A prison worker has admitted to investigators that she provided vital assistance to two convicted killers who escaped a maximum-security prison in upstate New York last weekend, according to a published report.
The Albany Times-Union reported late Thursday that 51-year-old Joyce Mitchell told New York State Police that she gave Richard Matt and David Sweat access to a cell phone and smuggled power tools into Clinton Correctional Facility, where she worked as a supervisor in the prison's tailoring shop. The Associated Press, citing a person close to the case, reported that Mitchell had agreed to be the getaway driver for the two men, but failed to show up.
Mitchell's confession was reported on the same day that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo vowed that state law would come down hard on any prison system employee who crosses the line with inmates.
"If you do it, you will be convicted, and then you'll be on the other side of the prison that you've been policing, and that is not a pleasant place to be," Cuomo said. The governor also said investigators are "talking to several people who may have facilitated the escape."
Mitchell has not been charged in connection with the escape, but the Times-Union, citing a law enforcement official briefed on the case, reported that authorities expected to charge her with multiple crimes.
The paper also reported that Mitchell had been investigated in recent months by the state corrections department's inspector general after a fellow prison worker complained that she had gotten too close to Sweat and Matt. That investigation did not result in any discipline. Prison employees and correction officers are prohibited from having relationships with inmates or performing favors for them.
The Times-Union also reported that the search for the men had been beset by internal strife between federal marshals and State Police officials. The cause of the quarrelling was not disclosed in the report.
Earlier Thursday, bloodhounds had picked up the men's scent heading east from Dannemora after forest rangers who stopped at a convenience store late Wednesday discovered a trail leading to an area of the woods where the grass had been matted down. Authorities, including the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service, descended on the town of Cadyville.
Law enforcement officers walking an arm's length apart were conducting a grid search through a cordoned-off area consisting of mud, woods, thick underbrush and several houses, Sheriff David Favro said. He said there had been no reports of stolen or abandoned vehicles, break-ins or abductions.
Matt was serving 25 years to life for the 1997 kidnap, torture and hacksaw dismemberment of Matt's 76-year-old former boss, whose body was found in pieces in a river.
Matt and an accomplice stuffed William Rickerson in a car trunk in his pajamas and drove around with him for 27 hours because he wouldn't tell them the location of large sums of money he was believed to have.
According to testimony, Matt bent back the elderly man's fingers until they broke and later snapped Rickerson's neck with his bare hands.
After the killing, Matt fled to Mexico, where he killed a man outside a bar.
Sweat was doing life without parole for his part in the 2002 killing of sheriff's Deputy Kevin Tarsia, who was shot 15 times and run over after discovering Sweat and two accomplices transferring stolen guns between vehicles.
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