Michael McCaffrey, the man from Malone who had followed every facet of the manhunt, first hears the news via Facebook: a trooper has captured David Sweat.
“C’mon, let’s go to the hospital, and maybe we can see them bring him in!” he says to his wife, Terry. Within twenty minutes they are outside Alice Hyde Medical Center, hoping to get a glimpse of the fugitive.
Soon after, an ambulance pulls in. McCaffrey holds up his camera phone and hits record. The small crowd watches as the truck backs into the emergency entrance, where state troopers and police are waiting. Cops try to push the spectators back, but McCaffrey, who bears the size and likeness of a lumberjack, stands firm.
The ambulance parks and cops help open its doors.
“Wicked, eh?!” McCaffrey says aloud.
Seconds later, paramedics unload the gurney with Sweat strapped to it and rush him inside.
“There he goes!” McCaffrey said, trying to keep the camera steady. “He’s got camo on, eh? You seen it!? You seen him movin’ and shit!? Awesome! I want to hear that damn story!”
• • •
Members of the New York State Police, the U.S. Marshals, the Clinton County Sherriff’s Department, and other law enforcement agencies stand behind Gov. Andrew Cuomo as he takes the podium at Titus Mountain Ski Resort, headquarters for the manhunt.
“We are here with good news, as I'm sure you've heard already,” he says to the crowd of officers.
“The nightmare is finally over. It took twenty-two days, but we can now confirm—as of two days ago, as you know, Mr. Matt is deceased, and the other escapee, Mr. Sweat, is [now] in custody.[40] He is in stable condition. Let's give a big round of applause to the men and women of law enforcement.”
Whoops, hollers, and applause erupt from those gathered in the Upper Lodge.
“This was an extraordinary situation in many ways,” he continues. “The prison in Dannemora is over one hundred years old. This is the first escape in one hundred years. If you were writing a movie plot, they would say that this was overdone…
“But one escape is one escape too many. We will have the ongoing investigation to find out exactly who was involved. We have two people who have been arrested for facilitation or were accomplices in this situation, but the investigation is not over. Now that we have Mr. Sweat, it gives us the opportunity to ask some more questions and provide more facts on the overall situation. Anyone who we find who was culpable and guilty of cooperating in this escape will be fully prosecuted…
“Today ends with good news. These were really dangerous, dangerous men, both Matt and Sweat. They were killers. Mr. Matt killed at least two people. Mr. Sweat killed a sheriff's deputy in Broome County in a savage, savage way. So these were dangerous people. We could not tolerate them being on the loose…
“This was an unprecedented coming together of law enforcement on every level. We had local law enforcement, we had federal law enforcement, state assets, all working together, hand in glove, with gears meshing…
“And last but not least, I want to thank the people of the State of New York, who, as usual, stepped up to the challenge. People in Franklin County, Clinton County—they had all sorts of leads. They were on the lookout. Law enforcement didn’t end here. Every citizen did their job and they did it bravely, and they did it courageously, and they dealt with the increased police presence and the fear, frankly, of having to go three weeks knowing that there were murderers loose in your backyards.
“But New Yorkers are tough and they stepped right up. They stepped up to the challenge, they provided help, and they stood with us every step of the way. I want to thank the people in Franklin and Clinton County personally for their courage and every law enforcement officer—literally thousands of law enforcement officers—were engaged in this. And it’s nice when it ends well.”
• • •
Fifteen people gather in a small church in Hamburg, New York, for a private funeral service for Richard Matt. A pastor from Bethesda Church in Tonawanda leads a prayer. Matt’s ex-wife, Vee Marie Harris, has come, as well as their children, Francesca and Nick. Greg Durandetto is also there, accompanied by his mother, who has fond memories of Matt as a boy scoffing down spaghetti and meatballs at her dining room table.
Durandetto is among the first to speak.
“We all know the bad he did, but this is not how I remember Rick,” he says. The summer heat is stifling. He wishes someone would open a window. “He did bad things, but there was good in him. I can only fill in the blanks from what I know.”
His words are met with mostly silence. Durandetto had envisioned this day differently: he had seen them sharing stories of Matt’s teenage years with hearty laughter. The quiet is unsettling.
He looks over at Matt’s children. He had met his son a few summers back. He had not met Matt’s daughter, but he knows her immediately. She looks just like her father before he turned down a dark path from which he would never truly escape.
• • •
David Sweat takes a seat in Clinton County Court. His shaven head, wire-framed glasses, and light skin—which had not seen the sun for several months—make him look older than his thirty-five years. Thick metal links are wrapped around his waist and secured with a Master lock. His wrists are cuffed to the chain, and his ankles are shackled. Five members of the DOCCS Correctional Emergency Response Team (CERT) stand within inches of where he sits. Few others are present for the proceeding.
Judge Patrick McGill speaks first.
“This is a matter of the people of State of New York against David P. Sweat. We're here for sentencing.”
Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie gives a nod and begins.
“The people have reviewed the pre-sentence investigation report, Your Honor, that was prepared by Seneca County Probation Department as well as Clinton County Probation Department,” he says. “On the date the defendant entered his plea, Your Honor, he entered it through a three-count indictment, which consisted of two counts of escape in the first degree and one count of promoting prison contraband in the first degree. The sentences that the court could impose in this matter is a three and a half to seven-year determinate or indeterminate sentence, Your Honor. [sic] Those sentences would be imposed consecutive to the life without parole sentence that Mr. Sweat is presently serving, which he received on or about September 24, 2003, which was life without parole for his conviction by pleading to murder in the first degree.
“Your Honor, we would ask the court to impose that maximum sentence upon Mr. Sweat this morning. We would also ask that you impose fines and surcharges subject to your discretion that the defendant would also be required to [give] a DNA sample…and lastly, Your Honor, the people are asking the court to order restitution in the amount of $79,841—and that is the monetary amount the New York State Department of Corrections incurred as a result of repairing the prison cell walls, the interior portions of the facility that Sweat and Matt had both destroyed as a result of their escape. It also includes the repair and replacement of the steam pipe on the inside and the outside of the facility, [the damage of] which were also caused by Sweat and Matt during the escape.
“Your Honor, this escape, in and of itself, obviously caused trauma, caused anguish, caused fear to the citizens here in Clinton County—not only in Clinton County, but Franklin County, Essex County, New York State, and probably the United States, while these two men were out for the time period between June 6 and June 28, 2015. And as a result of that, the expenses that the state incurred and that fear that was set in, I think it is very important for this court to impose the maximum sentence, even though it would be imposed on a life without parole sentence. There is really no difference in a situation like this whether the defendant is serving a life without parole sentence, whether the defendant is serving a ten-year determinate or ten to twenty-year sentence, or a five-year sentence in state prison. That [a] crime was committed, that the defendant committed that crime, the defendant admitted to committing that crime, and that a just and proper sentence needs to be imposed as a result of that. And that is one of the reasons why we prosecuted this case—to also send that message out to any inmate, whether they're at a local jail or at a state facility, that here at least in Clinton County, they will be prosecuted. Thank you.”
McGill nods, then says, “Mr. Mucia?”
Sweat’s court-appointed lawyer, Joe Mucia, rises to his feet.
“Thank you, Your Honor—and good morning. First, I would note that unlike Mrs. Mitchell and Mr. Palmer, my client has taken full responsibility for his actions. That at Mrs. Mitchell’s sentencing, she showed very little remorse. And it should be noted that Mr. Palmer is still denying all responsibility over his role in the prison escape.
“But Mr. Sweat has taken the full responsibility by pleading guilty to the entire indictment. That is, all three counts that were lodged against him. Secondly, I would note that Mr. Sweat has cooperated with the IG’s—the inspector general's office. He has provided very useful information to the inspector general's office that should be noted for the record…It should also be noted for the record that after Mr. Sweat was shot, he spoke with law enforcement agents while he was in the Albany Medical Center. Mr. Sweat revealed to those agents that there [was] a point in time when Mr. Sweat and Mr. Matt were on the lam, and Mr. Matt threatened to take hostages, to kidnap people and to kill people. And it was Mr. Sweat who talked down Mr. Matt from doing that. So I would say that Mr. Sweat saved some lives. There's another occasion when Mr. Sweat and Mr. Matt were on the lam, and Mr. Matt—he had a shotgun, he had pointed the shotgun at a law enforcement official and Mr. Matt was going to shoot that official—but Mr. Sweat stopped him from doing that…
“As far as any fines, as far as any surcharges, as far as any restitution, we would object. And the reason is Mr. Sweat is serving six years in a special housing unit—the SHU. And while he is in the SHU, he does not receive any commissary whatsoever. Once he is eligible to get out of the SHU, in six years, Mr. Sweat will be eligible for what’s called grade three work. And it is my understanding, based upon the rules and regulations of the Department of Corrections, that grade three work gives Mr. Sweat six dollars per week. And it’s my further understanding, based on the Department of Corrections rules and regulations, that 20 percent of that salary, so to speak, will be taken out of the six dollars per week and applied to any order of restitution or fines and surcharges. So that is $1.20 per week that will be applied to any order of restitution. So this will not be paid off. I did the math…it is 1,029 years…
“He has no resources whatsoever. Mrs. Mitchell, she has a pension, and Mr. Palmer—I believe he will be eligible for Social Security; he’ll have a pension on his own. So I believe the order of restitution is better placed on Mrs. Mitchell and Mr. Palmer.
“Lastly, what I would note is, I have spoken to my client. He is remorseful. He does apologize for his role in the prison escape. He apologizes for the trauma and for the fear that he put on the state of New York in the County of Clinton. That's all I have to say—Mr. Sweat may want to say something.”
McGill steps down from the bench.
“Mr. Sweat?” says McGill.
Sweat stands. The place is silent. He chooses his words carefully, he will later say, hoping not to make a fool of himself.
“Yes, Your Honor.” His voice is soft but he speaks with conviction. “I would like to apologize to the community and people who felt fear and felt it necessary to you know, leave their homes or community because of the escape. That was never my intent and I deeply apologize for that, Your Honor.”
He remains standing, waiting for the judge.
“The court has read the presentencing report,” McGill says. “I thank the Seneca County Probation Department for putting together a report that gives some insight, I believe, into this situation.
“For approximately a month or so, this community was in turmoil. A number of people were exposed to danger. The officers and correction officers were placed in harm’s way because of Mr. Sweat's actions. It’s evident to me, from reading the report, that Mr. Sweat is not stupid. He is intelligent, articulate, and understands what has happened to him and what he’s done.
“He has, however, made stupid choices, beginning very early in his life, in 1993 to the present. One of his more stupid decisions was [being] convicted of murder in 2002…When he [first] joined forces with Mr. Matt to try and escape from Clinton Correctional Facility—[this] was another stupid decision…I know what you're thinking presently, but I don't know what you're thinking at the time. I find it difficult to contemplate that you felt escape would allow you to resume the freedom that you once enjoyed.
“If you think that there would not be an all-out effort to bring you back into custody, I think it was another stupid decision—one that struck fear into the community that it didn't deserve, one that extended vast amounts of resources…one that put hundreds of men and women in harm’s way, and one that put you in the hospital with injuries you are still struggling with, one that killed a fellow inmate. How would you term it other than stupid?
“You seem to indicate that you tried to escape to show the shortcomings of the correctional system or as a protest of treatment received from correction officers. Aside from the organizing an escape, I would ask, did you do anything to bring about change in the facility? Organizing, or complaining, or lodging complaints with regard to treatment or decisions made in the correctional facility? Maybe if you had expended the energy you expended in escaping to reform the programs and conditions in the prison, you might have changed the outcome…
“Sentencing you is anticlimatical [sic] since life without parole, as they say, is what it is…”
“For acts there are consequences, and unfortunately, you have had consequences a plenty.”
• • •
Pamela Sweat stands at the top of her trailer stoop, her bare arms crossed, the bulk of her ample body blocking the front door. Her posture matches her countenance, which resembles that of a bulldog. The weight of her jowls deepens the folds of her rather broad face, which, with its heavy brow and handsome nose, is the last visible remnant of her Cherokee bloodline.
Nearly eight months have passed since law enforcement apprehended her son after his breakout from Clinton Correctional Facility. The way Pamela sees it, the only upside to the escape was his transfer to a closer prison. The ninety-mile drive from her mobile home in Conklin to upstate Romulus beat the three-hundred-mile journey to Dannemora; she had rarely visited her youngest child before 2015, as long car rides exacerbated her arthritis and diabetes, which had set in by age fifty-nine. But, she says, even the shorter, two-hour road trip to Five Points Correctional Facility gives her trouble. To see her son, Pamela first asks her friend Carol or daughter Anna for a lift. The second option always requires a babysitter for Anna’s children, a task usually left to Sweat’s estranged eldest sister, Matilda, who loathes her brother. If Tilly Tuttle—the last name Matilda prefers, taken from their mother’s side—agrees to look after Anna’s kids, Pamela and Anna are then free to drive to Five Points.
Visitation day unfolds like this: they arrive at the facility before 8 a.m., always among the first in line for security. To speed up the process, Pamela brings only the essentials—a photo ID and a clear sandwich bag full of quarters to buy lunch, usually pre-cooked, plastic-wrapped cheeseburgers and chicken wings from visitor vending machines. (The mid-morning meal often puts her right to sleep.)
“I’ve been up to see him about three times…They wouldn’t let me see him for two months after he got put away, ’cause he had to be by himself,” she says, speaking in a backwoods twang. “I was just there last weekend. I’ve got to save up to go back. I usually give him fifty dollars. Not easy gettin’, but I get it. David said it’s better than the food that’s in there. He said, ‘That food’s nasty, Ma! Be sure to bring lots of change.’”
“He's real skinny now, hardly don't look like David, being up in the woods for three weeks and all. He said they're finally going to do something with his shoulder. I said, well, I hope so. The gunshot, that took his shoulder right out. He called a new doctor and I guess he said they have to do it. That's what he said, the lawyer told him they're required to fix it ’cause they're the ones that did it even though he ran away. Well we don't really talk about what he did. It's good he don't. He said he don't want to ’cause he don't want me into it, ’cause I have bipolar, so he doesn't want me getting into it. I said, ‘Well you shoulda’ stayed where you were.’”
Pam’s fingers suddenly dig into the flesh of her right arm. “When I go like this and stuff I get nervous,” she says. “Getting an anxiety attack.”
Maturity and medications now help stabilize the unpredictable mood swings that had plagued most of her adolescence. “That’s all I got all my life—people telling me I’m stupid,” she says of her days at Greene High School, when her manic episodes brought on ridicule from her classmates. “I’d go home and punch the hell out of my pillow. My brother Jimmy said, ‘Sissy, don’t worry about it. Laugh it off.’” But Pamela says being placed in a class for students with learning disabilities was hard to laugh off. At sixteen, after one particular row with her teacher, Pamela recalls asking the instructor, “Will I ever get a diploma and make something of my life?” to which, as she remembers it, the woman replied, “No, that’s why you’re in special ed.” So, she simply dropped out.
Around this time, she took up with her teenage sweetheart, Donnie Paul Sweat. “You promised me when you were thirteen you’d die a Sweat,” he had once told her. After one child—Matilda—and two years of marriage, the couple permanently parted ways, though she neither legally divorced Donnie nor dropped the surname. She would give that name to her future offspring, Anna and David Paul, whom she had with a man named Floyd Kenyon.
Of the three, she says it is David who tested her patience the most.
“Sometimes he’s too smart for his own britches. [When he was little] his adventure was going through the gardens, finding toys, bringing them home, fixing them up. He got a VHS that wasn’t working, he took it apart, put a big thick rubber band on there and it worked fine. That’s just the way he was. But he was a handful. He used to get mad and punch the wall and knock down a shelf, and got mad at me and pulled the bathroom door off.”
“A lot of people where he is at [now] said they would rather have him where he is now ’cause they know he can’t get out of that one like he did the other one. Last year, I was planning on going up to see him. June the fourteenth was our birthday. He took off the sixth. I was so upset I cried. I couldn’t go to sleep. I couldn’t eat, especially when I heard how many times they shot that other guy in the head.”
• • •
Standing in a gray suit and red tie next to his lawyer William Dreyer, an attorney brought in from Albany to handle his case, Gene Palmer says the word “guilty” three times—once for promoting prison contraband in the second degree, once for promoting prison contraband in the first degree, and once for official misconduct. After nine months of negotiations with the Clinton County District Attorney’s Office and the court, the charges of tampering with evidence are dropped.[41] A $5,000 fine is imposed, as well as a $375 courtroom surcharge. Palmer retires from his position as a corrections officer, where he had earned $74,644 base salary.
“Mr. Palmer had no idea that he was knowingly aiding anybody to escape, [it’s] the last thing he ever thought of, that there would be an escape at Dannemora,” Dreyer tells the court.
District Attorney Andrew Wylie disagrees.
“I think he needs to be incarcerated, whether the court deems that to be a state prison sentence or a, say, one-year term in county jail,” he says.
Judge Kevin Ryan opts to hand Palmer a six-month sentence in Clinton County Jail.
“The introduction of the screwdriver and pliers into the facility have the potential of actually making the facility less safe, not more,” he says. “[But] sending a [corrections] officer to state prison as an inmate would create a monumental challenge for the prison.”
In light of Palmer’s sentencing, New York State Inspector General Catherine Leahy Scott issues the following statement:
“This disgraced corrections officer’s disregard for the laws and rules guiding his profession underscores his criminal culpability in the systemic breakdown of security that led to last summer’s escape of two convicted killers. His actions made him a key enabler for the convicts’ escape plans and helped illuminate many of the procedural failures throughout Clinton Correctional Facility that I have been thoroughly investigating to help make sure it never happens again.”
• • •
Sweat has spent most of his eight months at Five Points Correctional Facility alone in “the box.” The guards have switched his cell several times since he first arrived, but the rooms—all part of the prison’s Solitary Housing Unit, each complete with a shower, twin bed, toilet, and a shelf, where Sweat keeps a tidy row of books—look more or less the same. Here, he passes the time reading (recently, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson disappointed him because the protagonists did not complete the entire 2,000-mile trek) or writing letters to his mother, Pamela, his sister, Anna, and to his teenage son, Bradly, whom he has not seen in more than ten years. Mealtimes break up the monotony, yet he rarely looks forward to the dishes they slide under his door, mostly things like limp pasta and bland potatoes.
His green uniform hangs loosely on his frame. He had once squatted five hundred pounds of metal in Clinton’s yard; now he struggles to complete a single pushup. His right arm is propped at an angle, suspended by a blue sling with a white strap. A surgeon has yet to weld the loose fragments of his cracked collar bone, which, when he tugs the neckline of his shirt and shrugs his shoulder, shift beneath the flesh in an unnatural way.
He recalls the moments after his bones were shattered in amazing detail:
Sweat looked and saw that he was handcuffed. He did not remember the restraints being put on.
“I need to lean over and spit,” he had said.
“Don’t spit on me!” said one of the troopers.
He was propped up. He felt his conscious beginning to slip. He felt his body begin to shut down.
“I don’t think I’m going to make it.”
“He should’ve killed you,” said another voice.
“Don’t let him bleed out,” said Cook. “We need the intel.”
A third cop knelt down on his left. Sweat could feel the pressure of fingers on his wound to keep his blood from spilling out.
“Hold on, David. Just hold on.”
Everything went dark.
Sweat looks down at the sling cradling his right arm. He now knows what he looked like that day in the alfalfa field: a friend had sent him one of the few images taken shortly after his capture. The photo shows him in camo pants with three state troopers standing around him in a circle. He keeps this picture in an envelope near his bed.
“That cop behind me, he had his knee in my back. He acted like he didn’t want to touch me,” Sweat says in seat C7 in the Five Points visitation room. Guards walk past as he speaks. His voice is faint from lack of use.
“It looks like a hunting photo, only I’m the deer. I guess they got their big white buck.”
Memories of what happened next come in flashes. There was the ambulance ride. Medics cut his pants off and clipped his necklace. The driver sped along a dirt road. Someone next to him, an EMT he thinks, called out for them to slow down. A woman prodded at his right shin, which hurt like hell.
Sweat arrived at Alice Hyde Medical Center. Nurses bustled past his hospital bed. He heard the beeps of the heart monitor. An oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth. He asked a doctor to remove the sock on his left foot. A cop, he thinks, took it for evidence.
When he woke up again, he was in Albany Medical Center. His wrists and ankles had been chained to the bed. CERT officers from DOCCS stood outside his door. Nurses came in to feed him. Of them, his favorite had been Daphne, a soft, bubbly woman with hazelnut skin. She was there when the investigators first arrived to question him about the escape.
A week later, at 3:05 a.m., officers wheeled him out the back door of the hospital. They loaded him into a vehicle flanked by police escorts and brought him to an airport in Albany, where they waited for the fog to lift before flying to Five Points Correctional Facility.
Once at the prison, he had been photographed and brought into a cell in the infirmary. A CO sat outside his door twenty-four hours a day. They had been prepared to place him on suicide watch.
Sweat has had many close calls in life. He has crashed a four wheeler, fallen out of a tree, and had a van drop right on him while working as a mechanic. Each time he walks away, mostly unscathed.
“I always say I took a bullet to break a bone—and I don’t count this!” He points to the slight bump in his nose, the result of a water polo injury in high school.
“I’m lucky,” he says with a smile. “Like a bastard.”
Being shot was not the way Sweat wanted to end his “three-week vacation,” as he now calls it. He had envisioned a home near the water, one he’d build himself, perhaps a door down from his friend, Richard Matt.
Sweat knows his friend was responsible for his own fate. An autopsy revealed that Matt’s blood alcohol content was .18 percent—more than twice the national legal limit for operating a motor vehicle. He was the one who had chosen to drink, and he had left Sweat no choice.
“If I hadn’t left him, he would probably still be alive,” he says. “I had to accept it. I couldn’t dwell on it. Because of the way I grew up, I have to accept things for what they are.”
These facts, however, give him little comfort now as he thinks back to the day Matt handed him a silver dollar at Twisted Horn, hours before the manhunt took a turn that would permanently seal their fate.
Sweat’s only solace is that he helped his friend, the Midnight Rider, get his one final wish.
“Matt didn’t want to die in prison,” he says. “He just wanted to die free. So in a way, he got what he wanted—it’s what he would’ve wanted. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live free. It's a waste of life being in here. No one should spend the rest of his life in prison."
Sweat looks around the Five Points visitation room. Rows of long tables and lacquered benches fill the space. The main area is divided by windowless, bar-less partitions. In the back of the room there’s more secluded seating, reserved for the prison’s more “problematic” inmates. Nearby, visitors bustle from one vending machine to another, surveying the selection of chips, sodas and pre-cooked meals as microwaves hum, warming the cellophane-wrapped turkey and Swiss sandwiches and meatball subs.
He peers out into the sea of green shirts. Freedom, he says, is on the minds of all incarcerated men.
“If they tell you they're not thinking about it,” he says, “they're shitting you.”
• • •
The wall behind Sgt. Cook’s desk is covered in awards, hung up by his colleagues at the Malone Barracks. There’s the superintendent’s commendation for “outstanding performance of duty and exceptional contribution to the New York State Police,” the 2016 Top Cop recognition from the National Association of Police Organizations, resolutions from the Franklin County Legislature and the New York State Legislature to thank him for protecting the public, the Officer of the Month Award from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. In the middle of these accolades is a metal sign: “Began on Cook Ended with Cook.”[42]
When he retires, the certificates, plaques, and other things he received for capturing Sweat will most likely go in a box.
“I have deer heads in my house,” Cook says with a wry smile. “They wouldn’t fit in.”
The idea that he’s “a hero” doesn’t sit well with the sergeant. He is a soft-spoken man with a dignified presence who is well-known and well-liked, yet considers himself “just an average guy who grew up on a farm and makes syrup.”
Yet that day in the alfalfa field left a permanent mark on Cook, who recalls the event and the hour after with startling clarity:
“You all right?” said Senior Investigator Kurt Taylor. They stood several feet from where Sweat was being treated for the bullet wounds.
“Yeah, I think so,” said Cook.
“How many times did you shoot?”
“I think twice.”
“Where were ya?”
The sergeant looked over and saw Sweat’s bag.
“Right there by that backpack somewhere,” he said, pointing.
Taylor looked in the direction of the bag, then towards Sweat. An investigator who had inspected the inmate’s tattoos gave Taylor the thumbs up. The markings matched. They had their guy.
Taylor turned back to Cook.
“I’m going to need your gun,” he said. The weapon was now part of the investigation into the escape.
“Yeah, I know.”
The sergeant pulled out his .45 GAP and handed it over. But Taylor would not let the sergeant go unarmed. He handed Cook his own weapon, which he readily holstered.
“C’mon,” the investigator said. “Let’s go.”
Halfway to the patrol car, Cook felt his stomach churn.
“I’ve got to stop for a second.” His face was clammy. His head was light. He bent over, ready to hurl.
A few seconds passed. Then, the spell subsided.
When he reached the patrol car, a lieutenant approached him.
“You all right? You should go to the hospital.”
“No, I don’t need to go to the hospital,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
Back at the barracks that day, Maj. Charles E. Guess had joined his wife, the captains, and other officers in Troop B to congratulate the sergeant. Gov. Andrew Cuomo had paid him a phone call. Hundreds of emails—some offering praise, others requesting interviews—had flooded his inbox. His phone had blown up with text messages. The media had already swarmed his house, a quaint, white, well-kept ranch on a dead-end street surrounded by maple trees. A trooper was posted outside of his home for one week to keep the press at bay.
By Wednesday—three days after the shooting—Cook returned to work.
“I could’ve taken off as long as I wanted,” he says. “But just sitting home was not helping. I wanted to get back.”
“The emotions that went through me after my encounter with him—it’s very hard to explain. It still runs through your head. It’s really weird to talk about. It doesn’t feel sometimes like it happened. I still don’t sleep well at night. I was never a good sleeper anyway but boy, the months following I had a real tough time sleeping. Shit would run through your head constantly. I didn’t feel bad about it. I don’t know, it was just out of the norm. That could’ve went so many different frickin’ ways. I could’ve been the one who let him get away.
“Sweat, in my opinion, was very young when he did what he did. He was into some bad shit with the burglaries and stuff. But that night they killed Kevin Tarsia…now he’s paying the whole rest of his life for what he did. I have no sympathy.”
• • •
One year after the escape out of Clinton Correctional Facility, the State of New York Office of the Inspector General put out a 150-page report of findings from its investigation.
It concluded:
“The June 5 escape from Clinton was planned and executed by two particularly cunning and resourceful inmates, abetted by the willful, criminal conduct of a civilian employee of the prison’s tailor shops, and assisted by the reckless actions of a veteran correction officer. The escape could not have occurred, however, except for longstanding breakdowns in basic security functions at Clinton and DOCCS executive management’s failure to identify and correct these deficiencies…
“Significantly, the many failures revealed by the inspector general’s investigation did not arise only as Sweat and Matt planned and executed their escape. Indeed, they are of long duration and reflect a complacency regarding security at Clinton that is alarming and unacceptable. One DOCCS executive testified that basic security practices at Clinton were characterized by a “culture of carelessness.” The inspector general is incredulous that high ranking security staff, including executive management officials, were unaware of these deficient practices.”
The search cost the state approximately $23 million in state law enforcement overtime alone. Additional costs included those incurred by other local, state, and federal agencies, as well as $573,000 on extra security and repairs to the prison.[43]
A wave of suspensions, reassignments, and resignations followed. Within ten months, sixty-four Clinton workers retired from the DOCCS—67 percent more than during the same time period the year before. Many COs did not want to deal with the policy changes implemented at the prison post-escape, some would later say, while others did not want to be seen as connected to the dirty dealings behind the white wall.
By the fall of 2016, a wave of new recruits arrived at the prison. Along Cook Street, each light pole was flying a red, white, and blue pennant flag bearing the words, “Clinton Strong.”
• • •
Sweat often thinks of his son, Bradly. Occasionally he receives a letter from the boy, now a teenager with his father’s physique. Sweat knows April had married a man named Bill, an aircraft mechanic. “That was a good pick,” he says, giving one thumb up. He wants someone bright to teach his son.
A few years back, Bradly wrote Sweat a letter that said he and his dad went fishing. But the boy had scratched out “dad” and in the small space above scribbled the word “Bill.”
“I wrote him back,” Sweat says. “I told him—he raised you. He was there for all of the big moments. Don’t you feel bad about calling him that. Bill deserves to be called dad.”
He is silent for a minute before speaking again in the Five Points visitation room. This time, he brings up Bradly’s mother, April.
“It was too hard on her, all of this,” he says, indicating the steel doors and other inmates. They had tried to stay together for a few years after he was locked up, but being separated by concrete and barbed wire eventually took its toll.
“I can understand,” he says.
Sweat thinks back to a day some fifteen years before, when he and April had sat on the edge of a dock to watch the sun rise.
“It’s about to get sappy,” a younger Sweat had thought. He had begun to fidget. He had cracked a joke. The joke had offended April.
“You always ruin these moments,” she had said to him.
His eyes begin to well up.
“I ruin a lot of moments.”
A few minutes later, a familiar voice calls out from two seats away.
“That’s Sweat! He taught me how to sew! Hey, Sweat!”
Tyrone, a tall, brawny inmate with dark skin and thick black frames, who is also relegated to SHU, has not seen his Industry teacher for at least two years, since they last worked together in Clinton’s tailor shop. They both sit on circular metal stools on the same side of a long table with steel partitions, facing their visitors. Tyrone is across from a smartly dressed woman and a baby girl named Sojourn, who giggles and taps her feet playfully as her mother lifts her from the bench and props her up on the table.
“Hey Sweat, you still paintin’?” He says this just loud enough for the words to carry. The COs do not like it when the inmates, especially those in SHU, speak to one another during visitation. “They probably don’t give you any brushes.”
Sweat shakes his head.
“I’m not doing much of anything,” he says.
A bit later, Tyrone calls out to one of the guards to request a bathroom break. He stands up and walks a few feet. As he waits for the CO, he turns back to Sweat.
“They shot you in the back!?” His wide eyes rove to the sling.
Sweat nods.
“Man!” says Tyrone. “When you and Hacksaw were out there, I was like, ‘Yeah, they did it! They gonna make it!’ Couldn’t think of two better guys to do it. I watched the news, anytime I could get my hands on a newspaper or something I would. Then they killed Hacksaw. Man, that’s rough. How long they give you for that?”
“Six years.” He speaks quietly, but not out of concern for the COs.
Tyrone looks down in disbelief.
“Six years?! Man, that’s a long time.”
• • •
Shawn Devaul sits at a wooden picnic table in the shade of Rec Park, the whimsical chords of Binghamton’s historic carousel humming in the background. His light skin is decorated with several tattoos, the most noticeable being the large gray skull on his right calf. Black socks, camo shorts, and thick, dark boots heighten the contrast, as does the black t-shirt with the word NOMAD printed in bold lettering inspired by the Middle Ages.
Devaul, now thirty-seven, has tried to keep a low profile over the last thirteen years. He does not tell people where he lives, where he works, or that he ever did three years behind bars for his role in the shooting that sent Sweat to Clinton. Yet privately, Devaul followed every twist and turn of the manhunt, keeping tabs on the man with whom he would always be inextricably linked.
“That cop [Cook] is lucky he decided to take the shots because he wouldn’t have caught him [on foot],” he says. “I tried racing him before, and I used to be fast. He was faster than me; he was like a track star. That’s why I say if they wouldn’t have took the shots, he would’ve been gone; that tree line was only a few more feet away. He would’ve been running in the woods still ’cause he’s quick like that. He was a fast mother. I mean, he’s fast.”
His words drift off as do his thoughts, floating from memory to memory. He talks of Sweat doing mechanical work on his car, their hangouts in the den on Dickinson Street, their time on One Dirt Road.
Devaul admits he was never close to Sweat. Yet now he sees a very different man than the one he remembers from their days back in Binghamton.
“Just looking at his face it almost seems like he’s broken,” Devaul says, recalling photos and video clips of Sweat he had seen circulating in the media.
“He’s not a monster or anything that what people would call somebody that killed somebody. It’s not in him no more. I don’t know if it ever was in him, really.”
• • •
In 2010 Sweat received a letter from Julia Hunter, a reporter from the Press & Sun-Bulletin. It had been eight years since the death of Sheriff’s Deputy Kevin Tarsia, and she wanted his comment for a story.
On May 29, 2010, Sweat wrote her the following response:
“I received your letter yesterday on the 28th. I really appreciate the opportunity to tell my side of the story. I have given it alot of thought and don’t see how any thing positive could come of it for anyone and may just have an adverse affect by bringing up something many people affected by what happened have been trying to deal with or move on from, in their own ways. So I must respectfuly decline. I do how ever wish you luck in writing the story because Im sure your editor intends for you to do so regardless. In doing so I hope that you will keep in mind and be compassionate to all the people and familys involved and affected by (as you put it) the events that led to my incarceration. As far as how I am doing, if it were a personal question, but I believe you are simply writing as a reporter which to me means anything I write is subjectable to interpretation and may or may not be wrote as a whole. Besides, its prison, how could a person realy be doing :)
“Well, Kentucky :) I do thank you for your time and consideration. Sorry I cant help but good luck with the new job at the Press & Sun-Bulletin!”
In an interview earlier that month, Inspector General Catherine Leahy-Scott said Sweat would grow agitated when they asked him questions that might tarnish his reputation, calling him “very smart, very cunning, very narcissistic.”
“She said I thought, I always thought, I was the smartest guy in the room,” says Sweat. This time he’s in Legal Room A1, an enclosed space walled in by thick panes of glass and a heavy steel door just large enough to fit a desk-sized table and three plastic chairs, if three slender visitors squeeze together. (The guards have placed more restrictions on his visits, and he is no longer permitted to sit among the other SHU inmates. There is no real reason for this relegation, he says.)
“Well that’s just not true,” he continues. “I don’t know who the smartest guy in the room is because I might not know everyone in the room. I could be in a room full of people and one of them could be some scientist who has discovered something I know nothing about. And a narcissist doesn't have compassion.”
• • •
Floyd Kenyon sits at his small kitchen table in Taylorsville, North Carolina, a clear flexible tube connecting his nostrils to a nearby oxygen tank. The device is a relatively new addition to the one-bedroom apartment on Zion Avenue, as his worsening chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)—stemming from coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, or “black lung”—causes him to wheeze with every breath. At sixty-one, Kenyon spends the better part of his days tending to this ailment as well as a lengthy list of other conditions, including diabetes and congestive heart failure. Every three hours or so, Kenyon tests his blood sugar, and, with precise penmanship, neatly jots down the number in a ruled notebook, a ritual of orderliness in which he takes a certain amount of pride. He applies the same sense of organization to his home; in his kitchenette, a series of plastic and wooden spoons, spatulas, and ladles hang along the backsplash in descending order of size, and, a few feet away, piles of papers sit in tidy stacks on a card table. Even the art on his walls—a painting of a Native American man in a feathered war bonnet, a poster-size print of the Twin Towers, a headshot of country singer Sonny James, a needlepoint of a handsome buck, a portrait of the Virgin Mary—are hung with great care and forethought.
Near the front door hangs another picture, a black-and-white photograph of his father’s farm that once sat on 180 acres of land in upstate New York in the town Smithville Flats.
“I could remember when I had to get up at three o’clock in the morning, get the cows, move ’em to the barn, get ’em all cleaned up and then get ready for school.” He looks at the photograph as he says the words, which come out with a slight lisp and a wheeze, the result of his COPD and several missing teeth. “I miss the country. Be nice to be back. Be a lot better to get out of this apartment.”
Kenyon fondly recalls his days at Greene High School, where he first met Pamela Sweat—a “nice” underclassman and the sister of his friend, Jim Tuttle. The two had quickly taken to one another and, within five years of an on-again, off-again romance, the couple gave birth to a daughter named Anna, and, soon after, to a son named David. Their relationship, however, would not last long; within two years of David’s birth in Binghamton, the couple split.
“She wanted to do it her way and I said, ‘That’s what you wanna do, then I’ll go my way.’ And that’s the way we went…Last time I saw [David] he was in court, Family Court, him and Anna, I seen both of them at the same time. Last time I ever saw him he was real young. Been a long time…Off and on [I] thought about them. I just wondered where they were. Now I’m missing nobody. You see what I’m getting at. The way I look at it, they is thinkin’ I don’t exist.”
He pauses to inhale. The air rattles as it fills his lungs.
“I blame them anyhow ’cause none of them keep in touch with me or nothin’. Sometimes I wish I was in touch with them. The way I look at it, I don’t exist to them. The way I look at it, it’s a long road for them. What goes around comes around.”
The next time Kenyon saw his son’s face was on the evening news in the summer of 2015.
“I didn't know that was him. That kind of caught me off guard. I didn't know about it until the officers came,” he says, remembering the day when law enforcement questioned him on his son’s whereabouts.
“The officer told me about it and I was like, ‘What? You've got to be kidding me.’ I says I don't know nothing about it and didn't wanna know nothing about it. I didn't want ta’ get involved. The way I look at it, Dave was wrong. Let him suffer with it…He's got to pay the price. You do the crime, you got to do your time. That's the way I look at it.”
Kenyon says he knew something about “doing time” after completing his own ninety-day stint in Iredell County Detention Center in Statesville, North Carolina. Six years after he parted ways with Pamela, Kenyon married a woman named Teresa, and within a year the couple had a baby girl, Peggy Mae. The family moved to Statesville, where Kenyon took a job at a sawmill in neighboring Unionville. They lived a normal working-class life, Kenyon says, until July 2001, when then fourteen-year-old Peggy Mae told authorities her father had exposed himself to her while he stood naked in the shower. In April of 2002, he pleaded guilty to five counts of “indecent liberty with a minor, sexual arousal with a child.”
It was not the first time he had been accused of inappropriately touching a child. Pamela Sweat’s daughter Tilly Tuttle had told her mother that Kenyon had sexually assaulted her as a teenager.[44]
“I’ve been down what they call a long road, what they call the hell road,” Kenyon says now. “It takes a lot to come back…You’ve gotta work your way out of it. I have the last fourteen years since my daughter [Peggy Mae] put me behind bars, when I lost everything Iredell County Detention Center my guns and all of that. That’s what hurt me the most, ’cause I had a gun handed down from my dad [and] a few other stuff like that. I had toys when I was a kid, like little cars, and I lost everything.”
“See,” he says, looking around at the possessions in his living room. “I worked my way back.”
• • •
During pre-trial preparations in the murder case of Broome County Sheriff’s Deputy Kevin Tarsia, defense attorneys raised questions as to whether the cop died from the bullets from Sweat or the two bullets Jeffrey Nabinger later fired. If the case had gone to trial, Sweat’s defense would have rested on one premise: Tarsia might have lived if not for Nabinger’s point-blank shots to the head.[45]
The case never reached a jury.
“This lawyer told me that if I went to trial, I would get the death penalty,” Sweat says.[46]
Despite a push for the death penalty by Tarsia’s family, the Broome County district attorney agreed to a plea deal. Sweat and Nabinger both pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder that carried a life sentence with no chance of parole.
In the years since, Sweat sometimes thinks about how his life might have turned out differently. If his mother had stayed in Deposit, he might never have encountered a predator like Paul. If he had had a father and if his mother had been in better health, he might have had been spared from a life of group homes and foster care. If he and April had never moved in with Nabinger, he might not have embraced a life of crime.
These experiences, he says, will never excuse his actions on July 4, 2002. While he still believes his shots alone would not have resulted in Tarsia’s death, he takes responsibility for the fact that he was present, that he ever went out that night, that he partook in something that ended in a man’s murder.
“In a way, it didn't really matter if it was Jeff's shot that killed him,” he says. “I should not have been there. I had a part in it. I was responsible.”
• • •
Joyce Mitchell sits at a narrow table in the visitation room of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester, an all-female maximum-security prison less than fifty miles north of Manhattan.
She thinks back to the day of her sentencing on Sept. 28, 2015, and the words she said before Judge Kevin Ryan in Clinton County Court:
“Please allow me to start by saying how sorry I am, how much remorse I have for everything that—I’m sorry.”
She lifted her cuffed hands to wipe the tears from behind her glasses before continuing to read from the speech she had written.
“—that has happened with my part in Matt and Sweat’s—I’m sorry, I’m sorry Your Honor.” (More uncontrollable tears.)
“—in Matt and Sweat’s escape. If I could take it all back, I would. I can’t begin to explain how sorry I am for all this, to the community, to my co-workers, to my family, to all the families of fellow officers that were involved in having to be taken away from their families in this search while these two men were on the loose.
“I never intended for any of this to happen. As hard as it was to come forward, I knew I had to. I was raised to tell the truth. I know I didn’t come out first and be completely honest, but I did bring myself to the state police and tried to help as much as I could. I’m afraid it didn’t help though, but I knew it was the right thing to do.
“I am fifty-one years old, and this is by far the worst mistake I have ever made in my life. I live with regret every day and will for the rest of my life. I’ve never been so disappointed in myself. I not only let myself down but my family. My husband and my children are my life, my world, my purpose.
“I was fearful of Mr. Matt threatening to kill my husband and wanting to know where my son and my mother lived. I could not let anything happen to my husband and family. I love them all so much. I love them more than life itself, Your Honor.
“I’m not a bad person. I clearly made a horrible mistake. I realize I need to be responsible for my actions. But I am hoping you will have mercy on me, Your Honor. No words can explain how deeply sorry I am. I am very fearful of the consequences I’m facing, as should I be. Please know that I am seeking mental health and counseling to help me understand my actions—how my actions affected the community, my family, myself, and all who were involved.
“Why I did what I did I shall not know other than I was scared for my husband and family’s lives. I know I should’ve told someone, but Mr. Matt had others watching and reporting to him about where and what myself and my husband were doing at all times. This is something I will never forget nor forgive myself for. Please understand that I acknowledge my actions, and I’m still trying to understand why I made the choices I did.
“I hope one day everyone involved can find it within themselves to forgive me. If not, I understand. But most importantly, I want to make it home to my family—as I fear I won’t because of my actions. I’m hoping you understand how remorseful and sorry I am. None of this was ever my intention, Your Honor. Thank you for your time and consideration.”
She looked up from the paper.
“Your Honor, I would wear an ankle bracelet and stay out of jail for the rest of my life if I could just go home to my family.”
Her letter did little to sway the judge. Ryan told Joyce she had done “terrible things” and her actions had cost the state millions. He sentenced her to an indeterminate period of incarceration of two and one third years to seven years for promoting prison contraband in the first degree. He also sentenced her to a definite term of one year for criminal facilitation in the fourth degree. He fined her a total of $6,000 in addition to the $375 courtroom surcharge.
She now feels the court showed Palmer preferential treatment because he was a corrections officer, “a boy in blue.”
In the thirteen months she has spent behind bars, Joyce has dropped a considerable amount of weight, and her hair appears to have thinned. The one thing she looks forward to is a visit from Lyle, who has since resigned from his industrial position at the prison and makes the 300-mile drive from Dickinson Center every two weeks. Joyce and Lyle talk about their children and grandchildren as they used to on those morning drives to Dannemora—except now they no longer ride anywhere together.
Joyce says her life at Clinton feels somewhat like a distant dream. Yet when she thinks back to those days in the tailor shop, she remembers the faces of the inmates she worked with side by side—particularly one face she now associates with a heavy burden of guilt.
“I’ve been on both sides of it. They used to look at me and say, ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like. At the end of the day you get to go home.’ They were right. You can’t imagine.”
“I feel responsible for where Sweat is now. I feel so much remorse for what this has done to my family and for what this has done to him. His situation is much worse because of me. I’m in here paying the price for what I did. But I’m fortunate. I have a husband who loves me. Eventually I’ll get to go home. He’ll never have that. He’ll never go home.”
• • •
Sweat sits in Legal Room A1. It is not much bigger than his cell, where he spends twenty-four hours a day looking east out at the grounds of the former Seneca Army Depot—a storied patch of land that once served as a secret storage place for America’s stockpile of nuclear weapons. The grounds are also part of the Finger Lakes, a lush region on the east side of New York, home to bountiful vineyards, woods, and wildlife.
“I see a lot of geese. There are so many birds around here,” Sweat says, his voice brightening. “The other day I heard the loudest sound, and after my heart came back into my chest, I realized it came from this little robin on the window. I couldn’t believe how close he got.”
Observing nature, he says, removes him from his present reality: a long sentence of solitary confinement.
“I try not to think about it,” he says. “It’s better to think about now then to think about the future, like what will I eat for dinner. I can’t wait until the doctor says I can work out. That will take up about two to three hours of the day.”
Earlier that month, he had spoken to the deputy of security at Five Points. Sweat told him he hoped there might be a way to reduce his time in the box.
“He told me, ‘Hope is a dangerous thing.’ That's what he said. I couldn't believe it. All you have in here is hope.”
Sweat says he’s always been one to accept things for what they were. He accepts that his mother was bipolar, that his father had abandoned them, that Paul had molested him in the apartment next door to his. He accepts that he had bounced around through foster care and group homes. He has made peace, for the most part, with the events that landed him behind bars. He has come to terms with nearly everything—save for a life sentence in Clinton Correctional Facility.
“Everybody always asks me how I did it, but not why,” he says. Sweat has received dozens of letters from newspapers, magazines, and television networks across the country, all looking to snag an interview. They all want to know more about the logistics. No one, he says, has asked him why he did what he did.
“Sure, there was the COs and all of those problems. And there are a lot of them. But I can't blame it all on them. Who wants to spend their life in here? I didn't do it to be famous. I did it to get out of this madness. I wanted to start a new life. That stuff with Jeff, we did that out of ignorance. Matt and I had a cause. This had a purpose. This was about freedom. Of course it was about the administration. But I was tired of living in prison. I gave them twelve years of my life. That was enough.”
[40] The escape lasted twenty-three days, from June 6 through June 29, if June 29—the day Sweat was captured—is considered one full day.
[41] The tampering with evidence charge related to allegations that Palmer had burned the paintings Matt had given him.
[42] The sign is reference to Cook’s name and Cook Street in Dannemora, where the prison is located.
[43] Statistics are taken from the June 2016 report released by the State of New York Office of the Inspector General.
[44] Kenyon was never charged or taken to court for the allegations that he molested Tilly Tuttle.
[45] Sweat and his attorneys maintained that the shots Sweat fired would have been non-fatal, noting that the majority struck Tarsia’s bulletproof vest or missed completely. Preliminary findings by Broome County Coroner Dr. Timothy Jones, who was at the scene, noted that it appeared Tarsia had been shot in the head, according to a July 6, 2002 report from the Press & Sun-Bulletin. Findings from the official autopsy, performed at Albany Medical Center, are part of a sealed file on the case. The file was sealed following the 2015 escape from Clinton Correctional Facility, according to a spokesperson for Broome County Supreme Court. Multiple requests by the author to review the file—even in its redacted form—were repeatedly denied.
[46] The State of New York reinstated capital punishment in 1995. It was abolished in 2007.