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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EXCUSE ME .. Why are the police units so eager to TELL THE MURDERS WHERE THEY’RE SEARCHING FOR THEM ..????????????
I noticed that the police units in Charleston NEVER BREATHED A WORD ABOUT WHERE THEY WERE SEARCHING. Even after a resident of NORTH CAROLINA called them to say she found the car and the murderer was still sitting in it.
NOT A WORD WAS UTTERED ABOUT THAT INFO .. thus ONE DAY after the shooting, the police were able to find the shooter.
But .. the police in NY still blab everything they’re doing .. and the murderers keep moving away from the area where they’re searching. UNBELIEVABLE ..!!!!!!!
Somebody told me this morning that he’d heard that these guys are hanging out at D.B. Cooper’s place.
find a body, DNA results take 5 days.
get the media off your back, 5 hours.
Good point.
I doubt these guys have access to much media. Nearby residents, however, should know to be on the lookout.
Oh, the cabin is apparently owned by corrections officers... What an odd coincidence.
By the time they're 'in custody', I'm sure there will be some of their DNA sprinkled around the scene of the 'arrest'. Thanks Jim Noble.
I imagine that drones, equipped with video and infrared, are in heavy use—or ought to be. Something tells me that “using armored vehicles to search logging roads in that area” isn’t very stealthy. Sounds like Rambo eluding the sheriff and his posse in “First Blood”—not that I’m rooting for either of these two, who should have been executed rather than “incarcerated.”
Well .. I’m not so sure about that. The woman supplied the MURDERERS with all sorts of items .. why not a phone ..????
And .. it’s easy to turn off the GPS on your phone to keep people from knowing where you are.
But, I’m guessing the police in Charleston decided to take the chance that citizens were capable of taking care of themselves ..????
I’ll bet some ugly-a$$ fat low self-esteem chick is giving them room, board and free sex.
Apparently, you live in New York. Are its citizens yet rethinking to any extent their opposition to the death penalty?
Curious as to source. Do you have a name?
Who the h*ll is paying for all these LEOs?
I understand what you mean about loose lips sink ships.
However,I do not think that these guys are hanging out watching CNN or Fox News. Most of these cabins or camps that they could possibly break into in the Adirondack Park do not even have electricity.
The Adirondack Park was designated as forever wild. You can not build ANYTHING there. You can only rebuild what was there prior to the area becoming a park. A buddy of mine went through this trying to rebuild a house on a lake about 30 miles south of there.
Mountain View lake is west of the prison in Dannemora. Therefore, they went deeper into the park away from where people would see them. This was actually the smart thing to do. Going east towards Plattsburgh and Lake Champlain was out. North towards the border would be probably the first place the authorities would look. South is also more populated. So, go west where there is virtually nothing for 50 miles.
U R
Topo with various points mentioned in article marked.
There money for the Border Patrol to be involved here but no money for the the Border Patrol to control the borders.
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