Tuesday, March 17, 2015

More about Police Protecting Their Own


This post considers the issue of police protecting their own in the investigation into my brother Mark’s death.  Salamanca police officer Mark Marowski was never investigated for his role in getting my brother arrested for DWI after their personal argument at the Holy Cross Club the very day before Mark’s suspicious death.  Yet Marowski’s serious problems with alcohol, gambling, and dependence on prescription drugs as well as his hostility toward my brother were well known, and according to information recently relayed to me, Marowski was having an affair with my brother’s wife Susan. (On Marowski, see posts of August 14, September 14, October 17, November 16, and December 14, 2014.)

There appears to have been a similarly cavalier attitude toward Peter Rapacioli, whose son-in-law is the brother of a veteran Salamanca police officer.  (On Rapacioli, see posts of May 15, June 26, and December 24, 2013, and April 19, 2014.)  In an entry in the police report (for September 25, 2003, with the name redacted), Rapacioli claims that he called to speak with Mark about a football pool but, not finding him home, spoke with my brother’s wife (in a conversation that allegedly lasted for about half an hour).
  
That (alleged) conversation took place immediately before Mark’s truck suspiciously went up in flames in the field across from their house.  As the State Police investigators were well aware, my brother and his wife had not been getting along at all for some time and were about to get divorced.  The State Police also knew about allegations that Rapacioli himself had been having an affair with Mark’s wife.  Yet they never checked the telephone records and refused to check them when requested to do so several times after the investigation was over.

According to Rapacioli (who called in June 2013 to berate me for mentioning him on my blog), he had been interviewed several times by the State Police during the investigation into my brother’s death.  Yet the police report mentions only the one interview with Rapacioli, at the very beginning of the investigation.  The police report entry makes it appear that Rapacioli was simply asked to verify the (alleged) call and to give his view as to whether Mark himself might have caused the truck fire.

Why aren’t the other interviews alluded to by Rapacioli recorded in the police report?  In my telephone conversation with him last August, Troop A Captain Steven Nigrelli stated that Cattaraugus County D. A. Edward Sharkey had known about the (alleged) phone call between Rapacioli and Mark’s wife Susan and that Sharkey insisted the case be closed.  Capt. Nigrelli also said that the State Police cannot obtain telephone records.  Yet Sr. Inv. John Wolfe told me back in 2005 that he would get the phone records if the case were re-opened.

A recent post (January 16, 2015) discusses the e-mail sent to me by Capt. Nigrelli summarizing the results of the inquiries and interviews that he asked State Police BCI staff to carry out as a result of our conversation last August.  As pointed out in that post, the summaries of the three interviews are highly problematic.  The one concerning Mark Marowski does not appear to represent any serious effort to determine if that now-retired police officer was in fact having an affair with my brother’s wife and if he was involved in Mark’s death.  The other two summaries do not accurately reflect the actual statements and information relayed to the BCI interviewer.  These interviews, as summarized in Capt. Nigrelli’s e-mail, look merely like "window dressing."

Capt. Nigrelli’s e-mail’s does not identify who this BCI interviewer was or indicate if there was more than one BCI interviewer.  But I have been led to believe that Sr. Inv. Christopher Iwankow conducted the interviews.  If so, that adds another problematic element to the investigation into Mark’s death.  According to the police report entry for September 25, 2003, “Investigator Christopher Iwanko [sic] attends the autopsy, taking photographs, fingerprints and a blood kit from the victim.” Iwankow thus had a role in the investigation into Mark’s death from the beginning.

What concerns me here about Sr. Inv. Iwankow is his response to an individual who called the State Police office in western New York in an effort to help me get the photos of the scene of Mark’s truck fire through a FOIL request.  In May 2011, independent criminologist Will Savive informed me by e-mail that he had spoken with a State Police official named Iwankow, who told him that they usually purge the records after five years.  Will added, “Oddly enough, he remembered the case.”

Shortly afterward, I spoke with Will by phone and let him know that according to the police report Iwankow had attended Mark's autopsy.  He then told me that at the end of their phone conversation he asked the State Police official for his name in case he had any follow-up questions.  But with my information about Iwankow’s connection to the investigation, Will was very concerned about how that State Police official had reacted to the request for his name.  According to Will, Iwankow did not reply at once, but instead hesitated for a good twenty seconds before identifying himself.  Why was Iwankow so reluctant to reveal his name?  Would any police official who had participated in an honest investigation have reacted in such a manner?

After filing a complaint about the investigation into Mark’s death with the U. S. Attorney’s office in Buffalo in 2004, I was advised to speak with the FBI agent in Jamestown.  In my first conversation with him, Agent Brent Isaacson stated that, although it wasn’t fair, the police are given the benefit of the doubt in controversial matters of this type.   But how far does such leeway extend?  Where is justice when the police are allowed to cover up the brutal murder of a decent man like my brother, who was doused with gasoline and burned to death?