Dannemora: ten years on – Part the third

Wherein our two escapees go on the lam and get lost in the woods in the process

This month marks the tenth anniversary of one of the more memorable instances of true crime in upstate New York history: the escape of two prisoners from the Dannemora Correctional Facility. For a good portion of June 2015, this corner of the world was the center of attention (even if some guy whose name rhymes with Ronald Frump stole the national headlines) and the site of one of the biggest manhunts ever in the state.

While on a layoff from my then-place of employment due to the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, I started doing a spinoff of my regular podcast that dealt specifically with instances of true crime here in New York's Capital Region. In June of that year, I devoted the entire month to the Dannemora prison beak on its fifth anniversary. Doing a true crime podcast requires good deal of time committed to research, typing up the script, and (of course) recording the episode. I present the scripts of all four episodes of that true crime podcast series herein — as for my regular writing, it hasn’t gone away; I’ll be getting ready for my (semi-)annual Cooperstown road trip this weekend and you’ll hear about the run-up this week and get a recap next week. In the meantime, it's forward into the past.

Just a quick note: all the transcripts presented this month have been edited for both clarity and removal of time-sensitive remarks made during the initial writing way back in 2020, pandemic references and all.

Again, just as the last two episodes, we take this opportunity to recognize Charles A. Gardner’s book Dannemora: Two Escaped Killers, Three Weeks of Terror, and the Largest Manhunt Ever in New York State as the primary source of this series.

Remember the last episode where Matt and Sweat were going to flee back to Mexico once they broke out of the Clinton Correctional Facility? Well, it looks as though those plans were the only things to go south, as they found themselves headed the other direction. In fact, they hadn’t gotten very far by the time that first weekend was over.

Meanwhile, back at the proverbial ranch, it was learned that officials at the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision had refused what was termed a “preventive lockdown” due to overtime costs. The request for such a lockdown measure came the previous Sunday, May 31, when no less than 35 inmates engaged in a violent brawl in the prison recreation yard. Corrections officers restored order by firing canisters of tear gas to quell the trouble.

Back in Albany, then (and now infamous) New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (and infamous New York City mayoral candidate) was preparing to travel to Long Island to watch the Belmont Stakes. This would be the same where American Pharaoh, with Victor Espinoza in the irons, became the first winner of thoroughbred horse racing’s Triple Crown since 1978. However, those plans were quickly scuppered once he received news of the prison break. Both the Governor and Acting DOCCS Commissioner Anthony Annucci headed north rather than south and upon arrival in Dannemora, surveyed the escape route from the prison, which an inspector general’s report deemed to be an “external breach” of 500 feet from the prison walls. Both Cuomo and Annucci blasted the prison administration for allowing the escape to occur in the first place, especially when the COs had broken the strict policy against mobile phones and cameras in the cells -- by the way, don’t most cell phones have cameras these days, making that last statement kind of redundant?

‘Shelter in place’

As soon as news of the prison break got out, the New York State Police set up roadblocks and sent out patrols in search of the escapees at the urging of prison officials. A siren on top of the prison’s power house would usually sound whenever an inmate escaped, but this was not the case according to then-prison superintendent Steven Racette. Racette at the time thought nobody would have known what it meant; after all, this was the first prison break from Dannemora since 1912. Meanwhile, the State Police began conducting door-to-door searches in the village and set up roadblocks on all major thoroughfares, seemingly cutting off Dannemora from the rest of the civilized world.

Charles Guess, the commander of Troop B, was put in command of the whole operation. Guess served as a Ranger in the United States Army and even had assignments on the SWAT team and state Office of Emergency Management before joining the State Police. The thin gray line got help from many regional and other state agencies, including but not limited to the Clinton and Franklin County Sheriff Departments, the police departments in Plattsburgh and Malone, and the Department of Environmental Conservation (otherwise known as either the DEC or EnCon). With the long memory of Sweat murdering one of their own thirteen years earlier, the Broome County Sheriff's Department also got involved in the search.

Federal agencies such as ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), the Border Patrol from the last episode, and even the US Coast Guard also pitched in should the escapees try to head across Lake Champlain. Vermont, New York’s neighbor to the east and the state where your narrator attended college, was represented by their State Police’s Special Weapons Tactical Unit and Marine Task Force. Even Canada’s famed Mounties, formally known as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, kept a watch on events on our side of the border.

North Country residents were ordered to shelter in place while the manhunt carried on. This region of New York is the most sparsely populated part of the entire state; routine trips to places such as the grocery store take more time than in, say, my neck of the woods. Residents usually get their mail from the post office than have it delivered. What would usually be a few minutes drive through Dannemora was made longer thanks to vehicle searches. Residents of such towns usually know those who work as state troopers and other essential professions as one of their own and take every opportunity to engage in small talk when the opportunity arises; such was definitely not the case here. Students in the area hit a stumbling block en route to finishing the school year as schools were closed during most of that first week, only to reopen the following week with armed police officers and school bus searches greeting them on arrival at school.

Residents who lived with the old-timey feeling of leaving their doors unlocked as though they were living in the 1950s were suddenly confronted with early 21st-century life; police asked residents to lock all doors and windows, leave their outdoor lights on at night, and (of course) shelter in place. Many reports of sightings of Matt and Sweat kept area residents on edge, and the sound of helicopters and barking dogs rather than mosquitoes was understandably chilling and deprived many people of sleep during the usually quiet nights. Not to mention the usual events that mark life in the month of June, such as weddings, high school graduation parties, and the like were either cancelled or moved to safer locations away from the madness.

With this crisis top of mind, the North Country stepped up to help those tasked with keeping everyone safe. Local eateries served meals to the many law officers, and these same residents also offered snacks and supplies such as bug spray. The hashtag “Clinton Strong” inevitably came into being on social media, and these men and women of law enforcement were also buoyed by a very high level of support amongst the residents. Blue became the color of the day in and around Dannemora.

The manhunt carries on

Meanwhile, Matt and Sweat were still on the run. The search had turned up empty at just about every turn in the road, with a search as far east as the Essex County town of Willsboro providing no answers.

Amongst the groups of people tasked with this responsibility were the state DOCCS CERTs, or Corrections Emergency Response Teams. These are a select handful of COs who are called upon to search for escaped inmates, and are usually armed with pistols and a lightweight, flexible pair of handcuffs called – would you believe it? – “Flexicuffs”. According to Gardener, they would come in real handy when arresting a tree-hugger back in the day. Guys like Richard Matt and David Sweat? Not so much…

While we’re on the subject, let’s return to our two nitwits. Matt and Sweat had made their way into Franklin County, doing so by way of a disused railroad bed once used by the old New York Central Railroad, situated on rough terrain mainly consisting of thick brush and swamps. According to an interview by the Plattsburgh Press-Republican, Malone fire chief Paul Langdon stated that deposits of iron ore on the aptly named Iron Mountain all but make even a simple compass useless. The two convicts even turned into thieves when they burgled a cabin in the nearby Black Cat Mountain hunting camp in Owls Head, only to be chased away out the back door by Craig Stockwell, a corrections officer not involved in the search, who went to check on the cabin two weeks after the breakout.

After 45 minutes, State Police arrived at the cabin and discovered the intruders had left out a jar of peanut butter, taken an area map off of the wall, and a coffee carafe away from its usual location. Matt also had left a pair of prison-issued underwear at the cabin, which was taken to the State Forensics Laboratory in Albany. The following day, it was announced that the test proved that the DNA had belonged to Matt, which confirmed that the pair were still in the area. As such, Guess moved the base of command to what would be its final location: the Titus Mountain Family Ski Center in Malone.

It was in the aforementioned cabin where a disagreement between the two took place that would eventually lead to their mission’s demise, and we’ll cover all that in the thrilling conclusion next week!