As the tenth anniversary of my brother’s suspicious death draws near, this post considers a major problem underlying the insistence by the New York State Police that my brother caused the fire that took his life, specifically because he was very intoxicated. In spite of evidence that Mark was attacked right where he normally parked his truck in the area off his driveway (see especially posts of May 29 and September 22, 2012), the authorities have adamantly maintained that he either deliberately poured gasoline or accidentally spilled it on himself after putting a gas can in the cab of his truck and backing the vehicle well into the field across the road. The State Police acknowledged that they based this view on the very high blood alcohol level recorded in my brother's autopsy report. But how carefully did they actually probe this issue?
Although the State Police emphasized that my brother’s blood alcohol level (actually a serum alcohol level) recorded in the autopsy report was a very high .25, Inv. Edward Kalfas never interviewed Mark's attending physician at the burn unit during the investigation. However, when Atty. Michael Kelly met with Inv. Kalfas and Sr. Inv. John Wolfe in September 2005, he informed them of Dr. Edward Piotrowski’s comment to me that the .25 reading in the autopsy report had to be wrong. Even Erie County M. E. Sung-ook Baik, who performed the autopsy, acknowledged to Atty. Kelly in a phone conversation that the .25 was too high, but explained that it was what the lab people had given him. At their meeting with Atty. Kelly, the two State Police officials agreed that the issue of Mark’s blood alcohol needed to be clarified, and Wolfe said that he would speak with the doctor himself. Yet he made no real effort to interview Dr. Piotrowski (see post of September 22, 2010).
When I brought to their attention Dr. Piotrowski’s statement that Mark's blood alcohol level should have been zero because of all the fluids pumped into him while he was at the Erie County Medical Center, three different New York State Police officials continued to maintain the validity of that .25 alcohol reading. In late 2005, Sr. Inv. Wolfe claimed that the doctor was wrong, insisting that even if a person is flushed with fluids, alcohol still remains in the blood. In early 2006, Capt. George Brown similarly dismissed the information from Dr. Piotrowski, maintaining that the technician involved in the testing would be an experienced professional and the doctor reading the results would know how to interpret them. In early 2007, Lt. Allen insisted that Mark’s blood alcohol level was in fact .25, asserting that this reading had been obtained by blood taken from the heart, the liver, and vitreous humor.
As will be explained, the statements by Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Brown are questionable for various reasons. The assertion by Mr. Allen is, in fact, simply wrong; he clearly misread the autopsy report. Blood from the heart, vitreous humor, and the liver were used to screen for certain chemicals (as it turned out, all that emerged were used in treating Mark at the hospital); however, serum only was used to test for alcohol. That in itself is problematic.
In 2012, I consulted a forensic toxicologist with a Ph. D. in Chemistry, who worked for many years in a state police forensic lab and served for some time as head of the lab. The information he provided raises numerous doubts about the .25 reading of the autopsy report. What follows summarizes most of the major points raised by this forensic toxicologist.
First, the .25 in Mark’s case represents 250 mg per deciliter (i.e., 250 mg/100 mL or .25 g/ 100mL). It reflects a serum alcohol, not a blood alcohol, level. Serum as the liquid portion of the blood has 60% more water than blood, and the blood alcohol would be 16% less; in Mark’s case, the blood alcohol is thus .215 rather than .25.
Second, the reading was obtained from a “headspace” test, typically used by forensic toxicologists, but the toxicology screen indicates that only one test was performed. That makes the results questionable. At least two tests are regularly done in order to produce accurate results by checking one against the other. There are two primary reasons for more than one test: fluids for testing can get contaminated, and there is movement of chemicals in the body after death different from what takes place in a living person. In Mark’s case, one expected a second test using vitreous humor in addition to the one using serum.
Third, in assessing test results for a trauma victim, a blood alcohol test is routinely performed on the person while still alive in the hospital. That test is then normally used to check against the post-mortem blood alcohol tests. However, as Dr. Piotrowski mentioned, no blood alcohol test was performed on Mark while he was in the burn unit. Interpreting Mark’s alcohol reading in the autopsy report is more complicated as a result.
Fourth, to determine the validity of the .25 serum alcohol reading, it is necessary to have the graphs and chromatogram information from the lab test. One needs to have that information to determine how reliable the test actually was. Lab technicians are also known to make mistakes transcribing data, such as blood alcohol levels, sometimes reversing digits, for instance.
Fifth, the blood normally metabolizes alcohol at the rate of .015 per cent per hour, which would mean having to add .210 (i.e., .015 x 14 hrs. in Mark's case) to the blood alcohol level at the time of the autopsy. Mark’s blood alcohol level at the time of the truck fire would then be calculated at about .425. This very important point will be expanded below.
Sixth, infusion of I.V. fluids can dilute blood alcohol, but it depends on how much fluid has been infused into the individual. Although fluids alone do not flush out the alcohol, they would speed the process up. As this toxicologist put it, the combination of the I.V. fluids and the continued metabolization of alcohol during the fourteen hours in which Mark survived makes the .25 reading hard to believe.
Seventh, a person with a blood alcohol level over .40 would probably be in a coma. This forensic toxicologist in his own experience knew of only one or two cases in which someone with such a high blood alcohol level could function. He added that the kind of person who might function in that state would likely be fat. By contrast, Mark was lean and muscular: he was normally around 175 lbs. (though the autopsy report lists his weight as 187) at 5 ft. 11 ½ in. (though the autopsy report in an obvious error lists his height as 67 ½ in., i.e., 5 ft. 7 ½ in.).
Eighth, there is no indication in the autopsy report that M. E. Baik consulted with Dr. Piotrowski, something he should have done. The medical examiner could not draw proper conclusions about Mark’s death without knowing about his condition when he was hospitalized.
On the subject of the elimination of alcohol, recent scholarship has demonstrated that serious burn victims experience a hyper-metabolic state and thus eliminate alcohol at a faster rate, up to .031 g/100mL/h (see Wigmore on Alcohol, reference number 10808). As calculations based on this work indicate, Mark would have had an even higher blood alcohol level at the time of the truck fire than he would have had if he had not been badly burned. If the .25 is correct, one can conservatively assume that he would have had at least a .46 blood alcohol level at the time of the truck fire. With such an extraordinarily high BAC, how could Mark have driven his truck virtually in a perfectly straight line down his driveway and fifty feet into the field? People who are even moderately drunk normally weave around when driving a vehicle. Yet at least two emergency workers on the scene that night noticed the tire marks in a straight line. As explained in an earlier post, someone else must have driven that truck into the field (see September 22, 2012).
The toxicologist with whom I spoke last year informed me that if I gave him a copy of the lab work with information about the calibrations, he could tell if the alcohol test had been done properly and if it was valid or not. As I informed him, however, I would not be able to provide that information. It is frustrating and difficult to comprehend why, given the very suspicious circumstances of Mark’s death, I am not legally permitted access to his medical records, even though I am the closest living relative from his birth family. It is only by chance that I obtained a copy of the autopsy report: just after it came out, Mark’s son Brian in a phone call to me emphasized that it ruled my brother’s death an accident and sent it to me.
In September 2005, Atty. Michael Kelly asked Sr. Inv. Wolfe to get the medical records in hopes of learning more specific information about Mark’s condition. Mr. Wolfe told Atty. Kelly that he would ask Mark’s wife to release the medical records. A few weeks later, Wolfe told me that Susan had not returned his call and that he would therefore go to the Salamanca High School and ask her in person to sign off on the medical records.
Less than two weeks afterwards, however, Wolfe informed me that he was in the process of getting those documents by subpoena. He did not explain why. But after obtaining the medical records in that way, Wolfe basically stated that he saw no evidence of foul play in those sixty-odd pages (see post of September 22, 2010) and added that the wound on Mark’s forehead was “positional” (e.g., possibly caused when my brother was placed in the ambulance, though it is hard to believe that the deep soft-tissue swelling noticed by Dr. Piotrowski could have been inflicted in such a way).
Having admitted to me that he was no scientist and that he had found the doctor’s handwriting difficult to decipher, Wolfe obviously did not know how to interpret properly the information in those records. He should certainly have discussed the medical records with Dr. Piotrowski. But, in any case, the information contained in the autopsy report and the medical records in general required scrutiny by someone trained in medical and scientific analysis. I managed to find a forensic toxicologist willing to clarify issues related to the alcohol reading in my brother’s report. Why didn’t Senior Investigator Wolfe, with the resources of the New York State Police at his disposal, consult a comparably qualified forensic toxicologist in one of their forensic labs?
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Sunday, July 28, 2013
How Did a False Claim Originate?
Today would have been my brother’s sixty-third birthday, but his life was taken away at age fifty-three under circumstances that must make any civilized person ponder the depths of human cruelty. Nearly ten years have passed since that suspicious truck fire, yet there is still no justice for Mark.
This post considers how the claim originated that the fire started when Mark was pouring gasoline into his tank because his truck had run out of gas. That explanation for my brother’s extremely severe, fatal burns was unsettling to me in the days and weeks following his truck fire. For one, it did not seem plausible that Mark would have run out of gas in the field right across from his driveway, and as I observed from the scorched earth on the day of his funeral, the truck had been well into that field, about fifty feet or so. Second, his friend Alexis Wright told me in December 2003 not to believe any report that the truck had run out of gas because she knew from Mark himself that he never let the tank go below half-full. Third, when it became known that there was a gas can on the passenger’s side floor of Mark’s truck, Alexis Wright mentioned that Mark had actually stated that he put gas cans only in the back of the truck and never in the cab, and numerous other friends of his made similar statements. The claim about Mark pouring gas into his tank in that field around 11 p.m. then made even less sense. Recently, a man from Salamanca with whom I had not had any contact for many years told me that he had been very surprised to hear that my brother had been accidentally burned to death because “Mark was not a careless person.”
During the investigation, Inv. Kalfas stated that my brother’s truck had not run out of gas and that he had not been putting gasoline into the tank when the fire started. That fact was definitively confirmed by the fire investigator’s report, which I obtained through a FOIL request in 2004: the report states clearly that the tank was three-quarters full. So why did that misinformation persist in the months after Mark’s death?
To my surprise, the issue of Mark putting gasoline into the tank came up recently in my conversation with Pete Rapacioli, who called to express his dissatisfaction at being mentioned in this blog (see June 26, 2013). In referring to his phone call with Mark’s wife just before the fire, Rapacioli stated that Susan had told him she had to hang up to call 911 about an “orange glow” in the distance and that he had not found out that it was Mark until the next day. He added that he then was told that Mark had been putting gasoline into the tank while smoking. I asked Rapacioli who had told him that because it couldn’t possibly be true, and I referred to the fire investigator’s report. He replied that “many people” had said that about the cause of the fire.
It seems very odd that at this point Rapacioli would still think that Mark had got so badly burned while putting gasoline into the tank of his truck. During the phone call with me in June, Rapacioli kept insisting that Mark had been his friend. Yet he apparently had not made any effort to learn what had actually happened that night. I can’t say how many people at the time of the truck fire may have thought that my brother had been pouring gas into his tank when he got burned. But no one I’m aware of believed it by the end of the police investigation.
Some time ago, I raised concerns in this blog about specific comments on this issue that were made immediately after Mark’s death and were reported to me. A previous post (September 22, 2012) refers to a statement by Susan to my half-sister Carol McKenna at the burn unit the morning after the fire that Mark had been putting gasoline into the tank, which had run out of gas, when he got burned. As mentioned in the earlier post, Carol reported that information to Inv. Kalfas. Within a day or so after my brother died, Mark’s and Susan’s son Brian also told my cousin Dennis Pavlock that the truck had run out of gas (see posts of July 22 and September 22, 2012). As Dennis informed me, when Brian called to ask him to be a pall bearer, he explained that Mark had been putting gas into the tank when the fire started. In addition, in a later conversation with me, one other person mentioned being told the same thing about the gas right after my brother’s death.
The police report makes no mention by anyone during the investigation that Mark had been putting gasoline into the tank when the fire started. Susan says nothing about that in her witness statement, which was taken that night at 11:30, yet she made that claim to Carol McKenna the following morning. Is it possible that in the interval Susan might have spoken to someone who had been on or near the scene at the time of the fire and claimed to have seen something?
This post considers how the claim originated that the fire started when Mark was pouring gasoline into his tank because his truck had run out of gas. That explanation for my brother’s extremely severe, fatal burns was unsettling to me in the days and weeks following his truck fire. For one, it did not seem plausible that Mark would have run out of gas in the field right across from his driveway, and as I observed from the scorched earth on the day of his funeral, the truck had been well into that field, about fifty feet or so. Second, his friend Alexis Wright told me in December 2003 not to believe any report that the truck had run out of gas because she knew from Mark himself that he never let the tank go below half-full. Third, when it became known that there was a gas can on the passenger’s side floor of Mark’s truck, Alexis Wright mentioned that Mark had actually stated that he put gas cans only in the back of the truck and never in the cab, and numerous other friends of his made similar statements. The claim about Mark pouring gas into his tank in that field around 11 p.m. then made even less sense. Recently, a man from Salamanca with whom I had not had any contact for many years told me that he had been very surprised to hear that my brother had been accidentally burned to death because “Mark was not a careless person.”
During the investigation, Inv. Kalfas stated that my brother’s truck had not run out of gas and that he had not been putting gasoline into the tank when the fire started. That fact was definitively confirmed by the fire investigator’s report, which I obtained through a FOIL request in 2004: the report states clearly that the tank was three-quarters full. So why did that misinformation persist in the months after Mark’s death?
To my surprise, the issue of Mark putting gasoline into the tank came up recently in my conversation with Pete Rapacioli, who called to express his dissatisfaction at being mentioned in this blog (see June 26, 2013). In referring to his phone call with Mark’s wife just before the fire, Rapacioli stated that Susan had told him she had to hang up to call 911 about an “orange glow” in the distance and that he had not found out that it was Mark until the next day. He added that he then was told that Mark had been putting gasoline into the tank while smoking. I asked Rapacioli who had told him that because it couldn’t possibly be true, and I referred to the fire investigator’s report. He replied that “many people” had said that about the cause of the fire.
It seems very odd that at this point Rapacioli would still think that Mark had got so badly burned while putting gasoline into the tank of his truck. During the phone call with me in June, Rapacioli kept insisting that Mark had been his friend. Yet he apparently had not made any effort to learn what had actually happened that night. I can’t say how many people at the time of the truck fire may have thought that my brother had been pouring gas into his tank when he got burned. But no one I’m aware of believed it by the end of the police investigation.
Some time ago, I raised concerns in this blog about specific comments on this issue that were made immediately after Mark’s death and were reported to me. A previous post (September 22, 2012) refers to a statement by Susan to my half-sister Carol McKenna at the burn unit the morning after the fire that Mark had been putting gasoline into the tank, which had run out of gas, when he got burned. As mentioned in the earlier post, Carol reported that information to Inv. Kalfas. Within a day or so after my brother died, Mark’s and Susan’s son Brian also told my cousin Dennis Pavlock that the truck had run out of gas (see posts of July 22 and September 22, 2012). As Dennis informed me, when Brian called to ask him to be a pall bearer, he explained that Mark had been putting gas into the tank when the fire started. In addition, in a later conversation with me, one other person mentioned being told the same thing about the gas right after my brother’s death.
The police report makes no mention by anyone during the investigation that Mark had been putting gasoline into the tank when the fire started. Susan says nothing about that in her witness statement, which was taken that night at 11:30, yet she made that claim to Carol McKenna the following morning. Is it possible that in the interval Susan might have spoken to someone who had been on or near the scene at the time of the fire and claimed to have seen something?
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
An Unexpected Phone Call
This post concerns an unexpected phone call I recently received from a man who identified himself as Pete Rapacioli, demanding to know why I had put him in my blog. Since the original post (September 22, 2010) reported my concern about the alleged telephone call between Rapacioli and my brother’s wife Susan between 10:30 and 10:55 just before Mark’s truck fire, I was surprised to hear from Mr. Rapacioli at this point. However, the most recent post (May 15, 2013) picks up that issue at greater length. Rapacioli stated that around thirty people had called him in the previous two days about being in my blog and added that he was advised to call me about it. As the phone call turned out to be quite lengthy, I will not summarize the entire conversation here but will refer to points relevant to issues that have come up in recent posts.
Rapacioli proclaimed that he had nothing to do with Mark’s death, insisting that Mark was his friend. I explained to Rapacioli that if he read the blog carefully, he would see that I did not accuse him but rather exposed problematic points that the police investigation did not pursue fully or at all. He informed me that he had not read my blog and did not plan to, adding that he didn’t go on the Internet. Referring to my right to question the police investigation, I stated that the phone records should have been checked not just to verify the call between 10:30 and 10:55 but also to find out if Mark made or received any calls the day of the truck fire.
Replying that he thought that phone records were checked only in the case of a crime, Rapacioli said that the night of the truck fire he called about the football pool. He explained that he had got in touch with Mark every Monday and Tuesday for this NFL pool and added that he would routinely take the results to “Susie” at the high school the next day and that she would run them off. He stated that on that particular Tuesday Mark had not called him and he had not been able to reach Mark. He added that he had tried numerous times throughout the day to reach my brother. In November 2003, however, Rapacioli told me only that he had called, but failed to reach, Mark early in the day. In addition, my brother’s wife Susan says in her witness statement that Mark was at home in the afternoon and that they had been watching television together in the early evening before he went out at 8:45. It would have been unlike Mark not to answer the phone, and his wife would presumably have answered if he didn't while they were home together. When I said that 10:30 seemed late for a phone call and mentioned what I had been told about Susan’s habit of going to bed very early, Rapacioli simply replied that he had often called Mark around 11 p.m.
Rapacioli further explained that he had called “Susie” and had given her the name of the winner and the amount. However, at another point in the conversation, Rapacioli stated that it had been necessary for Mark and him to coordinate their information to determine the winner. So it is unclear to me how he was able to give my brother’s wife that particular information if he had not reached Mark that day to coordinate their results. In addition, Rapacioli did not explain why he had been on the phone for so long with Susan or what they had talked about beyond the pool results for nearly half an hour.
Furthermore, I mentioned to Rapacioli that when I spoke with him in November 2003, he said nothing to me about being on the phone with Mark’s wife at the very moment she saw the flames in the field. He replied, “You knew about the call anyway.” As I informed him, however, I knew nothing about that phone call until much later.
I also raised my concern that Mark’s truck fire took place just one day after he was set up for a DWI by Mark Marowski at the Holy Cross Club (see April 18, 2013). I added that it seemed problematic that no one who witnessed the argument at the Holy Cross Club seemed willing to admit publicly that they had been there. I then asked Rapacioli if he had been there that day. He replied that he had not been there and emphasized that he didn’t drink much and would not have gone to the Club in the afternoon (when the argument between my brother and Ofc. Mark Marowski took place) but rather around 5 or in the early evening.
In the previous post, I mentioned being told that Rapacioli was interviewed a second time, though no second interview appears to be recorded in the police report. In the phone conversation on June 5, Rapacioli happened to say that he had been interviewed by the police several times. However, he did not indicate why he had been questioned several times.
Also in the previous post, I mentioned a comment made to me in November 2003 by a friend of my brother’s named Jack Plonka that Pete Rapacioli planned to read the police report because he had a relative on the police force. Referring to Jack as his cousin, Rapacioli replied that maybe the relative Jack meant was Denny Ambuske, Rapacioli’s ex-brother-in-law, who had worked on the police force. But he quickly stated that Denny had already left the force long before Mark’s death. Rapacioli added that he didn’t know why Jack had told me that. To my recollection, Jack was trying to be helpful because he was clearly shocked at my brother’s death and didn’t understand how Mark could have been burned to death.
Another issue I brought up in a recent post (March 13, 2013) concerns what Mark’s neighbors might have seen or heard the night of the fire. There I expressed my surprise at a statement to me by Cheryl Simcox that the closest neighbors of my brother’s on Cross Rd. had slept through the entire incident. In the phone conversation on June 5, Rapacioli mentioned that his daughter and her husband lived in the house on Cross Rd. at the intersection of Whalen Rd. and said that they had slept through the incident. Although I asked, Rapacioli did not tell me his daughter’s name. But I reiterated the concern I expressed in my post that the occupants of that house, now known to be Rapacioli’s daughter and her husband, could have slept through the sirens of police cars and fire trucks and through all the noise of the helicopter landing in the field or near to it and that they apparently did not hear the explosion which Cheryl Simcox said rocked their trailer, very close to that house. As I was informed, numerous neighbors rushed to the scene: they had presumably been roused by the noise, especially of the explosion and the emergency vehicles.
In view of this recent conversation with Rapacioli, I continue to maintain my position that the telephone records should have been checked.
Rapacioli proclaimed that he had nothing to do with Mark’s death, insisting that Mark was his friend. I explained to Rapacioli that if he read the blog carefully, he would see that I did not accuse him but rather exposed problematic points that the police investigation did not pursue fully or at all. He informed me that he had not read my blog and did not plan to, adding that he didn’t go on the Internet. Referring to my right to question the police investigation, I stated that the phone records should have been checked not just to verify the call between 10:30 and 10:55 but also to find out if Mark made or received any calls the day of the truck fire.
Replying that he thought that phone records were checked only in the case of a crime, Rapacioli said that the night of the truck fire he called about the football pool. He explained that he had got in touch with Mark every Monday and Tuesday for this NFL pool and added that he would routinely take the results to “Susie” at the high school the next day and that she would run them off. He stated that on that particular Tuesday Mark had not called him and he had not been able to reach Mark. He added that he had tried numerous times throughout the day to reach my brother. In November 2003, however, Rapacioli told me only that he had called, but failed to reach, Mark early in the day. In addition, my brother’s wife Susan says in her witness statement that Mark was at home in the afternoon and that they had been watching television together in the early evening before he went out at 8:45. It would have been unlike Mark not to answer the phone, and his wife would presumably have answered if he didn't while they were home together. When I said that 10:30 seemed late for a phone call and mentioned what I had been told about Susan’s habit of going to bed very early, Rapacioli simply replied that he had often called Mark around 11 p.m.
Rapacioli further explained that he had called “Susie” and had given her the name of the winner and the amount. However, at another point in the conversation, Rapacioli stated that it had been necessary for Mark and him to coordinate their information to determine the winner. So it is unclear to me how he was able to give my brother’s wife that particular information if he had not reached Mark that day to coordinate their results. In addition, Rapacioli did not explain why he had been on the phone for so long with Susan or what they had talked about beyond the pool results for nearly half an hour.
Furthermore, I mentioned to Rapacioli that when I spoke with him in November 2003, he said nothing to me about being on the phone with Mark’s wife at the very moment she saw the flames in the field. He replied, “You knew about the call anyway.” As I informed him, however, I knew nothing about that phone call until much later.
I also raised my concern that Mark’s truck fire took place just one day after he was set up for a DWI by Mark Marowski at the Holy Cross Club (see April 18, 2013). I added that it seemed problematic that no one who witnessed the argument at the Holy Cross Club seemed willing to admit publicly that they had been there. I then asked Rapacioli if he had been there that day. He replied that he had not been there and emphasized that he didn’t drink much and would not have gone to the Club in the afternoon (when the argument between my brother and Ofc. Mark Marowski took place) but rather around 5 or in the early evening.
In the previous post, I mentioned being told that Rapacioli was interviewed a second time, though no second interview appears to be recorded in the police report. In the phone conversation on June 5, Rapacioli happened to say that he had been interviewed by the police several times. However, he did not indicate why he had been questioned several times.
Also in the previous post, I mentioned a comment made to me in November 2003 by a friend of my brother’s named Jack Plonka that Pete Rapacioli planned to read the police report because he had a relative on the police force. Referring to Jack as his cousin, Rapacioli replied that maybe the relative Jack meant was Denny Ambuske, Rapacioli’s ex-brother-in-law, who had worked on the police force. But he quickly stated that Denny had already left the force long before Mark’s death. Rapacioli added that he didn’t know why Jack had told me that. To my recollection, Jack was trying to be helpful because he was clearly shocked at my brother’s death and didn’t understand how Mark could have been burned to death.
Another issue I brought up in a recent post (March 13, 2013) concerns what Mark’s neighbors might have seen or heard the night of the fire. There I expressed my surprise at a statement to me by Cheryl Simcox that the closest neighbors of my brother’s on Cross Rd. had slept through the entire incident. In the phone conversation on June 5, Rapacioli mentioned that his daughter and her husband lived in the house on Cross Rd. at the intersection of Whalen Rd. and said that they had slept through the incident. Although I asked, Rapacioli did not tell me his daughter’s name. But I reiterated the concern I expressed in my post that the occupants of that house, now known to be Rapacioli’s daughter and her husband, could have slept through the sirens of police cars and fire trucks and through all the noise of the helicopter landing in the field or near to it and that they apparently did not hear the explosion which Cheryl Simcox said rocked their trailer, very close to that house. As I was informed, numerous neighbors rushed to the scene: they had presumably been roused by the noise, especially of the explosion and the emergency vehicles.
In view of this recent conversation with Rapacioli, I continue to maintain my position that the telephone records should have been checked.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
More on the Problem of the Phone Call Just before the Truck Fire
This post considers further the issue of the phone call that allegedly took place between my brother’s acquaintance Peter Rapacioli and his wife Susan for twenty-five minutes or more immediately before the truck fire. As mentioned in previous posts (September 22, 2010, and December 27, 2012), the New York State Police refused to check the phone records, even though there were several important reasons why they should have. Their failure in this matter baffled both Atty. Tony Tanke and Atty. Michael Kelly, who explained to me that checking the phone records should have been a matter of basic procedure.
According to an entry in Inv. Kalfas’s narrative in the police report for 09/25/03, Rapacioli “was on the telephone with Mrs. Pavlock, looking to speak with the victim, when she advised him of seeing the fire and hung up to call ‘911.’” Yet when I spoke by phone with Rapacioli about Mark’s death in early November 2003, he never mentioned calling Mark’s house and speaking with Susan just before the fire (see post of December 27, 2012). Inv. Kalfas’s entry does not refer to the length of the call. However, in her witness statement, Susan mentions that she was on the phone around 10:30 and that she hung up to call 911 as soon as she saw the fire in the field. In preparing to make a FOIL request for a copy of the 911 call (on which, see posts of September 22, 2011, and October 27, 2011), I was given the incident number and the exact time of the 911 call as 10:59 p.m. Furthermore, Inv. Kalfas’s entry for 09/25/03 does not indicate why Rapacioli spoke with Susan after learning that Mark was not at home, apparently for about twenty-five to twenty-nine minutes.
As mentioned in the original post, 10:30 p.m. seems very late for a business call. It is also late for a social call, especially in this particular instance. I was told on several occasions that Mark’s wife Susan went to bed very early, around 9 p.m., in part because she needed to be at work at 8 a.m. My mother, who died less than three years before Mark was killed, informed me that she never called Mark’s house after 9 p.m. because she knew that Susan would be in bed and didn’t want to wake her up. Apparently, Susan’s habit of going to bed early had not changed around the period of Mark’s death. Not long afterwards, his friend Alexis Wright mentioned to me that in the summer of 2003 her husband Jim had happened to go over to Mark’s house and noticed that someone had apparently slept on the couch. According to Alexis, Mark explained to Jim that he had spent the night on the couch because he had returned home late from his job as a security guard and didn’t want to disturb Susan.
One would assume, then, that Rapacioli’s conversation with Susan must have been important enough to keep her up well beyond her normal bedtime. It is surprising, then, that there is no mention in the entry for 09/25/03 of any explanation by Rapacioli for such a lengthy call at that time of night.
It is unclear from the police report to what extent, if at all, Inv. Kalfas asked Rapacioli why he had spoken with Susan for nearly half an hour that late at night after failing to reach Mark. There appears to be no entry in the police report for a second interview with Rapacioli (as noted in the original post, almost all the names in the police report are redacted). However, I was told that Rapacioli was interviewed a second time. On November 4, 2003, I went to the Olean office of the New York State Police because I wanted to know just how badly my brother’s truck had been burned and knew that it would not be kept at the State Police compound much longer. At that time, of course, I assumed that my brother had been burned while in the driver’s seat when the fire started, and I needed to see for myself his beloved truck that had unthinkably become the setting of his death. Inv. Kalfas seemed surprised and not at all pleased that I had come, though he did let me see the truck.
A few months later, Mark’s and my half-sister Carol McKenna mentioned to me that both Susan and Peter Rapacioli had been interviewed by Inv. Kalfas on the same day that I had gone up to see Mark’s truck. There is no entry in the police report for any interviews on that date. But if Inv. Kalfas did interview Rapacioli again, did he question him about that phone call?
According to an entry in Inv. Kalfas’s narrative in the police report for 09/25/03, Rapacioli “was on the telephone with Mrs. Pavlock, looking to speak with the victim, when she advised him of seeing the fire and hung up to call ‘911.’” Yet when I spoke by phone with Rapacioli about Mark’s death in early November 2003, he never mentioned calling Mark’s house and speaking with Susan just before the fire (see post of December 27, 2012). Inv. Kalfas’s entry does not refer to the length of the call. However, in her witness statement, Susan mentions that she was on the phone around 10:30 and that she hung up to call 911 as soon as she saw the fire in the field. In preparing to make a FOIL request for a copy of the 911 call (on which, see posts of September 22, 2011, and October 27, 2011), I was given the incident number and the exact time of the 911 call as 10:59 p.m. Furthermore, Inv. Kalfas’s entry for 09/25/03 does not indicate why Rapacioli spoke with Susan after learning that Mark was not at home, apparently for about twenty-five to twenty-nine minutes.
As mentioned in the original post, 10:30 p.m. seems very late for a business call. It is also late for a social call, especially in this particular instance. I was told on several occasions that Mark’s wife Susan went to bed very early, around 9 p.m., in part because she needed to be at work at 8 a.m. My mother, who died less than three years before Mark was killed, informed me that she never called Mark’s house after 9 p.m. because she knew that Susan would be in bed and didn’t want to wake her up. Apparently, Susan’s habit of going to bed early had not changed around the period of Mark’s death. Not long afterwards, his friend Alexis Wright mentioned to me that in the summer of 2003 her husband Jim had happened to go over to Mark’s house and noticed that someone had apparently slept on the couch. According to Alexis, Mark explained to Jim that he had spent the night on the couch because he had returned home late from his job as a security guard and didn’t want to disturb Susan.
One would assume, then, that Rapacioli’s conversation with Susan must have been important enough to keep her up well beyond her normal bedtime. It is surprising, then, that there is no mention in the entry for 09/25/03 of any explanation by Rapacioli for such a lengthy call at that time of night.
It is unclear from the police report to what extent, if at all, Inv. Kalfas asked Rapacioli why he had spoken with Susan for nearly half an hour that late at night after failing to reach Mark. There appears to be no entry in the police report for a second interview with Rapacioli (as noted in the original post, almost all the names in the police report are redacted). However, I was told that Rapacioli was interviewed a second time. On November 4, 2003, I went to the Olean office of the New York State Police because I wanted to know just how badly my brother’s truck had been burned and knew that it would not be kept at the State Police compound much longer. At that time, of course, I assumed that my brother had been burned while in the driver’s seat when the fire started, and I needed to see for myself his beloved truck that had unthinkably become the setting of his death. Inv. Kalfas seemed surprised and not at all pleased that I had come, though he did let me see the truck.
A few months later, Mark’s and my half-sister Carol McKenna mentioned to me that both Susan and Peter Rapacioli had been interviewed by Inv. Kalfas on the same day that I had gone up to see Mark’s truck. There is no entry in the police report for any interviews on that date. But if Inv. Kalfas did interview Rapacioli again, did he question him about that phone call?
Thursday, April 18, 2013
More on the Problem of the Argument at the Holy Cross Athletic Club
This post considers further the problem of the argument between my brother and then Salamanca police officer Mark Marowski at the Holy Cross Athletic Club on September 22, 2003. As mentioned in previous posts (September 22, 2010, and July 28, 2011), the New York State Police investigator glossed over this issue, even though Ofc. Marowski called in after a personal argument to have my brother arrested for DWI on his way home to Great Valley and the very next day he was found burning to death in the field across from his house.
The facts—not least the wounds to my brother's head, the pool of his blood found on his driveway, his skin doused with gasoline, his truck backed down from his long driveway about fifty feet into the field, and the gas can found on the floor of the passenger's side of the truck--strongly suggest that more than one person was involved in Mark's death. Just under 6 feet in height, my brother typically weighed about 170 pounds and was very muscular; he could have fought back against a single attacker even if he had been drinking. It was all the more important, then, for the State Police investigator to look carefully into all individuals who might have had hostility toward or a grudge against Mark. There couldn't have been too many: shortly after his death, when I asked some of his friends if my brother had any enemies, they could hardly believe I had even posed such a question because in their opinion he was very well liked.
To resolve the issue of the nature and extent of the argument between Mark and Ofc. Marowski and to make it clear that they were not favoring a fellow law enforcement officer, the State Police should certainly have interviewed the members of the Holy Cross Club present during that quarrel. When I met with current Cattaraugus County D.A. Lori Rieman in 2010, former Sr. Inv. John Ensell (Inv. Kalfas’s immediate superior at the time of the truck fire) claimed that, according to Holy Cross Club members there, it had not been much of an argument. But that statement conflicts with what Inv. Kalfas told Atty. Michael Kelly in 2005. The State Police investigator acknowledged that he had not questioned Holy Cross Club members present at the time about the argument. At the meeting in 2010, Mr. Ensell also insisted that Marowski had been interviewed. However, neither an interview with Ofc. Marowski nor the altercation at the club is mentioned anywhere in the police report.
Furthermore, I have since learned that the incident the day before Mark’s truck fire was by no means the first time Ofc. Marowski and my brother had got into an argument at the Holy Cross Club. Quite the contrary: as I was told, they had argued many times. On that final occasion, my brother reportedly criticized the police action of arresting his son for DWI the previous week because Mark felt that circumstances involving the tragic death and funeral of a high school friend warranted leniency. From information I’ve learned recently, it appears that Mark’s son Brian was not stopped for DWI in Salamanca and that Marowski was thus not the arresting officer. (Ofc. Marowski apparently was not in the habit of making DWI arrests; in 2006, he himself was arrested for DWI and was forced to retire from the Salamanca police department.) But, as indicated in the post of December 27, 2012, I was told shortly after Mark’s death that the argument at the Holy Cross Club was heated and that after making the call to arrest Mark, Ofc. Marowski was overheard saying to someone on his cell phone, “It’s all taken care of.” Marowski reportedly also then quickly finished his drink and left in his car.
Because there are numerous unanswered questions surrounding that argument, all those present at the Holy Cross Club should have been interviewed. If it had been just a trivial spat, the Holy Cross Club members there would have had no problem making that clear. Yet I’ve spoken with numerous H.C.A.C. members, all of whom say that they were not there and cannot name anyone who was. Their reticence itself is telling, since some of these individuals at one time or another mentioned specifics about the argument and alluded to friends who had been there.
From comments made shortly after Mark’s death, it seems likely that Peter Rapacioli may have been present that day at the Holy Cross Club. I recently learned that he was a regular there in the period around Mark’s death. When I spoke with my brother’s long-time friend Jack Plonka in early November 2003, Jack said that he had heard about the argument between Mark and Marowski. He explained that Rapacioli had told his mother’s next-door neighbor about it and advised me to contact Rapacioli. Jack added that Rapacioli planned to read the police report on Mark’s death because he had a relative who was on the police force.
When I first tried calling Rapacioli, he was not at home. But I spoke with the woman who answered (apparently his girl friend). She told me specifically that Mark had argued with Marowski at the Holy Cross Club over his son Brian’s arrest for DWI. When I later reached Rapacioli himself, he did not refer to the argument at the Holy Cross Club. But then he also failed to mention that he had been on the phone for twenty-five minutes with Mark’s wife until she saw his truck on fire in the field and had to hang up to call 911 (see post of December 27, 2012). It is surprising that Rapacioli did not mention those two major points. He did say that when asked by the State Police how he would rate the likelihood that Mark had committed suicide, he replied that on a scale of one to ten, he would rate Mark’s chances of suicide as zero.
It is painful to accept the truth of Kathryn Krieger’s comment (see post of March 13, 2013) that people who knew what had happened to Mark (and what had taken place at the Holy Cross Club the day before) didn’t want to get involved. But in Salamanca and Great Valley, located as they are in rural Cattaraugus County, people tend to know each other and to be interconnected through family ties (as one person put it, “everyone you know is somebody else's cousin”) and through their jobs. I hope that some of those people remember that Mark was their friend, too.
The facts—not least the wounds to my brother's head, the pool of his blood found on his driveway, his skin doused with gasoline, his truck backed down from his long driveway about fifty feet into the field, and the gas can found on the floor of the passenger's side of the truck--strongly suggest that more than one person was involved in Mark's death. Just under 6 feet in height, my brother typically weighed about 170 pounds and was very muscular; he could have fought back against a single attacker even if he had been drinking. It was all the more important, then, for the State Police investigator to look carefully into all individuals who might have had hostility toward or a grudge against Mark. There couldn't have been too many: shortly after his death, when I asked some of his friends if my brother had any enemies, they could hardly believe I had even posed such a question because in their opinion he was very well liked.
To resolve the issue of the nature and extent of the argument between Mark and Ofc. Marowski and to make it clear that they were not favoring a fellow law enforcement officer, the State Police should certainly have interviewed the members of the Holy Cross Club present during that quarrel. When I met with current Cattaraugus County D.A. Lori Rieman in 2010, former Sr. Inv. John Ensell (Inv. Kalfas’s immediate superior at the time of the truck fire) claimed that, according to Holy Cross Club members there, it had not been much of an argument. But that statement conflicts with what Inv. Kalfas told Atty. Michael Kelly in 2005. The State Police investigator acknowledged that he had not questioned Holy Cross Club members present at the time about the argument. At the meeting in 2010, Mr. Ensell also insisted that Marowski had been interviewed. However, neither an interview with Ofc. Marowski nor the altercation at the club is mentioned anywhere in the police report.
Furthermore, I have since learned that the incident the day before Mark’s truck fire was by no means the first time Ofc. Marowski and my brother had got into an argument at the Holy Cross Club. Quite the contrary: as I was told, they had argued many times. On that final occasion, my brother reportedly criticized the police action of arresting his son for DWI the previous week because Mark felt that circumstances involving the tragic death and funeral of a high school friend warranted leniency. From information I’ve learned recently, it appears that Mark’s son Brian was not stopped for DWI in Salamanca and that Marowski was thus not the arresting officer. (Ofc. Marowski apparently was not in the habit of making DWI arrests; in 2006, he himself was arrested for DWI and was forced to retire from the Salamanca police department.) But, as indicated in the post of December 27, 2012, I was told shortly after Mark’s death that the argument at the Holy Cross Club was heated and that after making the call to arrest Mark, Ofc. Marowski was overheard saying to someone on his cell phone, “It’s all taken care of.” Marowski reportedly also then quickly finished his drink and left in his car.
Because there are numerous unanswered questions surrounding that argument, all those present at the Holy Cross Club should have been interviewed. If it had been just a trivial spat, the Holy Cross Club members there would have had no problem making that clear. Yet I’ve spoken with numerous H.C.A.C. members, all of whom say that they were not there and cannot name anyone who was. Their reticence itself is telling, since some of these individuals at one time or another mentioned specifics about the argument and alluded to friends who had been there.
From comments made shortly after Mark’s death, it seems likely that Peter Rapacioli may have been present that day at the Holy Cross Club. I recently learned that he was a regular there in the period around Mark’s death. When I spoke with my brother’s long-time friend Jack Plonka in early November 2003, Jack said that he had heard about the argument between Mark and Marowski. He explained that Rapacioli had told his mother’s next-door neighbor about it and advised me to contact Rapacioli. Jack added that Rapacioli planned to read the police report on Mark’s death because he had a relative who was on the police force.
When I first tried calling Rapacioli, he was not at home. But I spoke with the woman who answered (apparently his girl friend). She told me specifically that Mark had argued with Marowski at the Holy Cross Club over his son Brian’s arrest for DWI. When I later reached Rapacioli himself, he did not refer to the argument at the Holy Cross Club. But then he also failed to mention that he had been on the phone for twenty-five minutes with Mark’s wife until she saw his truck on fire in the field and had to hang up to call 911 (see post of December 27, 2012). It is surprising that Rapacioli did not mention those two major points. He did say that when asked by the State Police how he would rate the likelihood that Mark had committed suicide, he replied that on a scale of one to ten, he would rate Mark’s chances of suicide as zero.
It is painful to accept the truth of Kathryn Krieger’s comment (see post of March 13, 2013) that people who knew what had happened to Mark (and what had taken place at the Holy Cross Club the day before) didn’t want to get involved. But in Salamanca and Great Valley, located as they are in rural Cattaraugus County, people tend to know each other and to be interconnected through family ties (as one person put it, “everyone you know is somebody else's cousin”) and through their jobs. I hope that some of those people remember that Mark was their friend, too.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
What Did Mark’s Neighbors Really See or Hear the Night of the Truck Fire?
This post considers further the issue of what my brother’s neighbors saw or heard the night his truck burst into flames in the field across from his house and he himself was found lying sixty feet away, with two-foot flames shooting from his entire body. Photos of the area are included to help visualize some of the issues.
The original post (September 22, 2010) mentions various observations made by Cheryl Simcox in her witness statement and in conversations with me. It is not necessary to reiterate that information here. However, I draw attention to one important point mentioned in the first post: Cheryl, an EMT as well as one of Mark’s neighbors, told me that just before she was “toned out” and rushed to the scene, she heard an explosion, which shook their trailer. When I informed Cheryl that there is no mention of an explosion in her witness statement, Cheryl expressed surprise and said that she was quite certain she had told the State Police investigator about it when he interviewed her. Although it is not mentioned in the police report, there clearly was some kind of explosion, strong enough to shake the Simcoxes’ trailer. It seems odd, therefore, that neither Dan Smith nor Eugene Woodworth, the other two neighbors with whom I spoke, mentioned anything about hearing an explosion.
Another point made by Cheryl has not previously come up in this blog. I asked Cheryl the name of the neighbors who lived closest to the intersection of Whalen and Cross roads. But she did not tell me because, she said, they had slept through the entire incident and did not know anything about what had happened. Presumably, these neighbors told Cheryl that they had not woken up during all the commotion. It is difficult to comprehend, however, how they could have remained asleep. In addition to the sound of an explosion, there was undoubtedly a lot of noise from the sirens of emergency vehicles, such as fire trucks and police cars, and from the Medivac helicopter, which landed close by (as I was told, either in the field itself or in a nearby horse run). The photo below shows the location of the house of my brother’s closest neighbors on Cross Road (whose name I later learned is Pierce) on the upper right and Mark’s driveway beside the mailbox on the lower left. The house clearly not only is close to Mark’s property, but also directly faces the field spanning one side of Whalen Rd. It would thus have an unobstructed view of the spot where my brother lay burning and, sixty feet from Mark, of his truck (which had already been backed about fifty feet into the field from his driveway on Whalen Road).
The photo below shows the house of Mark’s closest neighbor on Whalen Road. The driveway of this individual (whose name I was told is Jerry Collins) is adjacent to Mark’s property. Did he not hear or see anything that night?
As mentioned in previous posts (September 22, 2010, and November 30, 2011), I also spoke with Mark’s neighbor Dan Smith. When I asked what he had seen, he replied that he had been in his living room when he saw the truck on fire from the window and rushed to the scene. When I asked if he had actually seen my brother, he replied that he had approached Mark, who spoke about ten words clearly to him, one of which was “Hi!” and the others he could not recall. I have learned that Mr. Smith was not present with the firefighters (Gary Wind, Mark Ward, and Wayne Frank) who put out the flames on my brother. Therefore, he must have seen my brother at the point when he was about to be placed in the ambulance for the Medivac airlift.
Mr. Smith’s claim that Mark spoke several clearly intelligible words to him is problematic for a number of reasons. First, the three firefighters who put out the flames on Mark could understand virtually nothing that he was trying to tell them: as reported in their witness statements, Gary Wind heard only the word “gas,” and Mark Ward, the words “gasoline can”; Wayne Frank told me that he could understand nothing at all, though it was clear that my brother was trying to tell them something. Second, when my brother heard the voice of Gary Wind, the first firefighter on the scene, he called out, “Gary!” but said nothing else at that point. As then deputy sheriff (now Salamanca Police Chief) Wind recently informed me, Mark could not see him because his eyes were badly burned. How then did my brother recognize Mr. Smith and speak ten words to him? Third, it is documented in the police report that on the airlift to the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo (which had to be right after any communication Mark allegedly tried to make to Mr. Smith) my brother could not communicate at all. I emphasize this issue because the State Police and the District Attorney’s office used the claim that my brother had spoken with one or more individuals yet said nothing about foul play to insist that there was no evidence of murder.
As mentioned in a previous post (April 20, 2011), I also spoke with Mark’s neighbor Eugene Woodworth after another individual advised me to contact him because of information he had given to her. In a conversation with Judy Bess, then office secretary of Our Lady of Peace Church, I learned that Mr. Woodworth had told her that just before Mark’s truck fire, he heard a commotion on Mark's property from outside his own place just up the road; he then saw my brother’s truck go down the driveway and into the field; when it burst into flames, he rushed over and helped to put out the fire on Mark. Below is a photo of Whalen Road from just past Mark's property, with the Woodworth house on the right (if you enlarge the picture by clicking on it, a small bit of Dan's Smith's is just visible in the distance to the left of the shrub):
Assuming that he would confirm what Judy had told me, I called Woodworth but was surprised to hear something very different. According to Woodworth, he saw lights flashing but did not have a clear view because of the trees on his property; as he started down the road toward the field opposite Mark's house, he met Dan Smith returning to his own house at the end of Whalen Road and learned about the fire; he himself never even saw Mark. Woodworth added, "I thought that something happened on the property and surmised that Mark had backed the truck all the way across the road."
As also mentioned in the earlier post, I explained to Judy Bess the discrepancy between her conversation with Eugene Woodworth and my own. She strongly maintained that she had reported Woodworth’s conversation with her accurately and expressed her regrets that he would not tell me the truth about what he saw the night of Mark’s truck fire. She reiterated his account of hearing a ruckus and screams from Mark's property and then seeing the truck go into the field. When I mentioned the time of the truck fire, Judy expressed surprise: she had assumed that it happened during the day because Woodworth told her he had been outside on his property.
It is unnecessary to repeat here in full the response of both former Sr. Inv. John Ensell, Inv. Kalfas’s immediate superior at the time of the truck fire, and current D.A. Lori Rieman when I told them about this issue. But Mr. Ensell dismissed its importance and, after speaking with Eugene Woodworth, sent me an e-mail summarizing his interview. I quote Mr. Ensell verbatim: “Basically down to a one-liner was that he saw yellow off in the distance, walked about half way down, and turned around and came back. That anything said after that would have been purely speculation.”
It seems obvious that Mr. Ensell did not press Eugene Woodworth about what Judy Bess insisted he had told her. Although D.A. Rieman asked Mr. Ensell to contact Judy Bess about the issue, he told me in late 2010 that he could not find a phone number for her but from time to time checked various data bases for her number. As far as I know, he never did contact her. In a recent Google search of my own, I found an address for a Judy Bess in Kill Buck. Unless there is another person with the same name in Cattaraugus County, it would appear that Judy has returned to the area. Couldn’t Mr. Ensell have found her by now and thus done what D. A. Rieman asked?
A few years after Mark was killed, I spoke with a childhood neighbor of ours who still lived on Swan St. in Salamanca. Kathryn Krieger remembered Mark fondly, especially because he used to come over and chat with her husband, a U. S. Army Colonel in World War II who mentored local Vietnam era soldiers, and was unhappy about my brother’s death. Mrs. Krieger told me that people who knew what had happened to Mark that night had not come forward because they did not want to get involved. Is that the case with Mark’s neighbors?
The original post (September 22, 2010) mentions various observations made by Cheryl Simcox in her witness statement and in conversations with me. It is not necessary to reiterate that information here. However, I draw attention to one important point mentioned in the first post: Cheryl, an EMT as well as one of Mark’s neighbors, told me that just before she was “toned out” and rushed to the scene, she heard an explosion, which shook their trailer. When I informed Cheryl that there is no mention of an explosion in her witness statement, Cheryl expressed surprise and said that she was quite certain she had told the State Police investigator about it when he interviewed her. Although it is not mentioned in the police report, there clearly was some kind of explosion, strong enough to shake the Simcoxes’ trailer. It seems odd, therefore, that neither Dan Smith nor Eugene Woodworth, the other two neighbors with whom I spoke, mentioned anything about hearing an explosion.
Another point made by Cheryl has not previously come up in this blog. I asked Cheryl the name of the neighbors who lived closest to the intersection of Whalen and Cross roads. But she did not tell me because, she said, they had slept through the entire incident and did not know anything about what had happened. Presumably, these neighbors told Cheryl that they had not woken up during all the commotion. It is difficult to comprehend, however, how they could have remained asleep. In addition to the sound of an explosion, there was undoubtedly a lot of noise from the sirens of emergency vehicles, such as fire trucks and police cars, and from the Medivac helicopter, which landed close by (as I was told, either in the field itself or in a nearby horse run). The photo below shows the location of the house of my brother’s closest neighbors on Cross Road (whose name I later learned is Pierce) on the upper right and Mark’s driveway beside the mailbox on the lower left. The house clearly not only is close to Mark’s property, but also directly faces the field spanning one side of Whalen Rd. It would thus have an unobstructed view of the spot where my brother lay burning and, sixty feet from Mark, of his truck (which had already been backed about fifty feet into the field from his driveway on Whalen Road).
The photo below shows the house of Mark’s closest neighbor on Whalen Road. The driveway of this individual (whose name I was told is Jerry Collins) is adjacent to Mark’s property. Did he not hear or see anything that night?
As mentioned in previous posts (September 22, 2010, and November 30, 2011), I also spoke with Mark’s neighbor Dan Smith. When I asked what he had seen, he replied that he had been in his living room when he saw the truck on fire from the window and rushed to the scene. When I asked if he had actually seen my brother, he replied that he had approached Mark, who spoke about ten words clearly to him, one of which was “Hi!” and the others he could not recall. I have learned that Mr. Smith was not present with the firefighters (Gary Wind, Mark Ward, and Wayne Frank) who put out the flames on my brother. Therefore, he must have seen my brother at the point when he was about to be placed in the ambulance for the Medivac airlift.
Mr. Smith’s claim that Mark spoke several clearly intelligible words to him is problematic for a number of reasons. First, the three firefighters who put out the flames on Mark could understand virtually nothing that he was trying to tell them: as reported in their witness statements, Gary Wind heard only the word “gas,” and Mark Ward, the words “gasoline can”; Wayne Frank told me that he could understand nothing at all, though it was clear that my brother was trying to tell them something. Second, when my brother heard the voice of Gary Wind, the first firefighter on the scene, he called out, “Gary!” but said nothing else at that point. As then deputy sheriff (now Salamanca Police Chief) Wind recently informed me, Mark could not see him because his eyes were badly burned. How then did my brother recognize Mr. Smith and speak ten words to him? Third, it is documented in the police report that on the airlift to the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo (which had to be right after any communication Mark allegedly tried to make to Mr. Smith) my brother could not communicate at all. I emphasize this issue because the State Police and the District Attorney’s office used the claim that my brother had spoken with one or more individuals yet said nothing about foul play to insist that there was no evidence of murder.
As mentioned in a previous post (April 20, 2011), I also spoke with Mark’s neighbor Eugene Woodworth after another individual advised me to contact him because of information he had given to her. In a conversation with Judy Bess, then office secretary of Our Lady of Peace Church, I learned that Mr. Woodworth had told her that just before Mark’s truck fire, he heard a commotion on Mark's property from outside his own place just up the road; he then saw my brother’s truck go down the driveway and into the field; when it burst into flames, he rushed over and helped to put out the fire on Mark. Below is a photo of Whalen Road from just past Mark's property, with the Woodworth house on the right (if you enlarge the picture by clicking on it, a small bit of Dan's Smith's is just visible in the distance to the left of the shrub):
Assuming that he would confirm what Judy had told me, I called Woodworth but was surprised to hear something very different. According to Woodworth, he saw lights flashing but did not have a clear view because of the trees on his property; as he started down the road toward the field opposite Mark's house, he met Dan Smith returning to his own house at the end of Whalen Road and learned about the fire; he himself never even saw Mark. Woodworth added, "I thought that something happened on the property and surmised that Mark had backed the truck all the way across the road."
As also mentioned in the earlier post, I explained to Judy Bess the discrepancy between her conversation with Eugene Woodworth and my own. She strongly maintained that she had reported Woodworth’s conversation with her accurately and expressed her regrets that he would not tell me the truth about what he saw the night of Mark’s truck fire. She reiterated his account of hearing a ruckus and screams from Mark's property and then seeing the truck go into the field. When I mentioned the time of the truck fire, Judy expressed surprise: she had assumed that it happened during the day because Woodworth told her he had been outside on his property.
It is unnecessary to repeat here in full the response of both former Sr. Inv. John Ensell, Inv. Kalfas’s immediate superior at the time of the truck fire, and current D.A. Lori Rieman when I told them about this issue. But Mr. Ensell dismissed its importance and, after speaking with Eugene Woodworth, sent me an e-mail summarizing his interview. I quote Mr. Ensell verbatim: “Basically down to a one-liner was that he saw yellow off in the distance, walked about half way down, and turned around and came back. That anything said after that would have been purely speculation.”
It seems obvious that Mr. Ensell did not press Eugene Woodworth about what Judy Bess insisted he had told her. Although D.A. Rieman asked Mr. Ensell to contact Judy Bess about the issue, he told me in late 2010 that he could not find a phone number for her but from time to time checked various data bases for her number. As far as I know, he never did contact her. In a recent Google search of my own, I found an address for a Judy Bess in Kill Buck. Unless there is another person with the same name in Cattaraugus County, it would appear that Judy has returned to the area. Couldn’t Mr. Ensell have found her by now and thus done what D. A. Rieman asked?
A few years after Mark was killed, I spoke with a childhood neighbor of ours who still lived on Swan St. in Salamanca. Kathryn Krieger remembered Mark fondly, especially because he used to come over and chat with her husband, a U. S. Army Colonel in World War II who mentored local Vietnam era soldiers, and was unhappy about my brother’s death. Mrs. Krieger told me that people who knew what had happened to Mark that night had not come forward because they did not want to get involved. Is that the case with Mark’s neighbors?
Monday, February 4, 2013
Further Problems with the Theory of a Suicide or an Accident
This post comes with more reasons for questioning the authorities’ view that my brother's death was either an accident or a suicide.
After my brother was killed, various individuals in the Salamanca area mentioned that Mark's was one of several suspicious deaths within a period of a couple of years. Apparently, each was ruled a suicide. One of these cases involved a man found shot in his abdomen. Two involved men found burned to death in their vehicles. At this point, I have not been able to obtain much specific information about any of them and thus cannot fully grasp why people found these deaths suspicious. It would be interesting to know more. Certainly, the manner of death in each case would not immediately suggest suicide. One individual put it this way: “Who shoots himself in the gut?” In another instance, it was said that a pharmacist at the local Rite Aid, who was discovered burned to death in his vehicle, had been about to open a pharmacy on his own and had no reason to commit suicide. As is well known, self-immolation in the U. S. (and in developed countries generally) is very rare and basically limited to women who are psychotic.
The third case has an unexpected point of contact with my brother himself. Some time before Mark's truck fire, a man named Bill Duhan was discovered burned to death in his vehicle. Although learning about the case several years ago, I was told nothing about the circumstances of this terrible death. Recently, however, Salamanca Police Chief Gary Wind, who (then a deputy sheriff) was the first firefighter on the scene of Mark’s truck fire, kindly agreed to speak with me about some points that I hoped he might be able to clarify. In that conversation, Police Chief Wind happened to mention that Mark had been on the scene in which Bill Duhan was found burned to death in his car and had been very upset about it. As Chief Wind specifically noted, my brother said that he would never do that to himself but, if he wanted to take his own life, would instead use a gun (“a forty-five”).
That statement by Mark is yet another reason to reject the investigating authorities’ view that he really committed suicide. My brother was thoroughly sickened when he saw what had happened to Bill Duhan. As observed in earlier posts (see September 22, 2010, December 11, 2010, and August 22, 2012), Mark was very connected to life and never showed any suicidal tendencies, and too many aspects of the scene are not compatible with the theory of a suicide (most compellingly, the pool of his blood found in his driveway and the wounds on both his forehead and the left side of his face, observed by his attending physician). Several posts (September 22, 2010, June 26, 2011, September 22, 2012, and November 1, 2012), moreover, have tried to show that the theory of an accident leaves too many questions about Mark’s death unanswered (e.g., why his truck ended up in the field, how he could have backed it down there after receiving the injuries to his head and losing a pool of blood, why a gasoline can was in the cab of his truck when he never put gas cans there, and how he got saturated with gasoline).
One specific point that Chief Wind clarified about the scene of Mark’s truck fire makes the official ruling of accident even more problematic to me. A previous post (February 2, 2012) posed a question related to “two small spots” that Chief Wind had observed about sixty feet from the truck. When I asked about these two spots mentioned in his witness statement, he said that they were Mark’s clothes, which were on fire near by him. He added that my brother could have pulled them off and thrown them there. Mark indeed may well have done that. He certainly did not want to burn to death. But one must wonder how the State Police took into account the location of my brother’s burning clothes in light of other information they had about his movements when the truck burst into flames.
According to his wife Susan’s witness statement (begun at 11:30 and completed at 11:45 p.m., just after the fire), when she ran out to the field after calling 911, she saw Mark “crawling away from the truck” and tried to bat the flames out on him. If Mark drove the truck into field, he had to go around it from the driver’s side (presumably running) in order to have ended up where he was found by emergency workers about sixty feet from the passenger’s side. After running around the truck, he then must have collapsed in order to be seen crawling away from it. The act of crawling all or much of sixty feet would certainly have taken some time. Why, then, would Mark have waited until he got so far from the truck to tear his burning clothes off? He also presumably would have had to get up from the ground to pull his clothes off and throw them. Did the authorities consider this issue? There is no direct reference in the police report to those burning clothes. I would certainly like to know how they treated the location of Mark’s burning clothes and how they explained it.
As mentioned in a previous post (June 26, 2011), criminologist Will Savive stated that Mark could not have crawled from the truck in flames to the place where he was found without leaving a fire trail. But there is no evidence of a fire trail. Savive also suggested that if the book of Winston matches recovered from the scene was found near Mark himself (see post of February 2, 2012), then my brother had presumably been doused with gasoline and set on fire right where he was found. This new information about Mark’s burning clothes would seem to support that scenario of his death. It points in the direction of foul play.
After my brother was killed, various individuals in the Salamanca area mentioned that Mark's was one of several suspicious deaths within a period of a couple of years. Apparently, each was ruled a suicide. One of these cases involved a man found shot in his abdomen. Two involved men found burned to death in their vehicles. At this point, I have not been able to obtain much specific information about any of them and thus cannot fully grasp why people found these deaths suspicious. It would be interesting to know more. Certainly, the manner of death in each case would not immediately suggest suicide. One individual put it this way: “Who shoots himself in the gut?” In another instance, it was said that a pharmacist at the local Rite Aid, who was discovered burned to death in his vehicle, had been about to open a pharmacy on his own and had no reason to commit suicide. As is well known, self-immolation in the U. S. (and in developed countries generally) is very rare and basically limited to women who are psychotic.
The third case has an unexpected point of contact with my brother himself. Some time before Mark's truck fire, a man named Bill Duhan was discovered burned to death in his vehicle. Although learning about the case several years ago, I was told nothing about the circumstances of this terrible death. Recently, however, Salamanca Police Chief Gary Wind, who (then a deputy sheriff) was the first firefighter on the scene of Mark’s truck fire, kindly agreed to speak with me about some points that I hoped he might be able to clarify. In that conversation, Police Chief Wind happened to mention that Mark had been on the scene in which Bill Duhan was found burned to death in his car and had been very upset about it. As Chief Wind specifically noted, my brother said that he would never do that to himself but, if he wanted to take his own life, would instead use a gun (“a forty-five”).
That statement by Mark is yet another reason to reject the investigating authorities’ view that he really committed suicide. My brother was thoroughly sickened when he saw what had happened to Bill Duhan. As observed in earlier posts (see September 22, 2010, December 11, 2010, and August 22, 2012), Mark was very connected to life and never showed any suicidal tendencies, and too many aspects of the scene are not compatible with the theory of a suicide (most compellingly, the pool of his blood found in his driveway and the wounds on both his forehead and the left side of his face, observed by his attending physician). Several posts (September 22, 2010, June 26, 2011, September 22, 2012, and November 1, 2012), moreover, have tried to show that the theory of an accident leaves too many questions about Mark’s death unanswered (e.g., why his truck ended up in the field, how he could have backed it down there after receiving the injuries to his head and losing a pool of blood, why a gasoline can was in the cab of his truck when he never put gas cans there, and how he got saturated with gasoline).
One specific point that Chief Wind clarified about the scene of Mark’s truck fire makes the official ruling of accident even more problematic to me. A previous post (February 2, 2012) posed a question related to “two small spots” that Chief Wind had observed about sixty feet from the truck. When I asked about these two spots mentioned in his witness statement, he said that they were Mark’s clothes, which were on fire near by him. He added that my brother could have pulled them off and thrown them there. Mark indeed may well have done that. He certainly did not want to burn to death. But one must wonder how the State Police took into account the location of my brother’s burning clothes in light of other information they had about his movements when the truck burst into flames.
According to his wife Susan’s witness statement (begun at 11:30 and completed at 11:45 p.m., just after the fire), when she ran out to the field after calling 911, she saw Mark “crawling away from the truck” and tried to bat the flames out on him. If Mark drove the truck into field, he had to go around it from the driver’s side (presumably running) in order to have ended up where he was found by emergency workers about sixty feet from the passenger’s side. After running around the truck, he then must have collapsed in order to be seen crawling away from it. The act of crawling all or much of sixty feet would certainly have taken some time. Why, then, would Mark have waited until he got so far from the truck to tear his burning clothes off? He also presumably would have had to get up from the ground to pull his clothes off and throw them. Did the authorities consider this issue? There is no direct reference in the police report to those burning clothes. I would certainly like to know how they treated the location of Mark’s burning clothes and how they explained it.
As mentioned in a previous post (June 26, 2011), criminologist Will Savive stated that Mark could not have crawled from the truck in flames to the place where he was found without leaving a fire trail. But there is no evidence of a fire trail. Savive also suggested that if the book of Winston matches recovered from the scene was found near Mark himself (see post of February 2, 2012), then my brother had presumably been doused with gasoline and set on fire right where he was found. This new information about Mark’s burning clothes would seem to support that scenario of his death. It points in the direction of foul play.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Why Were the Telephone Records Not Checked?
This post deals with the important issue of the telephone records that were completely neglected in the police investigation into my brother's death. As previous posts (Sept. 22, 2010, and August 22, 2012) point out, several friends or acquaintances tried to reach Mark or expected a call from him on the day of the truck fire, but no one except his wife (according to her witness statement) saw him or heard from him that day. Since my brother was very connected to his friends, this unexplained lack of communication was a matter of concern to a number of people in the period following Mark's death. In addition, New York State Police Inv. Edward Kalfas acknowledged to Atty. Michael Kelly in September 2005 that he had not found anyone who saw my brother out at any time that day, although his wife Susan says in her witness statement that he left the house around 8:45 p.m. to go to downtown Salamanca. Susan was presumably at work as usual at her secretarial job at the Salamanca High School until 4:00 p.m., though the police report does not specify where she was during the day.
Given the mystery of Mark’s whereabouts that day, it seems only logical that Inv. Kalfas would have checked the telephone records to find out if my brother had made or received any phone calls on September 23, 2003. Furthermore, the investigator assumed very early on that my brother had been “depressed” after getting a DWI the previous day and likely suicidal (on problems with that view, however, see the posts of Sept. 22, 2010, December 11, 2010, and March 27, 2012). One would have expected Inv. Kalfas to check the telephone records in order to determine if Mark had spoken by phone with anyone that day. If Mark had spoken to any of his friends on September 23, the investigator would presumably have been able to find out about Mark's state of mind prior to the truck fire and could have learned about any despondency if there had been any (certainly no depression on Mark's part is indicated in his wife's witness statement). Mark’s long-time friend Bill Lewis mentioned that he had generally spoken by phone with him once a week. According to Bill, Mark never showed any suicidal tendencies and, if he had ever found it impossible to cope with life, would not have “bailed out” without saying goodbye. It is difficult to understand why Inv. Kalfas did not look into the phone records to try to find out what Mark had communicated to the people with whom he last spoke by telephone.
Beyond the strange circumstance that no one (except his wife, per her witness statement) seems to have either seen or heard from my brother the day of his truck fire, there are numerous reasons why the State Police investigator should have checked relevant phone records. Here are three of the most important:
(1) As mentioned in previous posts (Sept. 22, 2010, and July 28, 2011), my brother was arrested for DWI after he left the Holy Cross Athletic Club following an apparently heated personal argument with then Salamanca police officer Mark Marowski. Reportedly, on coming back into the Holy Cross Club after he went out to phone in on Mark, Ofc. Marowski was overheard saying to someone on his cell phone, “It’s all taken care of.” If Ofc. Marowski indeed made that statement, to whom was he talking at that point and just what was “taken care of”? Because Inv. Kalfas did not question the members of the Holy Cross Club who were present about the argument, he presumably did not consider those questions. Had he interviewed the relevant Holy Cross Club members and found out the particulars of the argument, he might well have decided that Ofc. Marowski’s cell phone records should be checked.
(2) According to an entry for 9/25/03 in his narrative in the police report, Inv. Kalfas interviewed an individual (name redacted) who stated that he had called the house to speak with Mark about a charity football pool but, apparently finding that he was not at home, spoke instead with Mark’s wife Susan, until she saw the flames in the field. It is well known that this individual was Peter Rapacioli, as Inv. Kalfas acknowledged to Atty. Michael Kelly in 2005. However, I happened to call Mr. Rapacioli on the advice of one of Mark’s friends, who mentioned that my brother had had frequent contact with him. When I spoke with Peter Rapacioli just five weeks after Mark’s death, he told me that he had not heard from Mark on Monday evening as he had expected and therefore called Mark’s house early on Tuesday. Mr. Rapacioli said nothing whatsoever about being on the phone with Mark’s wife late Tuesday night when she saw the flames in the field and hung up to call 911.
It is difficult to understand how Mr. Rapacioli could have failed to tell me, as Mark's sister, that he had called the house to speak with him but, after twenty-five minutes of conversation with my brother’s wife, was abruptly informed by her that Mark's truck was on fire in the field across the road. In the period immediately following Mark’s death, I knew nothing about any phone call to Mark's house several minutes before the truck fire. But in my letter of December 22, 2003, to D.A. Edward Sharkey, I mentioned that Mr. Rapacioli had told me about trying to reach my brother early in the day, several hours--not minutes--before the truck fire. Apparently, the investigating authorities either did not notice the inconsistency in Mr. Rapacioli's statements or, for some reason, did not consider it a problem.
(3) According to the police report, only Mark’s wife Susan provided any information about events on September 23, 2003, prior to the truck fire. In her witness statement, Susan says (a) that she heard a noise in the garage about 10:30, which she thought was from the cats; (b) that she later realized the noise was from Mark getting a gas can; and (c) that she saw Mark crawling away from the truck just after she called 911 at 10:55. As indicated in the post of September 22, 2012, there appears to have been a very narrow time frame (between 10:30 and 10:55) for what took place before Mark ended up burning to death in that field. In particular, the information given to me by Mark’s attending physician at the burn unit about wounds to my brother’s head and the pool of blood found by the authorities in the driveway suggest a longer time frame than half an hour, especially if Mark himself drove his truck into the field. It does not seem credible that, with the wounds to his forehead and the left side of his face as well as the injury that caused him to lose a pool of blood, my brother would have been able to drive his truck at all–much less back it down the driveway and into the field. He certainly would have needed some time to recover.
Furthermore, a statement by Mark’s wife that is not in the official records should have made the phone records seem even more important. Mark’s and my half-sister Carol McKenna mentioned overhearing Susan say to herself at the burn unit the following morning that she wished she could take back those last few hours. Why were “those last few hours” problematic to Mark’s wife? What had happened? I relayed this comment to D.A. Sharkey in my letter of December 26, 2003, but, as far as I know, he was unconcerned about it.
According to Atty. Michael Kelly, checking the phone records should have been a matter of routine procedure. When he met with Inv. Kalfas and Sr. Inv. John Wolfe in September 2005, he urged the State Police to check those records, and Wolfe said that he would. I myself followed up with a letter to Sr. Inv. Wolfe asking him to check the phone records and brought up the issue with him in a telephone conversation. But the senior investigator then said that he would not check the phone records unless the investigation was re-opened, which depended on what he found in the medical records. After obtaining the medical records by subpoena, Wolfe insisted that he could see no reference to the injuries Dr. Piotrowski had mentioned to me, though he also acknowledged that the doctor’s handwriting was difficult to decipher. He then said that the case would not be re-opened. When I brought up the phone records with N.Y.S.P. Capt. George Brown in February 2006, he insisted that they were not important. In April 2007, N.Y.S.P. Lt. Allen likewise downplayed the importance of the phone records, claiming that they would prove nothing. It’s as if the police were trying not to find evidence to re-open the investigation.
When I brought up the issue of the phone records with Lori Rieman during her campaign for Cattaraugus County District Attorney in 2009, she said that it would be useful to know if that phone call between 10:30 and 10:55 really took place. But later, when I met with now D.A. Rieman in May 2010, she had changed her position about the phone records. She asserted that the phone records would have to have been obtained by subpoena and that serious evidence of criminal activity would have been necessary to request it. D.A. Rieman then insisted that the call between 10:30 and 10:55 was verified by Peter Rapacioli in his interview with Inv. Kalfas.
It is extremely perplexing that the investigating authorities have so persistently dismissed the significance of the telephone records in the case of my brother’s death. Their resistance to looking into those records seems all the more incomprehensible in light of cases where telephone records have clearly been a key factor in solving a murder. One instance concerns a case recently aired on the true crime program “48 Hours.” Although there was little hard evidence against a man who was suspected of murdering his former girlfriend because of unhappiness over their break-up, his cell phone records were critical to solving the case. The police were able to prove that he was not where he had claimed to be the evening of the woman’s murder, but in fact had made or received calls close to her apartment and to the spot where he had buried her faithful dog, the only eyewitness to her murder. The authorities in that case were very eager to search those records and seem to have had no problem in obtaining them.
Given the mystery of Mark’s whereabouts that day, it seems only logical that Inv. Kalfas would have checked the telephone records to find out if my brother had made or received any phone calls on September 23, 2003. Furthermore, the investigator assumed very early on that my brother had been “depressed” after getting a DWI the previous day and likely suicidal (on problems with that view, however, see the posts of Sept. 22, 2010, December 11, 2010, and March 27, 2012). One would have expected Inv. Kalfas to check the telephone records in order to determine if Mark had spoken by phone with anyone that day. If Mark had spoken to any of his friends on September 23, the investigator would presumably have been able to find out about Mark's state of mind prior to the truck fire and could have learned about any despondency if there had been any (certainly no depression on Mark's part is indicated in his wife's witness statement). Mark’s long-time friend Bill Lewis mentioned that he had generally spoken by phone with him once a week. According to Bill, Mark never showed any suicidal tendencies and, if he had ever found it impossible to cope with life, would not have “bailed out” without saying goodbye. It is difficult to understand why Inv. Kalfas did not look into the phone records to try to find out what Mark had communicated to the people with whom he last spoke by telephone.
Beyond the strange circumstance that no one (except his wife, per her witness statement) seems to have either seen or heard from my brother the day of his truck fire, there are numerous reasons why the State Police investigator should have checked relevant phone records. Here are three of the most important:
(1) As mentioned in previous posts (Sept. 22, 2010, and July 28, 2011), my brother was arrested for DWI after he left the Holy Cross Athletic Club following an apparently heated personal argument with then Salamanca police officer Mark Marowski. Reportedly, on coming back into the Holy Cross Club after he went out to phone in on Mark, Ofc. Marowski was overheard saying to someone on his cell phone, “It’s all taken care of.” If Ofc. Marowski indeed made that statement, to whom was he talking at that point and just what was “taken care of”? Because Inv. Kalfas did not question the members of the Holy Cross Club who were present about the argument, he presumably did not consider those questions. Had he interviewed the relevant Holy Cross Club members and found out the particulars of the argument, he might well have decided that Ofc. Marowski’s cell phone records should be checked.
(2) According to an entry for 9/25/03 in his narrative in the police report, Inv. Kalfas interviewed an individual (name redacted) who stated that he had called the house to speak with Mark about a charity football pool but, apparently finding that he was not at home, spoke instead with Mark’s wife Susan, until she saw the flames in the field. It is well known that this individual was Peter Rapacioli, as Inv. Kalfas acknowledged to Atty. Michael Kelly in 2005. However, I happened to call Mr. Rapacioli on the advice of one of Mark’s friends, who mentioned that my brother had had frequent contact with him. When I spoke with Peter Rapacioli just five weeks after Mark’s death, he told me that he had not heard from Mark on Monday evening as he had expected and therefore called Mark’s house early on Tuesday. Mr. Rapacioli said nothing whatsoever about being on the phone with Mark’s wife late Tuesday night when she saw the flames in the field and hung up to call 911.
It is difficult to understand how Mr. Rapacioli could have failed to tell me, as Mark's sister, that he had called the house to speak with him but, after twenty-five minutes of conversation with my brother’s wife, was abruptly informed by her that Mark's truck was on fire in the field across the road. In the period immediately following Mark’s death, I knew nothing about any phone call to Mark's house several minutes before the truck fire. But in my letter of December 22, 2003, to D.A. Edward Sharkey, I mentioned that Mr. Rapacioli had told me about trying to reach my brother early in the day, several hours--not minutes--before the truck fire. Apparently, the investigating authorities either did not notice the inconsistency in Mr. Rapacioli's statements or, for some reason, did not consider it a problem.
(3) According to the police report, only Mark’s wife Susan provided any information about events on September 23, 2003, prior to the truck fire. In her witness statement, Susan says (a) that she heard a noise in the garage about 10:30, which she thought was from the cats; (b) that she later realized the noise was from Mark getting a gas can; and (c) that she saw Mark crawling away from the truck just after she called 911 at 10:55. As indicated in the post of September 22, 2012, there appears to have been a very narrow time frame (between 10:30 and 10:55) for what took place before Mark ended up burning to death in that field. In particular, the information given to me by Mark’s attending physician at the burn unit about wounds to my brother’s head and the pool of blood found by the authorities in the driveway suggest a longer time frame than half an hour, especially if Mark himself drove his truck into the field. It does not seem credible that, with the wounds to his forehead and the left side of his face as well as the injury that caused him to lose a pool of blood, my brother would have been able to drive his truck at all–much less back it down the driveway and into the field. He certainly would have needed some time to recover.
Furthermore, a statement by Mark’s wife that is not in the official records should have made the phone records seem even more important. Mark’s and my half-sister Carol McKenna mentioned overhearing Susan say to herself at the burn unit the following morning that she wished she could take back those last few hours. Why were “those last few hours” problematic to Mark’s wife? What had happened? I relayed this comment to D.A. Sharkey in my letter of December 26, 2003, but, as far as I know, he was unconcerned about it.
According to Atty. Michael Kelly, checking the phone records should have been a matter of routine procedure. When he met with Inv. Kalfas and Sr. Inv. John Wolfe in September 2005, he urged the State Police to check those records, and Wolfe said that he would. I myself followed up with a letter to Sr. Inv. Wolfe asking him to check the phone records and brought up the issue with him in a telephone conversation. But the senior investigator then said that he would not check the phone records unless the investigation was re-opened, which depended on what he found in the medical records. After obtaining the medical records by subpoena, Wolfe insisted that he could see no reference to the injuries Dr. Piotrowski had mentioned to me, though he also acknowledged that the doctor’s handwriting was difficult to decipher. He then said that the case would not be re-opened. When I brought up the phone records with N.Y.S.P. Capt. George Brown in February 2006, he insisted that they were not important. In April 2007, N.Y.S.P. Lt. Allen likewise downplayed the importance of the phone records, claiming that they would prove nothing. It’s as if the police were trying not to find evidence to re-open the investigation.
When I brought up the issue of the phone records with Lori Rieman during her campaign for Cattaraugus County District Attorney in 2009, she said that it would be useful to know if that phone call between 10:30 and 10:55 really took place. But later, when I met with now D.A. Rieman in May 2010, she had changed her position about the phone records. She asserted that the phone records would have to have been obtained by subpoena and that serious evidence of criminal activity would have been necessary to request it. D.A. Rieman then insisted that the call between 10:30 and 10:55 was verified by Peter Rapacioli in his interview with Inv. Kalfas.
It is extremely perplexing that the investigating authorities have so persistently dismissed the significance of the telephone records in the case of my brother’s death. Their resistance to looking into those records seems all the more incomprehensible in light of cases where telephone records have clearly been a key factor in solving a murder. One instance concerns a case recently aired on the true crime program “48 Hours.” Although there was little hard evidence against a man who was suspected of murdering his former girlfriend because of unhappiness over their break-up, his cell phone records were critical to solving the case. The police were able to prove that he was not where he had claimed to be the evening of the woman’s murder, but in fact had made or received calls close to her apartment and to the spot where he had buried her faithful dog, the only eyewitness to her murder. The authorities in that case were very eager to search those records and seem to have had no problem in obtaining them.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
The Issue of Mark Doused with Gasoline
This post deals with one of the critical issues concerning my brother's death: he was doused with gasoline. As a nephew who was at the burn unit the morning after the truck fire mentioned to me, Mark's attending physician told him, “This was no accident.” According to John McKenna, Dr. Edward Piotrowski explained to him that Mark had been doused with a flammable liquid and that either someone had done it to him or he had done it to himself. As a forensics expert recently explained, when doused with gasoline, the skin continues to burn even when a person removes his clothing to try to put out the fire. Thus, Mark's burns were extremely severe, mainly third and even some fourth-degree, over almost all of his body.
To judge by the police report, this issue was sidestepped in the investigation. Inv. Edward Kalfas does not directly address it in the police report. But in early 2004 Mark's and my half-sister Carol McKenna informed me of what Inv. Kalfas had recently told her: Mark had been saturated with gasoline. Later, however, when urged to re-open the investigation partly because of information revealed to me by Dr. Piotrowski, the New York State Police made conflicting statements about the problem of Mark having been doused with gasoline. This issue, moreover, is tied up with troubling statements about suicide made shortly after my brother's death.
In a telephone conversation in 2005 with Sr. Inv. John Wolfe about my concerns with the investigation, I asked how my brother’s death could have been an accident, given the severity of the burns over ninety percent of his body and the gasoline on his skin. Mr. Wolfe, however, insisted that there did not appear to be any burns on Mark’s head and therefore his head had not been doused with gasoline. Although I was not given the opportunity to see the autopsy photos, it is difficult to understand how my brother’s head could appear unburned. According to my nephew John McKenna, who saw Mark in the burn unit before he died, his head was so badly burned that his nose was “almost burned off.” John said that the burns on Mark’s head were clearly third-degree. Dr. Piotrowski confirmed my nephew's observation by indicating that he did not understand how Mark had also got gasoline on his head, as his burns there were so severe.
Furthermore, Sr. Inv. Wolfe criticized Dr. Piotrowski instead of seriously considering what this experienced doctor had observed at first hand. I mentioned, for instance, that the doctor had commented on the condition of my brother’s hands as extremely burned, which indicated to him that Mark had been trying to put the flames out and had not been committing suicide. But Mr. Wolfe replied sharply that Dr. Piotrowski should never have made such a remark because people who commit suicide by self-immolation frequently try to put the flames out because of the intensity of the fire.
When in 2006 I raised the general issue about the dousing with Capt. George Brown, he did not deny it but insisted that my brother could have spilled gasoline on himself accidentally “because of his drunken state.” Yet when I asked how Mark--even if he had been drinking--could have accidentally got gasoline on his head, Capt. Brown changed his explanation for the death. He then claimed instead that the saturation with gasoline suggested suicide. As so often with my questions to the New York State Police, if a particular fact did not fit conveniently with the theory of accident, they then insisted that it indicated suicide, or vice versa. The State Police were apparently unconcerned about the issue of logic when various facts fit the one theory but not the other. My brother’s death, however, could not have been an accident for one reason and a suicide for another, as if the two were somehow interchangeable.
After the New York State Governor’s office informed me in 2007 that a representative from the State Police would respond to my questions, a Lt. Allen from Troop A contacted me. But, in fact, point by point he seemed more interested in staunchly defending the investigation. When I brought up the problem of the saturation with gasoline, Lt. Allen asserted that he did not know where that was stated in the records. I mentioned the reference in the police report to samples of Mark’s clothing that tested positive for gasoline and the statement by the attending physician to a nephew at the burn unit that Mark had been doused with a flammable liquid. Lt. Allen, however, dismissed the issue, insisting that he did not understand how Dr. Piotrowski could have known that Mark was saturated with gasoline just by examining him, without lab tests.
It is clear that very early on in the investigation the State Police decided that Mark had committed suicide. The gas can in the cab of the truck, with which they assumed my brother had deliberately or accidentally poured gasoline on himself, was obviously a key factor in their decision. Yet why, then, did the State Police fail to interview Dr. Piotrowski about Mark's burns during the investigation? Why did they fail to interview him in 2005, when both Att. Michael Kelly and I asked them to speak with the doctor about the information that he had related to me about the wounds on Mark's forehead and face as well as the dousing with gasoline? According to Capt. Brown, Dr. Piotrowski, when reached by telephone in late 2005, told Sr. Inv. Wolfe that he did not remember the case and would have to check the medical records. However, in response to a question of mine in 2005, Dr. Piotrowski said that he did not have to look at his records because Mark had been so badly burned that he could not forget the case.
An entry on that issue in Inv. Kalfas's narrative in the police report is a matter of concern. For 9/24/03, the investigator states the following: “Member interviews...[about a third of the line blacked out] also states the victim was unable to communicate at any time during treatment.” It is not at all clear why the name of the medical personnel here (presumably a doctor) should have been redacted. But who was this physician? Dr. Piotrowski was without question Mark's attending physician at the Erie County Medical Center. He not only treated my brother for his burns; he also spoke with the relatives present (I was not informed of my brother's injuries until the 7:40 the following morning, too late to get to Buffalo before he died). Yet, in my conversations with him, the doctor emphasized that he had never been contacted by anyone in the investigation and therefore thought that the authorities knew what had happened and did not need any information from him.
Another entry in Inv. Kalfas's narrative in the police report is also a matter of concern. For 11/22/03, the investigator summarizes his interview with someone described as “a good friend of the victim.” I quote the last sentence verbatim: “He also added 'when he got the DWI with his name in the paper, I think it pushed him over the edge.'” Since the individual's name is redacted, it is difficult to say for certain who it is. But when I spoke with Mark's friend Jim Poole in November 2003, he told me that the State Police investigator had interviewed him and asked if he could think of any reason why Mark might have committed suicide. Jim told me that, because he was asked to speculate, he told the investigator that Mark was a proud man and would have been upset at seeing his name in the paper for a DWI. But Jim added that he did not find that a real motivation for Mark to commit suicide. What legitimate reason was there for State Police to black out the names--apart from Mark’s wife Susan, whose identity would be self-evident--of all the individuals whom Inv. Kalfas interviewed (except, oddly, mine)? Did the statement quoted above refer to Jim Poole? If so, it does not appear to have represented what Jim actually said in his interview with Inv. Kalfas.
A statement about suicide reported to me by my nephew John McKenna is even more troubling. According to John, when he called Mark's house a day or so after his death, Susan's sister Calla Smith, whom he had never met, told him that it looked as if the police were going to rule Mark's death a suicide. How could Ms. Smith possibly have known right after Mark's death that the investigating authorities expected to call Mark's death a suicide? By contrast, Mark’s wife Susan, according to Carol McKenna, stated the following about the suicide theory: “Oh, Mark would never have done that!” When Calla Smith made her remark to John McKenna, the investigation had barely begun. What could her source of information have been?
After nearly nine years of relaying important information about the suspicious nature of Mark’s death (much of which I cannot post on this blog) and engaging two well respected lawyers (Tony Tanke and Michael Kelly) to discuss its relevance with the investigating authorities, what can be said? A commenter on this blog (post of September 22, 2012) perhaps puts it best: “It’s small town police and small town connections, they didn’t want to do the work.” But, then again, there is no statute of limitations on murder.
To judge by the police report, this issue was sidestepped in the investigation. Inv. Edward Kalfas does not directly address it in the police report. But in early 2004 Mark's and my half-sister Carol McKenna informed me of what Inv. Kalfas had recently told her: Mark had been saturated with gasoline. Later, however, when urged to re-open the investigation partly because of information revealed to me by Dr. Piotrowski, the New York State Police made conflicting statements about the problem of Mark having been doused with gasoline. This issue, moreover, is tied up with troubling statements about suicide made shortly after my brother's death.
In a telephone conversation in 2005 with Sr. Inv. John Wolfe about my concerns with the investigation, I asked how my brother’s death could have been an accident, given the severity of the burns over ninety percent of his body and the gasoline on his skin. Mr. Wolfe, however, insisted that there did not appear to be any burns on Mark’s head and therefore his head had not been doused with gasoline. Although I was not given the opportunity to see the autopsy photos, it is difficult to understand how my brother’s head could appear unburned. According to my nephew John McKenna, who saw Mark in the burn unit before he died, his head was so badly burned that his nose was “almost burned off.” John said that the burns on Mark’s head were clearly third-degree. Dr. Piotrowski confirmed my nephew's observation by indicating that he did not understand how Mark had also got gasoline on his head, as his burns there were so severe.
Furthermore, Sr. Inv. Wolfe criticized Dr. Piotrowski instead of seriously considering what this experienced doctor had observed at first hand. I mentioned, for instance, that the doctor had commented on the condition of my brother’s hands as extremely burned, which indicated to him that Mark had been trying to put the flames out and had not been committing suicide. But Mr. Wolfe replied sharply that Dr. Piotrowski should never have made such a remark because people who commit suicide by self-immolation frequently try to put the flames out because of the intensity of the fire.
When in 2006 I raised the general issue about the dousing with Capt. George Brown, he did not deny it but insisted that my brother could have spilled gasoline on himself accidentally “because of his drunken state.” Yet when I asked how Mark--even if he had been drinking--could have accidentally got gasoline on his head, Capt. Brown changed his explanation for the death. He then claimed instead that the saturation with gasoline suggested suicide. As so often with my questions to the New York State Police, if a particular fact did not fit conveniently with the theory of accident, they then insisted that it indicated suicide, or vice versa. The State Police were apparently unconcerned about the issue of logic when various facts fit the one theory but not the other. My brother’s death, however, could not have been an accident for one reason and a suicide for another, as if the two were somehow interchangeable.
After the New York State Governor’s office informed me in 2007 that a representative from the State Police would respond to my questions, a Lt. Allen from Troop A contacted me. But, in fact, point by point he seemed more interested in staunchly defending the investigation. When I brought up the problem of the saturation with gasoline, Lt. Allen asserted that he did not know where that was stated in the records. I mentioned the reference in the police report to samples of Mark’s clothing that tested positive for gasoline and the statement by the attending physician to a nephew at the burn unit that Mark had been doused with a flammable liquid. Lt. Allen, however, dismissed the issue, insisting that he did not understand how Dr. Piotrowski could have known that Mark was saturated with gasoline just by examining him, without lab tests.
It is clear that very early on in the investigation the State Police decided that Mark had committed suicide. The gas can in the cab of the truck, with which they assumed my brother had deliberately or accidentally poured gasoline on himself, was obviously a key factor in their decision. Yet why, then, did the State Police fail to interview Dr. Piotrowski about Mark's burns during the investigation? Why did they fail to interview him in 2005, when both Att. Michael Kelly and I asked them to speak with the doctor about the information that he had related to me about the wounds on Mark's forehead and face as well as the dousing with gasoline? According to Capt. Brown, Dr. Piotrowski, when reached by telephone in late 2005, told Sr. Inv. Wolfe that he did not remember the case and would have to check the medical records. However, in response to a question of mine in 2005, Dr. Piotrowski said that he did not have to look at his records because Mark had been so badly burned that he could not forget the case.
An entry on that issue in Inv. Kalfas's narrative in the police report is a matter of concern. For 9/24/03, the investigator states the following: “Member interviews...[about a third of the line blacked out] also states the victim was unable to communicate at any time during treatment.” It is not at all clear why the name of the medical personnel here (presumably a doctor) should have been redacted. But who was this physician? Dr. Piotrowski was without question Mark's attending physician at the Erie County Medical Center. He not only treated my brother for his burns; he also spoke with the relatives present (I was not informed of my brother's injuries until the 7:40 the following morning, too late to get to Buffalo before he died). Yet, in my conversations with him, the doctor emphasized that he had never been contacted by anyone in the investigation and therefore thought that the authorities knew what had happened and did not need any information from him.
Another entry in Inv. Kalfas's narrative in the police report is also a matter of concern. For 11/22/03, the investigator summarizes his interview with someone described as “a good friend of the victim.” I quote the last sentence verbatim: “He also added 'when he got the DWI with his name in the paper, I think it pushed him over the edge.'” Since the individual's name is redacted, it is difficult to say for certain who it is. But when I spoke with Mark's friend Jim Poole in November 2003, he told me that the State Police investigator had interviewed him and asked if he could think of any reason why Mark might have committed suicide. Jim told me that, because he was asked to speculate, he told the investigator that Mark was a proud man and would have been upset at seeing his name in the paper for a DWI. But Jim added that he did not find that a real motivation for Mark to commit suicide. What legitimate reason was there for State Police to black out the names--apart from Mark’s wife Susan, whose identity would be self-evident--of all the individuals whom Inv. Kalfas interviewed (except, oddly, mine)? Did the statement quoted above refer to Jim Poole? If so, it does not appear to have represented what Jim actually said in his interview with Inv. Kalfas.
A statement about suicide reported to me by my nephew John McKenna is even more troubling. According to John, when he called Mark's house a day or so after his death, Susan's sister Calla Smith, whom he had never met, told him that it looked as if the police were going to rule Mark's death a suicide. How could Ms. Smith possibly have known right after Mark's death that the investigating authorities expected to call Mark's death a suicide? By contrast, Mark’s wife Susan, according to Carol McKenna, stated the following about the suicide theory: “Oh, Mark would never have done that!” When Calla Smith made her remark to John McKenna, the investigation had barely begun. What could her source of information have been?
After nearly nine years of relaying important information about the suspicious nature of Mark’s death (much of which I cannot post on this blog) and engaging two well respected lawyers (Tony Tanke and Michael Kelly) to discuss its relevance with the investigating authorities, what can be said? A commenter on this blog (post of September 22, 2012) perhaps puts it best: “It’s small town police and small town connections, they didn’t want to do the work.” But, then again, there is no statute of limitations on murder.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
More Questions about What Happened the Night of Mark’s Truck Fire
Today marks the eve of the ninth anniversary of my brother’s truck fire. Given abundant evidence pointing to the suspicious nature of that fire, it is difficult to understand how the investigating authorities came to the conclusion that Mark himself caused the fire by either accidentally spilling or deliberately pouring gasoline on himself inside the truck and why they have continued to insist that my brother’s death could not have been a murder. This post further considers problems with the State Police’s theory that Mark drove his truck into the field across the road from his property and then ignited gasoline that he had spilled or poured on himself.
There appears to have been a narrow time frame within which the truck could have been driven into the field. In her witness statement, Mark’s wife Susan says that they were watching television around 7:30 p.m. and that Mark left for downtown Salamanca around 8:45. My previous post (August 22, 2012) mentions a problem with Susan’s statement that they were watching television together. But, regardless of that issue, Mark apparently was off the property around 8:45 and did not return until about 10:30. For, to judge by her witness statement, Susan did not see or hear Mark come up the driveway. However, she says that around 10:30 she heard a noise in the garage, which she thought came from the cats, but later realized that Mark had taken a five-gallon gas can from the garage.
What would Mark have been doing with that gas can? The State Police assume that he put it on the floor of the passenger’s side of the truck and then drove to the field, where he spilled or poured the gas on himself and in the driver’s seat area. As a previous post (June 26, 2011) makes clear, that scenario seems highly unlikely. Moreover, conflicting statements about what Mark supposedly did with that gas can make it difficult to know what really happened. There is a significant discrepancy between what Susan says in her witness statement and what a relative reported Susan said to her just hours later.
In her witness statement, Susan clearly says that she did not know what Mark had done with the gas can. However, at the Erie County Medical Center the next morning Susan gave a different account to Mark’s and my half-sister Carol McKenna. As Carol informed me within a few days of Mark’s death, Susan told her that when the fire started, Mark had been putting gasoline into the tank, which had run out of gas. At the time, of course, Carol had no official information about the fire. But she expressed concern because later that day at the burn unit Susan gave a second, completely different explanation: the truck's starter had malfunctioned and caused the fire. Not long afterward, however, Inv. Edward Kalfas revealed what the fire investigator’s report made official: the tank was almost full, and the truck fire was not caused by any mechanical problem. As mentioned in my post of July 22, 2012, a day or so after the fire Mark’s and Susan’s son Brian told my cousin Dennis Pavlock that the truck had run out of gas. According to Dennis, when Brian called to ask him to be a pall bearer, he explained that Mark had been putting gas into the tank when the fire started.
It is also unclear how Susan knew that a gas can was missing. As my post of July 22, 2012, points out, Susan says nothing about seeing Mark himself until she rushed out of the house after noticing the flames in the field and calling 911. When did she go into the garage? Susan’s statement was taken between 11:30 and 11:45 p.m., shortly after the fire. As recorded in her own witness statement, Cheryl Simcox accompanied Susan into the house at Susan’s own request when they left the scene of the fire and remained with her until about 1 a.m. Some time ago, I spoke with Cheryl, who was the first person on the scene after Mark’s wife, about this issue. According to Cheryl, they did not go into the garage after the fire that night.
Before his truck went into the field, my brother must first have driven it to his usual parking spot in an extension off the long driveway, as a pool of his blood was found in that space when police and emergency workers arrived. (See photos of the driveway by the link on the right of the page.) Since the blood was fresh, Mark had to have been in that area shortly before his truck fire. As my post of May 29, 2012, points out, Susan apparently neither saw nor heard anything unusual in the area of the driveway between 10:30 and 10:55 p.m. as she waited for Mark to return from downtown Salamanca. But after leaving at 8:45, my brother presumably returned around 10:30, pulled up the driveway, and parked his truck in his usual spot.
However, since Mark must have been injured in his parking area, it is difficult to grasp how he could have driven his truck to the field. As mentioned in the original post (September 22, 2010), Dr. Edward Piotrowski, Mark’s attending physician in the burn unit in Buffalo, stated that my brother had “deep soft-tissue swelling” in his forehead (confirmed by a CT scan) and further soft-tissue damage to the left side of his face. Mark also presumably received a blow to his nose, the probable source of the pool of blood. After sustaining those injuries, my brother would have needed some time to recover, especially from the blow to his forehead, which may well have knocked him out. He would hardly have been able to drive his truck immediately at all, much less back it first from the extension into the driveway, then down the remainder of his long driveway and straight into the field. The only logical inference is that someone else backed that truck into the field.
It is not at all clear precisely--or even approximately--where Mark was when he was first discovered on fire in the field by his wife. In her witness statement, Susan says that when she rushed out of the house after ending a phone conversation (with Peter Rapacioli) and calling 911, she saw Mark “crawling away from the truck.” She does not specify his distance from the truck. But at the burn unit the next morning, Susan told Carol McKenna that Mark was a few feet from the truck when she found him. However, shortly after at the burn unit, she told Carol’s son John that Mark was 100 feet away from the truck. This discrepancy (as well as the one about the cause of the fire) was mentioned by Carol to Inv. Kalfas early in the investigation, as he confirmed to Att. Michael Kelly in 2005 when asked why he had not recorded in the police report Carol’s information about Susan’s statements in the burn unit. Inv. Kalfas replied that he assumed Susan had been upset and confused and therefore he did not think those statements important. (In her witness statement, however, Cheryl Simcox comments on Susan’s calm demeanor that night, and others made similar remarks.)
It is unfortunate, moreover, that in his interviews with Susan, the investigator did not have her clarify as specifically as possible where Mark was in the field when she first saw him. She presumably had a fairly clear idea since, according to her witness statement, she rushed to the field and tried to put out the flames on Mark. (In her own witness statement, however, Cheryl Simcox mentions that when Susan put down on the counter the white sweatshirt she said she had used to bat the flames, it was clean, with no soot or skin on it.) Mark’s distance from the truck when his wife approached him was certainly relevant information in the effort to determine how he ended up where emergency workers found him, so very badly burned.
It is also unfortunate that Inv. Kalfas apparently did not fully consider how Mark had come to be a considerable distance--about sixty feet--from the truck when the first emergency workers found him. As already mentioned, Susan says in her witness statement that she saw Mark “crawling away from the truck.” It is very difficult, however, to understand how he could have crawled sixty feet, impaired by fresh head wounds and so fully engulfed in flames. As Cheryl Simcox told me, two-foot flames were shooting from my brother’s whole body, including his head, when she saw him just a couple of minutes after the 911 call was made. Even more troubling, how could Mark, with his entire body ablaze, have crawled sixty feet from the truck without leaving a fire trail? Yet there is no evidence of any fire trail.
There appears to have been a narrow time frame within which the truck could have been driven into the field. In her witness statement, Mark’s wife Susan says that they were watching television around 7:30 p.m. and that Mark left for downtown Salamanca around 8:45. My previous post (August 22, 2012) mentions a problem with Susan’s statement that they were watching television together. But, regardless of that issue, Mark apparently was off the property around 8:45 and did not return until about 10:30. For, to judge by her witness statement, Susan did not see or hear Mark come up the driveway. However, she says that around 10:30 she heard a noise in the garage, which she thought came from the cats, but later realized that Mark had taken a five-gallon gas can from the garage.
What would Mark have been doing with that gas can? The State Police assume that he put it on the floor of the passenger’s side of the truck and then drove to the field, where he spilled or poured the gas on himself and in the driver’s seat area. As a previous post (June 26, 2011) makes clear, that scenario seems highly unlikely. Moreover, conflicting statements about what Mark supposedly did with that gas can make it difficult to know what really happened. There is a significant discrepancy between what Susan says in her witness statement and what a relative reported Susan said to her just hours later.
In her witness statement, Susan clearly says that she did not know what Mark had done with the gas can. However, at the Erie County Medical Center the next morning Susan gave a different account to Mark’s and my half-sister Carol McKenna. As Carol informed me within a few days of Mark’s death, Susan told her that when the fire started, Mark had been putting gasoline into the tank, which had run out of gas. At the time, of course, Carol had no official information about the fire. But she expressed concern because later that day at the burn unit Susan gave a second, completely different explanation: the truck's starter had malfunctioned and caused the fire. Not long afterward, however, Inv. Edward Kalfas revealed what the fire investigator’s report made official: the tank was almost full, and the truck fire was not caused by any mechanical problem. As mentioned in my post of July 22, 2012, a day or so after the fire Mark’s and Susan’s son Brian told my cousin Dennis Pavlock that the truck had run out of gas. According to Dennis, when Brian called to ask him to be a pall bearer, he explained that Mark had been putting gas into the tank when the fire started.
It is also unclear how Susan knew that a gas can was missing. As my post of July 22, 2012, points out, Susan says nothing about seeing Mark himself until she rushed out of the house after noticing the flames in the field and calling 911. When did she go into the garage? Susan’s statement was taken between 11:30 and 11:45 p.m., shortly after the fire. As recorded in her own witness statement, Cheryl Simcox accompanied Susan into the house at Susan’s own request when they left the scene of the fire and remained with her until about 1 a.m. Some time ago, I spoke with Cheryl, who was the first person on the scene after Mark’s wife, about this issue. According to Cheryl, they did not go into the garage after the fire that night.
Before his truck went into the field, my brother must first have driven it to his usual parking spot in an extension off the long driveway, as a pool of his blood was found in that space when police and emergency workers arrived. (See photos of the driveway by the link on the right of the page.) Since the blood was fresh, Mark had to have been in that area shortly before his truck fire. As my post of May 29, 2012, points out, Susan apparently neither saw nor heard anything unusual in the area of the driveway between 10:30 and 10:55 p.m. as she waited for Mark to return from downtown Salamanca. But after leaving at 8:45, my brother presumably returned around 10:30, pulled up the driveway, and parked his truck in his usual spot.
However, since Mark must have been injured in his parking area, it is difficult to grasp how he could have driven his truck to the field. As mentioned in the original post (September 22, 2010), Dr. Edward Piotrowski, Mark’s attending physician in the burn unit in Buffalo, stated that my brother had “deep soft-tissue swelling” in his forehead (confirmed by a CT scan) and further soft-tissue damage to the left side of his face. Mark also presumably received a blow to his nose, the probable source of the pool of blood. After sustaining those injuries, my brother would have needed some time to recover, especially from the blow to his forehead, which may well have knocked him out. He would hardly have been able to drive his truck immediately at all, much less back it first from the extension into the driveway, then down the remainder of his long driveway and straight into the field. The only logical inference is that someone else backed that truck into the field.
It is not at all clear precisely--or even approximately--where Mark was when he was first discovered on fire in the field by his wife. In her witness statement, Susan says that when she rushed out of the house after ending a phone conversation (with Peter Rapacioli) and calling 911, she saw Mark “crawling away from the truck.” She does not specify his distance from the truck. But at the burn unit the next morning, Susan told Carol McKenna that Mark was a few feet from the truck when she found him. However, shortly after at the burn unit, she told Carol’s son John that Mark was 100 feet away from the truck. This discrepancy (as well as the one about the cause of the fire) was mentioned by Carol to Inv. Kalfas early in the investigation, as he confirmed to Att. Michael Kelly in 2005 when asked why he had not recorded in the police report Carol’s information about Susan’s statements in the burn unit. Inv. Kalfas replied that he assumed Susan had been upset and confused and therefore he did not think those statements important. (In her witness statement, however, Cheryl Simcox comments on Susan’s calm demeanor that night, and others made similar remarks.)
It is unfortunate, moreover, that in his interviews with Susan, the investigator did not have her clarify as specifically as possible where Mark was in the field when she first saw him. She presumably had a fairly clear idea since, according to her witness statement, she rushed to the field and tried to put out the flames on Mark. (In her own witness statement, however, Cheryl Simcox mentions that when Susan put down on the counter the white sweatshirt she said she had used to bat the flames, it was clean, with no soot or skin on it.) Mark’s distance from the truck when his wife approached him was certainly relevant information in the effort to determine how he ended up where emergency workers found him, so very badly burned.
It is also unfortunate that Inv. Kalfas apparently did not fully consider how Mark had come to be a considerable distance--about sixty feet--from the truck when the first emergency workers found him. As already mentioned, Susan says in her witness statement that she saw Mark “crawling away from the truck.” It is very difficult, however, to understand how he could have crawled sixty feet, impaired by fresh head wounds and so fully engulfed in flames. As Cheryl Simcox told me, two-foot flames were shooting from my brother’s whole body, including his head, when she saw him just a couple of minutes after the 911 call was made. Even more troubling, how could Mark, with his entire body ablaze, have crawled sixty feet from the truck without leaving a fire trail? Yet there is no evidence of any fire trail.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Concerns about the Mystery of Mark’s Whereabouts the Day of His Truck Fire
My last post (July 22, 2012) dealt with the problem of the gas can in the cab of my brother’s pick-up truck the night of the fire. In that context, it pointed to the troubling issue of a statement made by his son Brian (20 years of age at the time) to a cousin of ours a day or so after the fire that Mark had been burned while putting gasoline into his truck after it ran out of gas. As noted there, Brian’s statement is a matter of concern not only because my brother’s truck had clearly not run out of gas but also because Mark’s daughter Christie (23 years of age at the time) told me the evening of his death that her father had left her a suicide letter, which she later denied to the State Police investigator. Here, I consider the problem of why apparently none of his friends and acquaintances saw or heard from Mark at any point on September 23, 2003, prior to his truck fire. The fire took place the day after my brother was set up for a DWI by then Salamanca police officer Mark Marowski after they got into a personal argument at the Holy Cross Athletic Club, reportedly over Brian’s own arrest for DWI (by Officer Marowski himself, according to rumors).
Inv. Edward Kalfas acknowledged to Att. Michael Kelly in 2005 that he had not been able to find anyone who saw Mark out the day of the truck fire. Although Mark’s absence in public places that day might conceivably have been the result of embarrassment over his DWI the day before, his wife Susan says in her witness statement that he left the house at 8:45 p.m. specifically to go to downtown Salamanca (presumably to one of the clubs or bars, the only places open at that hour). One must assume, then, that Mark was not so mortified over the DWI as to be unwilling to appear in public. Yet no one apparently saw him. In addition, shortly after his death, at least two individuals said that they had tried to reach Mark by phone the day of the fire but got no answer. His friend Jim Poole also told me that he had been very surprised not to get a call from Mark that day, since the previous evening (after he returned from the DWI) Mark had left a voice mail message promising to call back about helping Jim with some painting. Mark was by nature a very sociable person. So this highly unusual absence is a matter of concern to me, as it was to friends of his who asked in the months after his death if I had found out where he was that day.
The mystery of Mark’s whereabouts the day of his truck fire is even more of a concern in light of a statement made to me by my nephew John McKenna shortly after Mark’s death. John mentioned that on Sunday the week before the truck fire he had driven down from suburban Buffalo to show Mark his new motorcycle. Susan, John said, informed him that Mark wasn’t home, but he noticed that ordinary things of Mark’s, such as boots and jackets, were not around as they usually had been and that pictures of Mark were no longer on display. According to John, it looked as if Mark wasn’t living there. In the same conversation, John also referred to the fact that Mark's and Susan’s son Brian had got a DWI about that very same time.
In later conversations, John mentioned more specific information about Mark not living in his own home. He informed me that more than once my brother had spent a week or so, apparently not of his own accord, living with our mother (who, protective of Mark, had not revealed anything about this issue to me by the time of her death in November 2000). John also mentioned that Brian had explained why he himself was living with his grandmother (Mark’s and my mother) rather than with his parents from late 1999 to mid-2000. According to John, Brian stated that “Mark wouldn’t move out.” Since when does a sixteen or seventeen-year old boy have the right to expect his father to move out of his own house? I myself was very surprised to find Brian living in my family home when I went to visit my mother at Christmastime in 1999. To my query about why he was there, Brian simply replied, “I don’t get along with my father.”
John also mentioned his shock at Brian’s response when he picked him up at the Buffalo airport (presumably from school in Virginia) early in the afternoon on September 24, just after Mark died at the burn unit. According to John, Brian asked sarcastically, “What happened? Did Mark kill himself?” In a telephone call to me in November 2003, Brian was clearly not happy that I had been phoning Mark’s friends to ask what they had observed about Mark in the period before his death. He also expressed strong hostility toward his deceased father. When I asked him what my brother had ever done that was so terrible, he replied that several years earlier Mark had yelled at him for cashing a savings bond to buy a new golf club. Hadn’t Mark actually done his duty as a father in that instance? Although I waited to hear something more substantive, Brian had nothing more to say on the subject.
What Mark’s wife Susan says in her witness statement about his presence at home on September 23 also seems problematic. Susan states that she and Mark were “watching television around 7:30 p.m.” Yet Alexis Wright told me that when she and her husband Jim brought Mark home from his DWI arrest the day before, she had never seen anyone angrier than Mark’s wife. According to Alexis, Susan shouted to Mark, “Pack your bags and get the hell out,” among other statements that included vulgarity. When I spoke with firefighter Wayne Frank in 2005, he said it was well known that Susan had been furious over Mark’s DWI. One can be very angry, of course, and not act on those emotions. But Susan’s witness statement seems unrealistically to give the impression of domestic harmony. It is also a matter of concern to me that when D. A. Edward Sharkey instructed the State Police investigator to ask Mark’s wife to take a polygraph test in April 2004, Susan refused.
Peter Rapacioli’s statement to Inv. Kalfas, as recorded in the police report narrative for 9/25/03, does not in fact square with what he told me. Although I do not know Mr. Rapacioli, I was advised in early November 2003 by one of my brother’s friends to contact him because he had been involved in a charity football pool with Mark. According to the police report, Mr. Rapacioli “was on the telephone with Mrs. Pavlock, looking to speak with the victim, when she advised him of seeing the fire and hung up to call ‘911.’” But when I spoke with him around five weeks after Mark’s death, Mr. Rapacioli told me that he had tried unsuccessfully to reach Mark earlier that day. He said nothing whatsoever about being on the phone with Mark’s wife late that night when she saw the truck in flames in the field across the road. That seems too important a detail to fail to mention, especially to the victim’s sister.
The investigating authorities were informed by numerous individuals about problems related to the immediate circumstances of Mark’s truck fire. However, they clearly focused on the issue of Mark’s drinking (about which I will have more information in a future post). But they should also have taken other issues into consideration, including problematic attitudes toward Mark and statements about the day of the fire that didn’t add up.
I urge readers of this blog to go directly to the police report by clicking on the link on the right-hand side, where it is listed under “Official Documents.” The redactions seem unnecessarily abundant. According to the State Police official who responded to my FOIL request, sensitive information about police procedures would not be revealed. But why should the names and some of the substance of witness statements be blacked out? FOIL, after all, refers to freedom of information. But nonetheless where, for instance, does Inv. Kalfas record the Wrights’ observations when they brought Mark home from his DWI? Alexis assured me that they had reported that information in their interview with the investigator.
My brother’s character is also impugned in the police report, as though he had done little other than drink. But whatever faults Mark may have had (and using alcohol for relief in a period of personal stress is a problem), he was at heart a kind person, who among other things served his country in Vietnam and for many years performed a considerable amount of community service. He did not deserve to have third-degree burns inflicted over ninety percent of his body, and he does not deserve to have his reputation left as it is in that official record.
Most important, those responsible for Mark’s death ought to be held accountable. This blog should not have to compensate for an indifferent or ineffective justice system. But, sadly, that seems to be the case.
Inv. Edward Kalfas acknowledged to Att. Michael Kelly in 2005 that he had not been able to find anyone who saw Mark out the day of the truck fire. Although Mark’s absence in public places that day might conceivably have been the result of embarrassment over his DWI the day before, his wife Susan says in her witness statement that he left the house at 8:45 p.m. specifically to go to downtown Salamanca (presumably to one of the clubs or bars, the only places open at that hour). One must assume, then, that Mark was not so mortified over the DWI as to be unwilling to appear in public. Yet no one apparently saw him. In addition, shortly after his death, at least two individuals said that they had tried to reach Mark by phone the day of the fire but got no answer. His friend Jim Poole also told me that he had been very surprised not to get a call from Mark that day, since the previous evening (after he returned from the DWI) Mark had left a voice mail message promising to call back about helping Jim with some painting. Mark was by nature a very sociable person. So this highly unusual absence is a matter of concern to me, as it was to friends of his who asked in the months after his death if I had found out where he was that day.
The mystery of Mark’s whereabouts the day of his truck fire is even more of a concern in light of a statement made to me by my nephew John McKenna shortly after Mark’s death. John mentioned that on Sunday the week before the truck fire he had driven down from suburban Buffalo to show Mark his new motorcycle. Susan, John said, informed him that Mark wasn’t home, but he noticed that ordinary things of Mark’s, such as boots and jackets, were not around as they usually had been and that pictures of Mark were no longer on display. According to John, it looked as if Mark wasn’t living there. In the same conversation, John also referred to the fact that Mark's and Susan’s son Brian had got a DWI about that very same time.
In later conversations, John mentioned more specific information about Mark not living in his own home. He informed me that more than once my brother had spent a week or so, apparently not of his own accord, living with our mother (who, protective of Mark, had not revealed anything about this issue to me by the time of her death in November 2000). John also mentioned that Brian had explained why he himself was living with his grandmother (Mark’s and my mother) rather than with his parents from late 1999 to mid-2000. According to John, Brian stated that “Mark wouldn’t move out.” Since when does a sixteen or seventeen-year old boy have the right to expect his father to move out of his own house? I myself was very surprised to find Brian living in my family home when I went to visit my mother at Christmastime in 1999. To my query about why he was there, Brian simply replied, “I don’t get along with my father.”
John also mentioned his shock at Brian’s response when he picked him up at the Buffalo airport (presumably from school in Virginia) early in the afternoon on September 24, just after Mark died at the burn unit. According to John, Brian asked sarcastically, “What happened? Did Mark kill himself?” In a telephone call to me in November 2003, Brian was clearly not happy that I had been phoning Mark’s friends to ask what they had observed about Mark in the period before his death. He also expressed strong hostility toward his deceased father. When I asked him what my brother had ever done that was so terrible, he replied that several years earlier Mark had yelled at him for cashing a savings bond to buy a new golf club. Hadn’t Mark actually done his duty as a father in that instance? Although I waited to hear something more substantive, Brian had nothing more to say on the subject.
What Mark’s wife Susan says in her witness statement about his presence at home on September 23 also seems problematic. Susan states that she and Mark were “watching television around 7:30 p.m.” Yet Alexis Wright told me that when she and her husband Jim brought Mark home from his DWI arrest the day before, she had never seen anyone angrier than Mark’s wife. According to Alexis, Susan shouted to Mark, “Pack your bags and get the hell out,” among other statements that included vulgarity. When I spoke with firefighter Wayne Frank in 2005, he said it was well known that Susan had been furious over Mark’s DWI. One can be very angry, of course, and not act on those emotions. But Susan’s witness statement seems unrealistically to give the impression of domestic harmony. It is also a matter of concern to me that when D. A. Edward Sharkey instructed the State Police investigator to ask Mark’s wife to take a polygraph test in April 2004, Susan refused.
Peter Rapacioli’s statement to Inv. Kalfas, as recorded in the police report narrative for 9/25/03, does not in fact square with what he told me. Although I do not know Mr. Rapacioli, I was advised in early November 2003 by one of my brother’s friends to contact him because he had been involved in a charity football pool with Mark. According to the police report, Mr. Rapacioli “was on the telephone with Mrs. Pavlock, looking to speak with the victim, when she advised him of seeing the fire and hung up to call ‘911.’” But when I spoke with him around five weeks after Mark’s death, Mr. Rapacioli told me that he had tried unsuccessfully to reach Mark earlier that day. He said nothing whatsoever about being on the phone with Mark’s wife late that night when she saw the truck in flames in the field across the road. That seems too important a detail to fail to mention, especially to the victim’s sister.
The investigating authorities were informed by numerous individuals about problems related to the immediate circumstances of Mark’s truck fire. However, they clearly focused on the issue of Mark’s drinking (about which I will have more information in a future post). But they should also have taken other issues into consideration, including problematic attitudes toward Mark and statements about the day of the fire that didn’t add up.
I urge readers of this blog to go directly to the police report by clicking on the link on the right-hand side, where it is listed under “Official Documents.” The redactions seem unnecessarily abundant. According to the State Police official who responded to my FOIL request, sensitive information about police procedures would not be revealed. But why should the names and some of the substance of witness statements be blacked out? FOIL, after all, refers to freedom of information. But nonetheless where, for instance, does Inv. Kalfas record the Wrights’ observations when they brought Mark home from his DWI? Alexis assured me that they had reported that information in their interview with the investigator.
My brother’s character is also impugned in the police report, as though he had done little other than drink. But whatever faults Mark may have had (and using alcohol for relief in a period of personal stress is a problem), he was at heart a kind person, who among other things served his country in Vietnam and for many years performed a considerable amount of community service. He did not deserve to have third-degree burns inflicted over ninety percent of his body, and he does not deserve to have his reputation left as it is in that official record.
Most important, those responsible for Mark’s death ought to be held accountable. This blog should not have to compensate for an indifferent or ineffective justice system. But, sadly, that seems to be the case.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
A Closer Look at the Gas Can
This post focuses more specifically on the problem of the gasoline can found on the passenger’s side floor of my brother’s truck the night of the fire. The gas can raises a host of questions about the events of September 23, 2003, that cost Mark his life as a result of third-degree burns over ninety percent of his body.
Little is said about the gas can in the police and the fire investigator’s reports. Here is what the official documents and a statement by the State Police investigator reveal:
(1) An entry in the police report narrative for 09/24/03 lists among five items of evidence "the melted remains of a red plastic gas can."
(2) An entry in the police report narrative for 11/04/03 states the following: “Member received lab results from the Western Regional Crime Lab regarding the melted gas can and burnt clothing from the victim. Items tested positive for gasoline.”
(3) The fire investigator's report states that the gas can was found in the cab of Mark's truck on the floor of the passenger's side.
(4) In her witness statement (completed at 11:45 on the night of the fire), Mark's wife Susan states the following: "After the fire I realized that Mark had taken a plastic 5 gal. can of gas out of the garage but I don't know what he did with it."
(5) In a meeting with Att. Michael Kelly in September 2005, Inv. Kalfas stated the following: Mark's wife told him that she had purchased the gas can and that it was half-full, as she had used it to mow the lawn.
Earlier posts (September 22, 2010, and June 26, 2011) raised some basic questions: How did the gas can get into the cab of my brother’s truck when he never put gas cans there? Who put it there? Clearly, someone used that can to pour gasoline on the driver’s seat and on my brother himself and lit the match or lighter that triggered the fire. The fire investigator's report states that the fire started in the driver’s seat area and that there was “preparation,” and the attending physician at the burn unit told a nephew that Mark had been doused with a flammable liquid. The fire investigator's report also mentions that a lighter was found on the floor of the passenger's side of the truck, and the police report refers to a book of Winston matches secured from the scene but does not indicate specifically where it was found. Was the gas can open or not when the truck fire actually started? The police and the fire investigator’s reports do not say, nor do they indicate if testing was done on the can to try to determine the answer. As I recently learned from a forensics expert, it is important to know if the can was open or not, and forensics specialists could make that determination. Was Mark in the truck or around sixty feet away from it when he was doused with gasoline?
Apparently, there was no intense scrutiny of these matters. To judge from the police report and from oral statements by the authorities, it was simply assumed that Mark had put the gas can in the cab and that he had spilled gasoline on himself in an intoxicated condition or poured it on himself in an act of suicide or lit up a cigarette in a drowsy state after falling asleep in the truck (see February 2, 2012). Did the investigating authorities take as fact the statement (quoted above) by Mark's wife: "After the fire I realized that Mark had taken a plastic 5 gal. can of gas out of the garage but I don't know what he did with it." Did they then extend its implications and assume definitively that Mark had put that gas can in the truck? Besides acknowledging that she didn’t know “what he did with it,” Susan's comment provides no concrete evidence that Mark had any gas can in his possession at the time. For, according to her witness statement, Susan did not actually see Mark at any point after 8:45 p.m. until she ran out of the house when the truck went up in flames about 11:00 (see May 29, 2012).
Did the investigating authorities give equal credence to the statement by firefighter Mark Ward (also, as then superintendent of the Salamanca school system, Susan’s boss and a close personal friend of hers) that my brother had said the words “gasoline can” twice on the scene in his presence? Ward’s witness statement, however, differs from that of Gary Wind, who says that he heard my brother utter “something about gas,” but acknowledges that he “couldn’t make out anything he [Mark] was saying.” A previous post (November 30, 2011) deals with the problematic nature of claims about what my brother reportedly said when emergency workers arrived. Even N.Y.S.P. Lt. Allen acknowledged to me in 2007 that someone on the scene might have said, ”Did Mark say ‘gas’?” and the others around might have picked up on it. It may also be relevant that Ward’s witness statement was given not the night of the fire (as Gary Wind’s was), but on October 2, 2003, that is, nine days after the truck fire. Doubtless, people who had been on the scene were talking with one another about what they had seen and heard. Was a witness statement given nine days later influenced by the content of these exchanges after the incident?
It is surprising, furthermore, that the authorities were not troubled during the investigation by false or misleading statements about the gas can that had been made on the scene of the fire and shortly afterward. Numerous statements related to the gas can were in fact made in the hours after my brother was airlifted to the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo.
Here in this post I am concerned with one comment specifically. It was reported to me by my cousin Dennis Pavlock, who lives in Florida. Dennis informed me that Mark’s son Brian had called to ask him to be a pall bearer at the funeral. According to my cousin, Brian explained to him that Mark had been burned while putting gasoline into the tank of his truck after he ran out of gas. Immediately after Mark’s death, of course, my cousin did not know that Mark’s truck could not have run out of gas just before the fire because the tank was three-quarters full. But when he told me about the conversation, my cousin had learned the truth about the gas tank and was very concerned about Brian’s statement. What motivated Brian to tell Dennis that his father had been burned putting gasoline into the tank of his truck after he ran out of gas? No one on the scene who gave a witness statement, including Mark’s wife, even suggests the possibility that Mark’s tank had run out of gas prior to the fire. The bizarre location of the truck in the field would seem automatically to rule out that scenario. Brian’s statement seems even more unsettling in light of what his sister Christie told me about the same time: she claimed that her father had committed suicide and that he had left behind a suicide letter for her. She later denied to the police that she knew anything about a suicide or suicide note (see September 22, 2010).
After hearing many troubling things about the circumstances of my brother’s death, I wrote letters to then Cattaraugus County D.A. Edward Sharkey. In the one dated March 27, 2004, I reported the statement made to my cousin about the gas can as well as other very relevant information Dennis had passed on to me from a firefighter on the scene. I also included a telephone number by which he could be reached. However, Dennis later told me that he had never been contacted by anyone in the investigation.
Given the suspicious circumstances of Mark’s death, everything concerning the gas can should have been seriously scrutinized. It was, after all, a potential murder weapon.
Little is said about the gas can in the police and the fire investigator’s reports. Here is what the official documents and a statement by the State Police investigator reveal:
(1) An entry in the police report narrative for 09/24/03 lists among five items of evidence "the melted remains of a red plastic gas can."
(2) An entry in the police report narrative for 11/04/03 states the following: “Member received lab results from the Western Regional Crime Lab regarding the melted gas can and burnt clothing from the victim. Items tested positive for gasoline.”
(3) The fire investigator's report states that the gas can was found in the cab of Mark's truck on the floor of the passenger's side.
(4) In her witness statement (completed at 11:45 on the night of the fire), Mark's wife Susan states the following: "After the fire I realized that Mark had taken a plastic 5 gal. can of gas out of the garage but I don't know what he did with it."
(5) In a meeting with Att. Michael Kelly in September 2005, Inv. Kalfas stated the following: Mark's wife told him that she had purchased the gas can and that it was half-full, as she had used it to mow the lawn.
Earlier posts (September 22, 2010, and June 26, 2011) raised some basic questions: How did the gas can get into the cab of my brother’s truck when he never put gas cans there? Who put it there? Clearly, someone used that can to pour gasoline on the driver’s seat and on my brother himself and lit the match or lighter that triggered the fire. The fire investigator's report states that the fire started in the driver’s seat area and that there was “preparation,” and the attending physician at the burn unit told a nephew that Mark had been doused with a flammable liquid. The fire investigator's report also mentions that a lighter was found on the floor of the passenger's side of the truck, and the police report refers to a book of Winston matches secured from the scene but does not indicate specifically where it was found. Was the gas can open or not when the truck fire actually started? The police and the fire investigator’s reports do not say, nor do they indicate if testing was done on the can to try to determine the answer. As I recently learned from a forensics expert, it is important to know if the can was open or not, and forensics specialists could make that determination. Was Mark in the truck or around sixty feet away from it when he was doused with gasoline?
Apparently, there was no intense scrutiny of these matters. To judge from the police report and from oral statements by the authorities, it was simply assumed that Mark had put the gas can in the cab and that he had spilled gasoline on himself in an intoxicated condition or poured it on himself in an act of suicide or lit up a cigarette in a drowsy state after falling asleep in the truck (see February 2, 2012). Did the investigating authorities take as fact the statement (quoted above) by Mark's wife: "After the fire I realized that Mark had taken a plastic 5 gal. can of gas out of the garage but I don't know what he did with it." Did they then extend its implications and assume definitively that Mark had put that gas can in the truck? Besides acknowledging that she didn’t know “what he did with it,” Susan's comment provides no concrete evidence that Mark had any gas can in his possession at the time. For, according to her witness statement, Susan did not actually see Mark at any point after 8:45 p.m. until she ran out of the house when the truck went up in flames about 11:00 (see May 29, 2012).
Did the investigating authorities give equal credence to the statement by firefighter Mark Ward (also, as then superintendent of the Salamanca school system, Susan’s boss and a close personal friend of hers) that my brother had said the words “gasoline can” twice on the scene in his presence? Ward’s witness statement, however, differs from that of Gary Wind, who says that he heard my brother utter “something about gas,” but acknowledges that he “couldn’t make out anything he [Mark] was saying.” A previous post (November 30, 2011) deals with the problematic nature of claims about what my brother reportedly said when emergency workers arrived. Even N.Y.S.P. Lt. Allen acknowledged to me in 2007 that someone on the scene might have said, ”Did Mark say ‘gas’?” and the others around might have picked up on it. It may also be relevant that Ward’s witness statement was given not the night of the fire (as Gary Wind’s was), but on October 2, 2003, that is, nine days after the truck fire. Doubtless, people who had been on the scene were talking with one another about what they had seen and heard. Was a witness statement given nine days later influenced by the content of these exchanges after the incident?
It is surprising, furthermore, that the authorities were not troubled during the investigation by false or misleading statements about the gas can that had been made on the scene of the fire and shortly afterward. Numerous statements related to the gas can were in fact made in the hours after my brother was airlifted to the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo.
Here in this post I am concerned with one comment specifically. It was reported to me by my cousin Dennis Pavlock, who lives in Florida. Dennis informed me that Mark’s son Brian had called to ask him to be a pall bearer at the funeral. According to my cousin, Brian explained to him that Mark had been burned while putting gasoline into the tank of his truck after he ran out of gas. Immediately after Mark’s death, of course, my cousin did not know that Mark’s truck could not have run out of gas just before the fire because the tank was three-quarters full. But when he told me about the conversation, my cousin had learned the truth about the gas tank and was very concerned about Brian’s statement. What motivated Brian to tell Dennis that his father had been burned putting gasoline into the tank of his truck after he ran out of gas? No one on the scene who gave a witness statement, including Mark’s wife, even suggests the possibility that Mark’s tank had run out of gas prior to the fire. The bizarre location of the truck in the field would seem automatically to rule out that scenario. Brian’s statement seems even more unsettling in light of what his sister Christie told me about the same time: she claimed that her father had committed suicide and that he had left behind a suicide letter for her. She later denied to the police that she knew anything about a suicide or suicide note (see September 22, 2010).
After hearing many troubling things about the circumstances of my brother’s death, I wrote letters to then Cattaraugus County D.A. Edward Sharkey. In the one dated March 27, 2004, I reported the statement made to my cousin about the gas can as well as other very relevant information Dennis had passed on to me from a firefighter on the scene. I also included a telephone number by which he could be reached. However, Dennis later told me that he had never been contacted by anyone in the investigation.
Given the suspicious circumstances of Mark’s death, everything concerning the gas can should have been seriously scrutinized. It was, after all, a potential murder weapon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)