New York escapees on run as prison breakout route sealed

Two escaped killers have evaded capture for nearly two weeks despite "countless hours" of information divulged to investigators by a female prison worker who assisted in the upstate New York breakout, police said on Friday.

The busted prison cell walls, steam pipe and manhole cover that the convicts slipped through to escape Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora have been repaired, allowing authorities to lift a lockdown at the maximum security prison, Daniel Martuscello, a deputy commissioner of state corrections said at a press conference.

The U.S. Marshals Service has put escapees Richard Matt and David Sweat on its 15 Most Wanted Fugitives List and the manhunt, now in its 14th day, has widened to encompass the entire country. But many believe the escapees remain in the heavily wooded regions of New York's Adirondack Mountains and Vermont's Green Mountains.

Joyce Mitchell, 51, the training supervisor in the prison tailor shop who is charged with giving hacksaw blades to the convicted murderers, has spoken at length with investigators since she lost her nerve to drive their getaway car and instead checked into a hospital with a panic attack, authorities said.

"(We) won't characterize if have all information we need from Joyce Mitchell at this point," said Major Charles Guess of the New York State Police.

She has spoken to law enforcement for "countless hours," he said.

Law enforcement officers, assisted by sniffer dogs, have so far searched 160 seasonal homes and unoccupied buildings and 585 mile of trails and railroad beds.

Experts say the escapees' range is limited by their survival skills.

"They can disappear very easily but to survive is another story and that's really predicated on their plan and their equipment and, of course, their abilities," said Pat Patten, who was hired to help with the 2003 capture of Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph after more than five years on the run in the Appalachian Mountains.

Matt, 48, and Sweat, 35, broke out of prison at the height of region's black fly season, when even the most hardened outdoorsmen douse themselves in insect repellent and wear head nets to guard against bug bites that can cause extreme irritation and sometimes even death.

After being incarcerated for so long, Patten said, the men will not fare well in the woods and are likely relying on civilization, including abandoned seasonal homes and camps, to gather food and equipment needed to stay hidden.

"It's a fallacy to think, unless they're some kind of really exceptional person, that they could flee into the woods with nothing and make it," said Patten, who now teaches tracking skills at a school in North Carolina.

Patten said interactions with civilization are commonly where fugitives trip up.

Matt has a history of escapes, including one in 1986 in which he broke out of New York's Erie County Correctional Facility, only to be caught five days later in a family apartment near Buffalo.

Shane Hobel, founder of Mountain Scout Survival School in Beacon, New York, said the precision with which their escape was executed leads him to believe Matt and Sweat had a destination in mind when they left the prison, but he doubts that plan included a lengthy stay in the wilderness.

"These guys are not going to go deep into the Adirondacks and survive," Hobel said. "They're not going to make it. They have to stay close to supplies they're already familiar with."

(Additional reporting by Katie Reilly in New York; Editing by Barbara Goldberg, Bill Trottand Lisa Lambert)