As convicted murderers David Sweat and Richard Matt dug away at the walls inside the Clinton Correctional Facility in New York just over a year ago, they thought about Andy Dufresne, the main character in the famed prison escape film The Shawshank Redemption.
“We were laughing and joking about how Andy did it in 20 years; I think we might be able to do it in 10.” Sweat said, according to a new report released Monday.
Working at the wall with a sledge hammer and makeshift pick, the two slowly chipped away at a brick wall.
“I was having a hell of a time,” Sweat said.
READ MORE: Complete coverage on the New York prison escape
The 150-page report from the New York inspector general detailed how on Saturday, June 6 just after 5:00 a.m., a corrections officer found Sweat’s and Matt’s empty cells.
The escape led to a massive three-week manhunt involving more than 1,300 officers from local, state, federal, and Canadian law enforcement agencies, costing nearly $23 million.
READ MORE: 2nd escaped N.Y. prisoner, shot and captured by police near Canadian border
The search for the two suspects ended on June 26, 2015 when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent fatally shot Matt in a small town near the Canadian border. Sweat was caught two days later on June 28, 2015 after being shot by a state police officer.
What led to the escape?
A year after the Hollywood-style escape, New York’s inspector said in her scathing report how systemic security failures and chronic complacency allowed the pair to succeed.
“The extent of complacency and failure to adhere to the most basic security standards uncovered by my investigation was egregious and inexcusable,” Inspector General Leahy Scott said in a statement.
“These systemic deficiencies led to the escape of two convicted murderers, striking fear in communities and placing brave law enforcement personnel at risk, at a high cost to the state.”
READ MORE: Prison chief, 11 others put on leave in aftermath of 2 escaped killers
Among the findings in the report: that more than 400 different required security checks were not done.
“Any one of which, if conducted properly, would have detected Sweat’s absence and instantly foiled the escape plot,” Scott said.
A search by prison staff of Matt’s cell on March 21, 2015 missed a gaping 18-by-14 inch hole in the wall of Matt’s cell, and a similar hole in Sweat’s cell.
Other failures included “grossly inadequate” night counts, officers didn’t adequately screen employees entering and exiting the prison, and the prison had stopped doing regular tunnel inspections.
A prison employee is seduced
Included in the report, is the relationship between the two convicts and Joyce E. Mitchell.
Mitchell, the civilian supervisor in the prison tailor shop, is serving a seven-year sentence for smuggling in hacksaw blades and other tools to help the men escape, along with Bacardi 151 and Wild Turkey she had poured into plastic water bottles.
READ MORE: Woman who helped 2 killers escape from New York prison says she was depressed
Sweat told investigators that Mitchell wanted the duo to kill her husband. However, she claimed it was Matt’s idea to murder her husband, and pretended to agree to the plan out of fear that Matt would kill her husband, either inside or out of the prison.
The night of the escape
According to Sweat, it took 85 nights to dig and hammer his way through the brick, steel and concrete until they reached freedom.
And because the two had no blueprints of the tunnel’s walls and underneath the prison they had to rely on trial and error. It took months before they found a series of pipes leading through the prison’s outer wall. They emerged from a maintenance hole about six metres outside the prison.
“You know, go down each block, check the backs of the blocks, check each wall … get on each side of the steam pipes, so that you could see … whether there was another entrance or exit anywhere,” Sweat said in the report.
READ MORE: N.Y. inmate spent months exploring tunnels under prison before escape
When the tunnels were finally ready, Sweat and Matt made a break for it on the evening of June 5 just after 11 p.m.
Again in true Hollywood fashion they left dummies on their beds and notes for corrections officers.
“You left me no choice but to grow old & die in here. I had to do something,” Matt wrote on a notepad, according to the report.
A second note, written on Matt’s artwork depicting fictional mob boss Tony Soprano, read “Time to Go Kid!” with the date “6-5-15.”