Friday, August 14, 2015

Who Was the Neighbor Mark Visited Just before the Fire?


This post considers the issue of my brother’s whereabouts the evening of his truck fire.  In spite of N. Y. S. P. Inv. Kalfas’s claim that he couldn’t find anyone who had seen my brother out the entire day of the fire, the anonymous letter sent to me late last summer (see post of August 11, 2014, with a copy of the letter) provides significant information on that issue.

According to the letter, immediately before the truck fire Mark was at the house of a neighbor, who said that my brother could not have had a .25 blood alcohol level.  Unfortunately, the author of the anonymous letter did not reveal the identity of the neighbor Mark was visiting.  But that person’s information about my brother’s lucidness and ability to function is very important as a counter to the State Police’s insistence that Mark caused the truck fire and his own death in a highly intoxicated state, either by accident or by suicide.

Shortly after my brother’s death, his close friend Jim Poole told me that the last person who he knew had seen Mark was Todd Lindell, and advising me to call Todd, he gave me his cell phone number.  Recently, another individual indicated that, among the neighbors, Mark would likely have been visiting Sidney Lindell or Todd Lindell, both good friends of my brother (the two Lindells are cousins of each other).  However, Sid Lindell specifically told me that he had not seen Mark on the day of the fire.

Previous posts (September 22, 2011, and March 3, 2014) have discussed the problem of Todd Lindell’s statement to me that “Mark would be alive today if he had not gotten the DWI.”  As indicated, Todd did not return my calls when I tried to get clarification from him on that issue and on the time Mark left his house the evening before the fire.  I found Todd’s behavior perplexing because he had told me that he would be happy to talk to me anytime.

Apparently, Todd is unwilling to discuss the matter with me.  In the spring, Mark’s long-time friend Bill Lewis told me that he would be golfing with Todd this summer and offered to ask him if he would speak with me.  Yet after hearing nothing from Bill, I tried calling him several times to find out if he had made contact with Todd.  But now he, too, has not returned my calls, even though he had indicated a willingness to help and expressed a desire to have the truth about Mark’s death finally brought to light.

If for some reason he had not ended up golfing with Todd, Bill could easily have let me know that.  Moreover, Bill also told me that he had run into Todd at a bar in the local casino.  He thus had other opportunities to speak with Todd about Mark’s death.  It would appear likely that he did talk to Todd.  But it is difficult to understand why Bill would not want to tell me what Todd said.  Bill’s silence is both surprising and disturbing.

Early in the investigation, Inv. Kalfas claimed that Mark had been “depressed” not only over his own DWI the day before but also over his son’s DWI a week or so before.  Presumably, at least one person had informed Kalfas about Brian’s DWI and made an issue of it.  Immediately after Mark’s death, a relative mentioned that Brian had got a DWI around a week before Mark’s death.  But neither that person nor anyone else with whom I spoke referred to any depression on Mark’s part because of it—quite the contrary (see post of March 27, 2012).  However, information recently obtained suggests that there would likely have been additional tension in my brother’s household, beyond the serious marriage problems acknowledged by the State Police investigator, following Brian’s arrest.

Public records in the nearby Ellicottville, NY, court clerk’s office reveal that on September 10, 2003, Brian was arrested for DWI by Troy Westfall, a Salamanca police officer (and currently Chief of Police) who also worked part-time on the Ellicottville force, and that he had the very high blood-alcohol level of .219.  The records also state that on September 19, 2003, Brian pleaded guilty in court and was fined $500, along with a $125 surcharge.  Court personnel informed me that his driver’s license would also have been revoked for six months.  This must have been a very difficult situation for both parents, since Brian, to all appearances, had been a model youth.  He had been his class valedictorian and a star golfer in high school and had recently begun his junior year in college.

Just three days after Brian’s court date, Mark himself was arrested for DWI after getting into a personal argument with off-duty Salamanca police officer Mark Marowski, with whom the writer of the anonymous letter says my brother’s wife was having an affair (see esp. posts of July 28, 2011; April 18, 2013; August 11, 2014; and September 14, 2014).  With Mark’s DWI following on the heels of Brian’s, tensions in the house would obviously have escalated.

According to the individual who drove him home after his arrest, Mark's wife Susan reacted vehemently, among other things telling him to pack his bags and “get the hell out” (see post of August 22, 2012).  It seems difficult to believe Susan’s account of the next evening in her witness statement, namely that she and Mark were watching television until he left for downtown Salamanca around 8:45 p.m.  It seems very likely, however, that Mark would have preferred to be out of the house and to be with someone he knew well enough, with whom he could feel comfortable under the circumstances.

It is most important to know who last saw Mark before the fire.  If that person was not Todd Lindell, who could it have been?