Police in the deep woods of upstate New York shot and wounded a convicted murderer who had escaped from a maximum-security prison three weeks earlier.  This comes just two days after his accomplice and fellow inmate was shot and killed more than 35 kilometers away.

Authorities released a photo of 35-year old David Sweat after his capture.  He’s drenched with blood from his non-lethal wounds, wearing a camouflage outfit that might have been stolen from any of a number of hunting cabins in the region, and visibly gaunt when compared to the previous image in his prison ID photo.

The manhunt for Sweat and 49-year old Richard Matt stayed on top of the US headlines from the moment they busted out of Clinton Correctional Facility in the town of Dannemora on 6 June.  They accomplished their audacious break out by cutting through the steel wall in back of their cells on the “honor block” – where well-behaved inmates are kept – making their way through a maintenance crawlspace, and out a sewer.  And “yes”, that was pretty much just like “The Shawshank Redeption”. 

Except that these men weren’t sympathetic, misunderstood, or wrongly accused.  Matt was a conman and psychopath who killed at least two people in two countries – one of his victims, beaten to death and dismembered.  Sweat was a cop killer who shot a Broome County deputy 22 times with his own service weapon in 2002. 

Investigators quickly determined they had inside help.  A female jail employee who smuggled power tools to the pair was supposed to have been their getaway driver, but she panicked and backed out.  When she called in sick to work at the prison, authorities zoomed in and Joyce Mitchell was arrested and charged.  Another prison employee, a guard named Gene Palmer who admitted to smuggling hacksaw blades hidden in bags of raw meat to the pair has also been charged.

Without that crucial ride out of the area, they took to the woods.  But they knew what they were doing, somehow obtaining picnic style peppershakers that they would use to contaminate their paths and throw off scent dogs.  They also stayed for a time in a hunting cabin that had a TV, and likely obtained information from the round the clock news coverage on the locations of their pursuers.

It’s not clear at what point they separated and Sweat left his older, slower partner behind.  There are some indications it happened days ago, but several earlier reports suggested that the two were either together or at least close when a US border patrol search team spotted Richard Matt, who turned and pointed a stolen shotgun at them on 26 June.  The cops fired several rounds into Matt’s head, according to the autopsy.

Two days later on Sunday 28 June, authorities spotted Sweat in the woods just three kilometers from the Canadian border.  It’s likely that when he is healthy enough, authorities will stick him in a “super max” facility – a cell roughly two by three and a half meters, surrounded by 45 centimeters of concrete and steel, 23 hours a day and an hour of exercise time.