The 2-week-old search for two escaped murderers focused on a rural area about 20 miles away from the upstate New York prison they fled, authorities said on Monday, after evidence reportedly showed the pair had been inside a burglarized cabin.
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The search for David Sweat and Richard Matt is focused about 20 miles west of the prison at the northern edge of the Adirondacks with evidence found at a hunting cabin. New York State Police wouldn’t say what items they recovered, but did confirm that the items are now at the lab for tests.
The Buffalo News reported late Sunday that “forensic evidence” of Sweat’s had been found in the vicinity of the sighting.
“I believe we will get these guys”, Gov. Cuomo said. More than 1,000 law enforcement officers from state, local and federal agencies are involved in this search, including Conservation Officers and Forest Rangers from the Department of Environmental Conservation, officers from the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, the FBI, US Marshals Service, US Customs and Border Protection, Vermont State Police, Plattsburgh Police, and the Clinton and Franklin County Sheriff’s Department.
Guess also said police had received security camera footage from the area that showed men resembling Matt and Sweat, but that the sightings remain unconfirmed.
Hundreds of law enforcement authorities have searched campsites, houses, and wooded areas surrounding the prison since the convicts’ escape, to no avail.
“He definitely didn’t plan to help them escape and had no prior knowledge that they were going to attempt an escape”, his attorney, Andrew Brockway said.
“There are a lot of camps located along Wolf Pond Road”, she said.
“We always joke about it. We’re so close to the prison – that’s the last place that anyone who escaped would want to be”, Jessica Lashway said as she waited for the bus with her school-age children a few doors down from the hulking, fortress-like prison.
Meanwhile, Guess also confirmed a correctional officer at the prison has been taken off the job in connection with the escape.
Mitchell has visited his wife in jail, where she is being held on charges she supplied hacksaw blades that allowed Sweat and Matt to cut through their cell walls, slither through a steam pipe and emerge from a manhole outside the prison walls.
Corrections officer used killers as “sources”. Sweat was serving a life sentence for killing a sheriff’s deputy. New York State Police said Monday morning that the search in the towns of Amity and Friendship in western New York had concluded. He was placed on administrative leave on Friday “as part of the ongoing investigation into the escape”, according to a DOCCS spokesperson, who declined to elaborate.
And the governor noted that Matt had a connection to Mexico: He was convicted of killing a man there while on the lam after being accused of dismembering his Buffalo-area boss in 1997, the crime for which he was serving 25 years to life. She has pleaded not guilty.
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And this time of year, she added, mosquitoes and deer flies can be unbearable.
