Search for escaped murderers intensifies

Residents in rural New York, unaccustomed to locking their doors, day or night, were on edge as the manhunt for two killers who cut themselves free from a maximum-security prison with power tools stretched into a ninth day yesterday.

More than 800 law enforcement officers in the search for David Sweat and Richard Matt scoured the fields and Adirondack woods several miles around the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora near the Canadian border.

The search continues to focus on the area surrounding the prison after the jail worker accused of helping the men escape backed out of a plan that could have had the men hundreds of miles away, a prosecutor said.

The now-jailed prison worker had planned to pick the men up after they cut themselves out of the prison and drive about seven hours to an unknown destination, District Attorney Andrew Wylie told CNN.

But prison tailor shop instructor Joyce Mitchell backed out of the plan at the last minute, Wylie said. Searchers continued to focus on an area east of the prison,