On June 6, Clinton Correctional Facility employees discovered that two convicted killers Richard Matt,49, and David Sweat,35, had escaped the prison leaving behind stuffed beds as decoys. The two were assumed to be armed with stolen weapons.
The men used smuggled hacksaw blades and a screwdriver bit to break through the steel walls in their neighboring cells, slipped through a steam pipe and fled through a manhole outside the walls of the maximum-security prison, about 20 miles from the Canadian border. The tools allegedly were hidden in frozen meat by Joyce Mitchell, 51, who worked in the prison’s tailor shop and is charged with aiding in the escape of the inmates, who were allowed to cook their own meals, said Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie.
Gene Palmer,57, is the second employee at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora to be detained over the dramatic escape of Richard Matt and David Sweat on June 6. Palmer is charged with tampering with physical evidence, introducing dangerous contraband into prison, both felonies, and a misdemeanor charge of official misconduct for accepting the paintings in return for the contraband, the documents showed.
Mitchell has pleaded not guilty. Palmer admitted passing on the meat but had no idea it was concealing contraband, Palmer’s attorney Andrew Brockway said. Brockway added that his client had been “completely cooperative with the investigation” and “wants these individuals caught.”
More than a decade ago Palmer talked about life as a corrections officer inside the Dannemora prison in an interview with North Country Public Radio.
“With the money they pay you’ll go bald, you’ll have high blood pressure, you’ll become an alcoholic, you’ll divorce and then you’ll kill yourself,” he said, calling Dannemora as a “negative” environment.