More on the Alleged Phone Call Just before Mark’s Truck Fire

This post further discusses the problem of the alleged phone call between my brother’s wife Susan Pavlock and Peter Rapacioli from around 10:30 to 10:55 p.m. the night of the truck fire.  At the end of the call, Susan allegedly told Rapacioli that she had to hang up because she saw flames in the field across from the house and was going to call “911.”  As mentioned in previous posts (see May 15, June 26, and December 24, 2013), this alleged phone call raises numerous questions.  It is, then, a matter of considerable concern that the New York State Police investigators did not verify that call and refused to do so when they were asked to check the phone records in 2005.  The present post raises another problem related to Rapacioli’s statements about that call.

As stated in the previous post (March 3, 2014), I would have preferred to convey sensitive information only to the relevant authorities.  But since they have turned deaf ears to compelling evidence that my brother was murdered, I have no choice but to make public more of the information I have obtained about Mark’s death.  One such piece of information concerns Rapacioli’s claim that he could not reach Mark the day of the truck fire and therefore called his house late that night.
 
As recorded in the narrative of the police report for September 25, 2003, Rapacioli was on the phone with Susan but intended to speak with Mark about a charity football pool.  Rapacioli himself told me just weeks after my brother’s death that he had tried to reach Mark early in the day but was unsuccessful.  Yet when he telephoned me on June 5, 2013, he insisted that he had called my brother “numerous times” throughout the day but could not reach him.  In November 2004, however, my cousin Dennis Pavlock mentioned a very different statement by Rapacioli about speaking to Mark on the day of the truck fire.

Dennis mentioned the circumstances under which he happened to speak with Rapacioli: they met at the Holy Cross Athletic Club in May 2004 when Dennis went there with Gary Subulski during a visit to Salamanca.  According to Dennis, Rapacioli told him that he in fact had talked to Mark on the day of the truck fire.  Dennis added specific details from that conversation at the Holy Cross Club: Rapacioli mentioned that in their discussion about the football pool, Mark told him that they were losing and that he was going to do it over.

The discrepancies in Rapacioli’s statements in the only two conversations I have had with him (November 1, 2003, and June 5, 2013) are a matter of deep concern to me.  His statements to my cousin Dennis, as related above, are very troubling.  They raise further concerns about the quality of the investigation by the New York State Police, in particular about their refusal to check the telephone records related to that alleged call just before my brother’s truck burst into flames and he was found burning to death in the field across from his house.


               

More on the Problem of Mark’s Whereabouts the Day of the Fire

This post picks up on a problem previously discussed at length on this blog (see August 22, 2012): where was Mark on September 23, 2003, prior to his truck fire?  None of his friends saw him that day, nor did any of them have any contact with him by telephone, even though efforts were made to do so.  The State Police investigator also acknowledged that he had not been able to find anyone who had seen my brother out that day.  The only person known to have seen Mark that day is his wife, as recorded in her witness statement in the police report. 

The issue is important because shortly before 11:00 p.m., Mark must have been attacked in the extension of his driveway where he normally parked his truck because he left a significant pool of blood there.  As I’ve mentioned in several recent posts, he couldn’t simply have “fallen” and hit his nose or cut his head.  That scenario would presume that he was very drunk, but if so, then he couldn’t possibly have backed his truck in a straight line down his driveway and fifty feet into the field.  But that is the way the truck went down the driveway.  Whether my brother had been drinking or not does not change the clear implications of the physical evidence: he was beaten up, and someone else, presumably one of his attackers, drove his truck down the driveway and into the field, where Mark was doused with gasoline and set on fire and a gas can was ignited inside his truck.  So, how did Mark come to be in such a vulnerable position in or right next to his truck in the extension of his driveway shortly before 11 p.m.?

The only known information about Mark’s whereabouts that day is what his wife Susan says in her witness statement.  She states that Mark was at home in the afternoon and left the house about 8:45 p.m. to go to “downtown Salamanca.”  As the post of August 22, 2012, indicates, it is difficult, then, to understand why several people either expected to hear from my brother but didn’t or attempted unsuccessfully to reach him.  Mark’s friend Jim Poole, for instance, told me that my brother had left a message for him the previous evening that he would explain why he hadn’t come over to help him paint that day, but never got back to him.  More important, at least two individuals said that they had called the house that day for Mark but got no response.  It would certainly be uncharacteristic of my brother not to answer the phone.  More recently, as mentioned in the post of June 26, 2013, Peter Rapacioli insisted in his phone call to me on June 5 that he had called “Susie” around 10:30 p.m. because he had tried numerous times “throughout the day” to speak with Mark by phone but could not reach him. 

I had hoped that by now this case would be reopened and that many such problems would have been resolved.  Obviously, a check of Mark’s and other relevant individuals’ phone records would have shed some light on this particular issue.  But since officials thus far have refused to re-investigate Mark's death, I have no choice but to reveal information passed on to me in hopes that it might motivate some decent person who knows the truth to come forward.  Therefore, I report now a comment made to me by my cousin Dennis Pavlock not long after my brother’s death.

When I expressed concern about Mark’s whereabouts the day of the truck fire, Dennis said that he had been told by one of my brother’s close friends (whose name I will not reveal at this point) that Susan had locked him out of the house that day, as she had done on other occasions.  Stunned at this revelation, I asked Dennis where my brother had slept at such times.  Dennis replied that Mark had slept in his truck and that he had in fact slept there the night of the fire.

I myself, of course, cannot verify that Mark was actually locked out of his house that night.  But my nephew John McKenna indirectly offered some support for what Dennis reported.  Several years ago, John acknowledged that he had been concerned when he discovered that on more than one occasion Mark had had to stay at our mother’s house for several days at a time.  Unfortunately, my mother did not tell me about the problem, but wrote in a letter not long before her death in November 2000 that Susan treated Mark “like dirt.”  Furthermore, according to Alexis Wright, who with her husband picked Mark up from his DWI the day before the truck fire, Susan shouted to him, “Pack your bags and get the hell out!”  As Alexis also mentioned, Susan added that she should have thrown him out long before.  In addition, it is unclear how long my brother stayed at Todd Lindell’s after his truck was retrieved the night of his DWI.  Todd told me that Mark had remained at his house late.  But when I tried to get clarification on that issue as well as on Todd’s statement that “Mark would be alive today if he hadn’t gotten the DWI,” he did not return my call.

Did Mark actually have to stay in his truck the night of September 23, 2003?  In that case, he would have been in a very vulnerable situation if someone with malevolent intentions approached the truck as he slept.  

I can only imagine what my brother was thinking when he lay near death with such severe burns over most of his body.  But I am certain that he would want those who took his life by such a savage act to be brought to justice.  As I am the closest living relative from Mark’s birth family, it has fallen on me to act on his behalf.  Since he has no voice, I speak out for him and will continue to do so until the truth is made known and those who took his life are brought to justice.  If some people are critical of me for revealing “sensitive” information relevant to Mark’s death, they might better look into their own conscience.

                   

A Follow-up on the Claim of Suicide

Two earlier posts (December 11, 2010, and March 27, 2012) focused on the view expressed by New York State Police and Cattaraugus County District Attorney that Mark’s death was most likely a suicide, though it was officially called an accident.  As recent posts (September 23, 2013, and October, 29, 2013) indicate, Mark certainly did not back his truck into that field the night of his fire as the State Police claim he did in an intoxicated state.  Someone else had to have driven the truck there.  Furthermore, if he was not intoxicated, Mark would not have fallen as the State Police claim he did and would not have left a significant pool of blood right where he normally parked his truck. But since the State Police continued well beyond the investigation to insist that suicide was the likely cause of my brother's death, this post follows up on the questionable bases for that claim.

Statements made about the likelihood of a suicide were expressed by Inv. Edward Kalfas, Sr. Inv. John Wolfe, Capt. George Brown, Lt. Allen, and D.A. Edward Sharkey.  Inv. Kalfas gave the following three reasons to support the theory that Mark had been depressed: the death of his dog a month or so earlier, his son's DWI the previous week, and his own DWI the day before the truck fire.  In the post of March 27, 2012, I expressed my concerns about the origin of these alleged motivations for depression and offered concrete evidence to counter them. 

It is not necessary to reiterate here the information in those previous posts.  But a few important points in the post of March 2012 should be restated.  First, on the issue of Mark’s alleged depression over his DWI the day before the truck fire, there is a significant problem with Inv. Kalfas’s entry in the police report for September 25, 2003.  Although he records that members of the Holy Cross Athletic Club commented that Mark “was very upset at getting arrested for DWI the day before the fire,” he admitted to Atty. Michael Kelly in September 2005 that he had not found anyone who saw Mark out the day after the DWI.  Therefore, those club members had no opportunity to observe Mark's reaction to his DWI.  Second, Mark's interaction with friends shortly after his release from jail conflicts with the State Police's position that he was depressed as a result of the DWI.  Third, it is unclear to what extent a highly problematic statement to me by Mark's daughter that he had left her a suicide letter may have influenced the investigating authorities.  [On the report of a recent claim by Mark’s wife Susan that Mark left a suicide letter, see the post of November 23, 2013.]

In referring to a meeting in May 2010 with current Cattaraugus County D.A. Lori Rieman, I also brought up the comment by former Sr. Inv. John Ensell, Inv. Kalfas's immediate superior at the time of the investigation, that my brother had been under a “suicide watch” while in jail. Since Mr. Ensell was obviously implying that Mark’s mental state immediately after his arrest was an issue, I raised a question in my post of March 2012 about the conditions under which a suicide watch might have been held.  I have since learned that a suicide watch is merely routine procedure in that upstate New York town for an arrest such as a DWI.

Around a year after my brother’s death, I spoke with the claims agent of an insurance company potentially responsible for the cost of the Medivac airlift to the Erie County Medical Center and of Mark’s treatment in the burn unit.  Statements to me by the agent have been a matter of concern for two reasons. 

First, when the company looked into the cause of the fire, certain people on the scene who agreed to speak with their investigator only “off the record” told him that it looked like a suicide.  The claims agent did not explain to me what the basis was for that determination.  Of course, the people who spoke to the insurance investigator could not have had all the information necessary to make a definitive judgment.  But why did they insist on speaking only “off the record”?  Individuals presuming to have the knowledge to make such a claim should not hide behind a cloak of anonymity.  Furthermore, if they told the insurance investigator that it looked like a suicide, did these individuals make the same claim to the State Police investigator?  Allegations by certain people that my brother spoke clearly to them on the scene led the authorities to insist that Mark had not said anything about foul play and therefore had not been the victim of a murder.  But such comments (e.g., by Mark’s neighbor Dan Smith) fly in the face of the known facts, including the official report that Mark could not communicate at all on the airlift to E.C.M.C. (see November 30, 2011, and March 13, 2013).

It would be useful to know what specific individuals claimed that Mark’s death looked like a suicide and to learn how they arrived at that conclusion.  I believe I can say confidently that it was not Gary Wind (firefighter and then deputy sheriff), Wayne Frank (firefighter), or Cheryl Simcox (EMT), all of whom told me emphatically that Mark’s death did not look like a suicide.  Besides neighbor Dan Smith (who was there only briefly), the following are the only other individuals who I learned were on the scene: Mark Ward (firefighter, also close friend of Mark’s wife), Josh Newmark (EMT), Christopher Baker (fire investigator), Steve Arrowsmith (then Salamanca policeman), and Patrick Welch (police cadet and close friend of Mark’s son Brian).  There were others, of course, including members of the fire investigation team, but I do not know their identity.

Second, the claims agent was very surprised when I brought up the pool of Mark’s blood found in the driveway where he usually parked his truck.  The agent responded that the State Police investigator had not mentioned the pool of blood to them and in fact refused to let them see the police report when they asked for it.  As Atty. Michael Kelly stated to me in 2005, Inv. Kalfas should have let the insurance company read the police report.  Did Inv. Kalfas want the insurance company not to find out about the pool of Mark’s blood on the scene?

A conversation with my half-sister Carol McKenna in November 2004 is another matter of concern to me.  I had called Carol to ask her to contact Olean Times reporter John Eberth to urge the paper to print an article on Mark’s death.  In the course of the conversation, I mentioned that, according to Eberth, Inv. Kalfas told him that Carol believed Mark’s death was an accident.  Carol immediately exclaimed, “Why is Kalfas lying about me?  The subject of accident never came up.”  Carol made it clear that suicide was the focus in Inv. Kalfas's telephone conversations with her about Mark's death.

The report by my nephew John McKenna of a conversation that he had with one of Susan’s sisters also remains troubling to me.  According to John, Calla Smith, who was staying with Susan at the time, told him the day after Mark’s death that it looked as if the police were going to rule it a suicide.  As mentioned previously (see November 1, 2012), how could Susan’s sister possibly have known that?  To whom had she been speaking about the case?  The investigation, after all, had barely begun.

Finally, in light of the events of September 23, 2003, and those allegations of suicide, I remain concerned about the matter of a pistol Mark owned.  According to a relative, some months before his death my brother mentioned that he had obtained a license for a pistol.  This relative was also quite certain that Mark had referred to keeping the pistol in the glove compartment of his truck.  That made sense since, as someone pointed out, the M & M’s gas station where my brother was a security guard is rather isolated.  This pistol was in fact the gun that my brother mentioned to then deputy sheriff Gary Wind after he found a burned-out vehicle with Bill Duhan in it (see February 4, 2013).  Assuming that Mr. Duhan had committed suicide, Mark said, “I’d never do that to myself.  If I wanted to take my own life, I’d use a forty-five.”  My brother expressed his opinion about self-immolation clearly and cogently.  He would never have burned himself to death.

   

What happened to that pistol?  There is no reference in the police report to any gun found in Mark’s truck or elsewhere on the scene.  It makes one wonder further about what exactly took place in the driveway the night of that truck fire.  The events that led directly to Mark’s death would seem to have started right next to the driver’s side of his truck.  That’s where the pool of blood was found, near the left front bumper area when the truck was parked there.  That is also presumably where Mark got the wound on his forehead that Wayne Frank thought looked as if he had been hit with a nine-iron.  Or possibly with a pistol, if his attackers removed it from the glove compartment? 

A Follow-up on an Unexpected Phone Call

This post picks up a particular unresolved issue brought up in my post of June 26, 2013, on an unexpected phone call I received from a man identifying himself as Pete Rapacioli, who was obviously not pleased that he had been mentioned on my blog.  Rapacioli said that he himself had not read my blog but had been informed about it by numerous individuals.  My post of May 15, 2013, in fact focuses on the alleged telephone call between Rapacioli and my brother’s wife Susan between 10:30 and 10:55, just before Mark’s truck fire. 

Although it is not the focus of this post, that alleged call remains a matter of considerable concern for a number of reasons.  Here, I will briefly indicate why Rapacioli’s comments in June about the issue were unsatisfactory.  First, his claim to have tried to reach Mark about a charity football pool numerous times throughout the day conflicts with his statement to me in November 2003 that he had only called early in the day, but failed to reach Mark.  Second, Rapacioli’s claim to have called my brother throughout the day is hard to reconcile with the official statement in the police report by Mark’s wife that he was at home in the afternoon and the evening until 8:45.  Third, Rapacioli contradicted himself by stating at one point that he had called “Susie” to give her the amount and the winner of the pool but at another point that he and Mark had needed to coordinate their information to determine the winner.  Fourth, Rapacioli did not explain why he had been on the phone with Susan for nearly half an hour, since it should not have taken him very long at all to report his pool results.

This post, however, is concerned with Rapacioli's response when I brought up a comment by Mark’s friend Jack Plonka in November 2003 that Pete, who is his cousin, planned to read the police report because he had a relative on the police force.  Rapacioli replied that this relative was perhaps Denny Ambuske, his ex-brother-in-law, who had worked on the police force, but he immediately rejected the idea, saying that Denny had already left the force long before Mark’s death.  Rapacioli then claimed that he didn't know who it could be and insisted that he didn’t know why Jack had said that.  From my point of view, it seems unlikely that Jack would have simply made up his statement that Pete planned to read the police report through a relative on the police force, since Jack himself was obviously shocked at what had happened and did not understand how Mark could have been burned to death. 

At the end of his call to me on June 5, as reported in the post of June 26, Rapacioli mentioned that his daughter and her husband lived in the house at the intersection of Cross and Whalen Roads and added that they had slept through the entire incident. Although I asked for his daughter’s name, Rapacioli did not reply.  I then expressed my skepticism that the occupants of that house could have slept through the sirens of police cars and fire trucks and through the noise of the helicopter landing in the field or near to it and that they did not hear the explosion which Cheryl Simcox said had rocked their trailer, not much farther from the intersection of Whalen and Cross Roads (see the post of May 15, 2013).  Rapacioli had no response.

Quite unexpectedly, I recently learned the identity of a relative of Rapacioli's on the Salamanca police force.  An obituary in October for a man named Cas Myers, a long-time banker, noted that Mr. Myers had two sons, Joseph, who lives in Great Valley, and Paul, who lives in Salamanca.  Joseph Myers, it turns out, lives at 6761 Cross Road (see photo below) and is married to Tracie Rapacioli.  Thus, Rapacioli's daughter Tracie and her husband Joseph Myers reside in the house by the intersection of Cross and Whalen Roads.  They were presumably living there together when Mark was killed since Rapacioli said that his daughter and her husband had slept through the incident.

Entrance to 6761 Cross Road, facing the field where Mark's truck burned

Tracie Rapacioli-Myers is married to the brother of the Salamanca Police Chief Paul Myers, who was on the Salamanca police force at the time of my brother's death.  Pete Rapacioli thus is (and was presumably back in 2003) related by marriage to Paul Myers, his daughter's brother-in-law.  How is it, then, that in his phone call to me on June 5 Rapacioli claimed to have no idea what relative of his on the police force Jack Plonka could have meant?  Rapacioli had very quickly remembered the name of another in-law, Denny Ambuske, who he said had been on the police force long before Mark was killed.  Is one supposed to believe that Rapacioli was somehow unable to think of an in-law who was on the force back in 2003 and who is presently Chief of Police?

The issue of Rapacioli's relative on the police force became a concern to me during the investigation into my brother's death after one of my relatives mentioned that the Salamanca police were being very “tight-lipped” about Mark's truck fire.  Their reported silence seemed very odd since Mark had actually lived in Salamanca--or spent much of his time there--all of his life, except for his training in the Army and service in Vietnam.  As mentioned in the post of December 31, 2011, it is not clear why Salamanca police were on the scene of Mark’s truck fire.  Did they have any role, direct or indirect, in the investigation into Mark’s death?  Why, ten years later, was Rapacioli unwilling to reveal his daughter’s name and, by extension, his own connection with a long-term member of the Salamanca police force?

My post of October 29, 2013, made it clear that the State Police investigator knew very well that my brother could not possibly have backed his truck in a straight line down his driveway and into the field, where it went up in flames and he himself lay burning to death sixty feet away.  If he was intoxicated, Mark could not have backed his truck straight down his driveway.  His DWI arrest record the day before the truck fire makes that clear.  If he was not intoxicated, Mark certainly would not have fallen in his driveway, as the police claim; in that case, he would not have left a pool of blood there and sustained injuries to his forehead and the left side of his face.  The insistence by the State Police that Mark caused his own death because of his alleged intoxication simply does not hold up, and they have known it all along.

For my part, I will continue my quest for justice for my brother and will reach out to all relevant authorities until I find someone willing to stand up for what is right and bring Mark's murderers to justice.

Conflicting Claims about a Suicide Letter

This post takes up the claim made to me by my brother's daughter that he left her a suicide letter.  This troubling issue was briefly discussed in the original post (September 22, 2010).  Because another claim about this alleged suicide letter was recently reported to a relative and brought to my attention, it is important to re-examine this problematic issue.

As indicated in the original post, I was not notified about the fire and my brother's injuries until the following morning and was thus unable to get to the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo before he died.  After I made numerous unsuccessful attempts to reach his wife during the afternoon, their son Brian answered the phone in the early evening but informed me that his mother was in the shower.  Although Brian told my cousin Dennis very soon afterwards that Mark had been burned while putting gasoline into the tank after the truck ran out of gas (see posts of July 22 and September 22, 2012, and July 28, 2013), he said nothing whatsoever about the cause of the fire to me that evening.  Instead, he told me that his sister wanted to speak to me.

Christie calmly asserted that her father had committed suicide and added that she was not telling anyone else, except for her mother and brother, in order to protect the insurance money.  When I expressed skepticism about Mark taking his own life, Christie explained that my brother had been depressed over the deaths of our father and mother.  However, I knew that my brother had long ago got over the loss of our father, nearly nine years earlier, and had not shown any difficulty dealing with the loss of our mother, nearly three years before.  In addition, Christie, a psychology student at the time, connected Mark's alleged suicide with what she called his “low self-esteem.”  Never having observed any noticeable problems with Mark's sense of self-worth, I continued to express skepticism about Christie's claims. 

Even more surprisingly, Christie added that Mark had frequently told her that he no longer wished to live.  As became very clear in the weeks and months ahead, however, my brother had expressed no such desire to end his life to anyone else with whom I spoke.  Finally, Christie offered more tangible support for her claim: Mark had left her a suicide letter.  When I expressed disbelief, she claimed that the letter began as follows: “By the time you read this, I will be dead.”  Those words, however, did not ring true: my brother was in no way melodramatic. 

The statements made by Christie raise two serious questions.  First, why did Mark's twenty-three year old daughter make such transparently dubious claims about her father's death?  To my knowledge, daughters (myself included) are normally grief-stricken at the loss of their father and would shrink from fabricating anything that would make him seem culpable for his own death.  Second, why did she bring up the issue of insurance money?  It seems strange for a daughter to have any knowledge of her father's life insurance and even more so for her to express such a concern just hours after his death. 

As observed in the original post, I promptly informed the State Police investigator of Christie's claim about a suicide letter.  I also reported the information by letter to D. A. Edward Sharkey in December 2003.  In both instances, I offered to take a polygraph test in case they had any doubts about my credibility.  Inv. Kalfas declined my offer, stating that he didn't know what good it would do.  Mr. Sharkey said nothing.  Although her name is redacted, an entry in the police report for October 25, 2003, indicates that Inv. Kalfas asked Christie about the alleged suicide letter.  Here is what he recorded: “She has no information regarding rumors of a suicide note or pre-planned funeral arrangements.”  But since her statement in the police report contradicts what she told me the evening of Mark's death, Christie clearly lied either to Kalfas or to me.  Given the flimsy basis of her suicide story, it would appear that she lied to me.  But that lie was a serious one in itself and all the more so in connection to an expressed interest in insurance money.

Furthermore, these contradictory statements about the alleged suicide letter should have raised concerns for Inv. Kalfas because Christie was implicated in another contradiction at that same interview in October 2003.   In denying that she knew anything about “pre-planned funeral arrangements,” Christie was clearly indicating that she did not know why Mark had been cremated.  Yet, according to my half-sister Carol McKenna, Mark's wife explained that he had told Christie he wanted to be cremated.  Susan's statement to Carol and Christie's to Kalfas on the issue of cremation are obviously contradictory.  One of them must be false. 

As with so many suspicious elements surrounding Mark's truck fire, the investigating authorities failed to probe in any meaningful way the problem of the alleged suicide letter.  At their meeting in 2005, Inv. Kalfas told Atty. Michael Kelly that when Christie denied knowing anything about a suicide letter, he did not know what to do about it.  To judge from his entry in the police report in which he refers to asking her about “rumors of a suicide note,” Kalfas does not seem to have tried very hard to elicit the truth from Christie.  His phrase “rumors of a suicide note” is hardly a fair description of the detailed first-hand account that I gave him of Christie's claims just hours after my brother's death.  Should he not have mentioned very specific statements Christie made to me, including the matter of the life insurance, and judged by her reaction if she was telling the truth or lying? 

When I brought up the alleged suicide letter to Sr. Inv. John Wolfe in October 2005, he said that he wanted to talk to Christie about the issue but that she had not returned his call.  When I raised the issue with Capt. George Brown in February 2006, he simply insisted that Christie had just said something foolish on the spur of the moment.  But would a twenty-three year old college-educated woman really say such outrageous things about her own father “on the spur of the moment,” just hours after his death from third-degree burns?  I think not.  When I raised the issue with former Sr. Inv. John Ensell in May 2010, he insisted that Christie had been interviewed twice.  However, the police report mentions only the interview on October 25, and no other officials referred to more than one.

A few months ago, I was surprised to hear that the claim of a suicide letter had again been made by one of Mark's family members.  This time Mark's wife was reported to be the source of the claim.  My nephew Tom McKenna mentioned that, not too long before, his mother had referred to going out for pizza with Susan and Christie in Arizona, where they all live.  According to Tom, Carol told him that Susan had said that Mark really did leave a suicide letter.  Christie reacted, Tom added, by dropping her mouth in shock.  Tom himself shared my skepticism about the existence of any suicide letter by Mark.  But, regardless, what could have prompted Mark's wife to make that claim about a suicide letter nearly ten years after his death?  Could she have forgotten that she had firmly denied the existence of a suicide letter to Inv. Kalfas during the investigation in 2003?  Here is what Kalfas records in his entry for his interview with Susan on December 12, 2003: she “also stated that there was [sic] no notes or letters left by the victim.”

There can be no doubt that the questionable statements and contradictions made by Mark's wife and daughter should have been scrutinized by the State Police investigators, namely Inv. Kalfas and his immediate superior Sr. Inv. John Ensell.  Why weren't those State Police officials troubled by the problems discussed here, among so many others?  My brother not only lost his life in that suspicious fire but also lost his reputation by those allegations of a suicide letter.  Mark cannot have his life back, but his reputation can be restored.  It must be.  What it will take is an honest investigation.

More on Mark’s Blood Alcohol Level and His Arrest for DWI

The last two posts (September 1 and September 23, 2013) offered a scientific critique of the post-mortem .25 serum alcohol level (which would have made my brother's blood alcohol level approximately .46 at the time of the truck fire) and discussed implications of the records related to Mark’s arrest for DWI the day before the fire.  As mentioned in the previous post, the police records show that when Mark was arrested for weaving back and forth while driving his truck and for failing all the sobriety field tests given to him, he had a .28 blood alcohol level.  As that post pointed out, if my brother could not drive his truck without weaving on a city street with a .28 blood alcohol level, he could not possibly have backed his truck down his long driveway in a perfectly straight line and fifty feet into the field across the road with a .46 blood alcohol level. 

This post further considers problems with the insistence by the New York State Police that Mark did back his truck down the driveway and into the field, where he spilled or poured gasoline on himself and set his truck on fire, inflicting the fatal burns to his body.  As observed in the previous post, there was a very narrow window--to judge by his wife’s witness statement--for Mark to have drunk the amount necessary to obtain such an extremely high blood alcohol level as .46. 

Two inferences are clear: (1) If Mark was intoxicated the night of the truck fire, then he did not back his truck down the driveway with the tire tracks in a straight line, as witnesses on the scene observed.  State Police members also must have seen those tire marks; according to the police report, Trooper Chandler and Sgt. Frankowski as well as Inv. Kalfas were on the scene that night.  (2) If Mark was not intoxicated, then he did not stumble and fall--as the State Police insist he did–leaving a pool of his blood in his driveway (actually, two circular pools of blood, each about four inches in diameter, according to one emergency worker on the scene).  The blood was located in the area where my brother normally parked his truck, specifically where the driver’s side bumper would have been, according to an emergency worker on the scene. 

The State Police cannot have it both ways: my brother could not have backed his truck in a straight line into the field in an intoxicated state, and in a sober state he would not have fallen next to his truck, losing a significant amount of blood.  Certain conclusions can be readily drawn.  First, Mark did not back his truck down the driveway in a straight line and into the field.  He could not have done that in an intoxicated state, and he would have had no reason whatsoever to do so in a sober state.  Clearly, whoever drove the truck into the field did so with malicious intentions.  In addition, the wound to my brother’s forehead, observed by a firefighter on the scene, and soft tissue damage to both his forehead and the left side of his face, observed by his attending physician at the burn unit, make the existence of the pool of blood very suspicious (see the post of September 22, 2010).  Furthermore, it is not likely that only one person was involved, since Mark was very strong and muscular and would have made an effort to fight off his attackers.  Given these and other suspicious facts (e.g., the gas can in the cab of Mark’s truck), the investigating authorities should have looked carefully at all individuals who had shown noticeably hostile behavior to my brother in the period immediately before his death.

The State Police’s insistence on the “accident” or “suicide” theory, based on the claim that my brother drove his truck into the field in a highly intoxicated state, is particularly troubling, given that Inv. Kalfas told me that he had checked on Mark’s DWI report and knew about the .28 blood alcohol level.  He thus also knew about Mark’s inability to drive his truck without weaving all over the road the day before the fire.  Kalfas’s superiors with whom I spoke also clearly knew about the DWI, yet they continued to reiterate a totally unfounded story of accident or suicide.

Here is what they said about the truck ending up in the field: (1) In October 2005, Sr. Inv. John Wolfe insisted that Mark himself had driven the truck into field.  He claimed, with highly questionable logic, that if Mark had been attacked, he would have to have been placed in the passenger’s seat and then taken out and put into the driver’s seat after the truck was driven into the field.  Deeming that unlikely, Wolfe was insistent that Mark must have driven his truck to the field.  (See the post of February 4, 2013, for a scenario explaining how Mark ended up in the field that is far more consistent with the actual evidence.)  (2) In February 2006, Capt. George Brown also insisted that Mark himself had driven his truck into the field, specifically in order to move it away from the property so that he could commit suicide (i.e., without setting the house on fire).  (3) In April 2007, Lt. Allen offered the following explanation: Mark probably fell in the driveway, hit his head, causing the pool of blood, then got disoriented, and drove his truck into the field.  (If Mark was allegedly not only extremely drunk but was also “disoriented” from the fall and the loss of blood, how then could he have backed his truck down the driveway in a perfectly straight line?)  Given that these State Police officials knew about the DWI arrest record, their claims about my brother backing his truck down the driveway and into the field in an intoxicated state were nothing more than a fabrication.

Why did the State Police invent a scenario that they knew could not be true?  It is very disconcerting to realize that police investigators whose duty it is to enforce the law not only let such a vicious crime go unacknowledged but even put the blame on the victim.  Inv. Kalfas in fact admitted to Atty. Michael Kelly that he never considered murder as a possibility in Mark’s death.  I, however, remain very concerned about the failure of the investigating authorities to probe the actions of a fellow police officer who was involved in a troubling incident with my brother at a local club the very day before he was fatally burned.  In May 2010, retired Sr. Inv. John Ensell claimed that the altercation between my brother and Salamanca police officer Mark Marowski “hadn’t been much of an argument anyway.”  How could he make such an assertion, when Inv. Kalfas himself admitted to Atty. Michael Kelly in 2005 that he had not asked Holy Cross Club members who had been there about that argument? 

In addition, I have since learned that Marowski and my brother had argued on numerous occasions at the Holy Cross Club (see post of April 18, 2013).  There was obviously ill will between the two of them.  So, it was important for the State Police to find out specifically what that last argument was about and how heated it had actually got.  Did it focus on my brother’s insistence that his son should have been treated more leniently when he was stopped for DWI about a week earlier?  Or was there more to it?  Did Ofc. Marowski, as was reported (see post of December 27, 2012), make the comment on his cell phone, “It’s all taken care of,” when he returned inside the club after going out to phone the Salamanca police and have them pick Mark up right after he left?  If true, that comment is puzzling, to say the least, since it would imply that Marowski made another call after phoning in on my brother.  Those questions needed to be answered.

My intention is certainly not to criticize the Salamanca police for arresting my brother for DWI, given that he was apparently very intoxicated.  However, it is problematic that Ofc. Marowski, who was reportedly very drunk himself, phoned in over a personal quarrel to have Mark picked up.  Furthermore, he reportedly got right into his car and drove home in a similarly intoxicated state, but was not arrested.  It seems unlikely that the Salamanca policeman who took the call to have my brother arrested did not also realize that Marowski was drunk and should not be driving.  Many individuals have commented on Marowski’s excessive drinking, for which he was apparently reprimanded within the Salamanca Police system.  Yet it was not until three years after my brother’s death that some police officer picked Marowski himself up for speeding and DWI.  He was then “allowed” to retire.  Marowski, by all accounts, is far from an upstanding citizen.  In addition to his own arrest for DWI, the court cases against him for failing to pay money he owed have already been mentioned on this blog (see post of July 28, 2011).  Several individuals, moreover, have commented on other troubling forms of behavior by this retired police officer. 

Given that background, it remains a matter of deep concern not only that the State Police did not pursue the altercation between Marowski and my brother but also that Holy Cross Club members have been unwilling to admit either that they were present during that argument or that they know anyone who was.  Shortly after my brother’s death, my cousin Dennis Pavlock told me that his and Mark’s friend Gary Subulski had mentioned specific details related to that argument at the Holy Cross Club.  Dennis assumed that Gary had been there, yet Gary himself later told me not only that he hadn’t but also that he didn’t know anyone who had been there.  Another person similarly told me that some of his “buddies” had been there and also mentioned certain information that they had relayed to him about the incident.  However, he later backed off and didn’t name anyone.  Although I’ve asked numerous individuals who were known to frequent the Holy Cross Club at the time my brother was killed, no one has admitted to being there or to knowing anyone who was.  This reluctance to speak up about that argument between my brother and Mark Marowski strongly suggests that people are afraid to say what they know. 

A Follow-up on Mark’s Blood Alcohol Level

The previous post discussed from a scientific perspective problems with the authorities' view that my brother caused his own death because he was very intoxicated, as indicated by the .25 serum alcohol level in his autopsy report.  Indeed, if the .25 post-mortem alcohol level is correct, then Mark would have had approximately a .46 blood alcohol level at the time of his truck fire.  This post, which marks the tenth anniversary of my brother’s suspicious truck fire, further considers the issue of his drinking around that time. 

The New York State Police viewed Mark's DWI the day before the fire as further support that he was very drunk at the time he was so severely burned.  It is not necessary here to elaborate on the highly problematic circumstances of my brother's arrest following a personal argument with then Salamanca police officer Mark Marowski, who had a serious alcohol problem himself (see posts of September 22, 2010, July 28, 2011, and April 18, 2013).  However, the issue of Mark's blood alcohol level at the time of his DWI needs to be addressed.  Shortly after my brother's death, Inv. Edward Kalfas informed me that when Mark was arrested for DWI on September 22, his blood alcohol level was high, around the same as recorded in the autopsy report.  Just recently, I made a FOIL request for the records related to my brother's arrest and now have those documents.

According to the records, a breath analysis test revealed that when Mark was arrested for DWI on Central Ave. in Salamanca, he had a .28 alcohol content.  That alcohol level, needless to say, is very high.  Although breathalyzer tests are not flawless and can be affected by a variety of conditions (see, for instance, the concise summary on the website AlcoholAlert!), it seems clear that my brother was highly intoxicated.  But that fact needs to be interpreted properly.  There are at least three significant points that should be considered.

First of all, drinking heavily on one particular day does not mean that the individual will necessarily be drunk the next day.  In Mark's case, it is important to note that he had never had a DWI before.  One of the forms in his arrest report has a space for the police to list prior convictions, including DWI.  There is no entry, which confirms what family sources and friends of Mark's said, namely that he had never been stopped for DWI before.  My brother had in fact been a licensed driver in New York State for thirty-five years and had driven frequently in neighboring Erie and Chautauqua counties as well as Cattaraugus without being stopped for any appearance of impaired driving.  Furthermore, several individuals informed me that they had seen my brother at his job as a security guard around the time of his death and that he had clearly not been drinking.  What caused Mark to do some heavy drinking in the months prior to his death is perhaps a subject better left for another post.

Second, after returning from his arrest, Mark himself told Alexis Wright and Todd Lindell separately that he would be careful because he wanted to keep his driver's license in order to get to his job as a security guard.  As the records show, he was arrested at 3:50 p.m. and was given a breath analysis test at 4:55 at the Salamanca Police Department.  It could not have been a pleasant experience to be held in custody, even for a couple of hours.  Mark should then be given credit as a reasonable individual who had learned his lesson.

Third, the .28 alcohol reading of my brother's DWI has a bearing on the problem of that .25 post-mortem serum alcohol, which his attending physician at the burn unit insisted was wrong.  The police record states that my brother was stopped because he was “weaving back and forth in [the] lane” and that he “failed to keep right.”  The same form indicates that the arresting officer also observed the following: the odor of alcoholic beverage, glassy eyes, impaired speech, and impaired motor coordination.  It lists the following specific field tests that Mark failed: walk and turn, one leg stand, finger to nose, finger count, and reciting the alphabet.  Thus, as recorded in his arrest documents, my brother could not function properly with a .28 alcohol level. 

How, then, could Mark have functioned with a presumed .46 blood alcohol level at the time of his truck fire?  If he could not drive without weaving back and forth on Central Ave. with a .28 blood alcohol, he certainly could not have backed his truck down his long driveway in a perfectly straight line and fifty feet into the field directly opposite the driveway (see post of September 1, 2013, on the tire marks) with a .46 blood alcohol level.  Furthermore, not only would Mark have been unable to back his truck down the driveway with a .46 BAC; he would almost certainly have been in a coma, if not actually dead (see, for example, data on the website of the Redfern Health Center of Clemson University).  Yet the State Police insist that Mark did back his truck down the driveway and into the field, where he spilled or poured gasoline on himself and lit up a match or lighter, setting his truck on fire and inflicting third-degree burns over ninety percent of his body.  Why didn't Inv. Kalfas, who acknowledged that he had gone and checked on Mark's alcohol level on the day of the DWI, realize the obvious problem with the position that my brother was very drunk the night of the fire, yet at the same time managed to do things that would have been impossible in that state?

Another factor calling the credibility of the .25 post-mortem alcohol into question is the time frame of my brother's activities the evening of the truck fire.  According to his wife's witness statement, Mark was “slightly intoxicated” in the afternoon.  Susan is presumably referring to Mark's condition in the late afternoon, since she worked until 4 p.m.  She also observes that she and Mark were watching television around 7:30 and that he left about 8:45 to go to downtown Salamanca.  She says nothing about Mark drinking during the evening before he left.  One would thus assume that my brother was not drinking in the early evening, especially given how angry Susan had been about his DWI the day before (see post of August 22, 2012).  In that case, there was a very narrow window for my brother to acquire a .46 blood alcohol level, that is, to judge by his wife's witness statement, between 8:45 and 10:30 (roughly when Mark must have returned). 

How many drinks would Mark have had to consume in that period in order to produce a .46 blood alcohol level?  The Redfern Health Center website, for instance, provides charts factoring in gender, weight, and the number of hours one has been drinking in order to calculate a BAC.  According to those guidelines, my brother would have had to consume more than 25 standard drinks in less than two hours.  Mark's blood alcohol level the night of the truck fire in fact cannot be determined, but to insist on the accuracy of that .25 post-mortem serum alcohol reading is ludicrous.

In the first post, I reported a statement made to me by Todd Lindell that “Mark would be alive today if he had not gotten the DWI.”  In my conversation with Todd, he affirmed that Mark had not been suicidal and that he had been concerned about keeping his driver’s license. Todd’s comment implies that my brother's arrest itself was a primary factor in his death.  As mentioned in the initial post, I was not able to get any clarification on that suggestive remark because Todd did not return my calls.  The State Police, however, should have pressed him about it.  In early 2007, Lt. Allen told me that some of the individuals whose statements I had reported denied making them.  Was Todd one of those individuals?  If so, why?

Only the New York State Police know why they did not investigate Mark's suspicious truck fire vigorously, but they ignored or glossed over far too many things.  It is just as difficult to comprehend why the State Police refused to re-open my brother's case in 2005 and later.  But some important things need to be stated: (1) Mark did not cause the wound to his forehead that appeared to one firefighter to have been inflicted by a golf club and that caused his attending physician considerable concern.  Someone else did.  (2) Mark did not put a gas can in the cab of his truck instead of the back where he always had.  Someone else did.  (3) Mark did not back his truck down the driveway and into the field.  Someone else did.  (4) Mark did not pour gasoline all over his body.  Someone else did.

A decade after my brother's death, it is time for another government agency to pursue this case.  Those responsible for burning Mark to death should be held accountable for their actions.  And, as one relative recently put it, those who helped to cover it up should also have to pay.

A Scientific Approach to the Issue of Mark’s Blood Alcohol Level

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?

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?

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.