Prison worker 'supplied blades' to escapees

A worker at a maximum security prison in New York state has been charged with helping two killers escape.

Tailor shop instructor Joyce Mitchell is accused of befriending inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora and giving them hacksaw blades, chisels, a punch and a screwdriver bit.

[comment] David Sweat[/commentMitchell was arraigned in Plattsburgh on charges of promoting prison contraband and criminal facilitation.Court-appointed defence lawyer Keith Bruno entered a not guilty plea and Mitchell was ordered jailed on US $100,000 cash bailThe 51-year-old had her hands cuffed in front of her and did not speak during the hearing.District attorney Andrew Wylie said earlier that the contraband did not include power tools used by the men as they cut holes in their cell walls and a steam pipe to escape through a manhole last weekend.[comment] Richard Matt[/comment]

More than 800 law enforcement officers are still searching for the escapees, concentrating in a rural area around the prison in the Adirondacks near the Canadian border. Earlier residents reported seeing two men jumping over a stone wall outside Dannemora.

“We’re coming for you, and we will not stop until you are caught,” state police Major Charles Guess said in addressing the escapees as he headed a news conference after Mitchell’s arrest.

Maj Guess said officers were getting closer with every step they take on the ground and in the investigation, despite contending with bad weather.

“They’ve got to be cold, wet, tired and hungry” if they haven’t escaped the area or found shelter, Mr Guess said.

Mitchell’s family has said she would not have helped the convicts break out.

She is also suspected of agreeing to be a getaway driver but did not show up, leaving the men on foot.

Mitchell has a job with a yearly salary of $57,700, overseeing inmates who sew clothes and learn to repair sewing machines at the prison. Amid the criminal case, she was suspended without pay.

Within the past year, officials looked into whether Mitchell had improper ties to 34-year-old Sweat, who was serving a life sentence for killing a sheriff’s deputy, Mr Wylie said. He gave no details on the nature of the suspected relationship.

The investigation did not turn up anything solid enough to warrant disciplinary charges against her, the district attorney said.

Matt was serving 25 years to life for the 1997 kidnap, torture and hacksaw dismemberment of his 76-year-old former boss, whose body was found in pieces in a river.

On Thursday, a person close to the investigation said Mitchell befriended the two men and agreed to be the getaway driver but never showed up.

A former slipper factory employee who won three terms as tax collector in her town near Dannemora, Mitchell has worked at the prison for at least five years, according to a neighbour, Sharon Currier. Mitchell’s husband Lyle also works in industrial training there.

“She’s a good, good person,” Ms Currier said. “She’s not somebody who’s off the wall.”