More on What a Neighbor of Mark’s Said about the Night of the Truck Fire

Two previous posts (April 20, 2011, and August 31, 2021) discuss information reported to me about a ruckus on my brother Mark’s property immediately before his truck went into the field across from his house and burst into flames and the failure to follow up in 2010 by an investigator for the Cattaraugus County District Attorney, who was also the NYSP Senior Investigator at the time of Mark’s death.  This post expands on the two earlier ones.

As the two previous posts observe, the report of a ruckus on Mark’s property was brought to my attention by a chance encounter with the secretary of the local Catholic church in late September 2009.  The secretary, Judy Bess, referred to a conversation that she had with a member of the congregation named Gene Woodworth, who was a neighbor of my brother.  According to the secretary, Woodworth said the following: (a) he happened to be outdoors and heard a ruckus going on outside Mark's house; (b) he observed the truck go down the driveway and saw Mark; and (c) he then rushed over to the scene and even helped bat the flames out on Mark.

As the earlier posts also discuss, when I telephoned him the following day, Woodworth gave me a very different account of what he had heard and done.  Woodworth said that he had seen lights flashing and found out what was happening from another neighbor, Dan Smith, who was leaving as he arrived.  Stating that he never saw Mark at all, Woodworth added that he thought "something [had] happened on the property" and surmised that Mark had backed the truck all the way across the road.  The following day I reported to Judy Bess these discrepancies with her summary of the conversation she had with Woodworth.  Judy, however, insisted that she had reported Woodworth’s statements accurately and added that he had referred specifically to “screaming” coming from Mark’s property.

As the earlier posts also indicate, when I met with Cattaraugus County D. A. Lori Rieman and John Ensell in May 2010, I mentioned Judy Bess’s summary of what Gene Woodworth had told her, including the issue of a ruckus on Mark’s property right before the truck fire.  Ensell immediately insisted that it was not true.  I also explained how Woodworth’s account to me differed radically from what Judy said he had told her.  Although D. A. Rieman instructed Ensell to contact Judy Bess about her conversation with Woodworth, Ensell replied to me by e-mail in December 2010 that he could not find a phone number for Judy.  He also stated that he had interviewed Woodworth, who had little to say about the night of Mark’s truck fire, only that he “saw yellow off in the distance, walked about half way down, and turned around and came back” and that “anything said after that would have been purely speculation.”

Judy Bess apparently was never interviewed, and the issue seems to have been dropped by both Ensell and D. A. Rieman.  In my own conversation with Woodworth, I asked if he had been interviewed by the NYSP during the investigation into Mark’s death.  Woodworth replied that he had not been interviewed.  Given that he lived just down the road from my brother’s house and knew Mark, it seems very odd that the NYSP investigators overlooked Woodworth as a potential source of information.

A few years after my meeting with Rieman and Ensell, another individual mentioned a conversation with Woodworth about the night of Mark’s truck fire.  The details differ from Woodworth’s statements to me and from Ensell’s summary of his interview with Woodworth as well as from what Judy Bess reported to me.  According to that individual, Woodworth stated that his wife had seen the flames from their house and that he had gone up the road to the scene.  As that individual also reported, Woodworth did not want to talk any further about the night of Mark’s truck fire but did say that he thought it likely that Mark had been murdered.