The previous two posts (December 31, 2021, and January 31, 2022) discussed information about the severity of my brother Mark’s burns and other aspects of his condition, as relayed to me in a telephone conversation on January 29, 2004, by his attending physician Dr. Edward Piotrowski at the burn unit of the Erie County Medical Center. This post discusses information provided by one individual who saw Mark in the burn unit before he died there on September 24, 2003, about fourteen hours after his horrific truck fire late the previous night.
In several phone conversations following my brother’s death, my nephew John McKenna reported statements made to him by Dr. Piotrowski and mentioned what he himself had observed when he saw Mark in the burn unit shortly before he died. According to John in December 2003, Dr. Piotrowski revealed that Mark’s skin was saturated with a flammable liquid, with burns penetrating to the muscles, and firmly stated, “This was no accident.” In a conversation in January 2004, John recalled specifically being shown my brother’s legs by Dr. Piotrowski. My nephew referred to Mark’s legs as just too horrible to describe and added that he still couldn’t get the sight of them out of his mind.
In a phone conversation in October 2005, John elaborated more on what he had observed about my brother’s condition in the burn unit. According to John, Mark's feet were burned to nothing; there was no hair left on his head; his face was all burned up, with a brown-yellow appearance to the skin; and his nose was almost burned away, appearing black from the burns.
John’s detailed comments on my brother’s horribly burned body reinforce Dr. Piotrowski’s statement to me on January 29, 2004, that Mark had burns down to the muscle level, a condition which produces a substance that shuts the kidneys down. Dr. Piotrowski referred to this substance as myoglobin, which is a protein that stores oxygen in muscles and is released into the blood in the breakdown of muscle cells. When severe burns cause major breakdown of muscles, the kidneys are unable to discharge the large amounts of myoglobin waste quickly enough and fail, potentially resulting in death (see, e.g., Cleveland Clinic, “Rhabdomyolysis” online).
Although the N.Y. State Police investigators continued to reiterate their belief that my brother had committed suicide (see esp. post of November 30, 2019), there was never any evidence that Mark had suicidal inclinations (see post of December 11, 2010; and April 30, 2021, on D.A. Edward Sharkey's statement that there was no evidence of a suicide), and Dr. Piotrowski’s own observations make suicide less credible. The doctor could not understand how Mark had got gasoline on his head and was concerned about the severely burned state of Mark’s hands, including his palms, which suggested to him that my brother had tried to bat the flames out and had thus not been trying to commit suicide (see post of March 31, 2018).
Yet, despite numerous suspicious elements, including the pool of Mark’s blood found in his driveway the night of the fire (see, most recently, post of October 31, 2021) and the wound on his forehead observed by both two emergency workers on the scene and by Dr. Piotrowski (see esp. post of September 24, 2016), the State Police investigators did not even consider murder as a possibility. Mark deserved better.
