Convicts aborted first breakout from prison
DANNE MORA, N.Y. • One of two convicted murderers who broke out of a maximum-security prison last month told police they conducted a practice run the night before their daring escape, even poking their heads out of a manhole before deciding they were too close to nearby homes, a district attorney said.
Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie said David Sweat, 35, told police from his hospital bed he masterminded the June 6 breakout from Clinton Correctional Facility and began working on it in January.
The escape by Sweat and Richard Matt, 49, launched a massive 23-day manhunt in forested northern New York terrain involving more than 1,100 law enforcement officers.
Matt was shot and killed by a border patrol officer June 26. Sweat was wounded Sunday by a state trooper near the Canadian border. He was listed in fair condition Wednesday.
Steven Racette, the $132,000-a-year superintendent of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, has been removed from his job, along with Stephen Brown, deputy superintendent in charge of security, said a state official.
The New York Corrections Department said three executives and nine other staff members were placed on paid leave as part of a departmental review of the escape. It did not identify them. The department said it is bringing in new leadership.
Cherie Racette, the superintendent’s wife, told the Adirondack Daily Enterprise her husband was given the option of taking a demotion or retiring and chose retirement. She said he and two deputies are being made scapegoats by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Wylie said Sweat claimed he used only a hacksaw blade — not power tools, as officials had reported — to cut holes in the steel walls of his and Matt’s adjoining cells as well as a steam pipe they crawled through.
Sweat said he prowled the tunnels within the maximumsecurity prison from 11:30 p.m. to 5 a.m. — after lights-out and before the morning head count — in the days preceding the escape. He claimed to have done all the work himself, saying the older Matt was not in shape.
Authorities said the two reached the tunnels via narrow corridors behind cellblocks providing access to the bowels of the prison.
Officials have said a tailor shop employee, Joyce Mitchell, got close to Sweat and Matt, and supplied them with hacksaw blades and other tools. She has pleaded not guilty.