This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/07/new-york-prison-escape-search-widens-murderers-power-tools

The article has changed 13 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 6 Version 7
Murderers who escaped New York prison left note saying: 'Have a nice day' Murderers who escaped New York prison left note saying: 'Have a nice day'
(35 minutes later)
Two convicted murders cut through steel and shimmied through a steam pipe to escape a maximum security prison near the Canadian border – and left behind a taunting note urging authorities to “Have a nice day”. Two convicted murderers who cut their way out of a steel-walled maximum security facility in northern New York state were on the run on Sunday, sparking an international alert and a desperate manhunt involving helicopters, bloodhounds and hundreds of armed officers.
The elaborate escape on Saturday from an upstate New York prison had hundreds of local, state and federal law enforcement officers searching through the night for one man imprisoned for killing a sheriff’s deputy and another who dismembered his boss. The inmates, Richard Matt and David Sweat, were described as dangerous and their escape plan “extraordinary”, after they cut neat holes in pipes in the prison’s heating system and had the time and nerve to leave a note bearing a smiley face and the words “Have a nice day”.
Governor Andrew Cuomo said Richard Matt and David Sweat staged “a really elaborate, sophisticated operation” that ended at a manhole cover blocks away from the prison – and must have been overheard by someone. They escaped in the early hours of Saturday morning from Clinton correctional facility, about 20 miles south of the border with Canada. More than 24 hours later, there was still no information about their whereabouts.
“They were heard; they had to be heard,” Cuomo told ABC on Sunday. New York governor Andrew Cuomo asked for the public’s help in tracking the men down, while warning people not to approach them.
The men had filled their beds inside the Clinton correctional facility with clothes to appear as though they were sleeping. They left behind a note, a yellow square of paper with a smiling, bucktoothed face and with the words: “Have a nice day.” “They were heard; they had to be heard,” Cuomo told ABC, about the men’s use of power tools to break through the walls of their adjoining cells.
Roadblocks were set up in the area, which is about 20 miles from the Canadian border, and bloodhounds and helicopters were being used to track down the men, officials said. Authorities were trying to establish how the men acquired power tools, cut through the walls of their cells and shimmied through a series of pipes and tunnels until they emerged to freedom through a manhole cover on a public street.
Cuomo on Saturday described the two as extremely dangerous. He asked the public to notify the police should they encounter the men. The Clinton correctional facility is based in the small town of Dannemora. Although the intense search was focused in the vicinity of the town, authorities in Canada were on the alert. Ontario provincial police officers were ordered to patrol with “heightened vigilance”.
“It’s very important that we locate these individuals,” he said. “They are dangerous and we want to make sure they don’t inflict any more pain and any more harm on New Yorkers.” Cuomo repeatedly emphasized that this was the first escape from the maximum security wing at Clinton since the facility was built in 1865.
Sweat, 34, is serving a sentence of life without parole after he was convicted of first-degree murder for killing a sheriff’s deputy in Broome County, New York, on 4 July 2002. Matt, 48, is serving a sentence of 25 years to life for the kidnapping, dismemberment and killing of his former boss in 1997. New York state police were joined in the manhunt by investigators from the FBI, heavily armed Swat teams, forest rangers and local police. K-9 teams searched with bloodhounds and other trained dogs. Three helicopters made aerial sweeps, one of them from the federal Department of Homeland Security.
The two men’s adjoining cells were empty during a morning check, said Anthony Annuci, the acting state corrections commissioner. “It was an elaborate plot,” Cuomo said. “We went back and pieced together what they did. It was sophisticated, involving drilling through steel walls and steel pipes, so it was not easy to accomplish.”
“A search revealed that there was a hole cut out of the back of the cell through which these inmates escaped,” Annucci said. “They went on to a catwalk which is about six stories high. We estimate they climbed down and had power tools and were able to get out to this facility through tunnels, cutting away at several spots.” The governor published pictures of the suspects and warnings to the public on his Twitter account. Both inmates are from towns in upstate New York and were serving long sentences for brutal killings.
Investigators were probing how the men acquired the tools – and if any were missing from contractors at the prison. Matt, 48, was serving 25 years to life for beating to death and then dismembering his former boss, William Rickerson of North Tonawanda, New York, in 1997. Matt had worked for Rickerson at a food warehouse but had been fired. He kidnapped the 67-year-old, whose torso and legs were found floating in the Niagara River.
Officials said it was the first escape from the maximum-security portion of the prison, which was built in 1865. Matt fled to Mexico in 1998 and there stabbed a man to death outside a bar. He was extradited to the US in 2007 to stand trial for Rickerson’s murder and was convicted in 2008.
A Canadian broadcaster, CTV News, reported that officials were concerned the men could attempt to enter Canada through Ontario or Quebec, and safety alerts were broadcast to police officers in the Greater Toronto Area. He has a history of jailbreak. In 1986 he escaped from the Erie county jail by scaling a fence. He was recaptured – it was not immediately clear on Sunday what crime he had been imprisoned for.
Sweat is white, 5ft 11in, with brown hair and green eyes, and weighs 165lbs, police said. He has tattoos on his left bicep and his right fingers. Sweat, 34, was serving life without parole for the murder of a deputy sheriff on 4 July 2002.
Matt is white, 6ft, with black hair and hazel eyes, according to police. He weighs 210lbs and has tattoos including “Mexico Forever” on his back, a heart on his chest and left shoulder and a Marine Corps insignia on his right shoulder. Broome County deputy Kevin Tarsia was driving alone in the early hours when he spotted two men acting suspiciously in a park near the border with Pennsylvania. It was Sweat and another man, dividing the spoils of a burglary. When Tarsia challenged the men they shot him dead, hitting him with 22 bullets.
Nearly a decade after the 1997 kidnapping, murder and dismemberment of his former boss, William Rickerson, in upstate New York, Matt was returned to the US from Mexico where he had fled to and where he was arrested for fatally stabbing another American outside a bar in a robbery attempt. He was convicted in 2008 of Rickerson’s death. At Clinton prison on Friday night, the inmates had had their last “standing count” for the night at 10.30pm. Prisoners are checked every two hours during the night, but it is a simple, visual check to see they are in their cells. Cuomo said the two inmates had made replicas of themselves with clothing to make it look as if they were sleeping with sweatshirts with the hoods pulled up, “a usual” sleeping style for many inmates.
Sweat and another man shot Deputy Kevin Tarsia 15 times in 2002, shortly after using a pickup truck to break into a Pennsylvania woman’s house to steal rifles and handguns, authorities have said. Their disappearance was not discovered until the next full standing head count, at 5.30am on Saturday.
Steven Tarsia, brother of Kevin, said finding out his brother’s killer had escaped “turns your world upside-down all over again”. Many residents of Dannemora and surrounding settlements were reportedly staying inside and locking their doors, although others ran their businesses and let their children play outside as normal, according to Dannemora mayor Michael Bennett.
He said just the other day, he had been trying to remember the names of the men responsible for his brother’s death, and “I couldn’t remember their names”. Investigators were searching in dense forest and farmland with abandoned buildings, as well as using road blocks and conducting house-to-house checks.
“All of a sudden, I remember them again,” he said.
Tarsia told the Associated Press on Sunday he couldn’t imagine how the men could have gotten power tools and escaped without help, but added: “I don’t know why anybody would help them.”