Escaped Prisoners Richard Matt and David Sweat Listened to Radio Reports About Manhunt
Richard Matt and David Sweat had marijuana during their weeks on the run.
— -- Escaped prisoners Richard Matt and David Sweat listened to reports about their manhunt on a radio and also had marijuana during their weeks on the run, Sweat told authorities in a lengthy interview, a state police source told ABC News.
Sweat is recovering at Albany Medical Center after he was shot and wounded Sunday in the area of Constable, New York, about 1.5 miles south of the Canadian border. Matt, meanwhile, was shot and killed Friday in Elephant’s Head in upstate New York, police said.
Investigators have been interviewing Sweat to better understand how the men escaped June 6 from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, and how they were able to avoid capture for so long. His condition has been upgraded to “serious.”
More than 1,000 officers were involved in the search for the prisoners.
The two men split up last week, after Sweat believed “Matt was slowing him down,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. Matt later spent some time in a previously unknown camper in Franklin County, an official confirmed Monday.
Jon Chodat, who lives just down the road, told ABC News the camper that sheltered Matt, 48, from the elements has probably been there since 1997, and has likely been abandoned for many years.
"He was the only one that was here," Chodat said of Matt. "Because Sweat took off the other way."
Cuomo called the escape "an extraordinary situation in many ways."
"If you were writing a movie plot, they would say this was overdone," he said to reporters Sunday evening.
Sweat had been serving life without parole in the killing of a sheriff's deputy, and Matt had been serving 25 years to life for the killing of his former boss.
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