Ten years ago today, the North Country woke up to the news that two dangerous criminals had escaped from one of the state's maximum security prisons. What ensued was a three-week manhunt that terrified much of the North Country and captivated the nation. It ended with the death of Richard Matt and the capture of David Sweat. One of our reporters on the ground throughout the manhunt was NPR's Brian Mann. He joins us and shares his memories and takeaways on today's story of the day.
Support for Story of the Day comes from Clarkson University, offering over 95 programs of study with campuses in the Hudson Valley, Central and Northern New York. Hey, I'm David Summerstein. It's Friday, June 6th. The towering white walls of Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora are a symbol of incarceration. And yet, 10 years ago to the day, two inmates had squeezed through the pipes and under those walls to freedom, at least temporarily.
Brian Mann, now with NPR, and Zach Hirsch covered the manhunt for NCPR. I caught up with Brian, who remembered it was a Saturday, and he was making a run to the local dump when the news broke. And I got the word, something big is happening in Dannemora. And so I just, you know, I happened to have my recorder in the car and I drove there. And at first I thought, you know, this can't be much, just some thing. But we knew that the...
governor was going. That was the thing that signaled that this was, you know, at least something significant. And arriving there... You know, the big walls in Dannemora, that big white wall, you kind of get there and you could just feel the energy coming into the town, that this was different. There was a level of alarm, a level of security and just the expression. Yeah, and that sense of, you know, fear and that ominous vibe that you're describing, like that.
That endured for three weeks while this manhunt was going on. Take us back to what it was like to be in Dannemora and the surrounding area during those three weeks. It was frightening. I mean, remember Richard Matt and David Sweat. These were not, you know, run-of-the-mill.
These were not inmates that people were just sort of like, yeah, they managed to slip away from a work detail or something like that. These were really scary men. And very, very quickly, there became this whole system of checkpoints. and you were being inspected everywhere you went. And that sort of cordon of security...
expanded out to a huge part of the North Country. You know, I would see people searching train tracks as far away as Westport, New York, you know, people down in the Plattsburgh area searching. So this was a big part of the North Country where life was really altered for those weeks and i remember specifically david there was you know that area up there in that part of the north country a lot of it is very sparsely settled and winding back roads and out there in the forest with hunting camps.
I remember driving my pickup truck down those roads, and there was a kind of haunted feeling. It was, yes, the security presence, but also the fear that these men, and at times there was real fear that they could really harm. people and bring violence to the community. So, yeah, it was a time of real tension that really sunk into all of our lives for a really long time.
All over the country, you know, flocked to Dannemora to report the story became a big national story. And it turned out that you were one of the few reporters covering it. who had actually spent time inside Dannemore, inside Clinton Correctional. And you had interviewed at least one of the corrections officers at the center of this story. Tell us about that.
Yeah, that's right. By just kind of a stroke of luck as a journalist, I had been inside Dannemora actually for a tour of the unique architecture of the prison. This was some years before the prison break, but that allowed me to have a sense for the culture. of the place. It was dramatically different than any other correctional facility I've been in before or since, where inmates at that time had a lot of freedom. They had a whole section of the prison yard that they kind of controlled.
and they sectioned out amongst themselves. When I was in the prison, I could see that the inmates often had power tools and other kind of hand tools, which, of course, became a real question. How were Richard, Matt, and David Swayne? but able to get the equipment that they needed to break out.
And I did also talk to corrections officers while I was there. And, of course, we learned that this was one of the things that broke down inside the facility, that the supervision of inmates in some ways had come unraveled. There was more fraternization between corrections officers and staff and inmates than was appropriate on any level. And it was really interesting to be able to stand outside those walls.
and understand a little bit more about that complex society that was, you know, still functioning. And to some extent, even today still functions there. Dannemora is a remarkable place. This episode, you know, really was a huge. blow to the state prison system and to the Cuomo administration of how this could have happened, you know, after Richard Matt was killed and David Sweat was captured.
How did the repercussions to the New York prison system play out? I think this event, in an interesting way, fit into a conversation and a very tense conversation that had already begun. We were already seeing big questions about whether this vast state prison complex in the North Country, which had been used as a kind of economic engine for many decades, whether that was...
a structure that was going to go forward. There was already prison closure processes underway. It was already more difficult to find corrections officers to fill many of the jobs. There was discussion among CEOs about the quality of this work.
whether this was a career that people really wanted. And I think what Dan Amora showed, and people talked a lot about this at the time, was that this could be... a really hellish job for people it came with real dangers to corrections officers their mental health their quality of life there were questions about
the economic impact, the cultural impact of having these prisons. And what happened with Dannemora was we really cracked all of that open and got a look inside this very, very troubled prison. You know, it added to this. kind of burning debate. What are these facilities? How do they function? Are they safe? Are they good for communities? And I think what's fascinating to me is that 10 years later, that conversation... Still is underway, you know the
State legislature just approved the possibility of another three state correctional facilities closing. The wildcat strike by the corrections officers and also, you know, on the other side, the violence. against inmates by corrections officers to people killed in the last few months. All that is really echoing still today.
Absolutely. Ten years later, this episode in North Country history has really become a part of like American lore. You know, Ben Stiller's Escape from Dannemora TV show became a national hit. When I talk with people from other parts of the country and say where I'm from, people will still say, oh, yeah, you live in the place where that prison break was, right? You know, what do you think the legacy of all this is?
It is really interesting to be part of something that does kind of sift into pop culture and then maybe even more into that kind of... And for some reason in America, prisons have always had that kind of Shawshank redemption power. There's something about this. And remember, this is an event that had it all. It had this incredibly...
clever prison break where they dug their way out using tools. These were not admirable guys. I don't want to romanticize them, but they did this pretty stunning prison break. It involved sex. It involved the seduction of a staff worker. There was all of those elements that make it just sort of iconic for that kind of storytelling. And so, yeah, this is one of those moments where...
Sure, there are policy questions and pragmatic questions about, you know, what do we do with these state correctional facilities? But Dannemora is also now kind of... a ghost story and a legend and it's it's one of those things that you know kind of like the ice storm of the north country it's one of those moments that will certainly live in our vocabulary forever and to some extent in the national vocabulary as well.
NPR's Brian Mann reported for North Country Public Radio for more than 20 years, including 10 years ago when he reported on the Dannemora Manhunt. We have tons of photos from the Dannemora Manhunt. You can check them out at ncpr.org. Music today by Michael Farley of Canton. Have a great weekend. I'm David Summerstein, North Country Public Radio.