US

The Story Of The ‘Shawshank’ Prison Break Just Got A Whole Lot Juicier

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Casey Harper Contributor
Font Size:

Last weekend, Richard Matt and David Sweat broke through steel and brick, crawled through a metal pipe, and came out on the other side free men in the ‘Shawshank’ style breakout that has sparked a massive manhunt.

As if that wasn’t interesting enough, it seems like they might have had inside help, allegedly from a female employee of the prison.

Here’s everything we know so far:

  • Police have questioned 51-year-old Joyce Mitchell, a prison supervisor at the Clinton Correctional Facility, who may have helped the pair escape. The New York Post has reported that the woman may have been wooed by Matt. “When [Matt’s] cleaned up, he’s very handsome and, in all frankness, very well endowed. He gets girlfriends any place he goes,” retired Detective David Bentley, who helped catch Matt for murder, told The New York Post.
  • Police believe Mitchell was going to meet the pair of men and drive them to hiding but at the last minute headed to the hospital for panic attacks. Her phone was reportedly used to call Matt’s associates, which could have been used to plan for after the escape.
  • Matt was convicted of three counts of murder, two counts of robbery, and three counts of kidnapping.
  • Sweat was serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for killing sheriff’s Deputy Kevin Tarsia in 2002.
  • The two men may have used a hacksaw to saw through the wall of their cell around the air vent, working slowly in the night for weeks to avoid detection. The men would remove the grate to cut and then put it back to cover their work.
  • They likely got their tools because contractors were doing construction work on site, and the prison might not have thoroughly the number of tools onsite.
  • The inmates likely charged the powertools by running a wire to the construction site and secretly stealing electricity.
  • Matt and Sweat had adjacent cells, and Matt has had a history of jail breaks. He escaped the Erie County Jail in 1986 by climbing the fence.
  • A fellow inmate at that jail reportedly tried to hire Matt to kill multiple people, including the husband of a Warner Bros. founder’s granddaughter.
  • Sources told The New York Daily News that the whole plot was hatched up in the tailor shop while the prisoners were sewing uniforms.
  • The two men were reportedly spotted carrying a guitar case, likely to carry their tools, five hours before they were reported missing. The witness claims one of them said, We’re just lost. We don’t know where we are. We’re on the wrong street.”
  • The men are extremely dangerous, and authorities have said they “could be literally anywhere.”
  • There is a reward of $50,000 per man for information leading to an arrest.
  • The two men used tools to cut a hole through a steel wall. Authorities suspect they climbed out of that hole and crawled down a catwalk six stories before using slicing through a large metal pipe, the same one they would crawl down for more than a city block.
  • That pipe led to a manhole in a residential neighborhood. The neighborhood has been thoroughly searched and guarded.
  • To avoid detection from guards in the middle of the night, the inmates put clothes in their beds to make it look like they were asleep. They were reported as last seen at 10:30 p.m. Friday during a guard inspection and discovered missing at 5:30 a.m.
  • The two men left behind a note reading “Have A Nice Day!” on the pipe they cut as a potentially final farewell.
Handout photo shows a note with a caption "Have a nice day" left on an opening in the pipe, where two inmates are suspected to have cut open as part of their escape from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York
A note with a caption "Have a nice day" left on an opening in the pipe, where two inmates are suspected to have cut open as part of their escape from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, is seen in this New York Governor's Press Office handout photo taken June 6, 2015 and released on June 7, 2015. REUTERS/New York Governor's Press Office/Handout via Reuters

A note with a caption “Have a nice day” left on an opening in the pipe, where two inmates are suspected to have cut open as part of their escape from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, is seen in this New York Governor’s Press Office handout photo taken June 6, 2015 and released on June 7, 2015. REUTERS/New York Governor’s Press Office/Handout via Reuters

Follow Casey on Twitter and like him on Facebook

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel