The True Story Behind “Escape at Dannemora”

This article was originally published on December 20, 2018. Six years later, this Ben Stiller-directed show is now on Netflix to distract you until then other Ben Stiller show is finally back, so we've updated this article with the most current information. Do you want more? Escape to Dannemora? To read our summaries and interviews with Stiller And Star Patricia Arquette.

In case you were wondering, yes, Richard Matt and David Sweat — the two inmates who escaped from a maximum-security prison in upstate New York in 2015, only one of whom lived to tell the tale — were both lifelong bad seeds and brutal murderers . That's not always clear for much of the Showtime miniseries' drama Escape to DannemoraDirector Ben Stiller's dramatization of the events leading to her capture/demise near the Canadian border. For this reason, we have put together the following summary of six key ones Dannemora Characters who describe their real background and, if applicable, their current social position in detail.

Richard Matt was born under the proverbial bad sign. Decades before the 49-year-old convicted murderer and multiple prison escapee was shot dead by U.S. Border Patrol agent Christopher Voss in the woods of upstate New York, he had been almost pushed aside in his youth. According to his son Nicholas Harris, Matt was left in a car when he was a toddler. He then grew up with foster parents in the upstate town of Tonawanda, near the Canadian border. Those who knew him insist he was a menacing bully in elementary school and a bona fide felon in early adulthood, even escaping from an Erie County prison in 1986.

Matt had two children: Nicholas (who he fathered with his childhood sweetheart and later girlfriend Vee, whom Nicholas raised alongside his stepfather) and a daughter Jamie (conceived with ex Lucille Cliffa-Longo), who recently published a book about their largely estranged life written relationship with her father.

As you can see in this video, at 30 years old, Matt was prepared to commit even more serious acts of violence. In December 1997, he and an accomplice kidnapped, killed and, using a hacksaw, dismembered Matt's former boss William Rickerson, who was then 76 years old. However, he was not convicted for this crime until 2008. Meanwhile, after Rickerson's murder, Matt fled to Mexico, stabbed a man, and served nine years behind bars (and supposedly tried to escape) before being convicted, extradited to the United States, and formally tried for Rickerson's death. As a retired police captain who came into contact with Matt told Washington post“He is the most evil and evil person I have ever met.” Matt was finally euthanized just ten miles from Malone, New York, the hometown of Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell.

Photo: Showtime

Despite being 14 years younger than Matt, David Sweat himself was no stranger to skirting the law. It was also partly the result of a dysfunctional upbringing. “We drank a lot. We celebrated a lot. His life was in turmoil,” a friend of Sweat’s mother, Pamela, told the New York Just. By the time he was nine years old, Sweat—who up to that point had lived primarily with Pamela and his two sisters in Upstate Deposit, New York—exhibited violent tendencies. Pamela sent him to live with his aunt, where his aggression increased and he ended up in foster care.

In 1996, Sweat attempted and failed to break into a group home in Binghamton, but served nearly two years between 1997 and 1999 on a separate attempted burglary charge. Finally, on the eve of July 4, 2002, after breaking into a Pennsylvania fireworks store with two friends in nearby Kirkwood, New York, Sweat and his accomplices were confronted by local deputy Kevin Tarsia. Sweat and one of the other men shot Tarsia 15 times, fatally wounding him. Sweat would be sentenced to life in prison without parole and sent back to Clinton Correctional Facility.

On June 28, 2015, 16 miles north of where Matt was shot, a police sergeant spotted Sweat, shot him twice in the torso and arrested him. Afterward, Sweat was placed in solitary confinement at Five Points Correctional Center for 23 hours a day, but he was later transferred to Attica Correctional after attempting to bribe Five Points officials. In March 2018, Sweat lost his privileges for 60 days after he was caught stroking himself during a visit with his girlfriend. He was in the headlines again in 2022 when a court authorized New York City Department of Corrections medical personnel to force-feed Sweat after he went on a hunger strike.

Photo: Showtime

Like the prisoners she eventually assisted, Joyce Mitchell had a complicated childhood. In a parole hearing in 2017 (she was denied parole twice that year), Mitchell described experiencing emotional abuse at the hands of her mother, whom she viewed as inferior to her brother and sister. (Her father, who died shortly before escaping, bore an uncanny resemblance to his daughter.) In the 1980s, she earned an associate degree in applied sciences from a local community college and dated a man named Tobey Premo, whom she claims he was abusive, adding that the two were alcoholics at the same time for a time. They married briefly in the early 1990s and gave birth to Mitchell's son, also named Tobey, whom her now-husband Lyle later adopted. Mitchell married Lyle (who was apparently part of a workplace love triangle between Mitchell and Premo) in 2001 and had been working at Clinton Correctional for about seven years at the time of Matt and Sweat's escape, where she worked as a seamstress in a tailor shop.

Mitchell's accounts of how her relationships, sexual and otherwise, with Matt and Sweat developed vary DannemoraShe claims she and Sweat never had sex and that Matt essentially intimidated her into being intimate. She also claims that it was Matt, not herself, who thought Lyle was “the mistake,” although she acknowledges that she had initially agreed to drug and kill him the night before the morning of the escape . Mitchell was charged with promoting prison contraband, a felony, and sentenced in September 2015 to up to seven years in prison. Reflecting on her downward spiral before the parole board in February 2017, Mitchell remarked, “I can be the person I once was – but to the point where I don't have to give in to be loved.” On March 6. In February 2020, Mitchell was released from New York City's Bedford Hills Correctional Facility on community supervision.

Photo: Showtime

Tilly's second husband and adoptive father of her son Tobey is always faithful and apparently keeps her going even from a distance. But if Mitchell's ex-husband's ex-wife is to be believed, Lyle and Tilly's relationship began scandalously while they were working in a slipper factory upstate. (As far as we can tell, the factory, which has long since closed, underwent a lengthy environmental cleanup review.) There isn't much public information about Lyle and his past, in part because he refused to do so during production. to work with Ben Stiller on the series. Immediately afterwards, Lyle's lawyer told the press that he remained in love with her, but “I don't know if he will really support her.” Lyle's opinion changed when she served a few years in prison and was denied parole , which he considered serious since another prison employee, Gene Palmer, got away with far less time in the slammer. When Tilly was released in 2020, she returned to his home in Dickinson Center, New York.

Photo: Showtime

On an overcast Monday morning in late July 2016, former Clinton Correctional Facility correctional officer Gene Palmer walked out of a rural prison in Plattsburgh, New York, a free man after serving four months of a six-month sentence. Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to two counts of promoting prison contraband and one count of official misconduct for his role in Matt and Sweat's escape in 2015. (The admission was part of a negotiated agreement and represented a slight about-face from his and his lawyer's initial denials that Palmer knew the meat he sent from Tilly to Matt contained blades and tools, or that the catwalk , which he had shown Matt and Sweat would be used as a means to escape.)

Palmer had worked at Clinton Correctional for 28 years (here's an NPR story where Palmer led a tour of the facility in the mid-2000s) and, according to his lawyer, traded favors for information that could help stop conflict and violence to prevent within the cell blocks. Several people close to him have detailed how Palmer and his wife, Laurie — who suffers from multiple sclerosis — separated more than a decade ago, and that Palmer left their Plattsburgh home to her and continues to care for her. When he was released from prison in 2016, he was reported to be living in Cadyville, and as suggested in DannemoraHe loves bandanas and rock'n'roll.

Photo: Getty Images/Showtime

IG Leahy Scott is barely visible in the crowd Dannemoraexcept for a questioning of Tilly at the series opening. But she was instrumental in bringing the case to trial once the hysteria surrounding Matt and Sweat's escape had died down. Her experience dealing with people from upstate New York certainly helped. Prior to assuming the role of state IG, Leahy Scott served a lengthy period as Columbia County's chief deputy district attorney, among other positions. That was before her term as assistant attorney general for the entire state of New York. Ironically, Leahy Scott was originally from Nassau County, Long Island, and earned both her bachelor's and law degrees from Hofstra University, a few miles from her home base in Levittown. (In fact, she was named Hofstra's Woman of the Year in 1981.) Since her appointment as IG in 2012, she has led investigations on everything from workers' compensation fraud to conducting forensic labs. And yes, she was instrumental in putting together a comprehensive report (150+ pages and 170+ interviews!) detailing how the hell Matt and Sweat almost got away with a monumental escape. About their implemented recommendations to prevent future disasters? Better training for newly promoted employees, increased night searches, and more training for new employees to report observed misconduct. In early 2019, Governor Andrew Cuomo replaced Leahy Scott as Inspector General of the State with his long-time assistant Letizia Tagliafierro.