MALONE, N.Y. -- One of two convicted murderers who escaped from an upstate New York maximum-security prison three weeks ago was shot and killed Friday in a wooded area about 30 miles from the prison, officials said.
Authorities tracked down and killed Richard Matt after a person towing a camper reported that there was a bullet hole through the back of it, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state police said. David Sweat hadn't been spotted by Friday night, Cuomo said.
The shooting of the camper led officers to a cabin in Malone, where they discovered the smell of gunpowder, said Joseph D'Amico, superintendent of the New York State Police. There were indications someone had recently been there and fled out the back door, he said.
While searching the property, officers heard coughs and detected movement, and tactical teams found Matt in the woods.
"They verbally challenged him, told him to put up his hands. And at that time, he was shot when he didn't comply," D'Amico said.
A 20-gauge shotgun was found on Matt, who didn't fire the weapon, D'Amico said. Matt was shot by a Border Patrol agent from Vermont, said U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
It was unclear whether Matt and Sweat were together at the time of the shooting, authorities said. The pair escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility together earlier this month. Cuomo called them "dangerous, dangerous men."
Police blocked off roads in the area Friday as officers hunted for Sweat. The search area for him was centered on Titusville Mountain State Forest in Malone and spanned 22 square miles, down from 75 square miles earlier this week, authorities said.
Matt and Sweat used power tools to saw through a steel cell wall and several steel steam pipes, bashed a hole through a 2-foot-thick brick wall and squirmed through pipes to escape from the prison in Dannemora, near the Canadian border, officials have said.
The men used dummies fashioned from sweatshirts to trick corrections officers into believing they were in bed and asleep. The men, who were in adjoining cells, cut through the walls of their cells, then made their way into the bowels of the prison, cutting through steel, and emerged from a manhole into a neighborhood of vacant storefronts and clapboard houses just outside the prison.
Officials said the inmates made their escape late on June 5 or early June 6. The corrections officers did not discover that the prisoners were missing until a bed check at 5:30 a.m. June 6.
Sweat was serving a sentence of life without parole in the killing of a sheriff's deputy in Broome County in 2002. Matt was serving 25 years to life for the killing and dismembering of his former boss. They were added to the U.S. Marshals Service's 15 Most Wanted fugitives list two weeks after getting away.
A civilian worker at the prison was accused of helping the killers flee by giving them hacksaw blades, chisels and other tools.
Prosecutors said Joyce Mitchell, a prison tailoring shop instructor who got close to the men while working with them, had agreed to be their getaway driver but backed out because she felt guilty for participating. Mitchell pleaded innocent June 15 to charges including felony promoting prison contraband.
Authorities also said Mitchell had talked to the men about killing her husband, Lyle Mitchell, as part of the plot.
On Wednesday, authorities charged Clinton correction officer Gene Palmer with promoting prison contraband, tampering with physical evidence and official misconduct. Officials said he gave the two prisoners the frozen hamburger meat Joyce Mitchell had used to hide the tools she smuggled to Sweat and Matt.
Palmer's attorney said he had no knowledge that the meat contained hacksaw blades, a bit and a screwdriver.
Dannemora, built in 1845, occupies just over 1 square mile within the northern reaches of the Adirondack Forest Preserve and is surrounded by forest and farmland. The stark white perimeter wall of the prison, topped with guard towers, borders a main street in the village's business district.
The escape was the first in history from Clinton Correctional's maximum-security portion.
In July 2003, two convicted murderers used tools from a carpentry shop at Elmira Correctional Facility to dig a hole in the roof of their cell and a rope of bedsheets to go over the wall. They were captured within three days, and a subsequent state investigation cited lax inmate supervision, poor tool control and incomplete cell searches.
Information for this article was contributed by John Kekis, Michael Virtanen, Michael Hill, Jake Pearson and Larry Neumeister of The Associated Press and by William K. Rashbaum and Benjamin Mueller of The New York Times.
A Section on 06/27/2015