By The Associated Press
Tuesday, February 2, 2010 11:53 PM EST
DANNEMORA - Authorities continued searching Tuesday for a retired New York state prison guard wanted in connection with the slayings of his ex-girlfriend and a prison employee just hours after the victims celebrated her 43rd birthday.
State police said they weren't calling Anthony Pavone, 52, a suspect in Sunday's early morning shootings. But authorities said investigators want to question him about the deaths of Patricia Howard and Timothy Carter in Carter's home in Dannemora, in the northeast corner of the Adirondacks 20 miles south of the Canadian border.
Authorities said Howard called state police in nearby Plattsburgh at 3:54 a.m. Sunday to report that Pavone was outside the house and wouldn't leave.
“There was no indication that any violence was imminent,” state police Lt. Scott Heggelke said.
Troopers who arrived soon after the call found signs of a break-in and both victims dead from multiple gunshot wounds.
Police said Pavone, an ex-Marine who worked for 25 years at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, should be considered dangerous and shouldn't be approached if spotted.
A third day of searching Tuesday failed to turn up any sign of Pavone or his vehicle, a black 2001 GMC Sierra pickup truck with Marine Corps stickers, a yellow light on the roof and the license plate EAK 3536.
Heggelke said the ground and air searches focused on areas around the crime scene and Pavone's home in Morrisonville, a rural area just west of Plattsburgh. Clinton County sheriff's deputies, Plattsburgh police and state forest rangers were aiding the search, he said.
Pavone worked for the state Department of Correctional Services from 1982 to 2007, according to Linda Foglia, an agency spokeswoman in Albany.
She said he was hired as a correction officer trainee in July 1981 and was transferred a year later to maximum-security Clinton, the state's largest prison. In July 2007, he retired as a sergeant paid a salary of nearly $74,000, she said.
Carter, 52, had been a civilian maintenance employee at Clinton since November 2005, Foglia said.
Police said Pavone and Howard had dated for some time but recently broke up. A friend of Howard's, Robert Bellerive, told the Press-Republican of Plattsburgh the two had an “on-again, off-again” relationship.
Howard, a divorced mother of two daughters, was a dental hygienist in Plattsburgh. The newspaper reported that she and Carter went on their second date Saturday night, Howard's birthday.
“She said she didn't know what Tony would do if he ever found out,” Bellerive told the Press-Republican.
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