Police: Solo escapee faces tough time
MALONE, N.Y. — With his fellow jail escapee killed, the surviving convicted murderer who pulled off an elaborate breakout from a maximum-security prison three weeks ago could have a tougher time eluding the army of searchers scouring miles of thick woods in far northern New York, police said Saturday.
Richard Matt — who once vowed never to be taken alive — was fatally shot during an encounter with border patrol agents Friday about 30 miles west of the prison he escaped from with David Sweat on June 6.
Sweat, 35, remained on the lam Saturday as about 1,200 searchers focused intensely on 22 square miles encompassing thick forests and heavy brush around where Matt was killed.
Police hoped Sweat would succumb to the stress of little sleep, scant food and biting bugs.
The solo escapee also could have an even tougher time now without someone to take turns resting with and watch his back, said Clinton County Sheriff David Favro.
“Now it ’s a one-man show, and it makes it more difficult for him,” Favro said. “And I’m sure fatigue is setting in for him as well, knowing the guy he was with has already been shot.”
The manhunt suddenly broke open Friday afternoon when a border patrol team discovered Matt and shot him after he failed to heed a command.
Matt had a shotgun that was believed to have been taken from a cabin. The pair had apparently been relying on the region’s many hunting camps and seasonal dwellings for supplies.
Matt — who turned 49 the day before he died — was serving 25 years to life at Clinton County Correctional Facility for the killing of his former boss.
Across the state in Buffalo, the man who prosecuted Matt’s murder case seven years ago was not surprised by Matt’s death. Louis Haremski, the special prosecutor for Matt’s 2008 murder conviction, said snitches had told deputies back then that Matt had a plan to break out of the jail he was in at that time. Matt had sworn then that, if he escaped, he wouldn’t be captured alive.
“I guess maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Haremski said. “I wasn’t looking for him to be killed, but it was not an unpredictable event.”
Matt’s body was taken to Albany Medical Center for an autopsy.
Sweat was serving a sentence of life without parole in the killing of a sheriff’s deputy in Broome County in 2002. Franklin County Sheriff Kevin Mulverhill said investigators believe he may be armed.