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 Richard Matt, a 49-year-old convicted murderer, was killed by U.S.
Border Patrol officers after he was spotted in a wooded area in the
town of Malone, the New York State Police said.
Police were still combing the vicinity for Matt's accomplice, David
Sweat, a 35-year-old who was imprisoned for killing a sheriff's
deputy.
“You never want to see anyone lose their life, but I would remind
people that Mr. Matt was an escaped murderer from a state prison,"
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at a news conference. "Mr. Matt
killed two people that we know about.”
Authorities said they have no evidence to confirm the whereabouts of
the second escapee but have no reason to believe he was not with
Matt recently and still in the area.
Malone lies 27 miles (43 km) northwest of the Clinton Correctional
Facility in Dannemora, where the convicts staged their elaborate
escape and were discovered missing on June 6. The manhunt has
involved as many as 1,100 law enforcement officers.
 Dozens of law enforcement vehicles, some of them equipped with
floodlights, had converged on the area, signaling the search for
Sweat would go on all night if necessary.
Jeff Tough, who lives within the search perimeter across from Lake
Titus, said state troopers were lining State Route 30 at regular
intervals.
“I feel relieved, to be honest," Malone resident Matt Maguire said
while stopped at a roadblock after learning one of the escapees had
been killed. "Everybody’s been on edge for 20 days.”
CABINS BURGLARIZED
Police started focusing the search in the Malone area, just south of
the Canadian border, when two burglaries were reported this week at
backwoods cabins, and items believed to have been dropped by Matt
were found, said Joseph D'Amico, superintendent of the New York
State Police.
Earlier Friday, authorities were alerted to a third break-in near
Malone. When officers arrived at that cabin, they confronted Matt in
the woods outside, D'Amico said, and warned the convict to drop the
shotgun he was holding.
When Matt failed to comply, the Border Patrol agents shot and killed
him, even though the escapee fired no shots of his own, the
superintendent said. He declined to elaborate.
In making their escape three weeks ago, Matt and Sweat cut through
the walls of their adjoining cells and sneaked along the catwalk to
a steam pipe, slithered through the pipe and popped out of a manhole
outside the prison walls.
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Two prison workers have been charged with aiding them. Gene Palmer,
57, a corrections officer for 27 years, was suspended without pay
from his job, the New York State Department of Corrections and
Community Supervision said.
He is accused of bringing hacksaw blades and a screwdriver bit to
the inmates, hidden in frozen hamburger meat supplied by Joyce
Mitchell, 51, a training supervisor in the prison tailor shop. She
also has been charged in connection with the escape.
Palmer also let the men slip behind their cell walls onto a prison
catwalk to hide contraband and alter electrical wiring so they could
cook in their cells, according to court documents.
Matt was convicted in the 1997 torture, murder and dismemberment of
his boss in Tonawanda, New York, and was sentenced to 25 years to
life.
Sweat was serving a life sentence after his conviction in the
shooting death of a Broome County Sheriff's deputy on July 4, 2002.
Immediately after the escape, the manhunt centered on an area east
of Dannemora along the shore of Lake Champlain. Last weekend, the
search shifted to New York's Southern Tier along its border with
Pennsylvania. Officers were deployed to that area, where Sweat once
lived, after a series of unconfirmed sightings of the pair, but the
effort proved fruitless.
(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg and Katie Reilly in New
York, Allison Lampert in Montreal; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing
by Jeffrey Benkoe and Eric Beech)
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