'They could be long gone:' tiny clues but vast scale in hunt for escaped murderers

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/13/dannemora-new-york-inmates-escaped-murderers

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Locals call this remote area the North Country, and for police hunting two escaped murderers this week its scale has been daunting.

Six million acres of forest and lakes to sweep in the heart of the Adirondacks. Some 330 buildings and cabins fell within the most recent search “hotspot”, just 25 miles from the Canadian border. Two men. Zero confirmed sightings.

That is the challenge that has faced law enforcement since convicted murderers Richard Matt and David Sweat made an audacious escape on 6 June from the maximum security prison wing of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, in the far reaches of upstate New York.

On Friday, investigators were fervently hoping they were closing in on the men, in an area three miles from the prison where dogs had picked up their scent at a gas station, and later in dense forest where they may have slept.

Late in the day, Joyce Mitchell, a female prison employee, was arrested over her alleged role in the escape, on charges of promoting prison contraband and criminal facilitation. She later appeared in court, and pleaded not guilty.

But the true search area remained exactly as it had been from 5.30am the day Matt and Sweat escaped, when guards did a standing head count at the prison and discovered dummies rather than people in their beds, and a hole in the back wall of their adjoining cells: Canada, Mexico and the entire United States in between.

The search began with an alert to Canadian and Mexican authorities and the US federal government from the New York state police.

Matt, 48, sports a variety of tattoos, one of which says Mexico Forever, and he had escaped there before, after a previous murder case.

To the north of the prison it is possible to walk into Canada without border controls, locals attest, by hiking through the undergrowth, or paddling across in a canoe, easily stolen when outdoors types leave them on wooden docks or the banks of the hundreds of lakes in the region.

On the day of the break-out, investigators pieced together the details of the intricate escape, sending police patrols to fan out from the prison, with few clues as to where the inmates went after reaching freedom, or how they were traveling.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo came to at the prison and retraced the prisoners’ steps through the holes they cut into heating system pipes. He also warned the public about the danger of confronting the two murderers who, respectively, tortured and dismembered an ex-boss (Matt) and with an accomplice shot dead a sheriff’s deputy (Sweat) with 22 bullets.

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Sunday saw the first breakthrough in the investigation, as the authorities homed in on civilian prison employee Joyce Mitchell, who worked as a seamstress in the tailoring facility in the prison. Matt and Sweat had also worked there, and they had allegedly developed close relationships with her.

Mitchell was suspended from work and began talking to the authorities. She claimed that she had intended to help the inmates not only break out of the prison, but get away once they emerged from the manhole cover in a street in Dannemora where their escape labyrinth led.

But she had allegedly panicked at the last minute and failed to turn up with a vehicle for the escapees. She would be arrested and charged on Friday.

As Sunday progressed, investigators became more optimistic that the men had been forced to escape on foot, out into the picturesque but rugged Adirondacks.

For the rest of Sunday and into Monday, the authorities mustered personnel and were seen criss-crossing the country roads for miles around the prison.

The FBI joined the hunt, assisting New York state police troopers, forest rangers, local police, dog teams and three helicopters, one supplied by the Department of Homeland Security.

The region around Dannemora features small towns and villages, large dairy farms and vast areas of beautiful forest mixing coniferous and deciduous trees in a verdant blanket across foothills and mountains.

Stormy weather with heavy downpours in the last week had swollen streams and rivers, while warm sunshine in between brought the season’s first stand-up paddle boarders and kayakers out on to the lakes. Some lakes are built up around their shores, others are much more remote, with barely a cabin or a dock to interrupt the wooded banks that harbor moose, black bears, deer and wild turkeys.

But the summer season is barely getting under way in the region and there are thousands of summer homes, cabins and rustic huts around the lakes and dotted through the woods that are not yet being used, potentially providing two inmates on the run with good shelter.

On Monday, Mitchell was still cooperating with the police and investigators were poring over several hundred tips called in by the public, trying to determine which were most credible.

The authorities admitted they still had no idea where Matt and Sweat were or where they were headed. There had been no reports of any break-ins or car thefts that could be linked to the fugitives.

Then, after dark on Monday, a resident of Willsboro, a small town 40 miles south-east of Dannemora, who was driving in the area reported spotting two men walking along the roadside. When approached, they fled across a field into the dark.

By Tuesday morning, 500 police and forest rangers had descended on the Willsboro area. Residents were unsure whether the two men spotted were the inmates – or local lads carrying beer for a get-together and scarpering because they were underage, or, less likely, drug dealers.

The small town is centered on the Bouquet River, which runs into the magnificent Lake Champlain, which divides the states of New York and Vermont. The Bouquet is fished for trout, salmon and bass and locals like to hunt in the woods. Most carry guns – and they slept with them loaded on Tuesday night.

Police, with handguns drawn, went house to house in Willsboro and checked barns, cabins and campsites. They walked in lines through fields and woods. SWAT teams with AK-47 assault rifles and body armor took part in the patrols. Residents checked their basements, garages and barns.

There was no further sighting of the men and they were not found. On Wednesday morning, armed teams could still be seen gathering down country lanes outside Willsboro, ready to walk through farmland and wilderness. But many personnel had already been moved back to the area around Dannemora, where investigators tried to retrace the steps the escapees may have taken after emerging from the manhole cover.

On Wednesday afternoon, the authorities announced that the inmates could have fled to Vermont. They emphasised, however, that they really did not know. It became clear this was still a wild goose chase.

Darrin Giglio, chief investigator at the private-eye firm North American Investigations, based in New York City, said that the longer the hunt went on with no success, the more likely it was that Matt and Sweat would get away. But if their getaway ride failed to show up and they were trying to survive in the woods during the search, they faced a huge challenge.

“It looks like they had a great plan to escape but what was their plan after they reached the outside? What was their contingency if Joyce Mitchell fell through? It seems they may not have had one. In that case, it’s only a matter of time before they get caught. Living ‘off the grid’ is very difficult, if they are trying to evade capture in the woods, without survival expertise,” said Giglio.

“They need a food source. How are they going to hunt, trap and clean meat in the wilderness? How do they know which plants are poisonous? How are they going to mask their scent?” he added.

But even as law enforcement swarmed the area, in the vast reaches of the countryside “they could be long gone”, Giglio said.

After a week on the run, they had not resorted to taking a hostage or carjacking a vehicle. If they managed to disappear for several weeks, then they would start to think about slipping back into society, he said.

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As the trail went cold in Willsboro and immediately around the prison in Dannemora, Thursday brought a new “hotspot”.

Bloodhounds had apparently picked up the scent of one or both of the men in several locations close to Dannemora – a gas station a mile from the prison, a sandwich shop and a patch in the woods three miles away, where there was evidence of people sleeping in the open, a boot print and some discarded food wrappers.

Armed state troopers, rangers and the FBI formed a personnel and vehicle cordon 500-strong around a 30-acre area near Cadyville and West Plattsburgh on Thursday. Residents were ordered indoors, schools closed and police blocked the road between Dannemora and West Plattsburgh.

Patrols walked through the woods, officers 50ft apart, searching on a grid system.

New York state police reported that they were searching every structure within the zone.

But there were 330 “structures” just within the search zone, such as barns, hunting huts, holiday cabins and residential houses, CNN reported, using detailed mapping of the area.

Clinton County district attorney Andrew Wylie said Mitchell was still cooperating fully with the police, answering questions without a lawyer. But as the intense manhunt continued around West Plattsburgh, Friday dawned with no success.

Investigators revealed that Mitchell’s cellphone had been used to contact some of Matt’s “associates”. It is not clear who this referred to.

Dr Mary Ellen O’Toole, a former FBI agent and now the director of the forensic science programme at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, said that relatives may be reluctant to help the men.

“These are two very, very violent men. For them to call up relatives and say, ‘Hey, my ride’s not here, could you come get us’ may not work for them. People are afraid of them, probably even their own families,” she said.

Matt was serving 25 years-to-life. Sweat was serving life without parole.

“The families of guys like this breath a real sigh of relief when they are put behind bars. They have spent their lives being aggressive and parasitic within their families and it would not surprise me that no family members of the two men are going to get involved with them to help them after their escape,” she said.

If the men were surviving rough in the region around the prison, however, O’Toole said she feared what would happen if they were eventually cornered.

“The chances of this ending badly are very high,” she said.