DANNEMORA, N.Y. (AP) – Other inmates at the state prison in Dannemora may have been in a position to see or at least hear two convicts making their escape using power tools to cut steel, break through bricks and slice open steam pipes.
But in a world where snitching can get you killed, investigators ran all too predictably into a wall of silence.
“Nobody heard anything. Nobody saw anything,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said sarcastically this week about the questioning of inmates. “They’re all heavy sleepers.”
Prison experts and former inmates say breaking through that silence is tough but not impossible. And in a case as notorious as the weekend escape of two murderers from the maximum-security Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, investigators may be willing to make deals.
“There’s certainly a group of people in every prison or every jail who are just waiting to be snitches,” said University at Buffalo Law School professor Charles Ewing, a forensic psychologist. “But it needs to be done very discreetly.”