Here's a brief look at the crimes that put escaped inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat behind bars and their disciplinary records in prison.
THE CRIMES
RICHARD MATT
Date of birth: June 25, 1966
Hometown: Tonawanda, New York
Convicted of: Second-degree murder, kidnapping, robbery.
Richard Matt's former fiancee, a step-brother and co-defendant took turns at Matt's trial providing details of the 1997 kidnap, torture and hacksaw dismemberment of Matt's 76-year-old former boss, whose body was found in pieces in the Niagara River.
William Rickerson spent 27 hours on a snowy December night in the trunk of a car in pajamas while his killers drove from New York to Ohio and back, angry because he wouldn't tell them the location of the large sums of money Matt was convinced Rickerson kept on hand.
Co-defendant Lee Bates described how Matt at one point opened the trunk and bent the duct tape-bound elderly man's fingers back until they broke. After driving some more, Matt snapped Rickerson's neck with his bare hands.
Before the car ride, Matt had beaten Rickerson in his North Tonawanda home, stopping long enough to eat pepperoni and drink wine, Bates testified. He poured the rest of the wine on Rickerson, then pulled off the businessman's hairpiece and put it in his pocket.
After the killing, Matt fled to Mexico, where he killed a man outside a bar in Matamoros. He served nine years in prison before being returned to the United States in 2007.
Seven of the 12 jurors who in 2008 convicted Matt in Rickerson's murder returned to the courtroom to watch the sentencing. After nearly four weeks of testimony, they'd convicted him in four hours.
"Of all the cases I've tried this would top my list for the death penalty," prosecutor Joseph Mordino, whose experience at the time included more than 250 homicide cases, would tell a Niagara County judge.
Matt's sentence of 25 years to life in prison was the maximum for second-degree murder.
DAVID SWEAT
Date of birth: June 14, 1980
Hometown: Dickinson, New York
Convicted of: First-degree murder
David Sweat was one of three men arrested after 36-year-old Deputy Kevin Tarsia of the Broome County Sheriff's Office was killed on the Fourth of July in 2002 in the town of Kirkwood, near the New York-Pennsylvania border.
Tarsia, a 13-year veteran, was shot 15 times and then run over with a vehicle after discovering the trio transferring stolen guns between vehicles in a park near his home. The suspects had stolen the guns after ramming the front door of a Pennsylvania fireworks store with a pick-up truck.
Tarsia was wounded in the stomach before being run over. While Tarsia lay dying, Sweat and co-defendant Jeffrey Nabinger went through his police car and his clothes and took the deputy's .40-caliber Glock handgun. Authorities say Tarsia was then killed with two shots, point blank, to the face.
Sweat and Nabinger, who are cousins, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in 2003 to avoid the death penalty, instead receiving a sentence of life in prison without parole.
Tarsia was the first county deputy to die in the line of duty since the department was founded in 1806.
At the sentencing Tarsia's fiancee, Christi-Ann Ciccone, said the cousins "really do not deserve to live."
"These are not people," Ciccone said. "They are monsters."
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PUNISHMENT
MATT
This was Richard Matt's third prison term in New York, corrections officials said. He was convicted in 1986 of possession of a forged instrument then escaped from Erie County Jail. He was captured, imprisoned and formally released in 1988, returned as a parole violator in May 1990 and released again that November.
He was convicted in 1993 of attempted burglary, released in 1996, returned that year for a parole violation, and released again in 1997.
He went to prison in 2008 for the Rickerson murder, with no parole eligibility date, and except for initial processing had been at Clinton Correctional since.
Matt's sole disciplinary conviction at Clinton was in September 2011 for tattooing, smuggling and providing false information.
SWEAT
David Sweat's first prison term, as an 18-year-old, began in November 1997 for attempted burglary. He was paroled in June 1999.
He was sent to Clinton Correctional in fall 2003 after pleading guilty to Tarsia's murder.
Sweat's sole disciplinary conviction was last September for interference and harassment. Details were not immediately available about that incident or either man's assigned prison jobs.
Sweat's co-defendant, Nabinger, also has been imprisoned at Dannemora, the state's largest maximum-security prison, since 2003.
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