A female prison worker was interrogated Sunday as a possible accomplice in the Hollywood-style escape of two killers from an upstate penitentiary, sources told The Post.
“It’s an employee being questioned,’’ a high-level source said, adding that the worker, who is not a guard, had already been yanked from her post.
Sources said the worker may have been wooed by one of the escaped cons, Richard Matt, 48, an infamous lady killer.
“He has a way with the ladies,” the source said.
Another source, retired Detective David Bentley, who helped put away Matt for the 1997 murder of a North Tonawanda businessman, added, “When [Matt’s] cleaned up, he’s very handsome and, in all frankness, very well endowed. He gets girlfriends any place he goes.”
Authorities said Matt and David Sweat, 34, escaped late Friday or early Saturday, by using power tools from one of several construction sites at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, 20 miles from the Canadian border.
They cut through a steel wall, broke through two feet of brick and mortar and sliced open a metal pipe before escaping through a street manhole over a mile away.
They even “had to cut through a steel lock and a steel chain to open up the manhole cover,” Gov. Cuomo said, adding that it could not be opened from the outside.
Authorities are not dismissing the possibility that there may have been more than one person who helped them, sources said.
Investigators have divided prison employees into three categories — guards, civilian workers and private contractors, Gov. Cuomo told NBC’s “Today” show on Monday.
“We’re going through [interviewing] all the civilians and contractors first. I’d be shocked if a corrections guard was involved in this,” Cuomo said.
“But they definitely had help, otherwise they couldn’t have done this on their own.”
All of the prison’s tools have been accounted for “so far,” said acting state Corrections Commissioner Anthony Annucci.
“That seems to point to a contractor leaving their tools,” he said.
A source said, “There was major construction at the prison — a bunch of work crews for a variety of projects. They are looking into every aspect of these crews, any connections they might have to these two prisoners. Was it a relative or a friend?
“Look at the cuts that they made in the pipes. They are perfect, clean. That’s not normal — they had some help.”
The source likened the breakout to Clint Eastwood’s “Escape from Alcatraz,’’ in which his character leaves a dummy in his bed, just as Matt and Sweat did.
Another source added that the pair “had help on the inside, and they could just have easily had help on the outside.”
“To do all that, it would have to take weeks, if not months. This was well- planned and thought out for some time.’’
The jailbreak occurred Friday into Saturday, when a “family day’’ had been scheduled at the prison, a source noted.
In a parting shot to prison officials, Matt and Sweat left behind a note with a smiley face that read, “Have a nice day.’’
“A little bit of a comedian in them [the escaped cons] but I plan on giving them back that note, ” Cuomo told “Today” on Monday.
Cuomo, who inspected the escape route, said officials are doing everything possible to prevent another escape but said the first priority is to apprehend the fugitives.
“This is a crisis situation for the state,” the governor said Sunday. “These are dangerous men. They’re capable of committing grave crimes once again. We will not rest until we have these two individuals back in custody.”
The state is offering $100,000 for info leading to the capture of the inmates, or $50,000 for tips leading to each one.
Cuomo said investigators were sifting through more than 150 leads. Among them, sources said, was a report that men believed to be Matt and Sweat were spotted at 12:30 a.m. Saturday in the backyard of a house near the manhole where they emerged.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” a man called out before the duo fled.
The witness did not report the incident to police, but later gave a description that closely resembled the missing men.
Matt and Sweat were logged as present at the prison Friday night but discovered missing at a 5:30 a.m. bed check Saturday.
Cuomo said he confronted a couple of inmates about how no one supposedly heard anything while the cons were drilling out.
“I chatted with a couple of the inmates myself and said, ‘You must be a very heavy sleeper.’ They heard, they had to be heard,” he said on “Good Morning America.’’
Sweat, 34, was serving life without parole for the 2002 killing of Kevin Tarsia, a Broome County sheriff’s deputy. Matt, 48, had been sentenced to 25 years to life for kidnapping, killing and dismembering his former boss in 1997.
Tarsia’s brother, Steven, said the escape has turned his world “upside-down all over again.”
Additional reporting by Leonard Greene and David K. Li