Pressure Exerted in a Small Community: The Case of Wayne Frank

A number of posts have referred to kinds of pressure, internal or external, that have kept people from telling what they know about my brother Mark’s death.  One characteristic of a small rural community is that people are closely interconnected by ties of kinship, friendship, and various other social relations and can therefore be reluctant to reveal information that might cause embarrassment or trouble for individuals in their particular circles.  Such internal pressure has undoubtedly been a factor, for instance, in the reticence of so many of Mark’s neighbors to admit that they were fully aware of the fire as it took place or that they were interviewed by the police.

There may be even more overt pressure that would explain the silence of the Holy Cross Club members who will not even admit to being present at the argument between my brother and Ofc. Mark Marowski.  As mentioned in several posts, that altercation resulted in Marowski calling in to the Salamanca police and having my brother arrested for DWI the day before his truck fire.  This post reveals direct pressure on one particular individual who was on the scene of Mark’s truck fire.

Wayne Frank was on the scene as chief of the nearby Kill Buck, New York, fire department (see post of September 22, 2010).  Sadly, Wayne died recently.  Although I had not seen him since our high school days, he was present at reunion events that I attended in 2005.  When I happened to run into him, I learned that he had stayed in the Salamanca area and also that he had known my brother.  At that time, I did not know that Wayne was a volunteer firefighter, and so when I asked if he knew anything about Mark's death, I was stunned to hear him state, very reluctantly, that he had been on the scene of the fire.

At first, in the same reunion conversation, referring to his “job,” Wayne refused to tell me anything about that night.  But he responded humanely when I let him know how difficult it was to think of the pain my brother must have suffered as he was doused with gasoline and burned to death and then, nearly two years later, to have no credible explanation from the investigating authorities for Mark’s truck bursting into flames in that field across the road from his house.  Wayne then said that he would tell me a little about the scene but oddly added that he “would deny it in court.”

Fortunately, at the same time, Wayne kindly went beyond the bare minimum that he first agreed to reveal.  Although he only hinted at the trauma to my brother’s head, he made the intriguing comment that “the police should have looked for Mark’s nine-iron.”  As the original post explains, he clarified that statement soon after in an interview with Buffalo attorney Michael Kelly by acknowledging that he had seen a wound on Mark's forehead which looked as if he had been hit by a nine-iron.  Wayne also contradicted what Inv. Kalfas told me about Mark’s location in relation to the truck when rescue workers arrived.  Whereas the State Police investigator said that my brother was found lying right by the truck, Wayne said that Mark was about 45 feet from the truck when he arrived, indicating the distance from where we were standing to a concession truck.  When I asked him about others who were on the scene, he offered to check on the issue for me.

As also indicated in the original post, Wayne in the same reunion conversation expressed concern as to why the truck was in the field and how it was parked, facing the road and Mark's driveway with the tires completely straight and aligned.  He noted that it looked as if the truck had been deliberately placed there.  As he added to Michael Kelly, tire tracks in the grass were in a straight line.  Thus, as Wayne clearly implied, Mark could not have been hurriedly removing a burning truck from the property.  These observations by Wayne, along with those by Mark’s attending physician at the burn unit, were sufficient for Atty. Kelly to ask the State Police to interview both Wayne and Dr. Piotrowski and to re-open the case.  But, by all accounts, they did not interview Wayne.  They clearly did not interview the doctor or re-open the case.

It is unfortunate—and problematic—that the State Police did not ask Wayne for a witness statement right after the truck fire and that they apparently did not interview him at any point.  Wayne in fact mentioned a number of other things not included in my original post that might well have shed light on the events related to Mark’s truck fire.  Here, I will refer to two other points that Wayne brought up in that reunion conversation.

First, Wayne was disturbed that, from his perspective on the scene, Mark’s wife Susan did not show any real concern about his dreadful condition and did not even bother to get right into her car and go to the hospital but instead waited a long time before leaving.  This would have been relevant information to the State Police investigator since Susan says in her witness statement that she and Mark were watching television before he left for downtown Salamanca and that she was waiting for him to return when she saw the flames in the field.  A serious investigator would certainly have wanted to reconcile the discrepancy between Wayne’s observations and Susan’s official statement.  Other discrepancies in Susan’s witness statement deserved to be examined as well (e.g., see post of September 22, 2011).

Second, Wayne referred to the argument at the Holy Cross Club between my brother and Ofc. Mark Marowski.  He said that Mark had won a pool and that, when Marowski made some remark about splitting it, my brother refused.  According to Wayne, Marowski then quickly called the police on his cell phone to pick Mark up for DWI.  He added that Marowski had been really drunk at the time.  The specificity of Wayne’s comments implied that he had witnessed the incident at the Holy Cross Club.  Therefore, I hoped that he would elaborate on that point (and others) at a reception prior to our reunion dinner the next day.

The following day I asked Wayne to clarify Marowski’s reaction to the pool that Mark had apparently won.  To my complete surprise, he then responded curtly, “I don't know anything about the incident at the Holy Cross Club.”  I also offered to send him a copy of the police report, which he had looked at briefly with interest the previous evening.  But now he brusquely replied, “No, that's all over with.”  Shocked, I could only wonder what had caused such a complete change of attitude in Wayne, who had been so cordial and understanding the evening before.

When I was seated for the dinner, I noticed Wayne approaching the next table, but he did not look my way, then or at any point during the dinner.  He was greeted by fellow classmate Don DeGain, who for some reason also did not acknowledge my presence.  Don, it turns out, was Wayne’s brother-in-law and (according to my cousin Dennis Pavlock) a relative of Pete Rapacioli (on whom, see esp. post of June 26, 2013).  As several individuals have observed in my search for information on my brother’s death, it seems that everyone you encounter in the Salamanca area is a “cousin” of someone whose name has come up in this case.

Not long afterward, a phone conversation with Atty. Michael Kelly shed some light on the issue of Wayne’s sudden change of heart.  After my two encounters with Wayne at the reunion, Atty. Kelly spoke with him in a follow-up interview, in which Kelly went through the substance of my conversation with Wayne, documenting everything point by point.  I asked Atty. Kelly if he understood why Wayne had not wanted to respond to me at the reunion dinner activities.  He replied that Wayne had mentioned being told by “people” not to say anything to me because of what I was trying to do.  These “people” were clearly individuals who knew that Wayne had spoken with me the on first evening of the reunion events.

Of course, I do not know who specifically pressured Wayne not to give me any further information and referred negatively to what I was “trying to do.”  But why would anyone be so averse to a sister’s efforts to find out the truth about her brother’s death?  And why would anyone want to prevent another person from revealing relevant information about a suspicious death like Mark’s?

A Follow-up on the Issue of Who Was on the Scene of Mark’s Truck Fire and What They Said

This comes as a follow-up on the previous post (November 15, 2015).  It adds further information and questions on two interrelated issues: what specific individuals were on the scene of my brother’s truck fire in Great Valley, N.Y, in 2003 and what they revealed to the State Police investigator.

The previous post reported that Shawn Gregory, a deputy sheriff, was not only present on the scene but was also a close neighbor of my brother’s on Whalen Rd.  It added that Mr. Gregory’s wife was the daughter of another close neighbor of Mark’s, Alana Lindell Cloud (recently deceased), who was the sister of Sidney Lindell and the cousin of Todd Lindell, both of whom were also neighbors and close friends of Mark’s.  In addition, it mentioned other Lindells and their relatives living in that immediate neighborhood.  The Lindell clan, then, seems to have had a very strong presence in that sparsely populated rural area.

That post also called attention to statements reportedly made by Alana Lindell Cloud in a telephone conversation with a friend of hers named Linda Askey Albrecht, who brought them up in an e-mail forwarded to me.  In particular, Linda reported damaging claims about my brother’s alleged drinking that are demonstrably false.

Other remarks reported by Linda are of concern here.  As a result of her conversation with Alana, Linda referred to being made aware that Mark’s truck fire took place “virtually, in fact, in Alana’s back yard [o]n Hungry Hollow [Road].”  Obviously, Alana had drawn attention to the very close proximity of her property to the field where Mark was burned to death.  If Mark’s truck fire happened practically “in Alana’s back yard,” was Alana aware of the fire when it was happening or at least when emergency vehicles arrived with sirens blaring?  Was Alana--perhaps along with her husband at the time--one of the many individuals reportedly milling around on the scene?

According to Linda, Alana reported that a member of the State Police “came to Alana’s house and asked all kinds [o]f question[s], including some about whether she knew anything about the marital [r]elationship.”  Linda did not specify what, if anything, Alana had told her about her responses to the State Police investigator.  But one must wonder how Alana herself replied to the investigator’s questions, including those about Mark’s and Susan’s marital relations.

It seems apparent that Alana did not know Mark all that well, given that she was so misinformed about his personal history with the railroad as to assert mistakenly that he had been involved in a serious train accident several years earlier and suffered from PTSD, which led to heavy drinking and kept him from ever going back to work again.  She seems to have had some level of acquaintance with his wife, for Linda mentioned a comment by Alana that Susan “had retired from her clerical job at the school district, sold her [h]ouse and moved to whereever [sic] her daughter lived as the daughter had recently had a baby.”  Linda also implied a history of familiarity with Susan’s own family since she referred to her as “one of Calla Smith’s twin sisters.”

In any case, what might Alana have known about Mark’s and Susan’s troubled marriage, given her proximity to their house?  On the day my brother died, my aunt Dorothy Pavlock, in referring to the poor state of Mark’s and Susan’s marriage, informed me that neighbors had heard their arguments.  Some time ago, one of my brother’s neighbors, who lived farther from his house than Alana, acknowledged knowing that all was not well in Mark’s and Susan’s marriage (see June14, 2015).  So, what did Alana tell the State Police investigator about that issue?

In addition, according to Linda, Alana asserted that “the state police did interview
[n]eighbors up and down the road.”  As mentioned in a previous post, all the neighbors with whom I spoke insisted that they had not been interviewed (see April 17, 2015).  Most recently, Mark’s neighbor at the corner of Cross and Hungry Hollow roads, Charles Rinko, confirmed that neither he nor his wife had been questioned by the State Police.  Was Alana completely mistaken about the extent of the State Police interviews of Mark’s neighbors?  Or have the neighbors been less than honest with me?  If so, why would they want to deny that the State Police had questioned them?

I have become aware of a discrepancy between what both Todd and Sidney Lindell told me and what another neighbor reported not long after Mark was killed.  In my one conversation with him, in November 2003, Todd said that he had not been interviewed.  Not long ago, Sid Lindell told me that he had never been interviewed (see April 17, 2015).  When I called Alexis Wright in July 2004 and asked if Mark’s friends Todd and Sid Lindell had been questioned by the State Police, she was not certain and asked her husband Jim.  He, however, replied that both of them had been interviewed. Was Jim Wright mistaken?

One must wonder if the author of the anonymous letter referring to an affair between Mark’s wife and Ofc. Mark Marowski was ever interviewed by the State Police.  The letter writer mentioned that the two were observed driving around on an ATV on numerous occasions (see August 11, 2014).  As several individuals have indicated, if Susan and Marowski had been riding around together on an ATV, they would probably have done it close by, in the fields in that neighborhood.  The writer of the anonymous letter, then, was likely one of Mark’s neighbors.  If interviewed by the State Police investigator, did that person mention seeing Susan and Marowski together or allude in any way to this alleged affair?

It is troubling that virtually no one in Mark’s neighborhood will admit to being questioned by the State Police about his death.  Who, then, informed Inv. Kalfas about the very poor state of Mark’s and Susan’s marriage?  Early in the investigation, he told me that many people had brought it up.  Even more to the point: why is that issue never mentioned in the police report?

More on the Issue of Who Was on the Scene of Mark’s Truck Fire and What They Said

This post takes up the issue of specific individuals who were on the scene of my brother’s truck fire in Great Valley, N.Y.  The subject is discussed in an earlier post (December 31, 2011), which mentions those known to have been on the scene as emergency workers and raises questions about certain others who were reportedly also there.  Among the latter were two individuals identified as Salamanca police officers: Steve Arrowsmith and Patrick Welch.

Several months after I put up that post (June 20, 2012), Mr. Welch sent in a lengthy comment to the blog stating that he had been a police cadet at the time and joined the Salamanca police force two months later and that he had been on the scene as “a friend of the family.”  After I posted the relevant part of his comment, another individual replied, observing that Mr. Welch had not really responded to my concern in the post and posed a question about “what he [Welch] was doing during the time that he was on the scene of the fire.”  Mr. Welch did not reply.  I have also learned nothing further about the reason for Mr. Arrowsmith’s presence on the scene.  However, I have since learned that another member of local law enforcement, Robert Buchhardt, a senior member of the Sheriff’s Department, was also on the scene.  The post of December 2011 mentioned Shawn Gregory as another individual on the scene, who reportedly was also a deputy sheriff.

Subsequently, I learned that Shawn Gregory in fact not only was present on the scene and employed as a deputy sheriff but also was a close neighbor of my brother’s on Whalen Rd.  In addition, it turns out that Shawn Gregory’s wife is the daughter of another close neighbor of Mark’s, a woman (recently deceased) named Alana Lindell Cloud, whose house on Hungry Hollow Rd. was directly opposite Mark’s across the open field on Whalen Rd.  Alana was the sister of Sidney Lindell and the cousin of Todd Lindell, both of whom were also neighbors and close friends of Mark’s.

Todd Lindell, furthermore, has been mentioned on this blog as the individual who said to me that “Mark would be alive today if he had not gotten the DWI,” yet did not return my calls when I tried to get clarification on that statement (see posts of September 23, 2010; March 3, 2014; and August 14, 2015).  The elder Sidney Lindell and his wife, parents of Mark’s friend Sid, also resided close by on Hungry Hollow Rd.  In addition, the Lindells, I have been told, are related to the Mendells, an elderly couple who lived on Cross Rd., adjacent to the field where Mark’s truck went up in flames.  Thus, Shawn Gregory is related by marriage to five separate families in Mark’s neighborhood.

That striking nexus of family relationships in a sparsely populated rural neighborhood is not per se my concern here.  Instead, I am concerned about statements that Alana Lindell Cloud reportedly made to a friend of hers named Linda Askey Albrecht, who conveyed them in an e-mail to another individual and gave him permission to pass the e-mail on to me.  According to Linda in her e-mail, Alana told her the following: “Mark was a serious serious drinker and had been since that horrible train [a]ccident in which Sid Smith and the others were killed.  The survivors has [sic] all [s]uffered from PTSD.”  She added that “Mark never went back [t]o work.”

Unfortunately, all of this supposed information is demonstrably false.  First, Mark was not involved in that terrible train wreck and thus never had any post-traumatic stress syndrome related to it.  Second, Mark stayed off alcohol for many years (certainly over a decade), which included the period around and after that train accident.  Third, Mark continued to work for several years, until he himself suffered an eye injury on the job.

There is no reason to believe that Linda Albrecht failed to report Alana’s statements to her accurately.  But unfortunately she accepted false statements about Mark without question as true. Certainly, as numerous individuals who knew my brother well have said, Mark began drinking alcohol again to some extent around two years before his death and more heavily in the last six months or so.  My brother’s friend Sid Lindell in fact told me in November 2003 that he had been surprised to learn that Mark had started drinking again since he had stayed off alcohol for so long.  The claims about Mark in Alana’s reported statements are very damaging and clearly false.

Did such distorted views about my brother affect what was said publicly and privately during the investigation into his death?  Linda’s e-mail also reports that Alana herself was interviewed about Mark.  Did Alana make such statements to the State Police investigator?  Had she said similar things to others, including her daughter and her son-in-law Shawn Gregory?

The question is relevant for at least two reasons.  First, negative remarks about Mark’s drinking by “neighbors” were cited by Inv. Kalfas in his narrative in the police report, yet the people who made them have not been held accountable for those statements, since their names have all been blacked out (see post of April 17, 2015).  Was Alana one of the neighbors who reported such information?  Statements of that nature had a significant impact on the investigation, making it appear that Mark was responsible for his own death, whether by suicide or by accident.

Second, in the investigation conducted by Nationwide Insurance, according to a company representative, their investigator interviewed certain individuals who had been on the scene but who agreed to speak with him only “off the record.”  These individuals insisting on anonymity told the insurance investigator that it looked like a suicide (see post of January 27, 2014).

Did these individuals fail to see the pool of blood on the section off Mark’s driveway where he normally parked his truck?  Or had they already made their minds up in advance?  Who were these individuals?  Were they exclusively emergency workers?  Or did they also include law enforcement officials (deputy sheriffs or Salamanca police)?  Was Shawn Gregory among them?  As mentioned previously (January 27, 2014), Gary Wind (firefighter and deputy sheriff), Wayne Frank (firefighter), and Cheryl Simcox (EMT) are certainly not among those who told the investigator for Nationwide that it looked like a suicide.

According to the company representative with whom I spoke, Inv. Kalfas refused to let them see the police report, and therefore they did not know about the pool of Mark’s blood on the driveway.  If Nationwide had had full knowledge of the facts, there might well be a report on Mark’s death that draws a very different conclusion from that of the State Police.  One must wonder what the motive was for individuals who insisted on anonymity and why Alana Lindell Cloud herself reported such distorted and inaccurate information about my brother.

Expressed Concerns about Suspicious Deaths in Vehicle Fires in the Salamanca Area

Over the years since my brother’s death, numerous individuals have informed me that Mark’s was one of several suspicious deaths in the Salamanca area within a relatively short period and that two of these other incidents involved vehicle fires.  One of the latter has already been mentioned on this blog: Mark himself discovered a burned-out vehicle with the body of a man named Bill Duhan, whom he actually knew but apparently did not recognize under those circumstances (see post of February 4, 2013).  The other was the death of a young local pharmacist named Dale Tarapacki, whose body was discovered in his burned-out truck off a rural road outside of Salamanca about a year and a half after my brother was killed.

There appears to have been no newspaper publicity about the manner of either of these other two deaths involving vehicle fires.  There was also clearly no news report in the local newspapers about Mark’s case, in spite of my efforts in 2004 (see post of November 30, 2011).  Since I have not had access to the police report on either Bill Duhan’s or Dale Tarapacki’s death, I do not know for certain any of the specific details of these two cases.  It is not clear to me, for instance, if Mr. Duhan’s death was ruled a suicide or an accident.  I was informed by a reliable source that Mr. Tarapacki’s death was ruled a suicide and that a suicide letter was apparently discovered by the investigating authorities.

In Dale Tarapacki’s case, however, many people are skeptical of, or flatly reject, the explanation of suicide.  As I have searched for answers in my brother’s death, numerous individuals have brought up the case of this young pharmacist as another very suspicious death.  Two people who apparently knew him quite well mentioned character traits that would not suggest a suicidal frame of mind.  One referred to his clearly sociable nature, and the other to his attachment to his two very young daughters.  The latter brought up some other things as well, which I cannot mention on this blog.

In addition to such individual conversations, this pharmacist’s death has come up on two local Topix sites.  The following comment from February 2010, taken verbatim from the Allegany Topix site, reflects some local people’s concern: “friends and i were just talking about things that never get solved in salamanca. we could never figure out what happened to dale the pharmacist from rite aid. that never seemed to fit. they found him in his truck in the woods..........just never fit.”  The writer both makes it clear that the official explanation for Dale Tarapacki’s death did not make sense and implies that many questionable deaths in Salamanca are left unresolved.  Here are two comments from May 2013, the one a reply to the other, taken verbatim from the Salamanca Topix site:         

            How about the pharmacist that worked at Rite Aid. Found him burnt

            in his truck. He was about to open with the nation pharmacy that

            was on Main st. Rumor was that there was something shady going on

            and he backed out. Less then a week later he was dead.

            yep and it wasn't suiside, that same year mark pavlock gets fried almost in his own yard and tim nye also gets killed of course it was all covered up calling them suicide. The bromley was laying on his couch in his own house and shot it the head,

I’d like to make it clear that the first comment from the Salamanca Topix site repeats a rumor that has not been verified and that I myself am not endorsing, nor am I endorsing the view in the second of a cover-up in all three cases (Tarapacki, Pavlock, and Nye).  I have made clear the numerous--some very serious--failures of the New York State Police investigation into Mark’s death throughout this blog.  But since I don’t have official information about the deaths of Tarapacki and Nye, I cannot make any assumption about the nature of the investigations into their deaths.

I’m not even certain what the second commenter on the Topix post is implying about the Bromley case.  But I quote these comments because together they reflect a publicly expressed concern about the two truck fires that took the lives of Dale Tarapacki and my brother and because the second raises concern about two other local deaths, the first of which (Nye’s) happened in the same general time frame as Mark’s.

Beyond the remarks made by individuals with whom I have actually spoken (in two cases the individuals knew this local pharmacist) and by posters using pseudonyms on the public forum of the Topix sites, a comment sent in to this blog some time ago adds another level of concern about the deaths of Dale Tarapacki and my brother.  In the summer of 2014, I decided to try and contact Dale Tarapacki’s parents to learn what they thought about his death.  I found a phone number for his mother Rosanne and left a voice mail message for her.

Shortly afterward (July 20, 2014), the following comment arrived on my blog (linked to the post “A Follow-up on Mark’s Blood Alcohol Level”).  I quote it verbatim: “Barbara, Received voice message Sunday 7/20. I would very much like to talk to you about similar circumstances and my son's death. I, too, have exercised various options and am convinced his death was murder. Can you call me again--leave a phone number or email? I am moving this week.”  The sender was listed as “Ro.”  I have now published the comment (to the relevant post of September 23, 2013).

As soon as possible after receiving that message, I called Mrs. Tarapacki’s number again and left the requested information.  However, I did not hear back from her and assumed that she was settling into a new place and would give me a call at a convenient time.  Perhaps she did not receive my information by the time she moved.  But since I have no longer had an operative phone number for her, I have not been able to contact her and find out what specific similarities she sees between her son’s death and my brother’s, other than the fact that each victim’s truck unexpectedly burned up in an isolated area near Salamanca.  I assume that she has some potentially useful information, since a family member of hers reportedly hired a private investigator.

In any case, I hope that Mrs. Tarapacki reads this post, and I ask that she contact me again to discuss her concerns.  Likewise, if readers have information relevant to any of these deaths, I ask that they contact me by sending in a comment to the blog or by e-mailing me (through the link “View my complete profile” at the right side of this page, where there is an “Email” link).