They traded goods and favors with guards and fellow prisoners in exchange for paintings, a skill for which Matt was revered, and Sweat was his eager apprentice. Prison guard Gene Palmer traded Matt and Sweat tools they used in their escape for a bevy of paintings, including portraits and landscapes. On the Honor Block, Matt and Sweat were allowed to cook their own meals, work in plumbing and electricity and wear civilian clothes. They successfully petitioned to have their cells moved next to each other in the prison’s Honor Block, a luxury only afforded those inmates with years of good behavior who have curried favor with corrections officers, according to Daniel Genis, who served 10 years at Clinton Correctional Facility. Sweat entered Dannemora in 2003, and when Matt arrived after his 2008 conviction, the two became friends, despite their 16-year age difference. Sweat and Nabinger pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and were sentenced to life without parole, according to The New York Times. The third accomplice hid in trees during the gunfire. The sheriff was shot 15 times by Sweat and Nabinger, and Sweat ran him over with his car while he was still alive. On July 4, 2002, Sweat and two accomplices, including his cousin, Jeffrey Nabinger, had just robbed a gun and fireworks store over the state line in Pennsylvania when they encountered Broome County Sheriff's Deputy Kevin J. At the age of 17, he served 19 months in prison for burglary, according to Binghamton’s Press & Sun-Bulletin. Born in 1980, David Sweat was the product of a broken home and was often in trouble in and around his hometown of Binghamton, New York. Matt’s literal partner in crime was no angel either. Bates was also found guilty for his role in the murder, according to NBC News. Matt received the maximum of 25 years to life in prison. In 2008, he was tried for the Rickerson killing and found guilty of second-degree murder, robbery and kidnapping charges after Bates testified against him. While jailed in Mexico, he was shot during another attempted escape, before being extradited to the United States in 2007. He used his brother’s name when he was arrested in 1998 for fatally stabbing fellow American Charles Perreault during an attempted robbery in Matamoros. Matt fled the country, driving to Mexico in his half-brother Wayne Schimpf’s car. Matt later broke Rickerson's neck with his bare hands, before dismembering his body with a hacksaw, and throwing the remains into the Niagara River. They then stuffed him in the trunk of a car and drove to Ohio. In 1997, Matt and an accomplice, Lee Bates, kidnapped and tortured their former employer, 72-year-old William Rickerson, whom they were convinced had access to large amounts of cash. In 1986, he broke out of the county jail, where he was serving a year for assault, before being captured a couple days later at his brother’s house. Even in elementary, junior high, he had issues," former North Tonawanda Police Chief Randy Szukala told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle at the time of his escape. At 13, he ran away from a group home where he had been sent for stealing a boat. Born in 1966, he grew up in foster care in Tonawanda, New York, outside Buffalo. Richard Matt had been trouble since an early age. Known colloquially as “Dannemora” for the small upstate town in which it’s situated, its remote northern location near the Canadian border also earned it the nickname “Little Siberia.” ![]() ![]() ![]() Opened in 1845, Clinton Correctional Facility is New York State’s largest maximum security prison and home to such infamous luminaries as serial killer Joel Rifkin and rapper Bobby Shmurda. Though both Matt and Sweat were cold-blooded killers, they made for model prisoners, and became friends on the Honor Block at Clinton Correctional Facility, where inmates with years of good behavior are afforded bigger cells. The event would eventually be dramatized in the new Showtime mini-series, “ Escape At Dannemora.” When it was all over, one of the men would be dead, two prison officials would become inmates themselves and the prison would come under intense scrutiny. "If it was a movie plot, you would say that it was overdone,” said Governor Cuomo, sticking with his Hollywood theme. Escaped convicts Richard Matt and David Sweat, however, were no innocents.Īs authorities learned more about the breakout, additional characters played supporting roles and the plotlines became more sensational and lurid. The summer 2015 prison break from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, was so brazen and daring that it was almost immediately compared to something you’d see in a movie. Governor Andrew Cuomo likened it to 1994’s “The Shawkshank Redemption,” based on a Stephen King story about a man wrongfully sentenced to life in prison who spends years plotting his escape.
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