TORONTO – It’s been almost seven weeks since convicted murderers David Sweat, 35, and Richard Matt, 49, escaped from a maximum security prison in upstate New York and more details have emerged about the daring prison break.
The New York Times reports that before the escape on June 6 from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., Sweat spent months exploring tunnels and pipes underneath the prison.
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Sweat and Matt escaped from the prison after cutting through their cell walls, slicing a hole in a steam pipe that led to a manhole cover outside the grounds.
The escaped killers led U.S. authorities on an extensive manhunt that ended with Matt being shot and killed by a federal agent on June 26. Sweat was shot and captured just two days later roughly 2.4 kilometres from the Canadian border.
According to The Times, Sweat told investigators from his hospital bed that he would wait each night until guards had done a head count before crawling through a hole he had cut in the back of his cell to explore the tunnels beneath the prison. He would return to his cell each morning before the 5:30 a.m. count.
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Sweat described himself as the architect of the escape and spent months searching through pipes often ending in dead-ends, the newspaper said. He noted that at one point he found a sewer pipe, which was the escape route used in the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption.
Sweat and Matt used tools – a stole sledgehammer and a hacksaw allegedly smuggled into prison by a correctional employee – to cut a hole into a steam pipe that led to a tunnel running to a spot outside the prison walls. The process reportedly took more than four weeks to complete and Sweat even kept a second set of clothes in the tunnel to work in.
In the aftermath of the escape the prison’s superintendent and 11 other prison staffers were placed on administrative leave. Two Clinton prison workers have also been charged with helping in the escape.
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