Investigators seek accomplices, answers in prison escape

As investigators seek accomplices who may have helped two convicted murderers escape a maximum-security New York prison, many other questions remain about the brash, elaborate breakout.
How could nobody hear prisoners slicing through a steel wall, breaking through brick and cutting their way in and out of a steam pipe or why did those who heard stay silent? How did the inmates hide the hole, the dirt and dust from work that likely took days to accomplish? Did they have access to blueprints or other inside information to chart their path through the bowels of the prison?
And as a manhunt for the missing prisoners stretches into a fourth day, there is a deepening unknown: "what the rest of the plan was," says Rick Mathews, the director of the University at Albany's National Center for Security and Preparedness.

"Where were they going to go, and how were they going to do it?"
As investigators questioned prison workers and outside contractors Monday to try to find out who may have supplied power tools used in the escape, law officers questioned drivers and searched trunks at checkpoints near the Clinton Correctional Facility in far northern New York.
But authorities said the escaped prisoners, David Sweat and Richard Matt, could be anywhere perhaps Canada or Mexico.

With authorities warning that the men were desperate and dangerous, some local residents were nervous over the escape from the 3,000-inmate prison in the middle of the small town of Dannemora, close to the Canadian border. But others figured the killers were long gone.

"We always joke about it. We're so close to the prison - that's the last place that anyone who escaped would want to be," Jessica Lashway said as she waited for the bus with her school-age children a few doors down from the hulking, fortress-like prison.
Sweat, 34, and Matt, 48, ultimately emerged through a manhole to make their escape, discovered early Saturday, authorities said. They had stuffed their beds with clothes to fool guards making their rounds and left behind a taunting sticky note that read: "Have a nice day."
The prisoners surely had help, and the noise must have been heard, Gov Andrew Cuomo said, though officials have given no details on how the men managed to avoid detection.

Cuomo said other inmates claimed they didn't see or hear anything. "They're all heavy sleepers," he said sardonically. State Assemblyman Daniel O'Donnell, chairman of the Correction Committee, said any inmate who heard drilling wouldn't dare report it.