On the day Richard Matt was sentenced for killing and dismembering businessman William Rickerson in 2008, the victim’s son addressed the judge.
“(Matt), in my opinion, should not ever see the light of day as far as being a free man goes,” William Rickerson Jr. said.
Judge Sara Sperrazza seemed to agree, stating that “quite frankly, this is not a difficult decision for me,” before sentencing Matt to 25 years to life in prison.
Now, Matt and another inmate at Clinton Correctional Facility in New York, David Sweat, are likely enjoying the light of day, following a weekend prison escape.
The escape — which involved power tools, navigating a maze of underground pipes and potential help from the inside — seems so unexplainable at the outset that even cliches fail to describe it. A daring escape? Brazen? Perplexing?
All those things, kind of. The pair used decoys to make it look like they were sleeping while they tunneled their way out.
Both men, Matt and Sweat, are convicted murderers. And the biggest question beside “How did they do it?” is “What could they have planned next?”
As the pair’s back stories emerged, more was known about Matt than Sweat.
Sweat, 35, was serving a life sentence without parole in the killing of Kevin Tarsia, a sheriff’s deputy, in 2002.
Sweat and another man robbed a gun store, and when confronted by Tarsia, responded by fatally shooting him.
The slain deputy’s siblings on Monday said they couldn’t understand how their brother’s killer escaped.
How did no one hear the power tools Sweat and Matt used to make a hole? Sharon Tarsia asked.
Steven Tarsia said he was surprised to learn the escapees had adjoining cells in an “honor block” reserved for inmates with the best behavior.
“I was under the assumption that they would never get anything. Their lives would be miserable, and awful. That’s what we wanted,” Steven Tarsia said.
Matt considered a violent person
Gabriel DiBernardo, who was the lead detective in the investigation into Rickerson’s death in 1997, said he was not completely surprised about the jailbreak.
Matt had escaped from jail once before, in 1986. According to the Buffalo News, he was on the lam for four days before being recaptured.
“He has a history,” DiBernardo said. “He broke out of jail before. He is a cunning individual, no question about it, and a vicious individual.”
DiBernardo said he wouldn’t be surprised if Matt had more to do with the escape than Sweat.
According to a Buffalo News report from before Matt’s trial, he had been in Mexico, where he allegedly killed another man.
He was accused of killing a man in Matamoros, Mexico, outside a bar and served nine years in a Mexican jail. During his trial for murder of Rickerson, Matt’s attorney said his client never had a trial in Mexico and “suffered indignities that we wouldn’t impose on stray animals in our country.”
Matt worked for Rickerson and was fired for poor performance just weeks before Rickerson’s murder, according to coverage of the trial.
Reports from the trial included another telling anecdote: During the trial, Matt wore electrodes on his ankles or waist that could be triggered by a guard if needed while inside the courtroom.
The Buffalo News noted yet another twist: The day after Matt’s conviction, a police detective and former friend of Matt received a note from the inmate.
The note accused the detective of having lied during the trial, and said, “You also make it very clear that we are not friends. I’ll remember both…”
The ellipsis left the note open-ended.
During the Rickerson trial, the issue of Matt’s previous jailbreak came up.
His defense attorney explained it this way at the time: “He told me, ‘I was 22 then. I climbed a fence. I couldn’t do that now.'”