8:45 a.m. (EDT)

Hundreds of searchers for two escaped inmates are scouring a remote and rugged patch of wilderness in northern New York.

Police this weekend began focusing intensely on an area 20 miles west of the prison that inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt escaped on June 6. Police say they developed evidence from a hunting cabin in the area.

More than 1,000 officers from multiple agencies are helping with the search centered Tuesday about 20 miles south of the Canadian border. Police were using dogs and helicopters to aid in their search for the two Clinton County Correctional Facility inmates.

Authorities are asking people in the rural area to report any suspicious activity

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8 a.m. (EDT)

The husband of Joyce Mitchell says he’s “absolutely 100 percent” certain he and his wife would have been killed by the two escaped murderers she’s accused of helping break out of a New York maximum-security prison.

Lyle Mitchell tells NBC’s “Today” show that if his wife had gone through with David Sweat and Richard Matt’s plan to have her pick them up in the couple’s vehicle after the June 6 escape, the convicts would have killed them. He says the inmates offered to give her pills that would have knocked him out.

Lyle Mitchell says if just his wife had shown up with the vehicle, the convicts would have killed her “within a half hour.” The husband isn’t suspected of having aided the escape.

Sweat and Mitchell remain at large Tuesday, with police searching an area 20 miles west of Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora.

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7:35 a.m. (EDT)

The husband of a prison employee accused of helping two convicted killers escape a New York prison says the inmates told her they would kill her husband if she didn’t follow through with plans to help them make their getaway.

Lyle Mitchell tells NBC’s “Today” show in an interview aired Tuesday that his wife, Joyce, told him David Sweat and Richard Matt offered to give her pills to knock her husband out so she could pick them up after they made it out of Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. The two murderers escaped June 6 after using power tools to cut their way out of the maximum-security prison.

They remain at large Tuesday.

Joyce Mitchell is being held on charges she helped the prisoners escape by providing them hacksaw blades, chisels and other tools. She has pleaded not guilty.

(AP)