officials noticed they were missing early Saturday morning.
Cuomo did not directly answer a question about reports that a female civilian employee at the prison was being interrogated as a possible accomplice to the two convicts. Officials later said a large number of prison and outside contractor employees are being interviewed.
“I think they had help. I don’t believe they could have acquired the equipment they needed to do this without help,” Cuomo said on NBC’s “Today” show during a flurry of appearances on early morning national news programs Monday morning.
“I would be shocked if a guard was involved, and that’s putting it mildly,” Cuomo told CNN. “But we’re looking at the civilian employees now and the private contractors to see if possibly if a civil employee or contractor was assisting the escape because they wouldn’t have equipment on their own, that’s for sure.”
Matt has been serving a 25-year-to-life sentence for murder, robbery and kidnapping of his former employer in Niagara County. He would not have been eligible for parole until January 2032.
In 2011, Matt received a prison disciplinary charge for smuggling, tattooing and false information and was sent for 30 days to a special housing unit with loss of recreation, package and phone privileges. In 1993, he entered the state prison system on an attempted-burglary conviction in Erie County, for which he received a sentence of two to four years. He was released March 14, 1996, returned as a parole violator Aug. 15, 1996, and was released again the next year. He also has a 1986 conviction for criminal possession of a forged instrument and escape following his breakout from the Erie County facility.
Sweat has been in state prison since 2003 on a first-degree murder conviction for killing a Broome County deputy sheriff. His prison disciplinary run-ins came last September when he was charged with interference and harassment; there were no further details. He had a previous criminal conviction of attempted burglary in Broome County and received a prison sentence of up to four years and six months.
Beau Duffy, a State Police spokesman, said Matt was transferred to Clinton in 2008; Sweat arrived at Clinton in 2003. He could not say Monday when the two men began to be housed in the two adjoining cells from which they escaped. Linda Foglia, a spokeswoman at the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, declined to provide any information about the housing of the two inmates, their prison jobs or information about any construction work done at the prison, citing the ongoing investigation.
On Monday, Cuomo described an elaborate process that the men used to escape. “We don’t know if it was one day, five days, 10 days, but they deceived the guards during the night shift while they were out working on the catwalk and through the tunnels and then coming back to their cell in the morning,” he said on Fox’s “Good Day New York.”
The manhunt includes more than 250 law enforcement personnel, including State Police, prison guards, the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, state forest rangers and police from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Police continued to warn New Yorkers to avoid any contact if they suspect seeing the two men and to report information about any signs of trespass, burglary or vehicle break-ins or theft by calling 800-GIVETIP or crimetip@troopers.ny.gov.