Charged guard is freed on bail

PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. — A prison guard who admitted giving two inmates tools, paint, frozen hamburger and access to a catwalk electrical box says he didn’t know the killers planned to break out, and investigators say they have no reason to believe he was knowingly involved in the plot.

Gene Palmer was released on $25,000 bail Thursday after his arrest on charges of promoting prison contraband, tampering with evidence and official misconduct.

Palmer, who has been suspended, will plead not guilty, his lawyer said.

The 57-year-old correction officer became the second Clinton Correctional Facility employee to be charged since inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat used power tools to cut their way out of the maximum-security prison in far northern New York on June 6.

Prison tailor shop instructor Joyce Mitchell stands charged with helping them escape.

In a signed statement, Palmer told authorities he was an unwitting helper.

Palmer admitted providing Matt with paint and paintbrushes, according to the statement. On four occasions over eight months, he supplied Sweat with needle-nose pliers and a screwdriver. He said he gave Sweat access to the catwalk later used in the escape to change the wiring on electrical boxes as “a favor” to make it easier for them to cook in their cells.

And a week before the escape, he delivered to Matt a pound of frozen ground beef in a package left by Mitchell.

B.B. King’s manager named executor

LAS VEGAS — B.B. King’s longtime business manager was named sole executor of his estate Thursday, despite objections from a lawyer for four of the late blues icon’s daughters.

Clark County District Judge Gloria Sturman refused to let prominent national attorneys Benjamin Crump and Jose Baez contest King’s will on behalf of daughters Karen Williams, Patty King, Rita Washington and Barbara Winfree.

The will, filed in January 2007, puts LaVerne Toney alone in charge of administering King’s assets, his property and his trust.

The judge then rejected efforts by Las Vegas attorney Larissa Drohobyczer to cast Toney as having misused her power of attorney while B.B. King was alive to move about $1 million from personal to joint bank accounts to which she had access, and to block relatives from visiting King in his dying days.

Attorney Brent Bryson, lawyer for the estate and Toney, said claims by the daughters that Toney stole from their father, isolated him and poisoned him before his May 14 death at age 89 have no basis in fact.