DANNEMORA, NY — (CNN) Nine days and hundreds of tips later, the convicted killers are still out there.
Despite the efforts of 800 law enforcement officials, popping open trucks, peering into cars and scouring heavily wooded areas, authorities seem no closer to capturing Richard Matt and David Sweat.
New York’s governor acknowledged over the weekend that the pair could be almost anywhere, and on Monday, the prosecutor whose office brought charges against prison tailor Joyce Mitchell for allegedly aiding the escape said authorities can’t even say for sure if anyone else was involved.
“We have not cleared anyone at this point in time,” Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie told CNN.
Meanwhile, the leads keep piling up — more than 870 of them so far, according to New York State Police.
They involve a mishmash of far-flung places: Vermont, Mexico, even a few miles from the Clinton Correctional Facility, the maximum-security prison in Dannemora, New York, from which Matt and Sweat escaped on June 6.
With every credible tip comes a switch in direction.
“We had a lead that they were headed to the state of Vermont and … I called the governor of Vermont and we worked out a cooperative agreement with Vermont,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
“We then received information that they may be just a few miles from the prison, because there was a house that was broken into and it was suspect, so we followed up on that. Yesterday, we had over 800 people searching quadrants in an area where we had a tip that they might be.”
On Monday, Cuomo ordered state Inspector General Catherine Leahy Scott to investigate the prison break, in which Matt and Sweat used tools, allegedly provided by Mitchell and others, to cut through steel walls and pipes before emerging from a manhole and disappearing.
The investigation, Cuomo said, will include outside corrections and law enforcement experts with experience in “prison design, operations and security with a view toward identifying how these inmates were able to escape, and recommend any potential reforms and best practices to prevent future incidents.”
“Capturing these killers and returning them to state custody remains our top priority,” Cuomo said in a statement. However, “it’s critically important to examine the circumstances that enabled these inmates to escape in the first place.”
Scott issued a statement of her own, saying she is “committing all resources necessary to conduct an expedient and comprehensive investigation.”
“I will follow the evidence wherever it leads,” she said.
Mitchell appeared in court Monday for a planned preliminary hearing, but that provided no answers.
Wearing a black-and-white-striped prison jumpsuit and with her hands shackled to her waist, Mitchell didn’t say anything during the brief hearing.
Her attorney waived her preliminary hearing after a more than two-hour delay that was needed after her first court-appointed attorney had to drop out because of a potential conflict of interest.
Mitchell has been in jail since last week, accused of helping the pair break out of their cells, and will remain there unless she posts a $220,000 bond or $110,000 in cash.
Mitchell supplied the inmates with various tools, including hacksaw blades, chisels, a punch and a screwdriver bit, according to court records.
But that was not all, Wylie said.
After their escape, the two convicts planned to drive seven hours under the cover of darkness to a predetermined location, together with Mitchell, he said.
Mitchell told investigators she was supposed to pick them up but got cold feet, Wylie said. The plan was to run off with the men after picking them up near a manhole where they’d emerge from a network of tunnels, according to Wylie.
“They were going to meet down by the power plant, drive — I’m not going to say into the sunset, because it was after midnight and it was dark out — but they were going to drive, potentially to an area that was about seven hours away,” he said.
Mitchell told authorities that the pair picked a destination, but they did not give her any specifics.
“That was the information that she was told by Matt and Sweat — that it was about seven hours away,” Wylie said.
After her change of heart, she began cooperating with police, authorities said.
“She did indicate one of the reasons why she didn’t show up was because she did love her husband and she didn’t want to do this to him,” Wylie said.
But the prisoners may have been manipulating Mitchell from as far back as 2013, when the trio met, he said.
Mitchell has told investigators that Matt made her feel “special,” a source familiar with the investigation said.
State Department of Corrections officials had received a complaint about the relationship between Mitchell and one of the two escapees. The department didn’t find enough evidence to support the complaint, but that does not mean there was no relationship, Wylie said.
The governor said the state will have “zero tolerance” for any prison employee involvement.
“To the extent any state employee was involved in facilitating the escape, that is a crime in and of itself, and that will be fully prosecuted as a crime in and of itself,” Cuomo said.
More than 800 state, local and federal law enforcement officers are searching for the escapees, who left behind a sticky note with the words, “Have a nice day” before vanishing.
According to Wylie, the pair may have left additional sticky notes.
“It’s my understanding there were other notes or markers in the tunnel system,” Wylie said. He didn’t say what they contained.
The manhunt for the convicts has expanded in Plattsburgh, in upstate New York, where authorities have shut a portion of State Route 374.
Tracking dogs picked up their scent last week at a gas station in the town, where authorities believe they were rummaging through trash at a sandwich shop. But it’s unclear when they were there.
The local Saranac Central School District canceled classes last week as the search intensified. Classes resumed Monday, but with an enhanced police presence on campuses during school hours, New York State Police said. It said there will be no outdoor activities.
Sweat was serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for the murder of a Broome County sheriff’s deputy in 2002. Matt was sentenced to 25 years to life for the kidnapping and murder of a man in 1997.
Mitchell may not face as much time, but she’s looking at eight years behind bars if she is convicted.
She pleaded not guilty Friday night to a felony charge of promoting prison contraband and a misdemeanor charge of criminal facilitation.
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