Nearly two weeks after their elaborate escape from a New York prison, more than 1,400 leads have failed to locate two dangerous murderers on the run, US agents admitted Wednesday.
Richard Matt, 49, and David Sweat, 35, escaped 12 days ago from a maximum security jail in New York state, in a carefully rehearsed, elaborate prison break that has been likened to a Hollywood movie.
New York police released doctored photographs of the two escapees showing how they could look 12 days on with facial hair growth.
They used hacksaw blades supplied by a 51-year-old married female prison worker, who reportedly had a relationship with both men, and equipment stolen from a toolbox left by construction workers.
Joyce Mitchell, who worked in the tailor shop at the Clinton Correctional Facility in the village of Dannemora, is in custody charged with facilitating their escape.
She told investigators that the two escapees also plotted to kill her husband, Lyle, Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie said.
Lyle Mitchell has been questioned but there is no information he had prior knowledge of the escape or helped, Wylie added.
Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York
Officials said his wife had been moved 150 miles (240 kilometers) south to a jail in the town of Plattsburgh to Rensselaer County where she is under constant supervision.
She allegedly confessed to giving the pair tools and to planning to meet them with a getaway car, but changed her mind at the last minute and checked into a hospital suffering from a panic attack.
Local, state and federal law enforcement have scaled back the ground search in the immediate vicinity around the prison, turning the focus nationwide and alerts have gone out on the Mexico border.
“We have no information that they have been able to leave the area. That being said, it doesn’t mean that they haven’t been able to escape this area,” said state police captain Robert LaFountain.
Police said Wednesday that 600 officers were on the ground — a reduction of 25 percent from 800 earlier in the week — in a search that has reportedly cost $1 million a day.
The manhole used by the two convicted murderers to escape Clinton Correctional Facility
Despite more than 1,400 leads, there have been no confirmed sightings of the pair.
A portion of state highway 374 is being reopened after more than 16 square miles (more than 40 square kilometers) were searched.
There is a $100,000 reward for information leading to the murderers’ arrest, and officials called on the public not to take their eye off the ball if they spot anything suspicious.
“I think we need to let the community know that since we don’t have concrete leads indicating they may be outside the area, we still need to stay motivated,” said Clinton County sheriff David Favro.
“We still need the assistance of the eyes and ears giving us your information,” he said.
Matt, six feet (1.83 meters) tall with multiple tattoos, was serving a sentence of 25 years to life for the 1997 kidnapping and dismembering of his former boss in a 27-hour ordeal.
He fled to Mexico after the murder and killed another American there, before being sentenced to 20 years and extradited back to New York.
Sweat was serving a life sentence without parole for murdering a sheriff’s deputy in New York state in 2002 when he was 22.
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