Escaped Killers May be Headed to Vermont; Reportedly Sighted in NY Town After Escape

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin says police in his state are on alert and a public awareness campaign is being launched in case two escaped convicts from northern New York try to take refuge in Vermont.

Shumlin and Col. Thomas L'Esperance of Vermont State Police joined New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a media briefing Wednesday afternoon at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. Shumlin says the awareness campaign will include information posted at campgrounds and state parks where people may not be tuned in to the latest news.

Cuomo says investigators received information suggesting Vermont was discussed by inmates and convicted murderers David Sweat and Richard Matt as a possible destination.

Meanwhile, police SWAT teams trailed by K-9 sniffer dogs are searching fields and barns and going house to house in the tiny New York border town where Sweat and Matt were reportedly spotted in the hours after they finagled their way out of a maximum-security prison between Friday night and Saturday morning.

More than 250 law enforcement personnel are still on the hunt for Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 34, after the criminals cut themselves out of Clinton Correctional Facility in the village of Dannemora, New York, sometime before a 5:45am bed-check on Saturday.

The men were thought to have emerged from a manhole in the town of Dannemora, and that is where investigators concentrated their efforts on Wednesday, four days after the daring escape, although authorities have conceded the pair may have fled the state or even crossed over the Canadian border, about 20 miles north of the town.

Two residents of Dannemora told ABC News they spotted the men without knowing who they were at around 12:30 am Saturday, shortly the escapees reportedly emerged from the manhole.

The unnamed friends, a man and a woman, said they spotted the two men — both wearing dark jeans — in their backyard. One of the men was reportedly carrying what looked like a black guitar case on his shoulder.

The woman told ABC the friends were "lucky to be alive" after yelling at the men to "get the hell out of here."

The men reportedly replied, "We're just lost. We don't know where we are. We're on the wrong street," before taking off.

At a press conference Wednesday, authorities said that they had received a tip off from residents that fit the description of the two prison escapees, but that they could not confirm the sighting.

Related: In Photos: Inside the NY Prison Where Two Inmates Made a 'Shawshank'-Style Escape

On Tuesday police pursued a lead that two men had been spotted late Monday about 50 miles south of Dannemora on a rural road in Willsboro, New York, during a heavy rainstorm, and had run off when a vehicle approached.

Searchers walked shoulder-to-shoulder, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying sidearms as they went through hilly woods, fields and swamps, checking every home, garage, shed and outbuilding, then yelling, 'Clear!' when there were no signs of the inmates.

By early evening, it appeared the sweep had come up empty, and there was no confirmation from police that the escaped convicts had been there.

State police major Charles Guess said that investigators are in the process of "retracing steps made early in the investigation" and have received hundreds of tips claiming to have information about the pair since the weekend, according to the Guardian.

Investigators have also not ruled out the possibility that Matt and Sweat escaped with the help of an insider, and confirmed they had questioned a woman who worked at the prison earlier this week.

"We're looking at the civilian employees now and the private contractors to see if possibly if a civil employee or contractor was assisting the escape because they wouldn't have equipment on their own, that's for sure," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told CNN Monday.

Sweat was convicted for the 2002 killing of a sheriff's deputy and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Matt is serving a sentence of 25 years to life for the kidnapping, killing, and dismembering his former boss in 1997.

Authorities said that the men would have had to use power tools to cut through a steel wall and escape through the prison's piping system. But after guards did an inventory sweep of the prison's equiment, they found nothing missing, leading investigators to look at the potential that the jailbreak was an insider job.

Authorities also noted the audacity of the prisoners who stuffed their bedding with effigies of themselves in hooded sweatshirts. Although unusual-looking, the lumps were apparently enough to fool security guards conducting their routine walk-through visual checks every two hours throughout the night, Cuomo said at a press conference.

The men also left a yellow Post-It note reading "have a nice day," which was drawn alongside a crude smiley face wearing a Chinese-style hat — likely a reference to the old (and geographically impossible) adage that anyone digging straight through the earth from the US would pop up in China.

Social media users have also noted similarities between the note Matt and Sweat left behind and a face drawn by the character Peter Griffin in the animated series Family Guy.

— sean conway (@seanway_)June 7, 2015

The Associated Press contributed to this report.