Hunt for killers expands to Vermont; prison staffer under suspicion

DANNEMORA, N.Y. – The manhunt for two escaped killers expanded to campsites and boat slips in Vermont on Wednesday, and State Police said a female prison staff member being questioned may have had a role in helping the men.

At a news conference outside the maximum-security prison, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin said investigators learned that the inmates had talked before last weekend’s breakout about going to neighboring Vermont.

“We have information that suggests they thought New York was going to be hot. Vermont would be cooler, in terms of law enforcement,” Shumlin said on Day 5 of the search. “And that a camp in Vermont might be a better place to be. We do not.”

He and other officials would not say how authorities learned that information.

New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico also said that a prison employee – identified in news reports as Joyce Mitchell, a training supervisor at the prison tailor shop – had befriended the killers and “may have had some role in assisting them.”

He would not elaborate.

Mitchell’s son, Tobey Mitchell, told NBC that she checked herself into a hospital with chest pains Saturday. He said she wouldn’t have helped the inmates escape.

Using power tools, inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt cut through a steel wall, broke through bricks and crawled through a steam pipe before emerging through a manhole in the street outside the 3,000-inmate Clinton Correctional Facility in far northern New York, about 20 miles from the Canadian border.

The breakout was discovered early Saturday, meaning the inmates may have had a head start of several hours, Cuomo said.

Authorities suspect they had help from the inside in obtaining the power tools. Unions representing guards and civilian staff members at the prison said many have been questioned by investigators but no one has been suspended, disciplined or charged.

Vermont authorities are patrolling Lake Champlain and areas alongside it, Shumlin said. Cuomo urged the people of Vermont to be on the alert and report anything suspicious, warning: “Trust me, these men are nothing to be trifled with.”

More than 450 federal and state law enforcement officers were taking part in the search, including customs agents, federal marshals and park rangers.