A pair of convicted murderers who escaped from a nearby prison were all the talk at Melissa’s Barber Shop in the upstate New York hamlet of West Chazy.
“My son says we’ll be reading a book and watching a movie about this one day,” Melissa Guerin, 41, said Tuesday. “It’s never happened before.”
West Chazy is about 30 minutes from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, where Richard Matt and David Sweat cut through a cell wall, maneuvered across a catwalk, shimmied down six stories to a tunnel of pipes, broke through a double-brick wall in the tunnel, cut into a 24-inch steam pipe and shimmied their way through, cut another hole in the pipe and finally surfaced through a manhole.
They were the first inmates to escape from the maximum security prison in its 170-year history, shattering the sense of peace in a knot of sleepy hamlets and towns shadowed by the Adirondack Mountains.
“I always thought being closer to the facility, you would be safer,” Guerin said. “They’re not going to stay in the area but you don’t know where they are. I’m paranoid.”
The shop’s clientele is largely divided between the older and younger generation of workers at Clinton, one of the largest public employers in the area.
“The guys that used to work there, they don’t understand how this happened,” she said. “Someone wasn’t doing their job.”
‘No one can get out’
Life in the sparsely populated area about 20 miles from the Canadian border has been transformed by an invasion of law enforcement officers, television satellite trucks, police checkpoints, state troopers guarding schools and changes in the ways people live their lives.
“People are eager to get back to the daily routine and the things that they do around here,” said Jonathan Parks, superintendent of the Saranac Central School District. “People live around here for a reason. It’s quiet. It’s serene. Your daily routine doesn’t really involve a whole lot of thought about danger. That’s why we’re here.”
The day after breakout was discovered Saturday, law enforcement officers combed through all school district’s buildings, every school bus and the woods and swamps surrounding the middle school and high school. A state trooper guards every school until 5:30 p.m. Bus drivers wait for children who want to remain inside their homes until buses arrive. Recess periods are now indoors. The manhunt involves 440 law enforcement officers — almost the size of West Chazy’s population.
While the school district has prepared for active shooters and other emergencies, escaped convicts were never really a consideration.
“Everybody just has assumed that that’s a given that no one can get out of there,” Parks said of the notorious prison. “So that’s certainly not been on our radar at all.”
‘Infamous history’
Opened in 1845, the Clinton Correctional Facility is also known as “Little Siberia.” The name stems not only from its remote and cold location but also its history as home to some of the most hard-bitten inmates in the history of New York crime.
“You never really think of somebody getting out and hiding in the area,” Parks said.
At Melissa’s Barber Shop, Guerin said her sons have been keeping her company out of concern for her safety. Her eyes are glued on the security camera. Customers arrive in pairs. People lock their car doors while driving, and shut the windows in their homes at night.
“I have a lot of correctional officers who come here,” Guerin said. “They’re very protective of me. I heard about the breakout before it was on the news. One of the officers wanted me to be safe. It was Saturday morning. He just wanted to let me know. He called and sent pictures of the escapees.”
An independent advocacy group called the Correctional Association of New York has described the Clinton Correctional Facility as a place that “has an infamous history of staff violence, brutality, dehumanization and racist attitudes that are an affront to any sense of humanity.”
The notorious Mafioso Charles “Lucky” Luciano did 10 years there before being deported to Italy.
Robert Chambers, the so-called preppy murderer, was transferred there after committing infractions at another prison. Chambers, who claimed that Jennifer Levin died accidentally during rough sex, was convicted of manslaughter — and, later, of drug offenses.
The bond between the surrounding communities and prison runs deep.
“Permanent settlement in Dannemora began in 1838 and Dannemora was officially incorporated as a village in 1901, growing up around the Clinton Correctional Facility,” the village website said.
The prison, which is “one of the largest public employers in the county,” houses about 3,000 inmates, according to the website.
‘Are they here?’
“My Grandfather Kennedy worked on the prison farm,” said Michael Maggy, a co-owner and pharmacist at Maggy Pharmacy, across the street from the prison.
“My Grandfather Maggy worked at the annex. My Uncle Russell worked in the prison system. So did my cousins and a lot of my best friends. I always valued what they did. But it does desensitize you driving by every day of what’s actually behind the wall.”
The military-type precision with which local, state and federal law enforcement personnel have responded to the breakout gives people confidence, Maggy said.
“Even though we’re still aware that these bad guys … are still out there and they may be still here, it’s making us feel very protected and a little more comfortable,” he said. “We’re very concerned. Everyone who has a dog that barks at night, ‘Is it an animal or are they here?'”
On Tuesday, authorities scoured farms, fields and swampland in Willsboro, a town of 2,000 people on Lake Champlain, about 40 miles south of Dannemora. The search was prompted by a resident who spotted two men walking down a road in Willsboro in the middle of a driving rain overnight, Town Supervisor Shaun Gillilland said. As the resident’s car approached them, they took off.
A law enforcement source close to the investigation suggested the men have been on foot since springing themselves from the prison.
‘Another 100 years’
In Willsboro, Darren Darrah said law enforcement officers surrounded his home Tuesday morning.
“The phone in my pocket started ringing and I told my boss, ‘I need to go home. My front yard and my house is on every news channel and every newspaper you can think off,'” he said.
When he returned home, Darrah said, busloads of law enforcement agents had descended on the area.
“It’s very scary,” he said.
Parks said many correctional officers and prison employees have children in the district schools.
“They realize that the best of the best are here in the area looking,” for the convicted murderers, he said. “That leads to a sense of security.”
Parks has a son in the eighth grade.
“Certainly everybody has in the back of their mind what could happen,” he said. “There’s no doubt about that. We’re all certain that there will be a significant review of practices and procedures at that prison. We’ll all pretty much bet out paychecks that it will be another 100 years before somebody escapes from that place.”