DANNEMORA, N.Y. – Two convicted murderers used power tools to cut through steel pipes at a maximum-security prison near the Canadian border and escape through a manhole, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday.
“It was an elaborate plot,” Cuomo said after joining law enforcement authorities to retrace the prisoners’ escape route from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y.
He said Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 34, “are two dangerous individuals.”
Sweat is serving a sentence of life without parole after he was convicted of first-degree murder for killing a Broome County sheriff’s deputy in 2002. Matt is serving a sentence of 25 years to life for kidnapping a man and beating him to death in 1997.
The two men’s adjoining cells were empty during a morning check, said Anthony Annuci, the acting state corrections commissioner.