The previous post (December 31, 2021) discussed what my brother Mark’s attending physician reported to me about the severity of his burns and the procedures that were performed to try to save his life after he was airlifted to the burn unit of the Erie County Medical Center from Great Valley, N.Y. This post discusses additional information relayed by Dr. Edward Piotrowski in that same telephone call on January 29, 2004.
At the time of my first contact with my brother’s attending physician, the investigation into Mark’s death was still ongoing, and so the police and the fire investigator’s reports were unavailable to me. (In fall 2004, I obtained copies of those two reports through FOIL requests, though the police report came heavily redacted.) The only official document related to my brother’s suspicious truck fire to which I had access in January 2004 was his autopsy report, sent to me by Mark’s son. The lack of clarity at several points in the autopsy report led me to consult Mark’s attending physician.
After Dr. Piotrowski explained the nature and extent of my brother’s burns, I asked him about possible scenarios for a truck fire causing such horrific burns. He explained that an accident would likely have occurred only if Mark had left an open gas can in the cab and then lit up a cigarette. He then added that although the fire would have spread quickly, Mark still would have been able to get out of the truck and roll around to extinguish the flames. When I informed him that the lead investigator Edward Kalfas told me that my brother had not been rolling around, Dr. Piotrowski wondered how the investigator could have known that and stated that there was dirt on Mark when he arrived at the burn unit.
Dr. Piotrowski obviously thought that the dirt on my brother indicated a strong possibility that he had been rolling on the ground to put out the flames. That likelihood would appear to be reinforced by the statement to me by the first firefighter on the scene that the “two small spots approx. 20 yards west of the vehicle,” mentioned in his witness statement in the police report, were in fact my brother’s clothes.
Mark presumably ripped his clothes off as part of an effort to put out the flames. He would have then got dirt on his body as well as on whatever clothes remined on him. Inv. Kalfas was not on the scene before my brother was airlifted by the medivac ambulance, and no photos were taken of Mark on the scene. Kalfas thus would presumably have seen only the autopsy photos rather than Mark himself or photos of him as he appeared immediately after the fire.
At the end of my conversation with him in January 2004, Dr. Piotrowski asked a telling question: “Do you think your brother was murdered?” It is a pity that Kalfas so quickly decided that Mark had committed suicide (on the N.Y. State Police’s insistence on suicide, see post of November 30, 2019), ignoring the problem of the pool of Mark’s blood found on his driveway the night of the fire (see esp. May 29, 2012, and October 31, 2021) and the head wounds he suffered (see esp. September 24, 2016).
If Kalfas had interviewed Dr. Piotrowski about my brother’s death, he might well have reached a different conclusion other than suicide or (by default) accident.
