DANNEMORA, N.Y. — The manhunt for two escaped killers expanded to campsites and boat slips in Vermont on Wednesday, and State Police said a female prison staff member being questioned may have had a role in helping the men.
At a news conference outside the maximum-security prison, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin said investigators learned that the inmates had talked before last weekend’s breakout about going to neighboring Vermont.
“New York was going to be hot. Vermont would be cooler, in terms of law enforcement,” Shumlin said on day five of the search. He and other officials would not say how authorities learned that information.
New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico also said a prison employee — identified in news reports as Joyce Mitchell, a training supervisor at the prison tailor shop — had befriended the killers and “may have had some role in assisting them.” He would not elaborate.
Mitchell’s son, Tobey Mitchell, 21, told NBC that his mother checked herself into a hospital with chest pains Saturday. He said she wouldn’t have helped the inmates escape.
Using power tools, David Sweat, 34, and Richard Matt, 48, cut through a steel wall, broke through bricks and crawled through a steam pipe before emerging through a manhole in the street outside the 3,000-inmate Clinton Correctional Facility in far northern New York, about 20 miles from the Canadian border.
The breakout was discovered early Saturday, meaning the inmates may have had a head start of several hours, Cuomo said.
Authorities suspect they had help from the inside in obtaining the power tools. Unions representing staff at the prison said many have been questioned.
