Thursday, July 28, 2011

What Happened at the Holy Cross Club between My Brother and Ofc. Mark Marowski?

    This post comes on my brother Mark's birthday.  He would have turned sixty-one today, if his life had not been so brutally taken away at age fifty-three.

    As I noted in my original post below (September 22, 2010), the New York State Police investigator mentioned that the day before his truck fire my brother had got a DWI after an altercation with an off-duty police officer at a local club.  People in the Salamanca area were apparently talking about this issue, for several of Mark's acquaintances soon told me that he had been set up for his DWI by a local policeman named Mark Marowski after getting into a personal argument at the Holy Cross Athletic Club.  When Attorney Michael Kelly brought up this subject at his interview with the New York State Police in 2005, Inv. Kalfas acknowledged that Ofc. Marowski had called in to have my brother arrested when he left the Holy Cross Club.

    What actually motivated this off-duty police officer to call in and have my brother picked up for DWI?  A few of Mark's acquaintances claimed to know that this argument was about the arrest of my brother's son Brian for DWI about a week earlier.  Mark reportedly felt that his son should have been treated more leniently because he had just come home for the funeral of a close friend.  I wondered for a long time why my brother would have argued about his son's arrest with Ofc. Mark Marowski in particular.  Apparently, a Salamanca police officer had arrested Mark's son the previous week.  But who specifically had picked up Brian for DWI? 

    Although Brian's arrest was apparently not publicized in the local newspapers, I have been told that the arresting officer was reportedly Mark Marowski.  Did my brother confront the very policeman who had picked his son up for DWI?  Was that issue the focus of the altercation at the Holy Cross Club?  If so, it might suggest a very heated argument indeed.

    It is frustrating that, although many people know about the argument, no one to my knowledge admits to being present at the Holy Cross Club during the altercation that resulted in my brother's arrest for DWI a week after his son's DWI.  A number of people must have heard what words were exchanged between my brother and Ofc. Marowski.  Was anyone also privy to the call that Ofc. Marowski made to the Salamanca Police to pick Mark up?  Did anyone hear Ofc. Marowski comment on the argument after my brother left the club?

    Although authorities were critical of my brother for drinking and getting a DWI, Ofc. Mark Marowski himself has had a problematic relationship to the law.  As I mentioned in my original post, Ofc. Marowski was arrested in May 2006 for speeding and DWI.  He was subsequently suspended from the Salamanca police force but allowed to retire with his police pension.  Recently, I was informed about Ofc. Marowski's legal problems over financial issues and advised to make a FOIL request for court judgments against him.  According to documents supplied by the Cattaraugus County Clerk's office, there were ten judgments against Ofc. Marowski for unpaid debts between 1996 and 2007, six of which were not classified as "satisfied."

    Those whose responsibility it is to enforce the law should not consider themselves above it.

    Just over a day after being released from jail and driven home by two friends, my brother was found burning to death in the field across from his house.  What happened in those hours between Mark's DWI and that suspicious truck fire?  Will the truth finally come to light and will justice prevail?