Killers make Hollywood-style escape from maximum security prison

Two convicted murderers escaped from the maximum security wing of New York's Clinton Correctional Facility on Saturday, marking the first breakout in the prison’s 150-year history.

“It was really unbelievable. If it was a movie plot, you would say that it was overdone,” said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in an interview with CNN.

Comparable to a Shawshank Redemption-style bolt for freedom, David Sweat, 34, and Richard Matt, 48, carried out their sophisticated exit plan under the cover of ongoing prison renovations. The men, who shared adjacent cells, obtained power tools to cut through the back wall of their cells, leaving behind nothing but a yellow sticky note containing a crude Asian caricature and the words, “Have a nice day!”

Investigators are looking into whether civilian employees or private contractors helped the men obtain the tools. The governor said “they had to have had the assistance of someone.” The facility employs 1,400 correctional officers andhouses nearly 3,000 prisoners.

After crawling through the hole, the prisoners came out on a catwalk. Travelling underground, they followed a maze of the prison’s pipe system, broke through a brick wall guarding a 24 inch steam pipe, and crawled along it for hundreds of yards. After slicing through a chain and lock on a manhole cover, the men reached the surface and disappeared.

Officials said the escapees fooled guards during Saturday’s bed checks by creating make-shift dummies out of clothes. The men were last seen at 10:30 p.m. Friday during a standing count. At night, guards perform head counts every two hours to see if inmates are in their bunks. Authorities have not determined how long the prisoners were missing between Friday night and Saturday morning roll call.

“The first order of business is getting them back,” said Cuomo. “These are really dangerous and desperate men. They are literally killers.”

Sweat murdered a sheriff’s deputy and received a life-without-parole sentence in 2002. Matt, convicted in 1997 of kidnapping, killing, and dismembering his former boss, was serving a 25-year-to-life sentence.

Locals call the Clinton Correctional Facility “Little Siberia” because of its remote and stark location, only 20 miles south of the Canadian border. Cuomo said the inmates may have crossed the U.S. border or fled to another state by now. He declared New York to be in “a crisis situation” and announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to the men’s capture.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.