Upstate New York Prison Superintendent, Workers Put on Leave After Escapes

State prison officials announced a major shake-up Tuesday at the maximum-security slammer where two convicted killers broke out and led authorities on a 23-day manhunt.

Wylie said the two convicts conducted a practice run the night before they escaped. The first time was when three people came to check the cabin where they were hiding.

Meanwhile, the surviving convict, David Sweat, claimed from his hospital bed at Albany Medical Center that he used no power tools to cut his way out, contrary to what authorities have said.

The plan had been to kill her husband, Lyle, and hightail it to Mexico, the DA recounted.

He has an annual salary of $132,040, according to the New York Department of Corrections, Reuters reported. Mitchell, 51, told authorities she had agreed to meet them outside the prison with a vehicle but that she changed her mind.

Even months before the escape, the official said, Mitchell used baked goods to win favors for Matt and Sweat – including asking one guard to pass frozen hamburger meat to Matt, bypassing the prison’s metal detector in a violation of policy.

If Sweat is indicted, Wylie said he would be brought to Clinton County Court to be arraigned.

What did they acquire on the run? A day ago, his condition was considered serious; On Sunday night, after he had been shot twice in the torso and captured by State Police, Sweat was in critical condition.

The men poked their heads out of a manhole, but decided it was too close to nearby homes.

After interviewing Sweat over the past two days, state police investigators have no plans for now to speak with him further, spokesman Beau Duffy said.

A new development in the case of the escaped New York prisoners suggests that more than a dozen prison employees may be involved or were negligent leading up to the escape.

The prison seamstress was arrested and charged with providing escape tools to the fugitives.

Corrections officer Gene Palmer is charged with promoting prison contraband, tampering with physical evidence and official misconduct.

With one escaped killer dead and the other caught – three weeks after the breakout of a lifetime – official probes are underway into root causes of how they got out and who is to blame. All contractor tool boxes are now to be stored in secure areas inaccessible to inmates and inspected daily.

“From the thing i fully understand in revealing the statistics right now, he informed private investigators which typically Palmer had no dealing with the escape”.

The new security measures also include temporarily closing the prison’s honor block, where the inmates escaped, and subjecting it to the same security restrictions as other blocks.

In addition to the prison break investigation, investigators were told – by prison employees – there may have been heroin use among inmates at the facility and employees may have played a role in it, CNN reports.