- Inside an impenetrable fortress.
- Never in my life would I think
that anybody would be able to get out of there.
- Two men's impossible dreams.
- You cannot tunnel out of Dannemora
unless you have a jackhammer.
- Meet two unlikely partners in crime.
- It was impossible for her to stop once she started.
- Together, they attempt the unthinkable.
- Crazy.
- Escape Dannemora.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
Some of the greatest stories ever told
start behind the bars.
♪ ♪
Locked up in the most notorious prisons in the world,
spied on by guards and fellow prisoners.
It takes a devious mind to find a way out.
♪ ♪
It could lead you to freedom,
or it could cost you your life.
♪ ♪
But wouldn't you try when you have nothing left to lose?
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
When you're locked up in Clinton Correctional Facility
in upstate New York, this is your world.
A dark, dank cockroach-infested 8x6 cell.
This place used to be an insane asylum.
Sometimes...
sometimes it feels like it still is.
Between the screams of your fellow inmates
and the rock-hard cot,
it's hard to sleep at night.
But you better get used to it
because if you're sentenced to life here,
the only way out is in a body bag.
♪ ♪
The prison's imposing 30-foot-high, 7-foot-thick
concrete perimeter wall looms over the main thoroughfare
of the tiny village of Dannemora.
It's a constant reminder to its citizens
of the evil that lurks behind it.
- The very first thing that you're really struck with
is that massive perimeter wall around this very old prison.
It looks ominous and there's this feeling
that there's a lot of history here.
A lot of dark history here.
- There's a shadow that overcomes you and it's like,
it gives you a chill
and it just reminds you
of like a castle.
Never in my life would I think
that anybody would be able to get out of there.
Never.
- When you look at Dannemora, it's not flat,
and it's because the wall has been poured
directly onto the bedrock of the mountain.
So you cannot tunnel out of Dannemora
unless you have a jackhammer.
The only way out is either breaching those front doors
or going over.
- Who would even try to escape this impregnable fortress?
♪ ♪
A remorseless killer named Richard Matt.
He's doing 25 years to life.
They called him Hacksaw because
that was how he dismembered his victim's body.
All of his appeals have failed, so in Matt's mind,
the only path to freedom no matter the odds is escape.
♪ ♪
- Richard Matt is a career criminal and ruthless killer.
In 1997, Matt kidnapped 76-year-old
William Rickerson, his former employer,
threw him in the back of his vehicle,
and proceeded to drive around
for approximately the next 27 hours,
stopping repeatedly to torture Rickerson
in an attempt to extort money.
When this failed, out of frustration,
Matt simply broke Mr. Rickerson's neck
and using a hacksaw dismembered his body,
disposing off it in the Niagara River.
- Matt fled to Mexico,
and he actually committed a second murder.
Was incarcerated by the Mexican authorities
and then nine years later he ended up
at Clinton Correctional Facility to be doing his time.
♪ ♪
- Richard Matt, he could sell water to a drowning man.
♪ ♪
I mean, if you wanted anything you could get it from him.
He was a hustler.
Richard Matt knew how to manipulate
and move through that environment.
- Richard "Hacksaw" Matt has been trapped behind the walls
of Dannemora for the last seven years,
and he desperately wants out.
- My dad, Richard Matt,
has mentioned escape
on numerous occasions,
as if escape is a for sure thing.
He spoke of Mexico often,
that that's where he wanted to be,
painting on a beach somewhere.
- Richard Matt believes that he can pull off an escape.
Why?
Because he's sure he can manipulate the right people
to get what he'll need.
But how will he escape?
His mind swirls with the possibilities,
thinking through each one.
Searching for a fatal flaw.
Can he dismantle his cell door and hide in a delivery truck?
Or maybe build a ladder to get over the wall?
Can he threaten or bribe the guards?
Dig a tunnel? Something? Anything?
As long as it will get him out of this hell hole.
This won't be Richard Matt's first prison break.
He once jumped the fence at a county jail
outside of Buffalo,
but that was child's play compared to Dannemora.
♪ ♪
He needs help, but who can he trust?
♪ ♪
Only one man comes to mind.
David Sweat.
♪ ♪
- David Sweat was incarcerated
at Clinton Correctional Facility
as a result of his involvement
with the murder of a Deputy Sheriff.
- Sweat has been in Clinton for 12 years,
but he's been in and out of prison most of his adult life.
He's picked up some valuable skills
in prison woodworking shops
and working as an electrician's assistant.
He also happens to be Richard Matt's neighbor
in the cell block.
- Richard Matt and David Sweat
really bonded from doing art together.
The friendship had started
when David saw a painting Richard Matt had done,
and David really admired it.
He thought it was great.
And they started to really paint together a lot,
and that's when they began planning,
♪ ♪
- Sweat and Matt search for any weakness in the prison,
and they come up with a plan that might just work.
They will remove their cell doors,
sneak out of the cellblock to the industry yard
and climb over that portion of the massive perimeter wall.
- The reason why they were going
to do this particular plan is that the inmates
were fully aware that there was no officer
stationed at that particular wall tower.
- The first step of their plan
is to remove the lock on the cell door.
To do that, they need a specialized security
screwdriver bit, known as a Torx,
but they don't have access to any tools.
They must find someone who can get them what they need.
Richard Matt, always scheming, knows just who to exploit.
The civilian supervisor of the tailor shop where he works,
Joyce Mitchell.
♪ ♪
Joyce has a weakness, his buddy David Sweat.
- I think Joyce Mitchell was bored
and was tired of living in this town
and in this marriage for 20 years,
and I think she found excitement.
I noticed many interactions with Joyce and David Sweat.
They would go in the backroom to count material.
- But Eric isn't the only one who noticed
that David Sweat and Joyce Mitchell
would disappear from the workroom
for extended stretches.
- Somebody wrote a note
stating that he was having sexual relations
and disappearing into the back material room with Joyce.
So with that, he was removed.
That's when Richard Matt, "Hacksaw," moved in.
- Joyce knows Matt is friends with Sweat
and uses him to pass messages.
Richard Matt now sees his opening.
He doesn't risk asking for the Torx bit right away.
He starts small.
He asks Mitchell for two pairs of glasses
with LED lights built into them.
He says they are so he and Sweat can paint at night.
- Slowly but surely Matt asks for more and more and more.
- But to ask her for a Torx bit,
something that clearly has nothing to do with painting,
Matt needs to leverage,
something he can blackmail her with.
- The next thing he asked for is some nudes.
[uneasy music]
♪ ♪
And she does.
She sends pictures of herself.
- Matt now knows Mitchell will get them the Torx bit,
but they will need to figure out
what size fits the screws on the lock.
This is where David Sweat's shop skills come into play.
♪ ♪
- He takes a little imprint of the screw.
He put some putty on this Torx screw,
gets a mold of the screw, get some ink
and a piece of paper and uses the mold as a stamp
to draw out or map out the size of the screw.
He hands that piece of paper off to Matt
who then hands it over to Joyce Mitchell.
- Joyce gets the right-sized Torx bit
and gives it to Richard Matt.
Now he has to smuggle them out of the tailor shop,
which requires passing through a metal detector
on the way back to the cell block.
If he gets caught, the consequences will be severe.
- You walk through that metal detector,
you feel like you're in a spotlight
and it's just shining on you as you walk through.
And it's one of the most uncomfortable times
because you don't know if you're gonna get picked off
and thrown on the wall.
You know, people get beat up.
People will disappear.
- But how will Richard Matt
get the Torx bit through the metal detector?
- If you have something like a set of headphones
that you know there's a hollow spot in,
but they will also ring in the metal in the metal detector,
well, that's a good place
to put something of metal and contraband.
- Matt hides the Torx bit
in the hollow compartment of his headphones.
When he returns to his cell,
he hands them over to Sweat,
who sets to work trying to dismantle the cell door lock.
♪ ♪
- David quickly finds out this isn't working.
He's trying to fiddle with it. It's not happening.
He can't get the cell door off.
- Richard Matt and David Sweat have broken many rules
to get to this moment, but it's a dead-end.
Without a better plan, they'll both spend
the rest of their lives wasting away behind bars.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
Two Dannemora prisoners are meticulously
and furiously attempting to break out of their cells
at one of the most dangerous prisons in New York State.
They've been at it for a month, but there's a problem.
♪ ♪
Richard Matt and David Sweat's
plan to escape the Clinton Correctional Facility
has been thwarted by a handful of screws.
No matter how hard they try, they won't budge.
They can't get to the locking mechanism behind the plate.
♪ ♪
Time to come up with plan B.
♪ ♪
- David is the one that's thinking, okay,
how do I get from point A to point B?
How do I get out of this cell?
So David sees that there's a vent
at the back of his cell behind his bed,
and he knows that if he cuts around that vent
it leads to the catwalks.
- The area behind the cells are what we call the catwalk.
♪ ♪
And everything that services the cells,
plumbing, electrical, cable for the TVs,
all of that is contained in those catwalks.
- David Sweat was allowed into the catwalk areas
on a number of occasions for electrical work
that he would do on fellow inmate cells.
- To access the catwalks,
Sweat's going to need something
to cut out the vent behind his bed.
David Sweat is a mastermind at exploiting weaknesses
in the physical structure of the prison,
but Richard Matt's genius, knowing who to exploit,
is just as important.
♪ ♪
- Joyce says in some ways that Richard Matt
made it impossible for her to stop once she started.
She knew that Richard Matt was very vindictive
and that there would be a price to pay
if she didn't continue going down the road
that she already started walking down.
- So they went to plan number two,
which was the smuggling in of hacksaw blades
that Joyce Mitchell had purchased
at the local Walmart store.
- How is Richard Matt going to get these big metal
hacksaw blades out of the tailor shop
without being caught by the metal detector?
Richard Matt, a master manipulator,
sets to work on another potential accomplice.
Someone he spent years befriending.
Correctional Officer Gene Palmer.
♪ ♪
- Gene Palmer was on the beat-up squad
and what the beat-up squad is,
it's a group of officers
that come and beat the hell
out of whoever's doing what wrong.
- Gene Palmer,
he'd really gotten to know Richard Matt.
The two had an understanding, and Palmer knew Matt
could keep the peace in the housing block,
and Palmer would give him art supplies.
- Richard Matt doesn't tell Palmer about the blades,
but he relies on their friendship
as a part of his ruse to get around the security checkpoint.
- So the hacksaw blades
would be at Richard Matt's workstation.
He would go towards the men's room, tape them to his torso,
and he had medical conditions that he would fake
and he would have the escort officer,
and in this case, that was Officer Palmer.
- He is ushered out of the tailor shop,
never put through a metal detector,
gets back to his cell which is next to David Sweat's cell.
♪ ♪
- These hacksaw blades would be split between inmate Matt
as well as inmate Sweat.
- David was very smart.
He took hacksaw blades and he wrapped them in fabric
to make sure that he was protecting his fingers.
So as he sawed away, his hands would be protected.
- David Sweat was very meticulous
about a lot of things that he did.
Not only did he always beat me at chess,
but when he was cutting out of the back of his cell
he took four magnets from inside of headphones
and he wrapped them with masking tape
and as he cut through the back of his cell,
the metal filings would fall onto the magnets
that were wrapped in a masking tape.
That way you can just put them under water,
and it rinses right off.
- He even tapes the feet of the bed
so he can slide the bed back and forth
without anyone hearing.
- They would cut approximately two inches
every evening during the evening recreation.
- Nobody is going to hear the sawing
of the back of the cells in A Block
because in the evenings when they were doing their work
you have one TV of movies.
So the noise from that, then you have noise
from guys playing cards and hooting and hollering.
You have showers going, you have people on the phone,
you have all the kitchen noise.
It's just impossible.
♪ ♪
- After three weeks of sawing,
David Sweat finishes cutting his way out of his cell,
but before he can explore the catwalks
and look for a way out,
he needs to disguise his absence.
- He places in his bedding sweatshirts,
sweatpants stuffed with assorted clothing,
giving the appearance once you threw a sheet over it
of a sleeping inmate.
- It's very plausible that an officer would mistake them
for an inmate because the state allowed them
to put the blankets right up over their heads.
- Inmate Matt would also keep watch
for any potential security rounds
and provide distractions needed.
- After standing count, which is when the guards make sure
everyone is in their cells,
the lights go out and David leaves.
♪ ♪
- Sweat's excursions
into the catwalks become a nightly event.
♪ ♪
- Inmate Sweat would be able to wiggle his way
between the catwalk
and the cell walls from the third floor
down to the subterranean tunnels
where he would start his exploration.
- It's very dark in the subterranean tunnels,
but luckily David has the light
from the illuminated glasses Joyce gave him
to help him find his way in.
- David is surprised that there aren't a lot of locked doors
and gates as he would have thought there would have been.
So he is free to move about.
- Each night, David Sweat
spends several hours exploring the tunnels.
He has to make sure he's back in his cell
before someone notices he's missing.
- So at the standing count,
the officers of the cell block they ring a bell.
That's their wake-up bell.
And then the officers will check
to make sure that everybody is up.
They have to turn their light on and so then we know
that the inmate is alive and well.
- When he does come back,
he makes sure he's got water on the hot plate.
He gets it warm and he washes off his hands.
He washes off his face. He changes his shirt.
He makes sure that there's no evidence
that he is doing this every night.
♪ ♪
- Richard Matt breaches his cell
a week after David Sweat, but the two decide
that Matt should be the one to keep watch
while the fitter, more agile Sweat
scours the tunnels, searching for the way out.
- From the windows in the tailor shop,
you can actually look out and see the power plant.
- The power plant is on the other side
of the prison's perimeter wall.
If sweat can find some pipes that lead to the power plant,
he could be one step closer to an underground route
that will take him beyond the prison walls.
♪ ♪
But on one night of exploring, he discovers he isn't alone.
- A staff member was in the catwalk area smoking,
and then discarded that cigarette butt.
♪ ♪
Which ended up at David Sweat's feet.
- It crosses his mind that oh, man, this is real,
and I might be found out.
- A guard has just thrown a lit cigarette down
where David Sweat is hiding.
Luckily, the guard hasn't noticed David as he explores
the bowels of the prison looking for a way out.
♪ ♪
Without a map, Sweat's just rat in a maze
testing each pathway night after night.
♪ ♪
- Sweat searched high and low
through the prison substructure
for conduit or piping that would indicate
that it would lead out to the power plant,
which is outside the wall.
♪ ♪
- The big turning point
was when they came across a steam pipe
that basically told them one was the incoming steam,
one was the outgoing steam.
- David Sweat follows the pipe through the dark,
bug-infested basement
underneath three housing blocks,
hoping it will take him under the prison wall
to the power plant.
♪ ♪
- David hits a brick wall,
and he realizes that he needs to get through this wall.
- David knows this pipe leads to freedom,
but all he has to remove the brick surrounding the pipe
is his dull hacksaw.
It's slow, tedious work.
He removes only three or four bricks a night.
- On a nightly basis, he would replace those bricks
just in case any of the correction officers
might be conducting a routine search of the prison
would notice something out of place.
- It seems as if he's never going to finish
making a hole big enough for himself,
let alone his larger partner in crime, Richard Matt.
♪ ♪
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
It's been a month of relentless, back-breaking work,
but one night David Sweat gets a big break.
Down in the tunnels,
he stumbles on a large contractor's toolbox.
♪ ♪
- A gang box.
It's an all-metal box, and inside the gang box
are all the outside work crew tools.
They're not supposed to be in there at all,
but in order to save time at the front gate,
the deputy superintendent gave them the okay
to put their tools
in a gang box in the bottom of A Block.
- And the most useful item is sitting next
to that gang box:
♪ ♪
A sledgehammer.
- It was a phenomenal finding.
It gave them that extra power that they needed.
♪ ♪
- But that's not all Sweat finds down in the tunnels.
- David Sweat find items
that would later prove very valuable.
An extension cord with a light on it
that he would utilize for a working light
as well as a power source.
He would find a piece of rebar
that he would fashion into a crude chisel
and the list goes on.
- Armed with his chisel and the sledgehammer,
David works for two weeks
making enough room to squeeze through the brick wall,
but on the other side,
he realizes that this was not the perimeter wall after all.
♪ ♪
That wall is still ahead of him
and it's made of solid concrete.
- David hits the subterranean wall,
and it's the perimeter wall.
It's the wall that surrounds the prison.
He's looking at this wall and he's thinking to himself
how am I gonna possibly be able to get through?
- Chipping away at this seven-foot-thick slab
of concrete is going to take years, maybe decades.
♪ ♪
It looks like David Sweat and Richard Matt
will be stuck in this dark, depressing prison forever.
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Three months into their plan to escape from Dannemora,
convicts Richard Matt and David Sweat
are staring at their final obstacle.
Seven feet of solid concrete
poured straight into the bedrock.
Clinton Correctional Facility's infamous parameter wall.
♪ ♪
The two men joke how in "The Shawshank Redemption"
Andy Dufrenese tunneled out of prison in 20 years.
♪ ♪
They think they can do it in ten.
- Sweat then began the arduous task of chiseling away
at the bottom of the wall
with the sledgehammer that he had found
and a crude chisel that he formed from a pry bar.
- Matt joins Sweat for a few nights
as they try to make some headway.
- They're chipping away at it ever so slowly.
I mean, they're gaining,
but it's gonna be a labor of love
and it's gonna be a long time coming.
- Most nights Matt keeps watch for guards in the cellblock
as Sweat returns to the same gang box to check
if workers have left any new tools.
♪ ♪
- On this one particular occasion,
it was a treasure chest full of power drills,
grinders all sorts of power tools,
but they don't have the needed bits to drill
into the base of the perimeter wall.
- Once again, the master manipulator, Richard Matt,
knows exactly who to go to for help.
By this point, Joyce Mitchell
is a willing participant in the escape.
She's even planning on providing the escape vehicle
once the men find their way outside of the prison walls.
- I think Joyce was living in this fantasy
that she was going to go off with Sweat and Matt,
ride in the sunset, go to Mexico.
- Richard Matt asked Joyce for cement bits
and a steel punch,
and he comes up with an ingenious way
to get these tools into his cellblock.
- Anything that you buy from the commissary
in any correctional facility
in New York State is cooked.
Raw meat is not allowed.
- While it's against the rules,
it's not uncommon for corrections officers
to give raw meat to inmates they like
because there's nothing worse than prison food.
- Richard Matt tells Joyce Mitchell
that the best way to smuggle the needed materials
was to place it in a hamburger and freeze the hamburger
and smuggled the bits inside the hamburger
back into the facility
- At the tailor shop,
Joyce Mitchell hands the meat to Matt's other mark,
Corrections Officer Gene Palmer,
then delivers it to his cell.
- Palmer knew nothing about these two escaping.
He didn't realize that the items that he was giving Matt
allowed these two to break out.
♪ ♪
- For the last 50 days, Sweat has toiled away
in the claustrophobic bowels of the prison.
Armed with the concrete drill bits and a new punch,
he finally has a way
to breach the prison's infamous perimeter wall.
He's hopeful he will leave this hell hole behind
as he heads to the gang box with the power tools.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Unfortunately, by the time that the bits were delivered
the gang box is gone.
♪ ♪
They're back to square one.
♪ ♪
- It's looking pretty hopeless,
but all of a sudden everything changes.
♪ ♪
All this time they've been working away
next to a steaming hot pipe,
but today for the first time, the pipe is cold.
The prison heating system is off for the summer.
♪ ♪
This could be their way through.
- Sweat would later tell investigators this is it.
I knew now that I had a route.
- They knew that if they're able to breach into that pipe
then they would simply breach on the other side
of the perimeter wall to freedom.
- David goes back to using his hacksaw
and he devises a clever way to make the difficult cut.
- They had also found a Mountain Dew bottle.
They would fill the Mountain Dew bottle full of water
and use it as a lubricant as they cut through the pipe
to save the blades and to keep the metal cool
so it would be easier to cut through that pipe.
- Cutting ten inches a night, David finishes the first hole.
- So when David's cutting into the steam pipe,
he has to then crawl through that hole and pop out
another part of the steam pipe
which means he has to cut his way out
once he is inside the pipe
- But the pipe's cramped.
Cutting it from the inside is incredibly difficult.
- Being in that steam pipe, it's very narrow.
It's not huge.
And so he is working in extremely close quarters
- Night after night,
David Sweat toils away at the cuts.
♪ ♪
David makes his last cut.
For the first time since he arrived
at Clinton Correctional Facility in 2003,
he's about to venture outside its perimeter wall.
- David gets out of the steam pipe.
He walks down a long tunnel
that he realizes is underneath
the streets above of Dannemora.
At different points in the tunnel,
he sees that there are different manholes.
- He located a manhole cover,
and he was able to go up
the ladder from the sewer, prop the lid open.
♪ ♪
- He goes out of the manhole, he looks around,
and he says to himself, "This is perfect."
♪ ♪
- David has made it outside the prison walls.
He has successfully completed the escape route.
He could leave right now if he wanted to,
but Richard Matt isn't with him.
- Friends is a very loosely used word
because in prison friends really don't exist.
I've seen people get stabbed in the neck
by somebody they call friends
- Will David betray his fellow inmate
and leave him to rot on the inside while he goes free?
[tense music]
- After 109 nights of backbreaking work,
David Sweat's made his way to the intersection
of Barker Street and Bouck Street,
130 yards outside the walls of the Dannemora prison.
He wants to run and never look back,
but his partner in this daring escape, Richard Matt,
is still locked in his cell.
Clock is ticking.
- David could have escaped,
but he didn't wanna leave Matt behind.
They were in this together.
- Dave and Richard Matt planned, plotted,
and they kept their mouth shut.
It was teamwork. That doesn't happen a lot.
Doesn't happen a lot in prison.
Not at all.
- But it's not just Richard Matt
that David Sweat is missing.
He's also without his getaway driver,
Joyce Mitchell.
The only way to get her to show up
is to rush back to his cell before the 5:30 count,
tell Richard Matt that they are ready to go
so they can tell Mitchell to be there the next night.
- And he says, "Matt, Matt," you know, "wake up."
And David takes a single stogey that he has.
He has a mirror and he puts his mirror outside of the cell
so that Matt on the other side can see him.
He can see his reflection.
And Matt looks at David and he goes,
"Oh, man, you did it?
It's really here. It's really happening."
And David said, "Yeah, we're ready.
♪ ♪
- Tonight will be the night.
- From what Joyce tells me, that day he looked at her
and he raised his fist in the air
as if to say, "We've done it."
And she knew in her heart that this was the signal.
- Mitchell is to meet them at midnight with her SUV.
Meanwhile, David prepares their getaway bags.
- Civilian clothing, it's allowed by the state.
So they could have a--like, a red hoodie or sweatpants.
- They had granola bars, they had pepperoni,
they had high-energy and low-weight food items.
- The escape plan is all set.
Now they just have to wait for go time.
♪ ♪
- Midnight staff will come into the block,
they'll do their last master count for the day,
and then shortly thereafter it's lights out.
They went into action.
They put the mannequins in their beds.
They wrote their goodbye notes in their cells.
- It's time.
They exit the back of their cells,
shimmy down the pipes,
make it through the brick wall,
and get to the cut steam pipe.
David Sweat goes through just as he did the previous night.
Now, for the first time,
Richard Matt crawls into the pipe.
- Matt starts his way through,
but Matt is very claustrophobic.
He is not someone that likes small spaces.
So as he's getting through he's already panicked,
and then he gets stuck
and he starts screaming for David to help,
and David's trying to pull him up.
It's not working.
- Inmate Sweat would throw a bedsheet back to him
and utilize the bed sheet to help pull him through the pipe
because it was a pretty tight fit for inmate Matt
- After a long struggle, Matt finally makes it through.
♪ ♪
- David popped his head out of the manhole,
looked around, and didn't see her black Jeep.
He goes back down and he says, "She's not here yet.
Let's give her a few more minutes maybe."
And Matt says, "Yeah, oh, she'll be here."
So they wait.
♪ ♪
And then at midnight, David looks out of the hole again,
No sign of Joyce.
- So once inmates Matt and Sweat
get out of the manhole, the question is
where is Joyce?
- What David Sweat and Richard Matt don't know
is that Joyce Mitchell has cold feet.
In fact, she has checked herself into the hospital
for a panic attack.
- Matt is baffled.
He cannot believe Joyce has not shown up.
And Matt says, "There's no way I'm going back to my cell.
Let's get out of here."
- Without a plan B and without a getaway car,
they head for the surrounding mountains.
Where they are headed is unknown.
- There's no doubt in my mind that they were headed
to Joyce Mitchell's house.
Inmate Matt was quick to tell the people
you don't wanna ever rat me out
because I will not only get you but I'll get your family,
I'll get your dog, and I'll get anything that you care about.
And you will pay a hell of a price for doing me wrong.
There's no doubt in my mind that inmate Matt
had a score to settle with Joyce Mitchell.
- They've escaped Dannemora.
They have a five-hour head start,
and now they have to escape a manhunt.
♪ ♪
- Just before midnight on June 5th, 2015,
Richard Matt and David Sweat
escaped Clinton Correctional Facility
in Dannemora, New York.
♪ ♪
- Inmates Matt and Sweat
were found missing at the standing headcount.
- There's two holes in the cells in A Block.
There are two inmates gone.
Holy [bleep].
And then when they found the hole
that went out through the pipe
and then the manhole cover that was moved,
they knew those guys are gone.
Crazy.
- I automatically became the incident commander responsible
for all operational search efforts in the area.
They had quite a significant six-hour head start.
Our plan was a massive
immediate deployment of personnel,
hundreds of troopers from around the state,
mobile units from multiple agencies.
- Hundreds of police, forest rangers and federal agents
have been searching for the pair.
- We're looking down on the Adirondacks.
That's 6 million acres of trees and heavy woods.
- They're out there miserable. They're hungry.
And desperate people do desperate things.
♪ ♪
- The entire upstate region of New York State
is in a panic
that two dangerous murderers are on the loose.
♪ ♪
As the authorities search for David Sweat and Richard Matt,
they are hiding out in the woods,
breaking into unoccupied hunting cabins along the way.
♪ ♪
At some point, David Sweat and Richard Matt
decide to split up.
- I think David and my dad split
because my father found alcohol.
My dad definitely becomes a different person
when he's drinking or under the influence.
That is when one of his more vicious personalities
come out, absolutely.
♪ ♪
- On June 26th, 21 days since their escape,
the authorities finally catch up with Richard Matt
near a hunting cabin.
- My father knew he was either going to get captured
or that they were going to kill him.
He knew this was the end, and he had a gun on him
and he raised that gun
and naturally the officers, doing their job,
they had to fire,
and come to find out that gun was empty.
So my father knew that if he raised a gun,
it was almost choosing death by cop.
So it was almost his invitation for them to shoot.
♪ ♪
- Two days later, on June 28th,
David Sweat is found
by an officer near the Canadian border.
David refuses to stop
when the officer yells for him to surrender.
- So he took careful aim and squeezed off one round.
A bullet struck sweat in the upper torso.
Sweat stumbled, but did not fall and kept running.
Sergeant Cook squeezed off another round.
The second round also hits Sweat in the upper torso.
Backup was nearby and immediately entered the field,
applying first aid and effectively saving
David Sweat's life, ending the 23-day manhunt.
♪ ♪
- Through cunning, coercion, ingenuity,
and hours of tedious work, Richard Matt and David sweat
managed to do what no one believed possible.
They escaped the confines of these walls,
but the chain of events that made their escape possible
was only as strong as its weakest link.
When Joyce Mitchell failed to pick them up on the night
of June 6th, 2015, their fate was sealed.
The 23-day manhunt that ensued
cost New York State over $23 million.
Joyce pleaded guilty to promoting prison contraband
and criminal facilitation.
She was fined $86,000
and served more than four years in prison.
Corrections officer Gene Palmer
pleaded guilty to promoting prison contraband
was sentenced to six months in jail
and fined $5,000.
Richard Matt's determination not to die in jail
cost him his life,
and David Sweat,
he's still serving his life sentence,
but now he's moved from prison to prison every few years
as they often find him planning his next escape.