Law enforcement officers search a building on a farm near Willsboro, New York June 9, 2015. Large numbers of officers converged on Tuesday on the town of Willsboro, about 40 miles (64 km) south of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, from which two convicted murderers had escaped, following a reported sighting of the pair.Chris Wattie/Reuters
Police in body armour were resuming house-to-house searches near the maximum-security prison in northern New York where two killers escaped using power tools, authorities said Wednesday as they renewed their plea for help from the public.
On the fifth day of looking for David Sweat and Richard Matt, state police said the house searches aren't the result of any new leads and law enforcement is retracing its steps in Dannemora, about 20 miles (32 kilometres) from the Canadian border.
"They'll be doing a 100 per cent sweep from the prison right out, see how that goes," said David Favro, the sheriff for Clinton County, where the prison is located.
Law enforcement officials reiterated their plea for the public's help in reporting anything unusual in the area.
"We don't want them out searching the woods," Favro said. "But if you're sitting on your porch, get your binoculars out and see if you see something unusual."
Unions representing guards and civilian staff at the prison said many have been questioned by investigators, but no one has been suspended, disciplined or charged. Among them is Joyce Mitchell, a training supervisor in the tailor shop where Sweat and Matt worked.
Mitchell's son, Tobey Mitchell, 21, told NBC that his mother checked herself into a hospital with chest pains Saturday. He said she wouldn't have helped the inmates escape.
Sweat, 34, and Matt, 48, cut through a steel wall, broke through bricks and crawled through a steam pipe before emerging through a manhole outside the prison grounds.
They were discovered missing early Saturday after stuffing their beds with clothes to fool guards on their rounds and leaving behind a taunting note: "Have a nice day."
There was speculation that the inmates had arranged for someone to pick them up outside the prison and were long gone from the area, even in Canada or as far as Mexico.
The escape from the 3,000-inmate state prison has raised suspicions the men had help on the inside.
Investigators have been questioning prison workers and outside contractors to try to find out who may have supplied the power tools. Contractors have been doing extensive renovations at the 170-year-old prison, a hulking, fortress-like structure that looms over Dannemora's main street.(backslash)
A search Tuesday in a rural town about 30 miles from the prison turned up no sign of the convicts. The search was prompted by reports of two men seen walking late Monday during a driving rainstorm along a road in Willsboro, near Lake Champlain.
A $100,000 reward has been posted for information leading to the men' capture.
Sweat was convicted in the 2002 killing of a sheriff's deputy and was doing life without parole. Matt was serving 25 years to life for kidnapping and dismembering his boss in 1997.