DANNEMORA, N.Y. (AP) — The intense manhunt for two escaped murderers in
far upstate New York has hit its 10th day as a woman charged with
helping the killers flee from prison heads back to court
Prosecutors say Joyce Mitchell, a
prison tailoring shop instructor who had befriended the inmates, had
agreed to be the getaway driver but backed out because she still loved
her husband and felt guilty for participating.
"Basically,
when it was go-time and it was the actual day of the event, I do think
she got cold feet and realized, 'What am I doing?'" Clinton County
District Attorney Andrew Wylie said Sunday. "Reality struck. She
realized that, really, the grass wasn't greener on the other side."
Mitchell
was charged with helping Richard Matt and David Sweat escape from the
Clinton Correctional Facility near the Canadian border on June 6. She is
due in court Monday morning in Plattsburgh.
Wylie said there was
no evidence the men had a "Plan B" once Mitchell backed out, and no
vehicles have been reported stolen in the area.
 |
| Add caption |
That
has led searchers to believe the men are still near the
maximum-security prison in Dannemora. At the same time, Gov. Andrew
Cuomo cautioned that for all anyone knows the convicts could be in
Mexico, where one of the inmates had fled after killing his boss in the
late 1990s.
Mitchell, 51, was charged Friday with supplying hacksaw blades,
chisels, a punch and a screwdriver. Her lawyer entered a not guilty
plea on her behalf. She has been suspended without pay from her
$57,000-a-year job overseeing inmates who sew clothes and learn to
repair sewing machines at the prison.
Wylie said Sunday that the
killers apparently cut their way out using tools stored by prison
contractors, taking care to return them to their toolboxes after each
night's work.
 |
| Add caption |
"They had access, from what we understand, to other
tools left in the facility by contractors under policy and were able to
open the toolboxes and use those tools and then put them back so nobody
would notice," he said.
The
convicts used power tools to cut through the back of their adjacent
cells, broke through a brick wall, then cut into a steam pipe and
slithered through it, finally emerging outside the prison walls through a
manhole, authorities said.
Workers
on Sunday welded shut a manhole at the base of a wall on the side of
the prison where the two men escaped. They also sealed two other
manholes on the street near the prison, including the one from which the
convicts climbed out.
More than 800 law enforcement officers went door-to-door over
the weekend and combed the rural area signs of the escapees. Residents
were very much on edge, with some saying they were keeping guns handy.
But there was also an outpouring of support for the search effort. A
restaurant urged people to tie blue ribbons around trees and mailboxes.
"The
locals have been awesome," said Sgt. Barry Cartier of the Franklin
County Sheriff's Department, part of a crew from a neighboring county
working 12-hour shifts. "They come around with food all the time. We've
got too much to eat."
Sweat,
35, was serving a life sentence without parole for killing a sheriff's
deputy. Matt, 48, was doing 25 years to life for the 1997 kidnap,
torture and hacksaw dismemberment of his former boss.
___
Associated Press video journalist Joseph B. Frederick in Cadyville, New York, contributed to this report.
