David Sweat, one of the two convicted killers who escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility, has revealed new details of his and Richard Matt’s escape.
David Sweat says he began by sawing a hole into the back of his prison cell in late January after he was transferred to a cell next to Richard Matt, another inmate serving life sentence at the prison. By February, Sweat and Matt were able to access the enclosed catwalk behind the cells, Sweat told one of the investigators in his hospital bed.
Sweat then found a tunnel that ran beneath the prison’s outer walls. Sweat used a sledgehammer and other pilfered hand tools to try to chip away at the concrete tunnel wall. He took a second set of clothes into the tunnel to serve as work coveralls to cover up the dust and grime as he continued working on the wall.
When the prison shut down its heating system around May 4, this allowed one of the 24-inch steam pipe to cool. Sweat used this opportunity to cut a hole that was large enough for both men to crawl through using hacksaw blades with handles fashioned from rags. This took Sweat more than four weeks to accomplish.
After conducting a dry run, Sweat and Richard Matt escaped the prison from a manhole outside the prison on June 6.
David Sweat is now being held in solitary confinement at the maximum-security Five Points Correctional Facility in Romulus, New York. Officials have filed charges against Sweat for the escape.