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| This photo provided by the New York State Police shows Gene Palmer on Wednesday, June 24, 2015. The maximum-security prison guard is believed to have delivered tools inside frozen meat to two inmates before they escaped was arrested on Wednesday, authorities said. |
BELLMONT, N.Y.
(AP) -- A maximum-security prison guard believed to have delivered
tools inside frozen meat to two inmates before they escaped was arrested
on Wednesday, authorities said.
Gene Palmer
appeared before a judge in Plattsburgh on Wednesday night to face
charges of promoting prison contraband, tampering with physical evidence
and official misconduct. He was held on $25,000 bail pending
arraignment Thursday. Defense lawyer Andrew Brockway said he will plead
not guilty.
Palmer worked at the Clinton
County Correctional Facility in upstate Dannemora, where inmates David
Sweat and Richard Matt were reported missing on June 6.
Sweat,
35, was serving a life sentence without parole for killing a sheriff's
deputy. Matt, 48, was doing 25 years to life for the kidnapping, torture
and hacksaw dismemberment of his former boss. Authorities say the
inmates cut through the steel wall at the back of their cells, crawled
down a catwalk, broke through a brick wall, cut their way into and out
of a steam pipe and then sliced through the chain and lock on a manhole
cover outside the prison.
Prison employee
Joyce Mitchell also has been charged with helping them escape. Mitchell,
a prison tailor shop instructor, has pleaded not guilty and remains in
custody.
Clinton County District Attorney
Andrew Wylie said Mitchell told investigators she smuggled hacksaw
blades, a screwdriver and other tools into the prison by placing them in
frozen hamburger meat. He said she then placed the meat in a
refrigerator in the tailor shop where she worked and Palmer took the
meat to Sweat and Matt, who were housed in a section where inmates are
allowed to cook their own meals. The district attorney said the guard
didn't know the tools were inside the meat.
Palmer
had been placed on leave on Tuesday. At the time, his attorney told
Plattsburgh television station WPTZ he was completely forthcoming during
several hours of questioning on Saturday.
"I can 100 percent confirm that he did not know they were planning on breaking out of the prison," Brockway said.
Searchers
hunting for the escaped killers Wednesday were contending with steep
slopes, thick woods, sticky bogs, biting bugs and the possibility that
the pair on the lam from prison for 19 days is armed.
Police
said they remain almost 100 percent certain that Sweat and Matt spent
time recently at a hunting camp about 20 miles west of the correctional
facility near Owls Head. A hunter said he saw a figure bolting from the
cabin on Saturday morning. But after days of intense searching with dogs
and helicopters, police still had no substantiated sightings of Sweat
and Matt.
The 75 square miles searchers
focused on is on the northern edge of the sprawling Adirondack Park and
includes woods so thick that visibility is only a few feet in some
sections, authorities said. The woods also are dotted with hundreds of
seasonal and hunting camps.
State police Maj.
Charles Guess said Wednesday that authorities don't have confirmed
evidence that a shotgun was stolen from the hunting cabin near Owls
Head, but they've always assumed the escapees were armed. Weapons and
ammunition are typically stored in camps, but not everyone keeps an
inventory of their firearms, he said.
"Just
about every cabin or outbuilding in the North Country has one or more
shotguns or weapons, and we have since day one operated under the belief
that these men are armed," Guess said. "They are extremely dangerous,
they're cunning. Why wouldn't they try to arm themselves immediately
upon escape?"
Guess said it was possible the
pair left the area, but promised that the more than 1,000 officers
involved would keep up the relentless search until the killers are
captured.
"We don't want them to have a restful, peaceful night putting their head on any pillow," he said.
