Previous posts have discussed problems concerning the gas can found on the floor of the passenger’s side of my brother Mark’s pickup truck the night of his truck fire (see July 22, 2012; October 30, 2018; and May 31, 2024). This post considers problems specifically with the NYSP investigators’ assumption that Mark must have placed the gas can in the cab of his truck.
As frequently observed in this blog, the lead NYSP investigator Edward Kalfas very quickly decided that my brother had committed suicide. As stated in an entry for 12/30/03 in Kalfas’s narrative in the police report, the Cattaraugus County District Attorney determined that there was no evidence to support a conclusion of suicide and that Mark’s death would be classified as an accident. However, NYSP officials continued to insist that my brother’s death was most likely a suicide.For the NYSP investigators, the presence of the gas can in the cab of Mark’s truck seemed to clinch the case for suicide. Yet Kalfas records in an entry in the police report for 9/29/03 that he interviewed employees at the nearby gas station where Mark frequently purchased gasoline and at the gas station where Mark worked (as a security guard), who all stated that they had not seen him for a few days prior to the fire. Kalfas also told Atty. Michael Kelly in their meeting in September 2005 that he had not been able to find anyone who had seen Mark purchase gasoline the day of the fire.
The only reference in the official documents to Mark taking the gas can out of the garage that night comes from his wife Susan’s witness statement in the police report. Mark’s wife states that as she was waiting for Mark to return home, she heard a noise in the garage (attached to the house) which she thought was from the cats. Susan goes on to say: “After the fire I realized that Mark had taken a 5 gal. plastic can of gas but I don’t know what he did with it.” Furthermore, Susan makes it clear by her witness statement that she did not actually see Mark until after the fire started.
This statement by Mark’s wife strongly implies that the gas can to which she referred was in the attached garage. Furthermore, as Kalfas informed Kelly at their meeting in 2005, Susan told him that she had purchased the can of gasoline, which she had used to mow the lawn, and that it was half full.
Kalfas apparently never considered any other options about the presence of the gas can in the cab of truck except for Mark putting it there. Kalfas presumably took Susan’s statement about the gas can at face value. But it is difficult to understand how Mark’s wife could have known that Mark himself had taken the gas can from the garage or that a gas can was involved in the fire. Since her witness statement was taken by Trooper David Chandler inside the house from 11:30 p.m. to 12 midnight the night of the fire, she was not in contact with those who found out about the gas can on the passenger’s side floor of the truck.
According to one of the emergency workers on the scene, they found out about the gas can in the cab of the truck from the fire investigators, who arrived at 11:30. Mark’s own attempts to communicate something about gasoline to two firefighters on the scene were unintelligible (see post of June 30, 2023). The police report, furthermore, states that Mark was unable to communicate anything at all on the Medivac flight to the burn unit of the Erie County Medical Center. According to the emergency worker previously mentioned, none of the firefighters who put out the truck fire were shouting anything about a gas can in the truck (see post of October 30, 2018). Therefore, neither Susan nor anyone who happened to have appeared on the scene would have known about the gas can before 11:30 p.m.
As far as possible locations of gas cans on Mark’s property goes, my brother would also have had another place to keep gas cans if he chose to do so. There was a utility shed adjacent to the end of extension of Mark’s driveway (the “T-zone”), where he normally parked his truck and where he obviously had parked it that night when he returned home. (See post of May 29, 2012, on the pool of blood found that night right next to the area where the driver’s side door of his truck would have been located. That post includes photos of the property as it was in 2012.)
In his narrative section of the police report, Kalfas states the following: “On 12/12/ 03 Member interviews the victim’s wife, Mrs. Susan Pavlock, at SP Olean. Mrs. Pavlock . . . is questioned again about the incident. She answers the same as she did the night of the fire and on the 10/25/03 re-interview.” Susan thus presumably repeated the comment in her witness statement that Mark had taken a plastic five gallon can of gasoline (from the attached garage). Kalfas apparently was not concerned to find out how Susan knew (or thought she knew) about the gas can at 11:30 p.m. the night of the fire.
Yet since gasoline from that (open) can on the floor of the passenger’s side of the truck presumably caused the fire that engulfed Mark’s truck and took his life, determining how that can of gasoline got there should have been a priority in the investigation. It was crucial to a coherent investigative narrative about events the night of my brother’s truck fire. Kalfas failed to do his job as an investigator here.
Furthermore, it was important to know if Mark had routinely or even occasionally put gas cans in the cab of his truck. One of my brother’s friends who was interviewed during the investigation told me emphatically that Mark never put gas cans in the cab but only in the back of his truck. One of the emergency workers on the scene similarly informed me that Mark put gas cans only in the back of his truck, never in the cab, and secured them there. The individual who sent an anonymous letter to my house (see post of April 11, 2014) stated the following: Mark “was compulsive about his vehicle and I cannot believe that he would EVER put a gas can in his truck. In fact, in the past I saw him transport gas cans in the back of his truck, going to the extent of securing the gas can to the bed of his truck to avoid it moving around the truck bed.”
Mark’s extreme carefulness with gas cans in his truck should thus have been an important fact in considering how that can of gasoline ended up on the passenger’s side floor of his truck the night of the fire. It is hard to believe that Kalfas was not made aware of his diligence, yet he simply overlooked it.
By failing to inquire from Mark’s wife how she could have known that Mark had taken a gas can from the garage before the fire started and by failing to take into consideration the well known fact that Mark never put gas cans into the cab of his truck, Kalfas and his superior John Ensell ignored what should have been the focus of the investigation. They were looking to close the case quickly with careless assumptions and easy answers.
