The New York max security prison 2 murderers escaped from wasn't actually all that secure
- Nightly bed checks were not performed properly.
- Corrections Department rules say officers must see inmate's skin and detect breathing. But over the years the inmates had been permitted to completely cover themselves. Guards also no longer shined flashlights in their faces after complaints by inmates that they were being woken up. This led to the two inmates not being discovered missing until the bed check at 5:30 a.m. although a witness said he saw the two prisoners in his garden at 12:30 a.m.
- Underground tunnels, through which Sweat and Matt escaped, were not regularly inspected even though they used to be inspected once a week. One current officer said the last inspection he could recall was in October.
- No one was inside two of the 35-foot-high watch towers on the south side of the prison, nearest to the manhole the prisoners fled out of. For years, they had not been staffed overnight but since the escape, the towers have been staffed around the clock.
REUTERS/Chris WattieA guard stands in a tower at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York June 8, 2015.
- Some security posts were no longer filled despite modest increases in personnel.
- In recent years officers stopped patrolling the catwalk behind the cells where it is believed the two escaped murderers found some of the tools they used to escape.
- The inmates may have found tools left by contractors on the catwalk
Darren McGee/New York State Governor's Office, via APThis photo provided by New York State Governor's office shows Gov. Andrew Cuomo on a catwalk looking into the cell that inmates escaped from at a maximum-security prison near the Canadian border in Dannemora.
- Although forbidden by prison rules except when using the toilet, putting sheets across cell bars to obstruct viewing was frequently allowed.
- The prison does not have video cameras on the cell blocks.
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Sweat and Matt broke out of the facility on June 6.
Matt, 48, was serving a sentence of 25 years to life for killing and dismembering his former boss in 1997. He had fled to Mexico in the '90s after killing his boss. Sweat, 34, was serving a life sentence for killing a sheriff's deputy.
Up to 800 law-enforcement officers have gone door to door checking houses, wooded areas, campgrounds, and summer homes in search of the fugitives.
Google MapsThis map shows all of the places, in chronological order, where police have searched for the escaped killers so far.
Over the weekend, the state police had moved their manhunt to an area west of the New York prison, as officers began investigating the latest reported sighting.
Investigators and military trucks converged on Mountain View, a hamlet in Franklin County, late Sunday. Hours before, hundreds had searched two towns more than 350 miles away, following an unconfirmed but credible report of another sighting.
The search is now focused on a rural area about 20 miles away from the prison after the pair's DNA was discovered inside a cabin.Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.