Tuesday, March 31, 2020

What Did the N.Y.S. Police Learn from Mark’s Medical Records?

This post considers how thoroughly the New York State Police examined my brother’s medical records after they obtained them in 2005 and what they learned from those records.  In September 2005, Atty. Michael Kelly spoke in person with Senior Investigator John Wolfe and Edward Kalfas, the lead investigator in Mark’s case, in part to discuss information that had been reported to me by Mark’s attending physician at the burn unit and to Kelly by a firefighter on the scene.  Wolfe then agreed to get Mark’s medical records.

As Kelly informed me, during that interview Wolfe instructed Kalfas to ask Mark’s wife Susan to sign a release for his medical records.  In October, I called Wolfe to ask if he had obtained the medical records.  He replied that he had not and that Susan Pavlock had not returned his call.  He added that he would go directly to her place of employment and ask her in person to sign off on the medical records.  When I next spoke with Wolfe, however, he stated that they had to subpoena the medical records.

In late December, Wolfe told me that he had received the medical records but could find nothing in them to indicate that my brother had been attacked.  A few days later, Kelly informed me that he had just heard from Wolfe, who stated that he could find nothing in the medical records to warrant re-opening the case.  Wolfe claimed that the soft-tissue damage was “positional” and not caused by an attack.  Although Kelly himself told Wolfe that the wound could certainly have been the result of an attack, Wolfe insisted on his “positional” theory.

It seems ludicrous to assume that my brother’s forehead head was injured when emergency workers put him into the ambulance.  In addition, Wolfe seemed oblivious to the fact (previously reported to him) that firefighter Wayne Frank saw the wound on Mark’s forehead when he was lying in the field the night of the fire and thought that someone had hit my brother with a golf club.

Wolfe insisted to Kelly that he had not seen anything in the medical records to confirm what my brother’s attending physician Edward Piotrowski had told me about soft-tissue damage to Mark’s forehead and to the left of his face (on the head wounds, see most recently post of January 29, 2019).  Yet Wolfe’s own mention of soft-tissue damage to Mark’s head suggests that he may well have read some reference to it in the medical records.

According to Kelly, Wolfe could not say much about the medical records because they had been obtained through a subpoena.  It is thus unfortunate that Wolfe had to get the records through a subpoena rather than through a release signed by my brother’s wife.  In the latter case, he could presumably have allowed Kelly access to review them.  Wolfe himself had told me that the records consisted of around sixty pages, much of them in a doctor's handwriting, and therefore he could not be sure that there was nothing about the soft-tissue swelling.  Dr. Piotrowski, however, was very clear in his statements to me about the soft-tissue damage to Mark’s forehead and to the left side of his face.

After contacting numerous officials in New York State to get some meaningful answers about the investigation into my brother’s death, in April 2007 I was finally contacted by N.Y.S.P. Lieutenant Allen.  That official, however, offered no clarification of the issues.  He insisted, for instance, that there was only a small cut on the bridge of Mark’s nose.  By contrast, two emergency workers on the scene saw the wound on my brother’s forehead, just where his attending physician at the burn unit observed soft-tissue swelling.  According to the doctor, a CT scan showed the soft-tissue swelling to be of a deep, rather than a surface, nature.  Lt. Allen also acknowledged that they had not looked at the CT scan.

Did the New York State Police make any serious effort to go through Mark’s medical records?  It would appear that they did not.