A native of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area where he grew up in foster homes, Matt was a career criminal who had already served several prison terms for various crimes before he and an accomplice robbed, kidnapped and murdered his former boss, William Rickerson, in December 1997.

After fleeing to Mexico to avoid capture, he murdered a second man, Charles Perrault, in February 1998 while attempting to rob him and received a 23-year sentence.

He was sent to a group home in his early teens for stealing a houseboat, but escaped by riding on a stolen horse, after which he hid in Allegany State Park.

[3] In 1991, Matt convinced fellow prisoner David Telstar to pay $15,000 bail to get him released while awaiting trial for rape and assault.

[4] On December 3, 1997, Richard Matt and his accomplice, Lee Bates, kidnapped his 76-year-old former boss, William Rickerson, in his North Tonawanda home.

On February 20, 1998, Matt murdered Charles Arnold Perreault, an American engineer employed at Ranco de Mexico, a local factory.

According to court reporter Rick Pfeiffer, the Mexican government placed him without explanation on a plane with a drug kingpin they had agreed to extradite because he had "been such a difficult prisoner.

On June 6, 2015, while serving a 25-years-to-life sentence for Rickerson's murder, the 48-year-old Matt and 34-year-old David Sweat executed an elaborate escape from the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York and became the subjects of a trans-national manhunt.

The two men had first earned privileged housing in Honor Block, a unit with larger cells available to only those prisoners who had gone years without a disciplinary infraction.

The driver alerted the police, and many U.S. Border Patrol officers were sent to investigate the heavily wooded area; after hearing coughing, they encountered Matt carrying a 20-gauge shotgun.

When he refused to drop the weapon, he was shot and killed by Supervisory Agent and former Army Ranger Chris Voss in Franklin County, New York, near the town of Malone,[17][18][19] receiving three gunshot wounds to the head.