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 As authorities searched for a fourth day for Matt, 48, and his
fellow convicted killer David Sweat, 34, details emerged showing
that the older inmate had twice tried to escape prison, once
successfully.
Large numbers of officers converged on Tuesday on the town of
Willsboro, New York, about 40 miles (64 km) south of the Clinton
Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, from which they had
escaped, following a reported sighting of the pair.
"We are continuing to pursue that lead down in Willsboro but it
would be inaccurate to say they are cornered," said Beau Duffy,
spokesman for New York State Police.
Duffy declined to comment on whether anyone was being questioned.
Police investigating Matt's getaway from the prison, just 20 miles
(30 km) from the Canadian border, were questioning a woman who
worked in the prison tailor shop where the men had menial jobs. She
was identified in various media outlets, including ABC News, as
Joyce Mitchell. According to her Facebook page, Mitchell is an
industrial training supervisor at the prison.
She was hospitalized with "severe chest pains" on Saturday, the day
the prison break was discovered, her son Tobey Mitchell told NBC
News.
Matt's son, Nicholas Harris, 23, of Angola, New York, told the
Buffalo News his father had a history of prison escapes.
"He has escaped before," he was quoted as saying.
Matt fled upstate New York's Erie County Correctional Facility in
1986. He scaled a wall and gate topped with razor wire that slashed
his forearms and remained on the loose for five days before he was
caught at a family apartment in Tonawanda, New York, near Buffalo,
his son told the newspaper.
'IT'S LIKE THEY CAN'T KILL HIM'
A decade later, to avoid arrest for the 1997 torture, murder and
dismemberment of his boss in Tonawanda, Matt fled to Mexico, where
he was soon locked up for a fatal barroom fight. He tried to escape,
making it to the roof of a Mexican prison before he was shot in the
shoulder, his son told the newspaper.
"This guy has bullet holes on his body. He's been shot like nine
times. It's like they can't kill him," Harris was quoted as saying
in the Buffalo News.
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Matt was eventually convicted in the beating death of his boss,
William Rickerson, in a trial that took place under heightened court
security, with a police sniper posted outside the courthouse and
Matt forced to wear an electric stun belt. He was sentenced to 25
years to life.
The Clinton escape, the first in the prison's 170-year history,
involved cutting through steel walls at the back of their adjoining
cells, crawling through a steam pipe and emerging from a manhole in
a residential community. They left behind a note saying "Have a nice
day."
Two residents said they spotted the fugitives in their back yard at
12:30 a.m. on Saturday, ABC News reported. They were holding what
appeared to be a guitar case, which other media reported was kept in
one inmate's cell and may have been used to hide tools used in the
escape.
"We're just lost. We don't know where we are. We're on the wrong
street," the resident told ABC News the men responded when
confronted.
That encounter occurred about five hours before guards realized the
pair was gone.
Law enforcement officers who have tracked Matt in the past describe
him as devious and calculating. The two inmates had managed to
maintain good enough behavior to gain a place on the prison's "honor
block," where looser restrictions allowed them to wear and keep
clothing other than their prison uniforms.
Their green prison uniforms were found in a pipe the men used to
climb out of the manhole, according to media reports.
Sweat was serving a life sentence after his conviction in the
shooting death of a Broome County Sheriff's deputy on July 4, 2002.
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Additional reporting by Katie
Reilly; Editing by Doina Chiacu and James Dalgleish)
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