Saturday, September 24, 2016

The Issue of Head Wounds


Thirteen years ago today, my brother Mark died from severe burns suffered the night of his truck fire in rural Great Valley, New York.  As the years have passed and more information has come to light, the cover-up of the foul play that took Mark’s life has made me seriously question our justice system.  Some of the information that has come to my attention most recently relates to troublesome similarities between the circumstances of my brother’s death and Dale Tarapacki’s (see esp. the posts of July 23 and August 24, 2016).  This post concerns head wounds as another factor linking the two deaths.

As reported in the initial post (September 22, 2010), Dr. Edward Piotrowski, Mark’s attending physician at the Erie County Medical Center, informed me in 2005 that when my brother arrived at the burn unit, he observed soft-tissue swelling on Mark’s forehead.  In order to determine if there was bleeding in his brain, Dr. Piotrowski ordered a CT scan.  The results of the scan concerned the doctor: although no bleeding was detected, there was deep, rather than superficial, soft-tissue swelling that made him think my brother might have been struck on the head.

When this information was relayed to the New York State Police investigators, they dismissed it, claiming that Mark had probably fallen and hit his head.  But, in addition, Dr. Piotrowski had revealed that Mark had also suffered soft-tissue swelling on the left side of his face and explained that my brother would have had to fall several times to get that level of soft-tissue damage.  The State Police never interviewed Dr. Piotrowski about these wounds or anything else he had observed in the burn unit related to my brother’s condition.

The State Police were also informed that firefighter Wayne Frank, who helped put the flames out on Mark, had noticed the wound on his forehead.  That wound was small but apparently well defined; by the time Mark arrived at the burn unit, it had obviously developed the swelling that so concerned Dr. Piotrowski.  To Wayne, it looked as if Mark had been hit on the head with a golf club.  Although the State Police said that they would interview Wayne, they apparently never did.  Gary Wind, a Deputy Sheriff and the first firefighter on the scene of the truck fire, later told me that he too had seen the wound on Mark’s forehead.  It is odd that the presence of the wound never made it into the official records on the truck fire.

Earlier posts (see esp. May 29 and September 22, 2012) discussed the facts indicating the following: my brother was beaten up after he pulled into his driveway and parked his truck; someone other than Mark backed his truck into the field across from his house; gasoline was poured in the front seat area of his pick-up truck; Mark himself was also doused with gasoline and set on fire.

It has been a matter of concern that the fire investigator’s report does not mention a pistol among the items found in the truck or on the scene.  According to a friend of his, my brother had bought a pistol because he had concerns for his safety at his job at M&M’s, a Native American cigarette store and gas station, where Mark had recently become a security guard.  Since the location is close to an off ramp of I-86 at Steamburg, N.Y., it is not clear why he felt anxious about his safety there.  At any rate, Mark reportedly kept the gun in the glove compartment of his truck. So what happened to it? Could it have been used to hit him on the forehead, and was it then taken away by his assailant (or, more likely, assailants)?

Dale Tarapacki’s death certificate does not mention impact wounds but rather states the cause of death as “acute alprazolam intoxication complicated by inhalation of products of combustion and thermal injury” (see post of May 19, 2016).  According to reliable sources, Tarapacki, who not long before his death had resigned his job as a pharmacist at the Rite-Aid in Salamanca to work for a new Native-American pharmacy there, had expressed concerns about his own safety.  As discussed in recent posts (May 19, July 23, and August 24, 2016), Tarapacki died in a truck fire under very suspicious circumstances just as Mark had.

It was previously mentioned that Tarapacki reportedly had a gunshot wound in the area of his right leg (see July 23, 2016).  Furthermore, a reliable source recently informed me that, according to a police official at the time of his death, Tarapacki had also suffered a serious head injury (apparently a cracked skull).  As reliable sources have also mentioned, the remains of two rifles were found in the rear of the cab of Tarapacki’s burned-out truck.  Had one of them also been used to strike him on the head and render him unconscious?

The similarities between my brother’s death and Tarapacki’s seem too numerous to be coincidental, especially for what authorities claimed in each case was an “accident.”