New twist on old file-in-the-cake trick
A maximum-security prison guard believed to have delivered tools inside frozen meat to two inmates before they escaped was arrested yesterday, authorities said.
Gene Palmer faces charges including promoting prison contraband and tampering with physical evidence, state police said. He was to be arraigned in Plattsburgh.
Inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt were reported missing from the Clinton County Correctional Facility in upstate Dannemora on June 6. Authorities say they cut through the steel wall at the back of their cells, crawled down a catwalk, broke through a brick wall, cut their way into and out of a steam pipe and then sliced through the chain and lock on a manhole cover outside the prison.
Prison employee Joyce Mitchell has also been charged with helping them escape. The prison tailor shop instructor has pleaded not guilty and remains in custody.
Clinton County district attorney Andrew Wylie said Mitchell told investigators she smuggled hacksaw blades, a screwdriver and other tools into the prison by placing them in frozen hamburger meat. He said she then placed the meat in a refrigerator in the tailor shop where she worked and Palmer took the meat to Sweat and Matt, who were housed in a section where inmates are allowed to cook their own meals. Wylie said the guard didn’t know the tools were inside the meat.
Palmer had been placed on leave on Wednesday. At the time, his attorney, Andrew Brockway, told Plattsburgh television station WPTZ he was completely forthcoming during several hours of questioning on Sunday. ‘‘I can 100 per cent confirm that he did not know they were planning on breaking out of the prison,’’ Brockway said.
Searchers hunting for the escaped killers yesterday were contending with steep slopes, thick woods, sticky bogs, biting bugs and the possibility that the pair on the lam from prison for 19 days are armed. Police said they remain almost certain that Sweat and Matt spent time recently at a hunting camp about 32 kilometres west of the correctional facility near Owls Head. A hunter said he saw a figure bolting from the cabin on Sunday morning.
The 195 square kilometres searchers focused on is on the northern edge of the sprawling Adirondack Park and includes woods so thick that visibility is only a few feet in some sections, authorities said.