Convicted killers David Sweat (left) and Richard Matt escaped in June 2015 from the maximum security unit at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. 

PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. — The murderers had a six-hour head start. The Adirondack terrain was treacherous. At first, there were no leads.

That was the situation state police Maj. Charles “Chuck” Guess faced as he and a phalanx of troopers, deputies and agents fanned out across New York’s North Country in pursuit of two escapees five years ago last weekend.

“Everything was possible, and we had to operate under those assumptions throughout the entire 23 days,” said Guess, now retired, who led the manhunt.

It was June 6, 2015 that Richard Matt and David Sweat, both serving life sentences for murder, tunneled their way out of Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Dannemora, New York. The pair emerged into freedom via a manhole a short distance from the prison — a dramatic break-out aided by a civilian prison seamstress, Joyce Mitchell, who later went to prison herself.

The escape began a three-week search that swept across the upper reaches of the state, terrorizing the region before it ended the weekend of June 26-28, when Matt was shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent and Sweat was shot and captured.

Looking back, state police Capt. Robert LaFountain, who led the Troop B Bureau of Criminal Investigation, could not heap enough praise on the officers working the manhunt.

“There was not one of us, every day, that did not report to that command post that did not want to be the one to apprehend these two inmates,” said LaFountain, now retired.

Matt and Sweat had used tools provided by Mitchell, including chisels and hacksaws smuggled into the prison in hamburger meat, to cut through their cell walls. They crawled along pipes to the prison’s bottom, then cut into a steam pipe and slithered their way toward freedom.

Mitchell, who oversaw the tailor shop, was meant be their getaway driver but was overcome with a panic attack. Mitchell had engaged in sex with both inmates in the tailor shop, investigators said. Their plan called for the convicts to kill her husband, a guard at the prison, before the trio would flee to Mexico.

Matt was eventually tracked down in the woods 35 miles west of the prison. He was shot and killed. Two days later a State Police sergeant spotted Sweat running down a rural road just south of the Canadian border. He fled into an open field, where the trooper shot and wounded him.

Sweat is currently serving a life sentence in another maximum security prison. Mitchell pleaded guilty to promoting prison contraband and criminal facilitation and was sentenced to 2 1/3 to 7 years in prison. The state parole board turned her down three times for early release before granting her release in February.

LaFountain said he had two fears throughout the search — that a civilian or member of law enforcement would be killed by the murderers, or that the pair would die in the Adirondacks, never to be found.

Complicating their hunt was social media. Guess said while the troopers were well versed in the internet, “we weren’t used to dealing with all the mis- and dis-information that would pop up.” Troopers sifted through more than 3,400 leads throughout their search — nearly 150 per day.

Mitchell, the seamstress, told investigators at the time the two had wanted to go to a remote area once they escaped. But, absent information to the contrary, troopers worked under the possibility that Matt and Sweat remained in the area, close to the prison.

In retrospect, Guess noted the importance of relationships among law enforcement and other agencies — district attorneys, sheriffs, local police, the FBI, U.S. Marshals and the U.S. Forest Service.

LaFountain had another takeaway: “Never underestimate the ingenuity and perseverance of an inmate in their desire to escape,” he said. “And that is only surpassed by the perseverance of law enforcement to ensure that that does not happen.”

Cara Chapman writes for the Plattsburgh Press-Republican. Email her at cchapman@pressrepublican.com