Posted on 06/22/2015 10:01:34 AM PDT by Jim Noble
MOUNTAIN VIEW — Police have confirmed that DNA evidence proves two escaped killers are in the Mountain View area, sources tell the Press-Republican, and searchers are closing in on them.
A break-in and sighting of a man Saturday at a remote hunting camp prompted police to begin searching in and around Mountain View, near Malone.
The small community is located about 20 to 25 miles from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, from which Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 35, escaped on June 6, launching a massive manhunt that has had area residents living on edge for 17 days.
BOOTS, BLOODY SOCKS
Sources are telling the Press-Republican that law-enforcement officials have DNA confirmation on both men that leads them to believe that the sighting was valid.
No capture had been made as of this morning, but this is a strong lead, multiple sources said.
Boots, bloody socks and toiletries were found, along with a water jug and jar of peanut butter that had been opened at the camp, the Press-Republican has been told.
The agencies involved in the search are getting fast turnaround on forensics information because this is a high-profile, highly dangerous case.
At a news conference on Monday, State Police Troop B Commander Major Charles Guess would say only that authorities have "developed evidence" that escapees may have spent time in an Owls Head area cabin.
CLOSING IN
Law-enforcement officials who were not authorized to speak on the record said the net is closing in on Matt and Sweat.
"The dogs have got a good track, and we are tightening the perimeter," one official told the Press-Republican, "so within the next 24 to 48 hours, we're confident they will be caught."
It looks like Matt and Sweat followed the power lines and an old railroad bed from Dannemora to Lyon Mountain and into Standish, the sources said.
"And from that, it looks like Mrs. Mitchell was Plan A (as their ride out of Dannemora). There was No Plan B," one said.
"They don't have a plan now, other than to evade us."
"The energy (among law enforcement) is just fantastic," another said.
At the news conference, Guess said the Dannemora region remains the primary target of the investigation and that the Allegany County area, focus of a possible sighting over the weekend, has been cleared.
He said the weather, terrain, the environment and the scope of the Adirondacks have complicated the search for the escaped killers in this area.
Asked about the growing cost of the search, Guess said: "I don't concern myself with the cost of the search; I concern myself with finding the inmates."
'VERY BUSY UP HERE'
Mountain View, a hamlet of the Town of Bellmont with a population of 2,444, was abuzz with action throughout Sunday night and again this morning.
Mike Carley, who lives on the east side of Mountain View Lake just 2 or 3 miles from where the camp in question sits, was speaking on the phone to the Press-Republican this morning when he looked out his window and saw state troopers emerge from the woods.
He described how officers were bending down and inspecting objects, weapons drawn and at the ready. Before getting off the phone, he said the searchers were approaching his house.
One of the few permanent residents of the area, Carley explained how it is swarming with search team members.
"It's been very busy up here," he said.
Police were working their way through the area last night in the pouring rain, he said, even visiting his side of the lake and knocking at his door.
He said officers checked the buildings on his property just as they had those neighboring his home, making sure locks were secure, windows were unbroken and that no traces of a break-in were present.
"Like everybody else up here, we're prepared," he said about the possibility of confronting either Matt or Sweat.
Terry Bellinger, owner of Belly’s Mountain View Inn in nearby Owls Head, said police had been combing the area for the past few days, he said but their presence definitely increased Sunday.
HUNTING CAMP
Bellinger told the Press-Republican that a string of several seasonal camps are located off Wolf Pond Road on Black Cat Mountain.
He said a man, armed with a handgun, went to check on his camp on Saturday and saw a jug of water and a jar of peanut butter on the table.
Bellinger said the camp owner yelled for whoever was inside to come out.
The person saw a man run out the back but could not tell whether it was one of the fugitives, said Bellinger, who noted the camps in that area are empty most of the year and often have canned goods in them.
INDICATIONS
Another indication of progress in the search comes from the fact that the masses of police sent to Allegany County, where a possible sighting had been seen as promising, have been reassigned to the North Country.
LONG NIGHT
Press-Republican reporters watched the buildup of law-enforcement personnel from early evening Sunday into the early hours of Monday, directed from a command post at Owls Head Fire Station.
Surplus military trucks and four-wheelers rolled in, and light towers were set up at intersections all along routes 26 and 27, with trooper cars at each crossroad.
State Police officer Fred Atkinson Jr. told the Press-Republican late Sunday: “Everything is fluid. We had to move a lot of assets very fast.”
Black Cat Mountain is located between Mountain View and Standish, according to Roger Livernois, a longtime member of the Owls Head Fire Department. Firefighters from his department were not called into service during the search but did lend use of their station.
Standish, a hamlet in the Town of Saranac, is about 17 miles from Clinton Correctional in the Village of Dannemora and not far from the Clinton County border with Franklin County.
HEAVY RAIN
It was raining hard Sunday night, and flashes of lightning split the sky.
State Police troopers and other searchers headed out wearing yellow slickers and carrying maps and bottled water.
Upstate Correctional and Franklin Correctional, prisons located in nearby Malone, towed in more portable lights as darkness descended. A busload of officers from Coxsackie Correctional Facility rolled up to join the search, which involved many correction officers from the North Country and other prisons as well.
State Department of Environmental Conservation forest rangers, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Marshals Service and a SWAT unit from Vermont were among many teams on site, with about two dozen police cars parked at nearby Owls Head Fire Station.
Sheriff’s departments from Clinton and Franklin counties were using armored vehicles to search logging roads in that area.
The State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision had a mobile unit there, as well.
Bellinger, who watched State Police vehicles whiz by his business all night, said he wasn’t bothered by the influx of law-enforcement officers, who, he said, are just doing their jobs and are trained to deal with this sort of situation.
“I’m not going to let two criminals change my life,” he added.
Late Sunday night, a new wave of State Police was arriving at the command center, to give a break to those who had been out all day.
The intense search continues this afternoon.
THE BREAKOUT
Matt and Sweat used power tools, over time, to cut a hole in the back of each of their adjacent cells, authorities say.
Sometime between the 10:30 p.m. standing check on June 5 and morning bed check at 5:30 a.m. June 6, they went through the holes and climbed down a six-story catwalk in the innards of the prison.
They broke through a wall, cut through a steam pipe, shimmied to a manhole and cut the lock that held the cover in place.
They climbed out to freedom on Bouck Street, within sight of the prison.
KILLERS
Sweat, originally from Binghamton, killed Broome County Sheriff’s Deputy Kevin Tarsia on July 4, 2002. The officer was shot 15 times and run over by a car as Sweat and his accomplices tried to flee after stealing guns from a shop.
He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life with no possibility of parole. He had been at Clinton County Correctional since Oct. 30, 2003.
Matt was sentenced to 25 years to life after his conviction in Niagara County on three counts of murder, three counts of kidnapping and two counts of robbery.
He kidnapped, tortured and killed North Tonawanda businessman William Rickerson, 76, his former boss, on Dec. 3, 1997. Matt fled to Mexico.
There, in 1998, he was imprisoned for the stabbing death of an American businessman.
Matt was eventually extradited to the United States and convicted in Rickerson’s murder. He had been at Clinton since July 10, 2008.
Only one other time in New York in the past 25 years has a maximum-security escapee remained on the loose longer than Matt and Sweat.
On March 26, 1991, four inmates went over the wall at Eastern Correctional in Napanoch. Two were captured an hour later, one was rounded up after three days and 10 hours, and the final man, George Gatto, eluded capture for 20 days.
THIS ARTICLE WILL BE UPDATED THROUGHOUT THE DAY.
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Ya’ll pray these two yahoos will be recaptured without any bloodshed & SOON. IF they resist with weapons; well, that’s up to the Lord how He wants it handled. As for Twinkie; I’m against them & am praying it will end and soon.
Thanks for the correction!
I retired from what use to be Griffiss AFB.
Only iPhone or Smart phones.
I have a computer geek for a son.
This is also true of the newer cars. They are automatically tracked .. but mine is older .. and there’s no device on my car. I have another son who is a car geek.
“Only iPhone or Smart phones. I have a computer geek for a son.”
All cell phones. And I stayed in a Holliday Inn.
Oh gee .. well .. I didn’t want to spoil their FUN .. Let’s hope it doesn’t get one of them killed.
I already knew what part of the mountains they were in, my family used to have wonderful family picnics there in the summer.
What bothers me is they were put in surroundings with less surveillance .. wore street clothes ..?? How outrageous is that .. and how typical of pity-party liberals who tell us we don’t treat these people humanely.
The liberals never see the inhumane treatment by the murderers as something to be concerned about.
Well, I’m not thinking they’re watching CNN .. I’m thinking the lady who brought them the tools could very likely have supplied them with a smart phone. This would have allowed them to listen to news broadcasts .. enough to know where the police were searching.
I find it hard to believe nobody has thought of that possibility.
Well, I’ve had people test it out .. and they are not able to locate me. So .. IT’S NOT ALLLLLL CELL PHONES.
“Well, I’ve had people test it out .. and they are not able to locate me. So .. IT’S NOT ALLLLLL CELL PHONES.”
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=how+police+triangulate+a+cell+phone
I spent four years in that area from 1981-1985. Two years at SUNY Morrisville. Two more at SUNY Syracuse, right next door to SU. My Freshman year RA in the dorm @ Morrisville was from Rome. I think his dad was in the Air Force at Griffiths. Most of the kids at Morrisville were from that general area. 90% were from NY state somewhere.
At SUNY SU: technically known as SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry School @ Syracuse University, there were lots of kids from the “north country”. There were many kids that grew up in the Adirondack Park. Several also went to Paul Smiths Forestry school in Cranberry Lake, NY for their first two years. At the time I was there SUNY ESF was only a junior, senior and graduate school. I was in Wood Products Engineering with a minor in Marketing. It was like Mechanical Engineering for wood.
I don’t think that is part of the plan. Even if they don’t resist the two will not come out alive. The prison authorities are so angry at these guys the plan is to do what they did to the murderer out in Big Bear, California - oh yes, and the two women delivering newspapers. Owners of summer camps better make sure their homeowners insurance is paid up.
I taught at MVCC for about 19 years. One of my students said he was going to transfer to SUNY Syracuse. I did not know there was a SUNY Syracuse. It is rated really well. “The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) has earned a place among the top universities in America for 2015, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report.
ESF is ranked number 30 among the nation’s top public universities in U.S. News’ 2015 edition of Best Colleges, the smallest institution to receive such a distinction. When both public and private universities are included, ESF is listed as number 76 on the Best National Universities list. “
It is the top Forestry, Wood Products Engineering, Paper Science schools in the world. The people who wrote the books on these subjects taught at this institution.
The other advantage was you paid state tuition and took courses at Syracuse University for roughly 20% of the cost of going to SU. There is also a SUNY nursing school @ SU. Same deal there. These schools are both located right on the south side of the Carrier Dome.
SUNY ESF is a small school because they only have about a dozen major programs. I think there were under 2000 students. Including graduate programs.
Liberals tend to side with criminals and monsters... and against the innocent. I know it tells us something...
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