Photograph by Matthew Healey, from Alamy
A mother accompanied her child to the school bus with a rifle slung over her shoulder. Guns were loaded and propped near doors and windows. People slept with hammers and baseball bats. They locked their houses, camps, cars and trucks—some for the first time ever. Armed officers lined roadways, searched passing vehicles, and swept forests and fields while the chop of helicopters drowned out the sounds of Adirondack springtime.
That was a decade ago, when two convicted killers escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility, in Dannemora—a feat that hadn’t happened since the prison’s imposing concrete wall was erected. It was also a feat that, despite a region dotted with prisons, seemed impossible. Especially at maximum-security Clinton Correctional, opened in 1845 when it was known as Little Siberia, an impenetrable place where the most notorious criminals were locked up, far from where most of them had committed their crimes.
But Richard Matt and David Sweat had done it. With hacksaws they cut through a cell wall and a steampipe, emerging from a manhole on a residential street in Dannemora. Matt was serving a 25-years-to-life sentence for strangling and dismembering an elderly man in Buffalo. Sweat was doing life in prison for shooting a Broome County Deputy Sheriff, then running him over with his car.
These men were dangerous and we were terrified.
Looking back at the events of June 6th through the 28th—after Matt was killed and Sweat was captured—seems “surreal,” a word now-retired Major Charles Guess, New York State Police Troop B Commander, uses when recounting one of the more challenging stretches of his career. If you tuned in to the dozen or so press conferences while the inmates were on the lam, you likely remember the incident commander with his unmistakable crewcut and rigid confidence, assuring the public that the escapees would be apprehended.
Guess recalls, “The level of threat couldn’t have been higher. These guys were the worst of the worst. There was every reason to believe they would be desperate and ruthless.
“We were concerned about them taking someone hostage, holing up, hiding out in a home,” he says. For that reason, residents in Dannemora and beyond were forced to move through perimeter checks and roadblocks; armed tactical teams searched their backyards.
“Where would they have gone? How far could they travel by foot? Were they headed north or south? Any one of 100 different scenarios existed.”
There was speculation that the convicts had fled to Mexico or had crossed into Canada. But “unless we had tangible evidence that they had left the area,” says Guess, “we had to act and run things like they’re here. Our mindset was to keep our heads in a swivel, you never know where they’re going to pop up.”
More than 1,500 members of law enforcement—state police, county sheriffs, forest rangers, corrections officers, border patrol and FBI agents—joined the search, many slogging into swamps and pushing through tangled woods. They followed some 3,400 leads. “We pleaded with folks—see something, say something. That’s what broke this case wide open,” says Guess.
On day 21, an off-duty corrections officer discovered that someone had broken into his Malone hunting camp. Nearby, Matt was soon shot and killed. Two days later Sweat was spotted along Coveytown Road, in Constable, two miles from the international border. As he fled, he was shot and taken into custody.
Guess says he’s forever grateful for “the way it all turned out,” thanks to partnerships with law enforcement and the North Country community, a sentiment that’s reflected in his 2017 book, Relentless Pursuit: Inside the Escape from Dannemora, New York State’s Largest Manhunt. You can also watch Ben Stiller’s 2018 Showtime series Escape at Dannemora, which includes a cameo by Guess, who served as the show’s law-enforcement consultant.
But how did the escape happen in the first place? Now we know that prison personnel—Joyce Mitchell and Gene Palmer—smuggled the hacksaw blades and other contraband in to Matt and Sweat. And after the manhunt, a state Office of the Inspector General’s investigative report outlined failures and fixes for Clinton Correctional. Among its recommendations were front gate checks, night counts of inmates, cell searches, metal-detector use, and tunnel and catwalk inspections.
At press time 5,000 corrections officers at 42 state prisons—including Clinton—have just ended a three-week strike over complaints of staff shortages, excessive overtime and a dangerous work environment. Despite the inspector general’s report, conditions at Dannemora are still under question, if not at a tipping point.
