Search for inmates goes back to woods
Published 9:38 am Wednesday, June 24, 2015
BELLMONT, N.Y. — Hundreds of searchers checked ATV trails and logging roads and went door-to-door in far northern New York trying to close in on two murderers who escaped from a maximum-security prison more than two weeks ago.
Spurred on by fresh evidence, law enforcement officers methodically combed through heavy woods on Tuesday looking for inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt.
Authorities began committing heavy resources to the remote woods this week after leads from a hunting camp that was apparently broken into led to “good evidence, DNA data” regarding the inmates, said Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Roadblocks were in place Tuesday around the remote hamlets of Owls Head and Mountain View in an area of rugged terrain about 20 miles west of Clinton County Correctional Facility.
Investigators conducted grid searches in the thick, mosquito-infested forests and also checked railroad beds, said Franklin County Sheriff Kevin Mulverhill. He said people were going to seasonal properties looking for signs of intruders.
“If they’re here, we’re going to find them,” Mulverhill said. “I really believe it’s going to come down to old-fashioned police work and the public.”
Cuomo said, “I believe we will get these guys.” But the governor also cautioned that they’ve had a number of leads and the more than 1,000 officers involved in the search have to follow each as though it’s the one that’s going to bring authorities to the escapees.
Meanwhile, the husband of the woman accused of helping the inmates escape said in an interview aired Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show that he’s “absolutely 100 percent” certain the pair would have killed him and his wife if his wife had been their getaway driver, as initially planned.
Lyle Mitchell said his wife, Joyce Mitchell, told him Sweat and Matt offered to give her pills to knock him out so she could pick them up after they escaped, but she refused because she said she still loved her husband.
“Do I still love her? Yes. Am I mad? Yes,” Lyle Mitchell said in the interview aired Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show.