PART ONE
Chapter One
David Sweat pushed the teeth of his last remaining bit of hacksaw blade through the inner wall of the metal steam pipe. Weeks of working from inside the dark, dank cylinder had now come down to this one final cut. Drawing his knees in, he pressed the soles of his boots against the rectangular section he had chiseled. The fiberglass lining cracked under his feet. Within minutes, that part of the channel gave way.
Spring weather had brought the kind of luck Sweat needed. Clinton had shut down its heating system for the season, and the pipe — its surface scalding during the winter months — had started to cool. By May he was able to make his first incision. Using only the hook of his hacksaw blade he carved a tiny hole into its surface. He hewed away at the metal until the gap grew large enough to fit a grown man. Satisfied with the product, he crawled into the pipe, and approximately twelve feet down he began to whittle an exit. He normally would have used a drill for this work, but he could not risk the clang of power tools. Instead, he wore the metal away one inch an hour. Minutes turned to days, days turned to weeks, but Sweat did not care. He had nothing but time.
Now, tearing through some of the remaining insulation, he edged his way out of the pipe and stood fully upright in a long tunnel, which was dim and damp from years of exposure to contained steam. The underpass — used by Clinton contractors to access the piping system — was below Barker Street, a two-block residential road in Dannemora sprinkled with manholes. (Sweat did not know the street by name, but he knew that there was a paved road directly above the pipe.) He walked the length of the passageway, inspecting each of the exit points above his head. The first two had been chained shut, so he continued toward the end of tunnel to the last manhole, which opened with minimal effort.
Joyce Mitchell provided supplies for the painstaking prison break.
(POOL/REUTERS)
Sweat peered out and saw a clearing behind the prison's powerhouse; the structure was an indication that he had gone too far. The last thing he wanted was to pop out of the ground into someone's front lawn.
He then backtracked about two hundred yards until he arrived at one of the other manholes. The plate was secured by chain, yet Sweat was able to sever a link using what blade he had left. Placing his palms flat on the surface, he extended his arms upward, heaving the cover onto the asphalt. He then climbed the iron ladder and lifted his head just above the lip. To the south was the powerhouse. To the north was the concrete perimeter wall.
He breathed in the free air of the Adirondacks.
Law enforcement officers walk along a road as the search continues for two escaped prisoners from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, on Monday, June 22, 2015.
(MIKE GROLL/AP)
"This will be perfect," he thought.
Sweat glanced at the silver watch that hung from a shoelace around his neck, its hands illuminated by a small LED light: 4:15 a.m. This was the latest he had been out since beginning work on the route — and he needed to be back on the block before the guards noticed his absence.
Even with little sleep, a sense of speed swept over him. He returned the metal cover to its proper position, sprinted down the tunnel, slid back through the steam pipe, and clambered out the other side. He then bolted toward the brick wall, removing those mortared blocks he had loosened weeks before, and scrambled through. Climbing the ladder to the catwalks, he crawled into the hole he had cut in the back wall of his cell on Clinton's Honor Block, and breathed a sigh of relief.
David Sweat arrives for his arraignment at Clinton County court, in Plattsburgh, N.Y.
(CHRISTINNE MUSCHI/REUTERS)
He checked his watch again: 4:27 a.m. Twelve minutes from start to finish, his fastest time yet.
Sweat turned to his tiny quarters. Among the towels, pillow cases, sweatshirts, and a few other miscellaneous items (a yellow Whitman's Sampler box and a Riverside Webster's II Dictionary, a paperback published in 1996 that boasted, "The Essential Reference for Successful Students") he pulled out a single Black and Mild, which he had stowed away for this very occasion.
He lit the end, grabbed a small handheld mirror, and held it through the bars of his cell so that his neighbor could see his reflection.
Police stand over Sweat after he was shot and captured.
(AP)
He tapped lightly against the wall.
"Matt! Matt, get up!"
Richard Matt groaned as he rose to his feet. He peered out of his own set of bars to see Sweat's dirtied face in the looking glass. The cigar hung loosely between Sweat's lips, which, even with the smoke between his teeth, spread into a wide, satisfied grin.
"Wild Escape: The Prison Break from Dannemora and the Manhunt that Captured America" by Chelsia Rose Marcius
(DIVERSION BOOKS)
"Oh my God!" Matt said. "I can't believe it! No way! I can't believe you did it!"
A celebratory stogie was part of a pact they had made during the six months of preparations. It meant the route was ready.
Sweat passed a cigar to Matt, then quickly placed a basin of water onto the hot plate in his cell. It was well past 4:30 a.m., and he needed to wash off the evidence of the overnight outing before Clinton's guards conducted standing count. As he put on a clean pair of pants and scrubbed the calluses on his palms, now toughened from the self-appointed graveyard shift, he gave Matt explicit instructions to pass on to the prison seamstress, Joyce Mitchell: she was to be in the car this evening, parked near the powerhouse, her cell phone pressed to her ear, pretending to make a call. At 12 a.m. — exactly 12 a.m., as he had always been a stickler for punctuality — he and Matt would emerge from the manhole near the corner of Barker and Bouck Streets by the old Dannemora school building and make for her vehicle.
Chelsia Rose Marcius, author of "Wild Escape."
(JAMES KEIVOM)
Sweat scribbled the orders down on a sheet of paper and handed it to Matt to give to Joyce. The plan was clear: today would be their last behind barbed wire.
Chapter Two
Fifty-five miles west of Clinton in Dickinson Center, an alarm clock rang. As Joyce Mitchell reached through the darkness to shut it off, she remembered it was Friday, the day of the week she had come to dread. She did not know yet which Friday they would carry out their plan, but she knew one thing: Matt was telling the truth when he said they were making headway on the route.
For the last six months, the fifty-one-year-old prison seamstress had dreamed of a different life from the one she was living with her husband, Lyle. Since the couple had moved into the two-story house with the rusted metal roof on Palmer Road, an extra layer of heft had settled around her waist, and the corners of her mouth had given way to gravity. Her layered, outdated 'do — its individual strands as kinked as those on the ears of a spaniel — had acquired several variations of yellow over the years, and few cosmetics had ever found a permanent place in her morning routine.
Convicted murderer Sweat, pictured moments after he was shot twice in the torso.
(COURTESY: WWNY TV)
On this morning, she got dressed, brewed coffee, and packed a lunch, as always. Joyce rarely ate before leaving; it was much more pleasant to have her breakfast — today, meat and potatoes, seared and roasted the night before — while seated at her desk in Clinton's Tailor Shop 1, where she could enjoy half an hour of stillness until 8 a.m. when the inmates arrived.
In the eight years she had been employed at the facility, Joyce — whom the prisoners knew as "Tillie," her longtime nickname dating back to her high school years — had come to welcome their company. She especially liked the company of David Sweat, whom she considered the most talented worker among the men she supervised. Joyce had openly admired his proficiency with patterns and skill with a sewing machine. (He could complete thirty to forty pairs of women's prison pants within two to three days, an impressive display of dexterity.) Watching him handle each skipped stich, broken needle, or bunched-up bit of thread with his characteristic calm confidence stirred something in her she had long suppressed.
It had been nine months since Sweat was removed from her shop. His dismissal had brought on uncontrollable tears. A supervisor claimed Sweat made an inappropriate remark to another civilian employee, though Joyce suspected other motives for the decision. She knew of an anonymous note, penned by a prisoner and sent to Clinton's higher-ups, that insinuated she and Sweat were having illicit relations. Flirtations in the way of small gestures (a touch of the arm, a gentle smile) had certainly taken place between the two of them — but, as both Sweat and Joyce would later say, they had not exchanged so much as a kiss.
The Clinton Correctional Facility pictured on June 17, 2015.
(MARK LENNIHAN/AP)
At that time, she saw him five days a week, seven hours a day. Now it was hardly ever, as he was no longer working under her watch.
At 6:05 a.m. Joyce opened the passenger door to the family's black Jeep Cherokee. In their one-hour commute to Clinton, she and Lyle, also an industrial training supervisor at the prison, often discussed their children, their grandchildren, and the day ahead. Today, however, Joyce shut her eyes and leaned back against the seat.
Lyle looked over. "Everything OK?" he asked.
Law enforcement officers question a woman that lives near the prison in Dannemora, N.Y., as they searched houses near the maximum-security prison.
(SETH WENIG/AP)
"Yes," she said. "I just have a headache."
She had said this more than once in recent weeks. It was a convenient excuse for her staid silence.
Since Matt first told her about the plot to escape, Joyce had satisfied their every request. She had been the one to buy the hacksaw blades, chisel, drill bits, and steel punch, tools they needed to carry out the plan. (She had concealed these in a vat of raw hamburger meat to get them past the "blue shirts," as she called Clinton's guards. It had long been custom for employees to bypass bag checks and metal detector screenings. Workers frequently brought in food, which was rarely subjected to search. Hence, most of these items — even two pounds of frozen ground chuck — failed to raise eyebrows.) She had agreed to pick them up outside the prison wall, and even said she would live with them in Mexico, or wherever they ended up. The fantasy had been all-consuming: it had offered a reprieve from monotony, and a mental escape from small-town boredom. For six months the daydream had lived neat and nice in her head, where all of its dire consequences could be ignored. Now, the fear of being found out, of going even farther down this rabbit hole, filled her with unshakable panic. She knew they were almost finished with the route, and the reality of her complicity began to sink in.
The area where the pair used power tools to cut through steel pipes, and leave a note, at the prison.
(DARREN MCGEE/AP)
As Lyle hugged the curves of the road, something told her that tonight would be the night.
Chapter Three
Sweat had slimmed considerably, down nearly thirty pounds from six months of preparing their escape. It was a big drop for a fit man of five feet and ten inches who had been a solid 210 pounds, with as little body fat as a lean cut of lamb. The loss accentuated his high cheekbones, the only noticeable trace of his Blackfoot and Cherokee bloodlines. (The thirty-four-year-old appeared more Irish or English than anything else. Anglo ancestry ran on his paternal side, although the surname Sweat was taken from his mother's first husband, to whom he was not related and had never met.) His unblemished, unlined face held a certain undefinable charm; a blondish brow hung strongly over his deep-set hazel eyes, made greener against the dark leafy hue of his prison button up. A light brown goatee, at times supported by a beard, framed a pair of lips that, when parted, revealed a set of white, mostly straight teeth. These features worked particularly well together when he smiled, complementing the boyish, endearing humor for which he was known. (In his pre-Clinton life, teen girls often sought his advances, and he would entertain their interests by spraying Tommy Hilfiger cologne on his neck before performing a Keith Sweat love ballad — "no relation," he would joke.) Traces of his youth existed in the form of three black letters on three different fingers of his right hand — I on the ring, F on the middle, and B on the index — etched with Indian ink to form the acronym "IFB," which stood for "Irish-Italian Fate Brothers," a club of sorts that he and a few other boys from Binghamton had once founded. Across the upper part of his left arm the word REBEL was also inscribed, another relic from his adolescence, underscored with a line that curled on either end. (At fourteen, he had ventured out to a party with his cousin Jeffrey Nabinger and Jeff's brother, Mike Benedict, who had given him the tattoos. He received two others on his arm that evening, another "IFB" and, above it, a rebel flag. These, however, have faded to only a pattern of dots that, with some imagination, resemble John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.) In Clinton, he had even given a few guys body art, and was particularly proud of a sizable dragon he had drawn on the upper left shoulder and down the bicep of a fellow inmate. (A guard had seen him scoring the man's skin. The CO was about to reprimand them when, as Sweat recalled, he rolled up his shirt sleeve and said, "I'm next!")
His artistic skills had improved since meeting Matt, a self-proclaimed copy artist who could recreate nearly any photograph. (Matt had sketched and painted the faces of many politicians, actors, and other celebrities over the years, including Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Marilyn Monroe, Oprah Winfrey, and fictional gangster Tony Soprano, which was bought by a woman on eBay for $2,000.) Matt's canvas work of a young brown and white basset hound — where each brushstroke of fur on its floppy ears held a lifelike weight and texture — had so impressed Sweat that he soon took up the craft. "Painting is about feeling and mood," he would later say. "I can start with a house. Maybe it's leaning to the left. Maybe later I want to make it go the other way. I can do that. I can mold it however I want it to look. I can escape into this place that I wish existed, the way I want the world to be. Maybe you visit a place and in that moment the light is perfect, and it's the most beautiful place you've ever seen. But then the light changes and things begin to look a little different. Painting isolates that moment. It makes it last."
One of the sites in Sweat and Matt's escape.
(DARREN MCGEE/OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR)
Sweat first met Matt after being transferred to A-block — or the Honor Block, as it was better known. Olive-skinned with considerable girth, forty-eight-year-old Matt held a certain sway over other inmates. When he asked another prisoner for a pack of cigarettes, the inmate would get it to him free of charge. If he did not receive the respect he thought he deserved, Matt would not hesitate to shank the transgressor; when he walked down the hall, men would readily step out of his way. In Clinton he was known as "Hacksaw," the tool he used to dismember the body of his former boss, seventy-six-year-old William Rickerson, who had run a food brokerage company in North Tonawanda, New York. Matt, then thirty-one, had roped in his strip club buddy Lee Bates to rob the businessman of cash to pay for trips to see topless women at Pure Platinum in Ontario. On December 4, 1997, they drove to Rickerson's house, knocked on his door, and demanded the dough. When Rickerson refused, Matt used a knife sharpener to beat the elderly man. He and Bates then bound Rickerson, stuffed him in a trunk, and began to drive. Every so often they pulled over and Matt would pop open the trunk to break another one of Rickerson's fingers. "Where is the money!?" he hollered again and again. "Leave the kid out of this!" Rickerson replied, referring to twenty-five-year-old Bates. "It's between you and me!" The answer enraged Matt. He pulled over once more, unlocked the trunk, and snapped the man's neck.
The twenty-seven-hour trip stretched from New York to Northeast Ohio and back again. Detectives later found Rickerson's severed torso and feetless legs floating in the Niagara River. Bates, who would serve sixteen years for his part in the crime, later referred to Matt as "the Devil."
Matt's murder case greatly differed from his own, Sweat thought. Feeling a person's bones break and cutting through flesh required a more twisted mindset than pulling a trigger. He hesitated to call Matt "Hacksaw" out of a distaste for what the name represented, though using the moniker eventually became a habit. (He would later learn more disturbing details about the murder — Clinton men rarely discussed their crimes — and the new knowledge would impact how he saw his friend.) Yet Sweat still preferred Matt to the child molesters and "homos" in prison. (He held no personal prejudice against "the gays;" he traded them goods for money because, as he put it, "Green is green.") "Matt got a lot of respect," he would later say. "We had mutual respect for each other. He once said to me, 'Sweat, I'm glad I'm on your side.' I took it as a compliment. Now if you crossed him, he'd be the first to stab you. All the guys in here will be violent if they have to be, including me, and I'm not a violent person. But [when it came to me] he'd always have my back."
Governor Andrew Cuomo examines the escape route.
(@NYGOVCUOMO VIA TWITTER)
It was Matt who had his back after Sweat's dismissal from Tailor Shop 1. Being fired from his job meant he was removed from the third-floor, sixth-tier Honor Block cell next to Matt's and relegated to the loud, less private first floor where televised sporting events often spurred a cacophony of whoops for winning teams and whines over lost bets. But the biggest problem with Sweat's new room was how far it was from Matt's. To resolve this, Matt went to Corrections Officer Eugene Palmer (better known as Gene), an old-timer at Clinton with whom he got on well. At his bidding, Palmer asked Industrial Superintendent Scott Scholl to give Sweat another shot at industry work. Scholl agreed and assigned Sweat to Tailor Shop 8. Soon after, he was allowed to return to the cell next to Matt's. (The man who occupied Sweat's old cell had to be persuaded to move by Matt, who gave him a hundred dollars' worth of cigarettes and two homemade porno books filled with voluptuous nudes.)
It was also Matt who first proposed to escape. He began to discuss the idea with Sweat in January, and Sweat — still sore about being booted from Tailor Shop 1, and fed up with prison life altogether — said he wanted in. With Sweat's cooperation, Matt's mind quickly turned to Joyce. He had seen the way she looked at his friend when they had worked together under her supervision. On the day of Sweat's dismissal, he watched her as she wept.
"What would you do if Sweat kissed you?" he later asked her. "Would you say anything?"
Joyce glanced at him over the rim of her wire frames, her yellow bangs falling behind each lens. She thought of her husband talking with a slender young blonde, a new hire at the prison who went to Lyle for guidance, which he gladly gave.
"Probably not," she said.
Matt went to back to Sweat with the news.
"She's f****** nuts. She'll bring us whatever we want, just tell me what you need and I'll get her to bring it in."
