N.Y. / REGION

Richard Matt, Escaped Prisoner in New York Manhunt, Is Fatally Shot

By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and BENJAMIN MUELLERJUNE 26, 2015

Richard W. Matt, one of the convicted murderers who engineered an elaborate escape from New York’s largest prison nearly three weeks ago, was shot and killed on Friday by a federal agent, officials said.

The authorities encountered Mr. Matt, 49, after the inmate, who was on foot, tried to carjack a camper vehicle near Malone, N.Y., a person with knowledge of the situation said. The driver sped away and called 911, and law enforcement officers responded.

Law enforcement officers were pursuing the other inmate, David Sweat, 35. “They don’t have eyes on the guy, but they have a three-mile perimeter around the area,” the person with knowledge of the situation said.

Mr. Matt’s killing marked a violent conclusion to one prong of a search that spread over large parts of the state, and exposed just how haphazard the inmates’ escape had apparently become over the course of their time at large.

For all the intricate planning that allowed them to break out of their cells at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., the killers made it only about 40 miles from the prison’s imposing walls, moving between remote hunting cabins under the cover of dense woods.

The attempted carjacking ended a brutal criminal career for Mr. Matt, who had also escaped from an Erie County jail in 1986.

The New York State Police said in a statement on Friday that a law enforcement officer “spotted a man in a wooded area” in Malone. An officer then “shot and killed a man believed to be Clinton Correctional Facility escapee Richard Matt,” the statement said.

“A positive identification is still pending,” it said.

Roadblocks set up on Friday evening near Lake Titus, in the town of Malone, kept residents and reporters away from what appeared to be tense law enforcement activity in the woods.

Shortly after 5 p.m., a dozen state troopers with firearms stood 50 feet apart along Fayette Road near Route 30, just north of Lake Titus. They stared intently into the woods flanking the dirt road on the south, guns drawn. “The dogs are out,” one trooper said.

The police had closed off Route 30, a main north-south corridor through Malone. Tina LaMour, who lives near Lake Titus, said she was pleased at least one escapee had been stopped.

“I’m relieved,” she said. “I would rather that they caught them alive and brought them back. But I really didn’t think that either of them would want to go alive.”

Investigators had converged this week on Franklin County after investigators found DNA matching that of the two killers in a hunting cabin about 15 miles west of the prison. The State Police said on Friday that evidence was recovered from a second cabin, this time in Malone, that indicated at least one of the inmates had been there.

Mitch Johnson, who lives in nearby Owls Head, N.Y., said his cousin alerted the police to suspicious activity at a hunting cabin near his home on Friday morning.

The cousin, Bobby Willett, of Malone, N.Y., had been checking on a hunting camp he has when he noticed a bottle of liquor that had not been there earlier. “There was a bottle of liquor there today that wasn’t there yesterday,” Mr. Johnson said. “They probably saw him coming from the woods and then ran out,” Mr. Johnson added, referring to the inmates.

Mr. Willett then called the authorities, according to Mr. Johnson.

The escape set off a statewide search on foot and by air, with hundreds of officers marching in tight formations through woods and investigating more than 2,000 tips. The manhunt at times widened to locations as varied as Vermont, a remote island on Lake Champlain and Philadelphia.

The breakout, rare in its complexity and precision, relied on a combination of power tools and trickery, as well as alleged assistance from inside and outside the prison.

The men used dummies fashioned from sweatshirts to trick corrections officers into believing they were in bed and asleep. The men, who had adjoining cells, each cut through the walls of their cells, then made their way into the bowels of the prison, cutting through steel, and emerged from a manhole into a neighborhood of vacant storefronts and clapboard houses just outside the prison.

Officials said the inmates escaped late on Friday, June 5, or early Saturday, June 6. The corrections officers did not discover that the prisoners were missing until a bed check at 5:30 a.m. Saturday. The next day, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo called the escape a “crisis situation for the state,” and announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to their arrest.

The authorities have accused a civilian prison employee, Joyce E. Mitchell, of supplying the men with tools that aided in their escape, including hacksaw blades, chisels, a punch and a screwdriver bit.

A corrections officer, Gene Palmer, is accused of giving the men needle-nose pliers and a flathead screwdriver in exchange for paintings by Mr. Matt.

Mr. Palmer, who had been placed on administrative leave, was arrested and charged with promoting prison contraband, tampering with physical evidence and official misconduct.