LANSING, Mich. Michigan prison employees' failure to properly operate motion-detection alarms played a "major role" in the escape of a convicted quadruple killer who pried open fences and crawled in heavy snow before being captured in Indiana a day later, state investigators said in a report released Thursday.

The Corrections Department's internal investigation found Michael Elliot would have been detected Feb. 2 if an alarm zone had been reset properly earlier in the day. Two prison employees have been suspended over the escape.

The review also found some sensors were misaligned, apparently letting Elliot crawl underneath an invisible detection beam without being noticed.

Elliot, 40, told investigators he began to think seriously about an escape due to heavy snow he thought could be used as cover, the report says, and he broke through fences while wearing white thermals to blend in. He chose Super Bowl Sunday because he thought staff might be distracted. But investigators found no evidence the Super Bowl was a factor.

They also found no evidence he had help from other inmates or staff.

The prison fences are equipped with motion sensors and carry electric current, but officials said Elliot, who was serving life in prison without parole, used hobby craft scissors and a belt buckle to pull back portions that do not carry an electric charge.

He also used a hook from his locker to dig out snow under a fence.

Elliot was convicted of fatally shooting four people and burning down their Gladwin County house in 1993 when he was 20 years old. He and his accomplices were trying to steal money from a drug dealer, police said.

Elliot claims to be innocent of the murders, and a co-defendant says he pulled the trigger and Elliot played no part.

Officials say that after the escape Elliot stole a Jeep in Ionia with a woman inside. She escaped when they stopped for gas in Elkhart County, Ind., more than 100 miles away from the prison.

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Michigan says guards' failure to secure motion alarms played 'major' role in killer's escape

Demolition on the one-story portion of the building on the corner of Market Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, next door to the Times Observer, began on Thursday.

Keith and Nate White of Keith White Excavating are knocking down the building, and loading the debris into large dumpsters.

Keith White said it must be done with care, as portions are connected structurally to the main building.

Over the years, the building has served as Warren's post office, a state liquor store, the AAA office, an insurance office and a hearing aid center.

The addition, which dates to the 1950s or 1960s, served as the headquarters of the local International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and a tattoo parlor.

Jameson Shepherd, the general contractor for work on the building, said that while the addition is in terrible shape, possibly because of flooding over the pre-Kinzua Dam years, the main building was well built.

Still, he said, there is a tremendous amount of work remaining to restore the apartments, including drywall installation over old plaster walls.

Some of the interior woodwork still needs stripping, and the floors will be refinished.

Over 50 new energy efficient windows have been installed, Shepherd said, reducing traffic noise from Pennsylvania Avenue.

Looking at the building from the outside doesn't give a clue to the interior spaces. "The front apartment on the third floor is 1,600 square feet," Shepherd said. Many houses are smaller than that.

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Portion of downtown building coming down

Didn't Gothamist already post about this? Yes, we did, in fact! The excellent preview by Ben Miller would be a strong introduction if you stopped reading now. But you already clicked and the money is in the bank, so read on for a fuller picture of the show.

Fine. What is the Whitney Biennial? The Whitney Biennial is a once-every-two-years ("biennial") exhibition presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art ("Whitney") of mostly new and emerging contemporary American artists. The Whitney has been putting on large group exhibitions for nearly 100 years, but the biennial format only began in 1973. It is first and foremost an exercise in curation, and this year the Whitney invited outside curators to put together the show, culminating in its distinct format and (sometimes) unique results.

Is it fascist? Well, that depends on how you feel about museums. (At the Frick they force you to WEAR your overcoat if you decide not to check it!) But seriously, though the Biennial is mostly uncontroversial in a larger, more general sense, it is routinely the target of familiar and valid criticisms from within and without the art world. As recently as 2012 a parody Biennial website mocked the exhibition's corporate ties.

The most notable (and sustained) criticisms were made by the Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous feminist art collective formed in 1985 in New York City, active through the late 1990s, and still working today, who in 1987 protested the Biennial to draw attention to the dearth of female and minority artists in the showcase. The Guerrilla Girls Review The Whitney was held at the non-profit Clocktower gallery, where the group denounced the systemic disenfranchisement of women in the history of the Biennial up until that point (for the seven exhibitions from 1973-1987, the number of women of color in the Biennial was a statistically insignificant 0.3%"). In 1987, women were a mere 27% of artists in the Biennial.

2014s Biennial is still not immune to these criticisms: by one early estimate, roughly 30% are women and 7% are black. Is it a coincidence that this year's only female curator assembled the most diverse collection? Should I disclose that I am a white male now or later?

So? What's the big deal? However you slice it, its just one of the biggest art-world events in one of the biggest centers of the art-world in one of the most famous museums in one of the biggest cities in the United States. The Whitney Biennial exists, and you most certainly will be hearing about it.

This years Biennial is taking on a slightly different format: three curators from outside the Whitney were invited to organize their own show on one of the museum's three main floors. Anthony Elms, Stuart Comer, and Michelle Grabner took over the second, third, and fourth floors respectively. Elms is an associate curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (read a nice Q&A with him here), Comer is the Media and Performance Art Curator at the MoMa, and Grabner is an artist and professor at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Let's get to it, then! There is a lot to get through: 103 artists and groups make up the 3.5-ish floor exhibition, so this will mostly highlight the pieces I liked the most and try to provide a sense of the three distinct floors. Am I qualified to do so? No, but neither are art historians, because art history is saturated with hired bullshit.

The Second Floor Each level opens with a curator's statement summarizing their approach to their exhibition floor. Elm's guiding question for the second floor was the same one Marcel Breuer posed to himself when designing the Whitney"What should a museum look like, a museum in Manhattan?"

Walking out of the elevators your are confronted with your first piece, Jimmy Durham's Choose Any Three, a wooden totem with names of famous persons in groups of three, made during his time in Cuernavaca, Mexico. He has been living and working all over Europe since the mid-90s, and his presence foreshadows one of the floors more interesting themes: Patriotism. What is an ex-pat American artist's relationship to American contemporary art? Is he even American? Does it matter? (Yes.)

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An Opinionated Guide To The 2014 Whitney Biennial

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