lethal manhunt!

Situation: Two particularly vicious murderers escape from prison, holding a whole region in a grip of fear.

Lesson: There are some situations only righteous gunfire can solve. Marksmanship matters.

In the northwestern corner of New York state sits a little village called Dannemora. It is populated by some 4,000 people, roughly three-quarters of whom are inmates of the prison known as Clinton Correctional Facility. Many of the law-abiding residents work at the prison. They and other residents call the prison “Clinton.” Most everyone else colloquially calls the prison simply “Dannemora.”

Among the men listed as the most potentially dangerous of those thousands of inmates were David Sweat and Richard Matt. Despite their history of ruthless, murderous sadism and escape attempts, they had of late maintained “good behavior” and earned some privileges inside the walls. They also groomed at least a couple of prison employees as friends who would bend rules for them. As a result, they were able to escape during the first weekend of June 2015.

In the days that followed, my wife and I were teaching in upstate New York, Saratoga Springs, and like everyone else in the region kept an eye out for the faces in the mug shots that dominated the news media. Half a decade later, I came across the most thorough documentation I’ve seen yet of the escape and the massive law enforcement operation that followed, the book Dannemora by Charles A. Gardner. Aptly subtitled Two Escaped Killers, Three Weeks of Terror, and the Largest Manhunt Ever in New York State, it was written by a municipal court judge retired from a quarter century career with the N.Y. State Department of Corrections who lived in the area.

Preludes

It is axiomatic in criminology many violent criminal actors had troubled childhoods, and equally true that a great many people with those disadvantages grow up to be law-abiding, productive citizens. Not David Sweat, violent even as a child and kicked out of elementary school at age nine for carrying a concealed butcher knife in class. His adventures in drug dealing and burglary saw him in and out of penal institutions starting in his teens. By 2002, he was into ripping off gun shops, and bragging to acquaintances how he would kill anyone who might send him back to prison. One night in July of 2002, he and a couple of cronies were gathered in a darkened parking lot celebrating a successful gun shop burglary when they saw a Broome County Sheriff’s Department patrol car pull into the lot.

As Deputy Kevin Tarsia, 36, exited his vehicle, he was ambushed by the gang, Sweat firing at him with two stolen guns. Several bullets stopped on the lawman’s body armor, but not all: wound channels ripped through his intestines and one kidney. He was down but still alive when David Sweat drove his getaway car over him, brutally dragging the body across the asphalt parking lot beneath the undercarriage. Sweat watched as one of his thug buddies snatched the severely injured officer’s own issue GLOCK .40 and cold-bloodedly executed the now-helpless deputy with two shots to the face.

Hunted down not long after, Sweat proved to have no stomach for pulling guns on cops already pointing theirs at him and meekly submitted to arrest, quickly snitching off his accomplices. A year later, he pled guilty to first degree murder and was on his way to Dannemora.

The hulking Richard Matt was older than Sweat, and if anything, an even more vicious murderer. The son of a criminal, he graduated from foster homes to “reform school” by the time he was 14. A lifelong bully since childhood, he had a high IQ and talent in art, but it seemed from the beginning he would rather steal than work. He was skilled at manipulating people, particularly women. By age 19 he had twice escaped from jail. The escape from Dannemora in 2015 would be his fifth attempt and his third successful one.

His odyssey went on to include a stint in Elmira for a murder-for-hire plot. In 1997, on parole at age 31, Matt was offered a job and a chance at redemption by an elderly man who owned a food company. Matt thanked him by first stealing from him, and then finally abducting him and torturing him for the stash of cash Matt believed the man had squirreled away. Frustrated to find no money, Richard Matt broke the old man’s neck with his bare hands, dismembered the corpse with a hacksaw, and threw the body parts in the Niagara River.

Detectives cracked the case fairly quickly, but by that time Matt was already in Matamoros, Mexico where he stabbed an American tourist to death to steal a few hundred dollars. Quickly captured and imprisoned there, he was eventually extradited to New York for the murder of his benefactor, and in 2008 was sentenced to 25 years to life and on his way to Dannemora, where he would meet and conspire with David Sweat.

The Escape

I’m not going to publish a guide on how to escape from a maximum-security penitentiary. Suffice to say Sweat, and particularly Matt, had a trait common to sociopaths and psychopaths: the ability to charm the gullible. Particularly vulnerable was a heavy-set, middle aged woman named Joyce Mitchell, who ran the prison tailor shop where both convicts worked. It was confirmed she definitely had a sexual relationship with Matt and possibly also with Sweat and was excessively chummy with both.

Both cons had made life easier for themselves by informing on other criminals before they got to Dannemora, and inside the walls, Matt had cultivated prison guard Gene Palmer. The bulky killer con also painted portraits for Clinton staff to garner more favors, including getting situated in proximity to Sweat in the relatively lightly monitored “honor block” area of the prison.

Mitchell bought hacksaw blades, hiding them in frozen hamburger meat she smuggled into the prison, and gave to Palmer to deliver to the pair. They used the hacksaw blades to cut through the cell walls, allowing them access to tunnels that ultimately led to a manhole cover in a Dannemora street outside the prison grounds.

It would later be claimed (and denied by Mrs. Mitchell) the plan was for her to drive to a pickup site after Sweat and Matt had cleared the walls, and head for Mexico — and before leaving town, the cons would murder her husband so she could collect his half-million-dollar insurance policy. Exactly how this would work out if she was in Mexico with two hunted men, one of whom had a murder sentence to serve in that very country, was never explained. Detectives theorized the pair simply planned to murder her after the escape, dump her corpse, and drive on. It became academic when Mrs. Mitchell failed to show up at the pickup point, and the fugitives desperately headed into the surrounding woods on foot.

Enter The Governor

Andrew Cuomo, known to our readers as a sworn enemy of gun owners, doesn’t seem to have much love for police and correctional personnel either. The Governor of New York saw the whole thing as a PR opportunity and turned his tour into something close to The Convict’s Guide to Escaping From Dannemora.

Wrote Charles Gardner, “The visiting officials from Albany paraded through the prison with cameras and cell phones documenting the escape route and crime scenes. In one of the many ironies surrounding the case, this was a violation of several departmental policies, including strict rules against cell phones and cameras inside prisons. In other words, top state officials were breaking some of the same rules about which they would later beat up on Corrections officials. The governor’s entourage gave their photos and video to the news media and posted them on social media.” (1) Added Gardner, “Apparently indifferent to investigative protocols, the governor, acting commissioner, and their staffs crossed crime-scene tape and handled physical evidence while touring the escape route. Investigators watched silently as this parade of people contaminated active crime scenes. Why Albany bigwigs allowed photos and video from the crime scene to be publicized, the investigators couldn’t understand. But they kept their mouths shut.”

Gardner also noted the correctional officers and police officers alike were disgusted Governor Cuomo referred to the cop-killer and the torture-murderer as “gentlemen” and “Mister.”

Meanwhile, two desperate criminals with proven homicidal tendencies were at large.

Murderers In the Woods

While Andrew Cuomo was performing for the news cameras, the two fugitives were in the woods surrounding the area. They’d headed there as soon as they realized Mrs. Mitchell wasn’t coming with the getaway car. Realizing the futility of their plan to escape to Mexico without wheels, they headed north to the other border: Canada was very close, “hiking distance” if not “walking distance.”

Neither had a history of hiking, hunting, camping or other outdoor sports. They had managed to get hiking boots smuggled into their cells unnoticed, but as they plodded through the forest, they still gathered blisters, and were tormented by mosquitoes. Had they had to live off the land, they might have become starved enough to surrender.

Northern New York has much beautiful forest land, but it’s not all wilderness. Many consider it vacation land. Numerous cabins and modest, privately owned hunting lodges dot the area, and the pair broke into many such currently unoccupied structures.

The break-ins provided them with more than enough food to sustain them. Located for recreation, many of those cabins had an ample supply of liquor, and occasionally marijuana, to which the fugitives helped themselves. The pragmatic Sweat indulged moderately if at all, but Matt had always been an out of control drunk when he was free and reverted to type. He would stay under the influence of alcohol for most of his remaining time at large.

Meanwhile, law enforcement had mobilized en masse for what turned out to be a three-week search. I’ve heard no one challenge Charles Gardner’s assessment this was the largest manhunt in the history of New York State. Most estimates put the “cop count” at around 1,500. N.Y. State Police were naturally there in force. Numerous SWAT teams were called in. As close as it all was to the Canada line, there was a heavy Border Patrol element involved, including BORTAC, the elite Border Patrol tactical unit. Bordering Vermont cops were on high alert status as well, and RCMP and other Canadian law enforcement entities, likewise, on the other side of the border. Even the elite FBI Hostage Rescue Team was called in.

And the hunted killers had another faction to worry about: armed citizens.

Encounter

On June 20, the fugitives were holed up in a remote cabin accessible only by all-terrain vehicle. Its owner, who happened to be an off-duty correctional officer, brought his dog out to check on the status of the place. The dog alerted as they neared the cabin: Matt and Sweat were in fact there. The owner drew his handgun, took a cover position, and ordered the men out. He was rewarded with the sound of a back door slamming, and a glimpse of the two men running away. They were long gone by the time he could summon the cavalry.

The bad news was by then, the fugitives had found a 20-gauge shotgun, fortunately with no ammunition. They had no stomach to bluff what appeared to be an ordinary man armed with a loaded handgun.

Unfortunately, they soon broke into another cabin where they found a box of 20-gauge rifled slug rounds. The danger level had just increased.

Matt Goes To The Mat

The prison buddies had grown hostile toward one another. Matt’s drunken, stumbling slowness grated on the more athletic Sweat, who felt his partner was slowing them down. Moreover, Matt spoke of going to the road and carjacking to escape, and of dying in a shootout with police. They separated.

On June 26, Richard Matt, now a lone gunman, concealed himself by a roadside and fired the stolen shotgun at a passing pickup truck pulling a camper, striking the vehicle but missing the driver. The driver called in, and police converged on the scene. They found Matt lying prone by a log and ordered him to show his hands.

Instead, Matt swung his shotgun — now sawed-off with tools found at another burgled camp — at one of the officers.

It was a spectacular case of “cause of death: sudden and acute failure of the victim selection process.” Matt’s target was National BORTAC team leader Chris Voss, a combat veteran former Army Ranger.

Voss beat Matt to the trigger.

Aim the M4 carbine, press trigger, reset, repeat. And it was over. Matt’s head, Voss’ only exposed target, had taken multiple high velocity .223 hits. He had been killed instantly before he could fire a shot. Richard Matt had died a quicker and easier death than his victims.

No Sweat

No longer encumbered by his staggering, drunken partner, David Sweat had covered more miles in two days alone than the whole rest of their three weeks together. On June 28 he was walking along a stone wall through a field some 30 yards from Coveytown Road when he was spotted by passing N.Y. State Police Sergeant Jay Cook. Alone in his patrol car, Cook pulled over and asked the man to stop for questioning. Instead, Sweat ran for the tree line. As Cook ordered him to stop, Sweat kept running; he threw off his backpack to gain more speed and screamed he was unarmed. If he shouted that because he thought it meant the trooper couldn’t shoot him, he was wrong.

Sweat, 35, was outrunning the 47-year-old sergeant. Away from his patrol car, armed only with his pistol, alone without backup in a rural area he knew had spotty radio contact, the trooper couldn’t take Sweat’s word he was unarmed. He had positively ID’d one of the two then-most identifiable faces in New York state. And, the cardinal criterion of the governing case law, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Garner decision: Cook knew this man was a clear and present danger to innocent human life for so long as he remained at large.

There has been some incorrect info on what happened next. For example, the New York Times incorrectly published Cook went to a kneeling position. (2) Cook himself told American Handgunner what really happened:

“When I realized I had to shoot, I jumped into an Isosceles stance, with my left foot a little ahead of my right. I held the sights center mass and focused on the front sight: He was a little blurry blob. I fired the first shot and he pitched forward and almost lost his footing. His right arm flopped wildly up in the air. He managed to catch himself and keep running. I fired the second shot, and he dropped immediately.”

Cook continued, “With the heavy camo clothing he was wearing, I couldn’t tell how badly he was hit. I saw an empty knife sheath on his belt. I kept him at gunpoint with his arms out to the side. He said, ‘I’m gonna die … I just wanted to live. I just wanted to disappear.’ When backup got there, we handcuffed him and took off his upper clothing, and that’s when we saw where he was hit.”

Sweat would later say, “He hit me twice and it was — the first one hit me in the shoulder, the top. It killed this whole arm. I couldn’t move it. And the other one was on the other side. I thought, ‘Man, I’m going to hit the ground,’ and just started spitting blood up. He hit my lung.” (3) The 200-grain Speer Gold Dots from Cook’s department issue GLOCK 37 in .45 GAP had inflicted arm and thorax hits. The distance from Cook’s firing point to where Sweat collapsed from his bullet wounds was measured at 210 feet. Sweat’s empty knife sheath hadn’t been empty long: The blade was found later nearby, where the fugitive had either accidentally dropped or intentionally discarded it during the final foot pursuit.

The manhunt would later be estimated to have cost up to $28 million. Now, it was truly over.

Lessons

The two corrections officers both served time behind bars for their parts in the escape. Other occupational heads rolled, so to speak, at Dannemora. David Sweat was last heard from in solitary confinement for 23 hours per day for the rest of his life. It is from his subsequent confession we know what went on with him and Richard Matt during their fugitive time.

We know from Sweat they had monitored media; for one thing, he had a stolen transistor radio with him at the time of his capture. They had to have heard the media stories of citizens arming themselves, an obvious deterrent to attempting carjackings and invasions of occupied dwellings his drunk and perhaps suicidal partner wanted to perpetrate.

We learn twice over precision marksmanship can be critical to survival. BORTAC team leader Voss was looking down the barrel of a slug-loaded shotgun when he coolly put multiple bullets into the small target presented to him in time to save his own life and the lives of his brother officers. Sergeant Cook’s remarkable marksmanship with 100% hits on a running cop-killer after a strenuous foot pursuit, at three times the normal maximum police handgun qualification distance, was nothing less than what the late Col. Jeff Cooper would have called “a feat of arms.”
This article is dedicated to the 1,500 guardians who participated in the manhunt that ultimately kept many people safe from two particularly cold-blooded murderers.

Footnotes: (1) Gardner, Charles A., Dannemora, NYC: Citadel Press, 2019, pp. 163-164. (2) Rashbaum, William K., Swamps, “Marijuana, Moonshine: 2 Prison Escapees’ 3 Weeks on the Run in New York,” New York Times, Sept. 17, 2016. (3) “Rashbaum,” New York Times, op. cit.

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