“Who Was on the Scene of Mark’s Truck Fire?”

   This post considers what specific individuals were on the scene of my brother’s truck fire on September 23, 2003.  The issue needs clarification because of reports about people on the scene who are not mentioned in the official documents and whose presence raises some questions. 

    As the original post (September 22, 2010) indicates, emergency workers responded quickly to the 911 call made by Mark’s wife Susan just before 11 p.m.  According to the police report, neighbor and EMT Cheryl Simcox was the first person on the scene after my brother’s wife, followed by firefighters Gary Wind (also a deputy sheriff) and Mark Ward.  Although not mentioned in the police report, firefighter Wayne Frank informed me that he arrived immediately after Ward and Wind.  The police report also indicates that Trooper David Chandler was the first New York State Police official on the scene and that Inv. Edward Kalfas arrived at 12:30 a.m.  According to the fire investigation team’s report, there were also four fire investigators on the scene.  That report, however, makes an apparent error about the arrival time, recording it as 22:30 (i.e., 10:30 p.m.) presumably instead of 23:30 (i.e., 11:30), since the 911 call was not made before 22:55 (i.e., 10:55). 

    According to both Wayne Frank and Cheryl Simcox, there were many people milling around on the scene.  As the original post notes, one person was neighbor Dan Smith, who informed me that he had rushed to the scene right after seeing flames from his window but had not remained there long.  The previous post (November 30, 2011) refers more fully to Mr. Smith’s statement that my brother had spoken several words to him on the scene and to his failure to recall anything Mark said other than the word “Hi!”  An earlier post (April 20, 2011) also mentions the conflicting accounts about neighbor Eugene Woodworth’s presence on the scene.  Another individual was Josh Newark, who as an EMT reportedly helped place my brother in the ambulance that took him to the Medivac helicopter for transport to the Erie County Medical Center.  But when I tried to speak with him in 2006, Mr. Newark failed to return my call.  Another person mentioned was Shawn Gregory.  I do not know who this individual is or in what capacity he was on the scene, though he is reportedly a deputy sheriff.

    Two other individuals reportedly on the scene were members of the Salamanca police force around the time of my brother’s death.  One was Steve Arrowsmith, reportedly an Ellicottville policeman at the time his presence on the scene was made known to me.  But, according to an item in the Salamanca Press shortly after Mark’s death, Mr. Arrowsmith was then a member of the Salamanca police force.  The other was Patrick Welch, who according to the same newspaper item, was likewise on the Salamanca police force.  Todd Lindell, one of my brother’s friends, informed me in early November 2003 that after being released from his DWI, my brother came over to his house and asked him to pick up his truck from the impoundment.  Lindell mentioned that Patrick Welch had driven Mark over.  He added that Welch was also “the third person” on the scene of the fire the next night.

    It is unclear to me why these two individuals who were Salamanca policemen around that time would have been on the scene of the truck fire in Great Valley.  It is a matter of concern under the particular circumstances, since the day before the truck fire my brother got into a personal argument at the Holy Cross Athletic Club with off-duty Salamanca police officer Mark Marowski.  As mentioned in both the original post and a later one (July 28, 2011), when my brother left the club, Marowski called in to the Salamanca police to pick up him up for DWI on his way home to Great Valley.  The original post also reports the following comment to me by Todd Lindell: "Mark would be alive today if he had not gotten the DWI."  Given the DWI under such troubling circumstances a day before my brother's suspicious truck fire, the presence of Salamanca police on the scene of the fire is problematic.  Furthermore, a relative mentioned not long after the incident that the Salamanca police were being very tight-lipped about my brother's death.  That seemed very odd since Mark had lived in the area all of his life apart from his army service, during which he served in Vietnam, and since he was active in community service.  Even D.A. Sharkey's investigator at the time of the truck fire, Michael Malak, acknowledged to me in a telephone conversation that my brother was well regarded in the community.

    At the time of the truck fire, according to Todd Lindell, Patrick Welch was also a friend of my brother’s son Brian and possibly of his daughter Christie as well.  After my brother’s death, several relatives mentioned that they had observed very rude behavior toward Mark by his two children and on numerous occasions had heard them, especially Brian, make very nasty remarks to their father.  According to Lindell, Mark was not happy about the way his children treated him.  Lindell insisted that my brother had not brought on this problem and added that he himself had never known anyone who did so much for his children as Mark. 

    With that background, it is difficult to understand why Brian’s friend Patrick Welch would have driven Mark over to Lindell’s house the evening of the DWI.  How did he even meet up with my brother that evening?  It is also difficult to understand why Welch would have been on the scene of the truck fire the next night.  If he was in fact one of the first on the scene (as Lindell thought, “the third person”), how did he learn about the fire so quickly?  How long did he remain on or around the scene?  What brought the other Salamanca policeman, Steve Arrowsmith, to the scene?

What Did Mark Really Say on the Scene of the Fire?

      This post examines the problematic issue of statements reportedly made by my brother on the scene of his truck fire before he was airlifted to the Erie County Medical Center.

    Officials involved in the investigation basically took such remarks as hard fact and interpreted them as evidence that my brother’s truck fire and his death were accidental.  Yet if one examines what individuals on the scene actually say in their official witness statements, serious questions arise about the plausibility of these reports.  Oral remarks by emergency workers and others on the scene, as reported later, make these alleged statements by my brother even more questionable.

     Here are the statements by individuals on the scene about what they heard Mark say, as recorded in their witness statements or reported to me in my own inquiries:
             
    (1) In her witness statement, my brother’s wife Susan says that she saw Mark crawling away from the truck and tried to put out the flames on him.  She adds that she asked him, "What did you do?" and that he replied, "I did nothing."

    (2) In his witness statement, firefighter Gary Wind (also at the time a deputy sheriff) describes my brother's efforts to speak as follows: "He was talking to me and said something about gas.  I couldn't make out what he was saying."

    (3) In his witness statement, firefighter Mark Ward (also at the time superintendent of the Salamanca school system and thus Susan's boss and reportedly a close personal friend of hers) states that Mark "was able to talk," but he could understand only the words "gasoline can," which he says my brother uttered twice.

    (4) Although not asked to give a witness statement, firefighter Wayne Frank, who arrived on the scene immediately after Wind and Ward, told me that they had not been able to understand anything Mark tried to say.  He added that he wished that he and Gary Wind had gone down on their knees in an effort to grasp what my brother was trying to tell them.

    (5) Dan Smith, Mark's neighbor at the opposite end of Whalen Rd., who arrived on the scene some time after the first three firefighters, told me that my brother had spoken several words–around ten--to him. He stated that Mark had recognized him and said, "Hi!"  But when I asked Mr. Smith what else Mark had said, he replied that he could not recall.

    (6) Another person on the scene, whose name will not be disclosed at this point, informed me that one of the principal firefighters on the scene, whose name will also not be disclosed at this point, stated that he heard Mark say, “I didn’t do anything.”

    (7) In November 2004, John Eberth, at the time a reporter for the Olean Times-Herald, abruptly cancelled an article on Mark’s death that he had said was “set to run.”  He explained this decision in an e-mail, in which he stated the following: “After conducting follow-up interviews with State Police supervisors and fire investigation officials and learning that Mark spoke to an off-duty Cattaraugus County Sheriff's deputy with whom he was acquainted before he was taken to the hospital, we have decided to not write a story at this time.”

    What do these reports of words Mark supposedly uttered really indicate?  Let’s consider some of the problems and questions that emerge from these statements.

    First, if the New York State Police investigators took seriously Susan’s report that Mark said, “I did nothing,” how could they claim that they really believed my brother’s death was a suicide?  The words “I did nothing” clearly imply no self-inflicted injuries.  And what person near death in an act of suicide would bother to deny it?  No one would.  Yet both the New York State Police and the Cattaraugus County District Attorney stated that they really considered Mark’s death a suicide.  If so, then they presumably didn’t believe what Mark’s wife said in her witness statement.  Shouldn’t they have then questioned her further about Mark’s supposed statement, “I did nothing”?

    Second, why would the (unnamed) firefighter have told another individual on the scene that he heard Mark say, “I didn’t do anything”?  That individual clearly did not record it officially.  None of the witness statements, except the one by Mark’s wife Susan, indicates that my brother made any such remark.

    Third, firefighter (and deputy sheriff) Gary Wind in his witness statement is very tentative about what Mark tried to say (i.e., “...something about gas.  I couldn't make out what he was saying").  What deputy sheriff, then, told John Eberth that my brother had talked to him on the scene (i.e., “...and learning that Mark spoke to an off-duty Cattaraugus County Sheriff's deputy with whom he was acquainted before he was taken to the hospital”)?  That statement was a major factor in Eberth’s decision to cancel his article on Mark’s death.  Oddly, there was no local newspaper publicity about my brother’s death.  In fact, many people in the Salamanca area told me–even long afterwards–that they had never been informed about the suspicious circumstances, including the pool of Mark’s blood found in his driveway that night.

    Fourth, firefighter Mark Ward’s reference to hearing my brother say “gasoline can” twice differs from Gary Wind’s mention of “gas” and, even more, from Wayne Frank’s insistence that my brother could not be understood at all.  Even N.Y.S.P. Lt. Allen in a telephone conversation with me in April 2007 acknowledged that the power of suggestion might have influenced some of the witness statements.  He explained that someone, for instance, might have asked, “Did Mark say ‘gas’?” and the others around picked up on it.  Yet the N.Y.S.P. investigators involved in the case appear to have relied heavily on Ward’s and Wind’s statements in ruling out the possibility of murder in my brother’s case.

    Fifth, how is it that Dan Smith could not remember anything my brother said to him except the word “Hi!”?  Granted, considerable time had passed since the night of the truck fire.  But can you really forget the words of a dying man calling out to you in such a pitiable state?  Wouldn’t they rather be permanently etched in your mind?

    The reliance on what appears to be very tenuous evidence of statements made by my brother on the scene of his truck fire has also influenced the thinking of current Cattaraugus County District Attorney Lori Rieman.  At the meeting I had with her in May 2010, D.A. Rieman claimed that Mark had spoken to several people on the scene and that he would have said the name of the guilty person if the fire had been deliberately set.

    I’ll end this post with two questions.  First, could my brother really have said anything intelligible under the circumstances?  Someone with medical training explained to me that Mark’s extremely severe burns, third degree even on his head, would have constricted his trachea and made it very difficult for him to speak.  Second, if by chance Mark said any of the phrases mentioned in the witness statements (“I did nothing”/“I didn’t do anything,” “gas,” and “gasoline can”), might he not have meant something very different from what the authorities have assumed?  Those words could just as easily fit into a scenario in which my brother was attempting to reveal that he was a victim of foul play.

"What Happened to the Recording of the 911 Call?": A Follow-up

    This post comes as an update to the previous one (September 22, 2011) on the issue of what happened to the recording of the 911 call by my brother's wife Susan at 10:55 the night of his truck fire.

    As I indicated in the previous post, when asked about the 911 call at a meeting in September 2005, N.Y.S.P. Inv. Edward Kalfas informed Atty. Michael Kelly that he could not remember what it said.  Sr. Inv. John Wolfe then said that he would retrieve the 911 recording.  In November 2005, after I asked Atty. Kelly to find out if Mr. Wolfe had reviewed the 911 call, the senior investigator informed him that he would not check the 911 call, among other things, unless the case was in fact re-opened, which depended on what he found in the medical records.  It is very hard to understand why the senior investigator would not go back to review that 911 call, since Inv. Kalfas could not remember what was on it and so many conflicting or confusing statements had been made about the scene of the fire.  Surely, that wouldn't have taken much time or effort, or drained N.Y.S.P. resources in any way.

    In a response on my previous post to an anonymous comment about protocols for preserving 911 calls, I posted a comment on October 1 in which I mentioned contacting the Cattaraugus County Clerk's office about getting an audio and transcript of that 911 call.  As I indicated, the individual with whom I had spoken stated that the County Clerk's office was the right place to contact for 911 call records, but he did not know how long 911 recordings are generally kept.  However, he suggested that I make a FOIL request to that office to see if the call in question still existed, and I did it. 

    That conversation led me to wonder why, in response to my original FOIL request for the 911 call, the N.Y.S.P. FOIL Unit replied last June that a search of their files "failed to locate any records responsive" to my inquiry.  It thus also seemed unclear why the FOIL Unit referred to the possibility of an appeal if the 911 recording was actually under the purview of the Cattaraugus County Clerk's office.  I wondered as well why the FOIL Unit hadn't advised me to contact that office instead.

    Last week I received a reply from the County Clerk's office.  A memorandum was included from the County Sheriff's office, in which a box was checked indicating "Did not reveal any records."  A stipulation is made at the end: "This memorandum indicates the absence or presence of information contained in our files.  It does not preclude the possibility that other activities may have taken place which are not on record with this office."  Immediately below it is a handwritten note stating the following: "Because this was not our case, we did not maintain a copy for any reason of the recording.  Also, any recordings that were not previously recovered prior to Nov. 2010 are gone.  This is due to the replacement of our recording system."

    The response by the Cattaraugus County Sheriff's office raises questions for me.  First, it is not clear why replacing a recording system would necessitate the loss of 911 calls made prior to the date of a new installation.  Doesn't current technology enable such information to be preserved?  Second, the Cattaraugus County District Attorney at the time of Mark's suspicious death and at the present (elected in November 2009) were both made aware of serious problems with the original investigation.  Attorney Tony Tanke not only spoke several times with D.A. Sharkey's investigator Michael Malak during the course of the investigation but also raised questions to D.A. Sharkey himself in May 2004 about his conclusion that Mark's death was either an accident or a suicide.  (The District Attorney added that he really believed it was a suicide.) 

    I myself wrote D.A. Sharkey three letters during the investigation and one in late 2008, informing him of information I had learned pointing to foul play.  I also had telephone conversations and correspondence about the issue with current D.A. Lori Rieman, both before and after her election, and met with her at her office in May 2010.  As mentioned previously in this blog, shortly after her election D.A. Rieman e-mailed me the following: "I cannot promise anything, but you deserve better and I will certainly do whatever I can.  I am thinking of asking that a special prosecutor (i.e. the Attorney General's office) be appointed to conduct an independent investigation."  At our meeting in 2010, even though D.A. Rieman abruptly changed her point of view without any warning and supported former N.Y.S.P. Sr. Inv. John Ensell's positions about the case, she did ask him to contact Judy Bess about her statement to me that Eugene Woodworth had heard a ruckus outside of Mark's house just before the truck fire.  (As my post on April 20, 2011 indicates, Mr. Ensell reported that he had spoken with Eugene Woodworth but failed to find a telephone number for Judy Bess.)

    With that background, why did the District Attorney's office fail to preserve the 911 call--and all the other evidence related to my brother's case (like the photographs of the scene)?

What Happened to the Recording of the 911 Call?

    This post comes on the eve of the anniversary of my brother Mark's suspicious truck fire on September 23, 2003.  Like the previous post on the photographs of the scene, it is concerned with what happened to the recording of the 911 call by Mark's wife Susan at 10:55 that night.

    The 911 call is a potentially important piece of information about the events on the night of September 23 that cost my brother his life.  It was the first eyewitness statement made about the truck fire.  As is clear from cases I've read about and seen documented on television, such 911 calls have proved to be valuable reference points to check what is said afterwards by individuals and to help resolve various contradictions. 

    In this case, the 911 call seems important because confusing and contradictory statements were made about several issues, both on the scene of the fire and afterwards.  For instance, as I reported in the original post below (September 22, 2010), there is a contradiction between the witness statements of Mark's wife and a neighbor/EMT: Susan states that she tried to put out the flames on Mark, but Cheryl Simcox states that the white sweatshirt Susan said she used was clean, without any soot or skin on it.  Although for legal reasons I cannot mention on this blog everything I learned, I reported relevant information to authorities during the investigation and afterwards.  One crucial issue concerns how the fire started.  The fire investigator's report states that the tank of Mark's truck was about three-quarters full.  But various individuals reported to me that they were told the morning after the fire or later that Mark was burned specifically while putting gasoline into the tank after the truck ran out of gas.

    In my discussions with Atty. Tony Tanke and with Atty. Michael Kelly, I wondered why Trooper David Chandler, the first N.Y.S.P. officer on the scene of the truck fire, states in the police report that he "responded to Whalen Rd, Great Valley for a report of a male subject possibly attempting to burn himself in his vehicle."  Where did the trooper get that idea?  Mark's wife says nothing like that in her witness statement, and it does not appear anywhere else in the police report.  As I stated in my original post and at greater length in the second one, there are many compelling reasons why my brother would not have committed suicide.  In addition, as several professionals have indicated, suicide by fire is extremely rare in the United States.

    At his meeting with the two State Police investigators in September 2005, Atty. Kelly asked Inv. Edward Kalfas what the 911 call said.  The investigator replied that he had listened to the recording but couldn't remember what it said.  Sr. Inv. John Wolfe then indicated to Atty. Kelly that he would call to retrieve the 911 recording.  However, in November 2005 Sr. Inv. Wolfe informed Atty. Kelly that he would not check the 911 call, as well as other things, unless he decided to re-open the case after looking at the medical records.  (Of course, Sr. Inv. Wolfe chose not to re-open the case, based on his own perusal of the complex medical records and no discussion of them with Mark's physician at the burn unit, Dr. Edward Piotrowski.)  Given the various confusing statements about the scene of the fire, it is difficult to understand why the senior investigator would not go back to review that 911 call.  

    In late May of this year, on the advice of criminologist Will Savive, I made a FOIL request for an audio and transcript of the 911 call made by Mark's wife to report the truck fire.  On June 29, I received an e-mail response from Captain Laurie M. Wagner, Records Access Officer, Central Records Bureau of the New York State Police, to my FOIL request for the 911 call.  It read as follows:

    "Reference is made to your e-mail correspondence dated May 20, 2011, received at this office on May 23, 2011, requesting a copy of the audio and transcript of a 911 call made to Cattaraugus County 911 pertaining to an incident (#343029) that occurred in Great Valley on September 23, 2003, pursuant to the requirements of Article 6 of the Public Officers Law (Freedom of Information).  Please be advised that a search of our files failed to locate any records responsive to your request.  Any appeals may be addressed and mailed to the Records Appeal Officer, Administration, at the above address."

    What does "failed to locate any records responsive to your request" mean?  It would appear that the recording of the 911 call has been destroyed.  But I have not made the "appeal" referred to in the e-mail reply above.  Readers of my previous post may have seen the comment by Frank Romer about the N.Y.S.P. response to his FOIL request for "the written procedures and policies governing the purging of files," after he was informed that the photos of the scene of my brother's truck fire had been destroyed.  I quote the relevant part: "The NYSP’s reply was completely uninformative. They sent two sheets from an unspecified document and stamped NON-RESPONSIVE in large letters, with a brief indication that files could be purged after five years. I certainly hope the NYSP are not engaged in destroying other evidence in this unsolved case."  Under such circumstances, I'm not sure what the point is of making an appeal.

    I await the day when I can visit my brother at Calvary cemetery and finally say, "Requiescas in pace."  But there can be no peace without justice.

What Happened to the Photos of the Scene of My Brother's Truck Fire?

    This post deals with the issue of the photos of the scene of my brother Mark's truck fire.  According to the police report, New York State Police Inv. Edward Kalfas and Sgt. Frankowski took thirty-eight photos of the scene shortly after 12:30 a.m. on September 24, roughly an hour and a half after the 911 call at 11 p.m. (Sept. 23, 2003). 

    These photographs were viewed by Atty. Michael Kelly when he met with Inv. Kalfas and his superior Sr. Inv. John Wolfe at my request in September 2005.  As Atty. Kelly reported to me, the photos revealed that Mark had shed a significant amount of blood in the part of the driveway where he normally parked his truck.  In October 2005, I also asked Sr. Inv. Wolfe if I could see the photographs.  At first he replied that, though comfortable allowing Atty. Kelly to look at the photos, he would not let me see them because, as Mark's sister, I would be upset by his condition.  I therefore asked if I could see the photos of the scene in general, including the pool of blood, and he agreed.  Although I reminded him twice about his promise to let me view the photos, Sr. Inv. Wolfe insisted in December 2005 that he had looked at the medical records and found no evidence that my brother had been attacked.  He then indicated that there was no point in meeting with me.

    Last May, after emphasizing the importance of finding out if there had been a fire trail in the field where Mark was found burning, criminologist Will Savive asked if I had ever seen the photos of the scene of Mark's truck fire.  He suggested that I make a FOIL request to obtain copies of the photos.  Attorney Tony Tanke also agreed that it would be very useful to view them.  Will even took the initiative of calling the Batavia office of the New York State Police to inquire how I might best proceed.  He informed me that he had spoken with Sr. Inv. Christopher Iwanko, who told him that they usually purge the records after five years.  Will added that Sr. Inv. Iwanko remembered the case.  He had, in fact, been involved in the investigation.  According to an entry in the police report for September 25, 2003, "Investigator Christopher Iwanko attends the autopsy, taking photographs, fingerprints and a blood kit from the victim."  As Will let me know, he soon received a follow-up call from Sr. Inv. Iwanko, who informed him that the photos had been destroyed in 2009.

    It seemed difficult to understand why those photos would have been destroyed.  In fact, former Sr. Inv. John Ensell mentioned in an e-mail to me in December 2010 that he had gone back to the case file to verify his recollection of coins on the scene, only to discover that there were no coins.  Didn’t Mr. Ensell look at the photos of the scene for that purpose?  To obtain a definitive answer about the status of the photos, I made a FOIL request electronically to the New York State Police for the 38 photographs mentioned in the police report.  The FOIL Unit replied as follows: "Submit your request for photographs to Troop A Headquarters, 4525 West Saile Drive, Batavia, New York 14020-1095, Identification Section.”  On June 8, I sent a FOIL request by U.S. mail to the Troop A Headquarters, but after two months had still received no reply.  I then e-mailed the FOIL Unit to let them know that the Batavia office had not responded.  The FOIL Unit again replied as follows: "As stated in the below email sent to you on May 23, 2011, the request for photographs is handled at Troop Headquarters not at this office.  You will have to contact that office with your concerns."

    About the same time as I made my initial FOIL request electronically, Frank Romer followed the same procedure to the FOIL Unit for the photographs.  In late June, he received the following reply by e-mail from the N.Y.S.P. Central Records Bureau: "Please be advised that all photographs concerning the above have met our criteria for purging and have therefore been destroyed.  Any appeals may be addressed and mailed to the Records Appeal Officer, Administration, at the above address."  As instructed, I repeated my FOIL request by U.S. mail to the Troop A Headquarters in late August but received a reply by U.S. mail from the Central Records Bureau.  It was the very same response that Frank Romer had received almost two months earlier by e-mail.  There was, to say the least, a lack of clarity in the process for the FOIL request to the New York State Police for the photos of my brother’s truck fire.

    Why were the photos of the scene destroyed?  Neither the Cattaraugus County District Attorney nor the New York State Police could offer a coherent explanation for my brother’s death as either an accident or a suicide.  Inv. Kalfas told Atty. Kelly in 2005 that they believed Mark’s death was the result of his high blood alcohol level. Yet when informed that, according to his attending physician at the burn unit, his blood alcohol level had to have been zero or only slightly above, they never interviewed Dr. Edward Piotrowski.  Nor apparently did they interview firefighter Wayne Frank, who like the doctor, saw the wound on my brother’s forehead and thought it looked as if he had been whacked by a golf club.  Nor did they check the telephone records, in part to verify the alleged call between Mark’s acquaintance Peter Rapacioli and his wife Susan from 10:30 to 10:55 the night of the fire.  Nor did they make a serious effort to find out why my brother’s daughter had told me that she was concealing a suicide letter in order to protect the insurance money.  The New York State Police were urged by Atty. Kelly in 2005 and by me on numerous occasions between 2005 and 2007 to do these and other things that had been left undone.  I also sent a letter to D.A. Edward Sharkey in October 2008 summarizing problems with the investigation and information I had obtained since the case was closed.  And yet the photos of the scene were still destroyed.

    I am curious as to why the response to both Frank Romer's and my FOIL requests came with the following: "Any appeals may be addressed and mailed to the Records Appeal Officer, Administration, at the above address."  What would the point of an appeal be?  Does "destroyed" not mean "permanently destroyed"?

What Happened at the Holy Cross Club between My Brother and Ofc. Mark Marowski?

    This post comes on my brother Mark's birthday.  He would have turned sixty-one today, if his life had not been so brutally taken away at age fifty-three.

    As I noted in my original post below (September 22, 2010), the New York State Police investigator mentioned that the day before his truck fire my brother had got a DWI after an altercation with an off-duty police officer at a local club.  People in the Salamanca area were apparently talking about this issue, for several of Mark's acquaintances soon told me that he had been set up for his DWI by a local policeman named Mark Marowski after getting into a personal argument at the Holy Cross Athletic Club.  When Attorney Michael Kelly brought up this subject at his interview with the New York State Police in 2005, Inv. Kalfas acknowledged that Ofc. Marowski had called in to have my brother arrested when he left the Holy Cross Club.

    What actually motivated this off-duty police officer to call in and have my brother picked up for DWI?  A few of Mark's acquaintances claimed to know that this argument was about the arrest of my brother's son Brian for DWI about a week earlier.  Mark reportedly felt that his son should have been treated more leniently because he had just come home for the funeral of a close friend.  I wondered for a long time why my brother would have argued about his son's arrest with Ofc. Mark Marowski in particular.  Apparently, a Salamanca police officer had arrested Mark's son the previous week.  But who specifically had picked up Brian for DWI? 

    Although Brian's arrest was apparently not publicized in the local newspapers, I have been told that the arresting officer was reportedly Mark Marowski.  Did my brother confront the very policeman who had picked his son up for DWI?  Was that issue the focus of the altercation at the Holy Cross Club?  If so, it might suggest a very heated argument indeed.

    It is frustrating that, although many people know about the argument, no one to my knowledge admits to being present at the Holy Cross Club during the altercation that resulted in my brother's arrest for DWI a week after his son's DWI.  A number of people must have heard what words were exchanged between my brother and Ofc. Marowski.  Was anyone also privy to the call that Ofc. Marowski made to the Salamanca Police to pick Mark up?  Did anyone hear Ofc. Marowski comment on the argument after my brother left the club?

    Although authorities were critical of my brother for drinking and getting a DWI, Ofc. Mark Marowski himself has had a problematic relationship to the law.  As I mentioned in my original post, Ofc. Marowski was arrested in May 2006 for speeding and DWI.  He was subsequently suspended from the Salamanca police force but allowed to retire with his police pension.  Recently, I was informed about Ofc. Marowski's legal problems over financial issues and advised to make a FOIL request for court judgments against him.  According to documents supplied by the Cattaraugus County Clerk's office, there were ten judgments against Ofc. Marowski for unpaid debts between 1996 and 2007, six of which were not classified as "satisfied."

    Those whose responsibility it is to enforce the law should not consider themselves above it.

    Just over a day after being released from jail and driven home by two friends, my brother was found burning to death in the field across from his house.  What happened in those hours between Mark's DWI and that suspicious truck fire?  Will the truth finally come to light and will justice prevail?

How Did Mark End up Where He Was Found in the Field?

    This post deals with the very odd fact that when emergency workers arrived, they found my brother engulfed in flames in the field about sixty feet from his truck.  How did Mark get there?

    Officials assumed that Mark had driven the truck to the field, where it caught on fire.  One explanation was relayed to me by John Eberth, at the time a reporter for a local newspaper, the Olean Times Herald.  After deciding to cancel the article on Mark he had said was "set to run," Eberth informed me in December 2004 that he had spoken with the fire investigator.  Here is how Eberth reported in an e-mail the fire investigator's assessment: "He reiterated what investigators have been telling us, that they believe the fire was an accident, possibly caused by Mark falling asleep with a cigarette in his hand."  Why would my brother have driven his truck into that field across from his property between 10:30 and 10:55 p.m.?  Let's not forget that the pool of Mark's blood was left in his driveway before, according to the fire investigator's  theory, he could have driven the truck into field and then possibly fallen asleep.

    Furthermore, as mentioned in my original post below (September 22, 2010), the fire investigator's report states that the fire started in the driver's seat area and lists textiles, plastic, and gasoline as materials ignited and a match or lighter as the source of ignition; it also mentions that the remains of a gasoline can and a lighter were on the passenger's side floor.  In addition, the report refers to an "accelerant" and to "preparation."  The logical inference from the fire investigator, then, would seem to be that Mark somehow spilled gasoline onto the driver's seat before he lit up a cigarette, causing the truck to go up in flames.  But why would my brother have brought a gasoline can into the cab of the truck and opened it at all?  The tank was three-quarters full.  Putting aside that problem, one assumes from this scenario that Mark, on fire, managed to get out and go as far as he could from the burning truck to save himself.

    But why was Mark in the field on the passenger's side of the truck?  When neighbor and EMT Cheryl Simcox arrived (around two or three minutes after my brother's wife Susan called 911), she thought it very strange that Mark was lying fifty to sixty feet opposite the passenger's side of the truck, the door of which was closed, and not opposite the driver's side, the door of which was open.  As I noted in my original post, Cheryl was certain that, if the truck had caught on fire while Mark was in the driver's seat, he would not have run around the truck but rather directly away from it.  Cheryl also said that while in her bedroom, she had heard an explosion that rocked their trailer and that as she left, she saw the truck engulfed in fifty-foot flames.  Why would my brother have risked going around such an inferno?

    And why would Mark have failed to roll around before he got sixty or so feet away from the truck?  In addition, Cheryl stated that when she got there, she could see that my brother was not rolling around at all.  He was simply lying there motionless with two-foot flames shooting from his entire body.  Recall that both his attending physician Dr. Edward Piotrowski and firefighter Wayne Frank mentioned a wound on my brother’s forehead.

    How can one square this theory of an accident suggested by authorities, including the fire investigator (as conveyed by John Eberth), with Cheryl's eyewitness observations on the scene and with details of the fire investigator's own report?

    Shortly before Cheryl arrived, Mark's wife Susan, according to her witness statement, went to the field right after she called 911.  Here is her brief account of what happened then.  I quote her statement verbatim from the police report: "I saw Mark crawling away from the truck and I tried to put the flames on him out.  I asked him what did you do and he said, 'I did nothing.'"  Susan does not specify how far from the truck Mark was when she approached him.  Did he continue to crawl away from the truck until Cheryl arrived?  Or was he already around sixty feet away from it?  Was Mark speaking to Susan with two-foot flames shooting from his whole body?  Or did the flames increase in the interval between Susan's arrival and Cheryl's?

    One important point about the scene of the truck fire has recently been suggested by a criminologist who happened to learn about my blog and has offered his insights.  In analyzing details of the scene, criminologist Will Savive pointed out that if Mark ran or crawled from his truck while on fire to his final destination, he would of necessity have left a fire trail.  The police report mentions nothing about such a trail.  Since he had examined the photos of the scene in his interview with the New York State Police investigators in 2005, I contacted Attorney Michael Kelly about this issue.  After checking his records of that interview, Attorney Kelly replied that he found no indication of any such fire trail.

    I myself have filed a FOIL request with the New York State Police to obtain a copy of the photos of the scene of my brother’s truck fire.  I am currently waiting for their reply.

    If any readers of this blog have suggestions about points raised in this post, please feel free to send in a comment.  It would be appreciated.  The police and the fire investigator’s reports are now available to examine in pdf format through links on the main page of this blog.
  
    Please note that anyone may send in a comment for posting anonymously.  As the blog manager, I decide what comments get posted.  But I myself do not know the identity or e-mail address of anyone who checks the “anonymous” box on the submission form before submitting a comment.

Recent Efforts to Get Some Answers from the Cattaraugus County District Attorney’s Office (Part II)

    My previous post (March 23, 2011) referred to the issue of insurance that I raised with the current Cattaraugus County District Attorney at a meeting in May 2010 about problems with the New York State Police investigation into the suspicious death of my brother Mark.  As I mentioned there, retired N.Y.S.P. Sr. Inv. John Ensell (now working part-time as an investigator in the District Attorney's office) was also present, at D.A. Lori Rieman's request.  This post discusses another issue I brought up at that meeting: a report about a commotion heard on the property outside my brother’s house shortly before his truck went into the field and burned.

     As background for this issue, I happened to go to Our Lady of Peace church in my hometown of Salamanca in September 2009 in order to arrange for Masses in memory of my parents and my brother.  The secretary at that time, Judy Bess, immediately said that she should have introduced me to the man who had just left the office, since he had previously mentioned being on the scene of my brother's truck fire.  She added that normally she would not want to get involved in this kind of situation.  "But," she said, "I feel so sorry for you." 

    As I reported to D.A. Rieman, Judy thus summarized what this individual, Eugene Woodworth, had said to her: just before the truck fire, he happened to be outside his house down the road from my brother's place when he heard a ruckus on Mark's property; he soon noticed my brother's truck go down the driveway and into the field; after seeing the truck burst into flames, he rushed over and helped to put out the fire on Mark.

     The day after my conversation with Judy Bess, I myself called Eugene Woodworth.  Without mentioning Judy, I said that I had heard he had been on the scene of my brother's truck fire.  To my surprise, he gave me a very different account from what Judy had stated.  As I reported to D.A. Rieman, here is what he told me: he saw lights flashing but did not have a clear view because of the trees on his property; as he started down the road toward the field opposite Mark's house, Dan Smith (another neighbor, who lived at the end of Whalen Road) was already leaving; Dan then told him what was going on, and he never saw Mark at all. 

    When I asked Eugene Woodworth if he had anything to say about the truck fire, he hesitated, pausing frequently as he replied, "I thought that something happened on the property and surmised that Mark had backed the truck all the way across the road."  He added that the next day he went over to the house to pay his respects.  I asked if Mark's wife explained to him at that time what had happened.  Here is his summary of what Eugene Woodworth told me that Susan had said to him: Mark "hollered" at her to stay away, and she herself got burns and bits of Mark's flesh on her hands as she tried to put the flames out on him.  As I mentioned in my original post, neighbor and E.M.T. Cheryl Simcox was the first person on the scene after Mark's wife, and she remained with Susan for a long time after they went into the house.  As Cheryl said to me and in her witness statement, she looked over the white sweatshirt that Susan said she had used to try and bat the flames out on Mark: it was clean, with no soot or burn marks on it.  Cheryl, furthermore, mentioned nothing about observing any burns on Susan's hands.

    The following day, I called Judy Bess and mentioned what Mark’s neighbor had told me.  She insisted, "That is not what he said to me," adding that she was sorry Eugene Woodworth would not tell me the truth about what he saw the night of Mark’s truck fire.  She firmly maintained that he had told her about hearing a ruckus and screams from Mark's property and then seeing the truck go into the field.

    I reported to D.A. Rieman the discrepancies between the two accounts of what Eugene Woodworth heard and saw and explained that, when I called her, Judy insisted that she had reported Mr. Woodworth's comments accurately.  Mr. Ensell, however, immediately said that the claim of a ruckus outside of Mark’s house before the fire was not true.  I replied that Judy Bess did not seem like the kind of person to make up such a story or to embellish on what she had been told by Eugene Woodworth.  Mr. Ensell's explanation was that people tend to exaggerate their role in things after the event and their stories often “mushroom.”  I replied that a desire to enhance one's own actions may well be true, but it would not account for Eugene Woodworth's statement about hearing a commotion outside my brother's house right before the truck fire.   D.A. Rieman then asked Mr. Ensell to contact Judy Bess about Eugene Woodworth's statements to her.  She assured me that they would follow up on the conversation with Judy Bess by sending me a letter.

    Since I had not received the promised follow-up letter from the District Attorney's office, I e-mailed D.A. Rieman and Mr. Ensell at the end of December 2010.  I reminded Mr. Ensell that in a brief e-mail to me in August he had referred to interviewing Mr. Woodworth but having no phone number for Judy Bess.  I then expressed my concern as to whether he had done anything further on this issue.  I also referred to two other matters from the May 2010 meeting: his insistence that the insurance money was only $17,000 [the subject of my post of March 23, 2011] and a statement by him that coins were found in my brother's driveway near the pool of his blood found the night of the truck fire.

    Here is what Mr. Ensell replied in his e-mail about the problem of the two contradictory accounts of what Eugene Woodworth heard and saw: "As you know know [sic], this office is extremely inundated with felony prosecution cases and my only time involved in looking into this past incident is on my own time....Regarding my interview with Eugene Woodworth.  Basically down to a one liner was that he saw yellow off in the distance, walked about half way down, and turned around and came back.  That anything said after that would have been purely speculation....I still do not know Judy Bess' phone number and every now and then look through various data bases for same."

    Although I assumed that Judy Bess had moved away from Salamanca after leaving her position as church secretary, I was surprised that Mr. Ensell was unable to locate a contact number for her.  Recently, I myself did a simple Google search for the White Pages to see if I could find some information.  I did not get a telephone number but did find what appears to be her current address.  I should think that the District Attorney's office would have no difficulty getting a number with that kind of information.

    On Mr. Ensell's reference to coins on the scene, I had brought up at the meeting in May the problem of the pool of my brother's blood found in a paved area off the driveway, where he normally parked his truck.  When D.A. Rieman and Mr. Ensell insisted that the blood was no evidence of a crime, I replied that the pool of blood was right where Mark usually parked his truck, suggesting that he may well have been attacked there when he got out of his truck.  Apparently attempting to offer an explanation for the blood as an accident, Mr. Ensell stated that some loose change had also been found in the same area as the blood. 

    I later contacted Attorney Michael Kelly about this issue, since he had not informed me of any coins on the scene after his meeting with the New York State Police representatives in September 2005.  Attorney Kelly stated emphatically that he had not seen any coins in the photos, something he would have noticed, and that the State Police themselves had not mentioned anything about coins found on the scene.

    In his e-mail reply to me in late December 2010, Mr. Ensell acknowledged that he could find no evidence of coins in the records for the investigation: "Further, after going over some of the detail with Inv. Kalfas of the scene I am going to have to retract on what I said about the coins being on the ground.  I should have examined more of the case file before making statements that were not probably true to this scene.  To this day I still would have said that there were pocket contents on the ground, but nothing in the case file that I can see so far indicate that to be for fact (I am ASSUMING now that my mind is starting to cross reference the many death scenes that I have been at).  Regardless, I will have to apologize for that statement as it appears to be in error." 

    Mr. Ensell thus has given me no reason to change my view about the pool of my brother's blood found in his driveway the night of the truck fire.  It is very suspicious.

Recent Efforts to Get Some Answers from the Cattaraugus County District Attorney’s Office (Part I)

    My original post (September 2010) sets forth my major concerns about the unsatisfactory investigation into my brother Mark’s death following a suspicious truck fire.  As I indicated there, I have continued to try to get answers to many of the troubling issues. 

    In May 2010, I raised a number of questions in a meeting with current Cattaraugus County District Attorney Lori Rieman.  I had previously discussed my concerns with her by telephone and e-mail.  When she was running for District Attorney in fall 2009, she agreed that not enough had been done in the investigation and referred specifically to the importance of checking the telephone records. 

    In late November 2009 shortly after her election, I sent the D.A.-elect copies of my letters to D.A. Sharkey, including the one of October 2008 outlining my major concerns and the relevant information I had learned.  Ms. Rieman replied by e-mail with the following: "I got your letter in the mail the other day and intend to do what I can when I get in office.  I cannot promise anything, but you deserve better and I will certainly do whatever I can.  I am thinking of asking that a special prosecutor (i.e. the Attorney General's office) be appointed to conduct an independent investigation.  I want to look at it first and consider which would be the best option."

    When I saw her in May 2010, however, D.A. Rieman had invited retired N.Y.S.P. Senior Investigator John Ensell, who was the immediate superior of the investigator in Mark’s case and now works part-time as an investigator in the District Attorney's office.  At this meeting, D.A. Rieman conveyed a very different attitude about the case and reversed her previously expressed intentions, with no warning and no explanation.  She now backed up virtually everything Mr. Ensell said justifying the original investigation.  I cannot discuss here all the questions I posed at that time, many of which referred to very sensitive issues.  This post, however, raises one specific point that came up at that meeting.  I later e-mailed some follow-up questions to D.A. Rieman, who replied that they were being referred to Mr. Ensell, with whom I subsequently had an exchange related to the issue at hand.

    As I mentioned in my original post of September 2010, when I brought up the issue of insurance money, Mr. Ensell insisted that the total amount was only $17,000.  Because he met with N.Y.S.P. Inv. Edward Kalfas and Sr. Inv. John Wolfe to discuss the case in September 2005, I asked Attorney Michael Kelly about that figure.  He replied that the New York State Police investigators had told him that they did not know how much insurance there actually was.  After receiving no response to the follow-up e-mail I sent in early July, I e-mailed Mr. Ensell in late December 2010, reiterating my question about this discrepancy, among other things.

    Mr. Ensell replied as follows: "As far as life insurance is concerned, I did have a contact during that time frame with an Investigator with the New York State Insurance Department.  His disclosure was that the Pavlock name did not stand out as name associated with any large amount of money concerning insurance.  As far as the $17,000 is concerned, that is a matter of the information that was supplied in the report."  The reply by Mr. Ensell thus maintains his statement about insurance at the meeting in May.  But, by the language he uses (e.g., "the Pavlock name did not stand out as name associated with any large amount"), Mr. Ensell's e-mail does not at all appear to settle the question of insurance money definitively.  It was reported to me that there is in fact no national insurance data base.  So, special effort is needed to confirm the existence of life insurance policies.
               
    At age fifty-three and in excellent health, my brother suffered an unnecessary and extremely brutal death, enduring unimaginably painful third-degree burns over almost his entire body.  A nephew who lived close enough to get to the Erie County Medical Center before my brother died said that Mark's condition was so horrific that he regretted going in to see him: my nephew could not forget the image of Mark's legs charred and his nose nearly burned off.  My brother did nothing to deserve a death like that.  The New York State Police admitted that they could not prove Mark's death was a suicide.  There was in fact no evidence of a suicide.  The police also could not produce any reasonable scenario by which that truck fire could have been an accident.  So what conclusion is left to be drawn?

    My concern about the insurance money was spurred by the dubious story my brother's then twenty-three year old daughter Christie told me about a suicide letter that she was keeping secret in order to protect the insurance money.  As I stated in my original post, I informed the New York State Police about this matter as soon as I found out who was investigating Mark's death and spoke about it directly to Inv. Kalfas.  I also offered, orally and in writing, to take a polygraph test in case they had any doubts about the veracity of my statements.  Inv. Kalfas declined to administer a polygraph test, saying, "I don't know what good it would do."  It is recorded in the police report that Inv. Kalfas asked Christie if she knew anything about a suicide letter, and she denied knowing anything about it.  The State Police investigator clearly did not press Mark's daughter at all about her claim to me of both a suicide letter and her motive for withholding it.

    My intention is not to accuse anyone of Mark's death but to question why more was not done in the investigation to find out how and why that truck fire really happened.  As Attorney Tony Tanke pointed out, in any thorough investigation into such a suspicious death, the authorities would look carefully at what happened with money, especially insurance policies.  This, of course, might reveal who would have been in a position to profit by my brother's death and in what amounts.  It was not fully explored.  More than one insurance agent has told me that it is not difficult to hide a life insurance policy, as there are many small companies out there.  No bank records were examined.  In addition, as I mentioned in my original post, no telephone records were checked.

    It is clear that significant money was spent not long after Mark's death.  Someone in the area informed me in 2008, for instance, that the house owned by my brother and his wife had been put up for sale with a company advertising it online.  In its description of the place, the ad stated: "Very nicely maintained ranch home that has been completely remodeled!"  Regrettably, the New York State Police did not probe deeply enough to "follow the money" received and spent after my brother's death.  Without exploring such a critical matter, it is difficult to fathom how any competent police or prosecutor could cease investigating, let alone reach any conclusion about the cause of Mark's death. 

After Frustrations with New York State Officials, a Disturbing Experience with a Cattaraugus County Legislator in My Search for Justice

    As I mentioned in my original post below (September 22, 2010), after contacting federal officials about the problems with the New York State Police investigation into my brother's death, I was informed that murder is a state crime.  Senator Charles Schumer of New York responded to a letter I wrote in 2005 that as a matter of protocol he was forwarding my materials to Senator Arlen Specter.  After making inquiries on my behalf, the office of Senator Specter advised me to contact the State Senator and the State Representative from the Great Valley area and to send a letter of complaint to the head of the New York State Police in Albany.
 
    In late 2005 and early 2006, I pursued these avenues for redress.  I wrote a letter to N.Y. State Senator Catharine Young, who sent a brief reply.  Although commending me for "gathering such a detailed collection of the facts and reports surrounding this unfortunate event," Senator Young stated that the matter was not under her jurisdiction.  I also wrote to N.Y. State Representative Joseph Giglio, but received no reply.  In addition, I wrote a letter of complaint to N.Y. State Police Superintendent Wayne Bennett.  Superintendent Bennett did not reply.  Back in 2004, I had already written to the Attorney General of New York.  Peter Drago of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office simply replied that they did "not have jurisdiction to be of assistance."  State officials were presumably unable or unwilling to refer the matter to the proper jurisdiction on their own initiative.  So there seemed little else I could do on the state level.

    When I conveyed to Senator Specter's office the disappointing results of my letters to Senator Young, Representative Giglio, and Superintendent Bennett, I was advised to write to the Attorney General again and to the Governor, given that I had obtained much more information since 2004.  After continuing to seek more information, I wrote letters to both in 2007.  Peter Drago, Director of Executive Chamber Operations, responded to my letter by stating that Governor Spitzer asked him to thank me for contacting the Governor's office about my concerns.  He added: "Your correspondence has been forwarded to the appropriate members of our staff.  I am sure it will be of interest to them."  The Governor's office later informed me that a representative of the New York State Police would be in touch with me.  As I indicated in my original post, however, State Police Lieutenant Allen did not respond to me in any meaningful way but simply reiterated the position taken by the original investigation.  When I complained to the Governor's office about this superficial response, I ended up being told that I would have to deal with the New York State Police about the matter.  I also wrote to then Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.  Attorney General Cuomo did not respond.

    Given the failure of these state officials to take any real action in response to my concerns, I was initially surprised but optimistic when a Cattaraugus County official expressed an interest in the case of his own accord.  On Memorial Day weekend in 2009, I was in Salamanca to plant flowers on family graves that included great grandparents who had come from Poland over a hundred years ago.  After our father died in 1995 until his own death in 2003, my brother had been performing this family service.  While tending the graves in Calvary Cemetery that Sunday, I happened to see a man standing near my parents' plot.  Noticing the name on the headstone in front of him, I asked if he was a Vecchiarella.  He replied, "Yes, I'm Carmen."  When I told him that I was Barbara Pavlock, he said, "I thought you might be."  I mentioned that I remembered him from my high school days but added that I hadn't lived in Salamanca for a very long time. 

    Explaining why I was there, I told Carmen that I was still very upset about my brother's death and the ruling of accident in spite of the suspicious circumstances of his truck fire.  Carmen replied that he had known Mark and had been concerned about his death.  He added that he had tried to do what he could at the time to find out what had happened but couldn't get anywhere.  I referred to my frustration that so many things had not been done in the investigation and that the police report glosses over troubling aspects of the scene, including the location of the truck in the field, the gas can in the cab, and the pool of Mark's blood in his driveway.  I mentioned results of my own efforts to learn the truth, including the information about a wound on Mark's forehead observed by a firefighter on the scene and by a doctor at the burn unit and the conflicting claims by individuals on the scene about what my brother had been able to say when emergency workers arrived.  Carmen informed me that he was a county legislator and would look into the matter.  Pointing out that he had not been able to see the police report, he asked me to send him the relevant documents.

     After returning home, I mailed Carmen Vecchiarella the information he requested, including copies of my letters to D.A. Sharkey and the police, autopsy, and fire investigator's reports.  After waiting several weeks to hear back, I tried calling him.  Although I left messages and was told by his mother that she had let him know I was trying to reach him, Carmen never returned my calls or responded in any form.  He had voluntarily discussed the circumstances of Mark's death with me and requested the information I had on the case, and yet would not communicate with me afterward.  I thus have no idea if he spoke to any officials about the case or to any individuals who were on the scene of the fire.

     It came to my attention that two of the first emergency workers on the scene of my brother's truck fire are now or were at the time Cattaraugus County officials.  These two individuals in their witness statements reported hearing my brother say the words "gas" or "gasoline can" (words apparently interpreted by the State Police to imply that there had been no foul play), yet as firefighter Wayne Frank insisted to me, they could understand nothing Mark was trying to say.  Firefighter Mark Ward (also at the time superintendent of the Salamanca school system) is, like Carmen Vecchiarella, a Cattaraugus County legislator; and firefighter Gary Wind was a Cattaraugus County deputy sheriff then (now acting chief of the Salamanca police force).  Did Carmen speak with either of these two firefighters about what they had observed on the scene?  Did he speak with firefighter Wayne Frank about what he had heard or seen, including the wound on Mark's forehead?  Carmen and Wayne overlapped at Salamanca High School and remained in the area; so they presumably ran into each other from time to time.  Reportedly, two other individuals on the scene were Salamanca police officers.  Might Carmen have spoken to them?

    Apparently, Carmen Vecchiarella has no intention of letting me know how he used the information I supplied to him and what he learned from it.  Under the circumstances, that is difficult to understand.

The Authorities Had No Basis for Their Claims of Suicide

    As indicated in the main narrative on the unsatisfactory investigation into the suspicious truck fire and death of my brother Mark in Great Valley, New York, no one that I spoke with ever observed any signs of depression or instability in Mark.  The main narrative below (September 2010) provides the background that I learned related to Mark's death.  This new post comes to reinforce the lack of any basis to the claims made by authorities that my brother in all likelihood committed suicide. 

(1) My brother in fact had a deep connection to people.  That came out clearly as soon as I began to call his friends to ask if they had noticed anything unusual in his behavior.  I've pointed out in the main narrative comments by some of his friends on that issue.  One long-time friend was Gary Subulski, who said that my brother offered help before he was asked.  Gary's wife even made a point of mentioning how much help Mark had given them when Gary was undergoing chemotherapy.

(2) My brother showed by his actions how much he cared about the well-being of his children and would not simply have abandoned them by taking his own life.  Two people I called not long after Mark’s death commented on my brother’s commitment to his children.  His old friend Bill Lewis said that during the summer before his death Mark asked him to speak with his son Brian about the young man’s drinking because Brian wouldn’t listen to him.  His acquaintance Peter Rapacioli said that after his son got a DWI (just days before Mark himself was set up for a DWI by Salamanca Police officer Mark Marowski after an argument at the Holy Cross Athletic Club), my brother went to a lawyer and was hopeful that Brian’s DWI would be reduced to a lesser charge.  Rapacioli insisted that, contrary to what the State Police investigator indicated, Mark was not depressed about his son’s DWI.

(3) My brother showed a sense of commitment to his obligations right up to the evening of the DWI.  Mark's friend Jim Poole told me that, when my brother did not show up at his house on September 22 to help him do some painting, he left a message for Mark to find out if he was planning to come the following day.  Jim said that he, of course, had not known at the time that Mark had been arrested for DWI.  After my brother was brought home by two friends, he was unable to reach Jim but left a message that he would explain later what had happened.  If Mark was suicidal at that time, he wouldn't have bothered to call Jim in order to explain why he hadn't shown up.

    My brother then had to find someone to go with him to retrieve his truck from the impoundment.  I was informed by two different individuals that he went to their houses to ask for help in getting his truck back.  That obviously would have taken some time.  So, it's understandable that my brother did not get back to Jim in the evening after he left the first message.  Jim said that he was surprised not to hear from him the following day because Mark always honored his commitments.  It is also surprising–and troublesome–to me that no one except for his wife seems to have seen Mark the next day prior to the truck fire.  Susan says in her witness statement that Mark was at home and "slightly intoxicated" the afternoon of September 23.  But Jim did not get the second phone call he was expecting, and two other individuals told me they had tried to reach him at home in the morning and afternoon but got no response.  Mark at least would have let Jim know if he wasn't able to help paint that day.  What happened to him?

(4) My brother apparently showed no signs of depression to the one person who acknowledges seeing him on the day of the fire, his wife Susan.  State Police investigator Edward Kalfas acknowledged to Attorney Michael Kelly in 2005 that he had found no one who saw Mark out that day.  All the friends and acquaintances I spoke with said that they had not seen him and, as many observed with concern, did not know of anyone who had seen him the day of the fire.  However, in her witness statement his wife says that she and Mark were watching television around 7:30 p.m. and that he left the house around 8:45 to go to downtown Salamanca.  Susan mentions nothing whatsoever about any despondency on his part over the DWI or anything else.  Mark was presumably not depressed about issues related to his marriage.  As retired N. Y. S. P. Sr. Inv. John Ensell (who was the main investigator's boss) pointed out during my meeting with D. A. Lori Rieman last May, a divorce was approaching.

Please note that your comments are appreciated and that the blog is now open to anonymous posting of comments.

 MURDER IN CATTARAUGUS  COUNTY: A TRUE CRIME IN SEARCH OF JUSTICE
 
    An army veteran who had served as a paratrooper in the Vietnam War, Mark Pavlock was fifty-three years old when he was killed.  He grew up with the values of a strong Polish Catholic heritage in the small western New York town of Salamanca and stayed in the area.  Married for more than twenty-five years, he had two children in their early twenties, both in school.  He loved his son and daughter and was proud of their accomplishments.  In particular, he was very happy that his son was valedictorian of his graduating class at Salamanca High School and that he won considerable success as a high school golfer.  More than one of his friends commented that they did not know anyone who did so much for their children as Mark had.  One of his neighbors recalled frequently seeing Mark out helping his son practice golf shots and going off with their dog to collect the balls. 

    Although on disability as a result of an eye injury received while employed by a railroad company, Mark was in excellent health and at the time held a job as a security guard.  He gave much of his spare time to charitable work for the community: shortly before his death, he finished another season of coaching Little League baseball and the very week of the truck fire was actively involved in running a football pool for scholarships for high school students.  Friends emphasized how loyal and helpful Mark was.  One recalled that when she casually mentioned running out of wood, Mark immediately brought over a load of his own wood.  Another put it this way: "Any time I needed help, Mark was right there."

    The picture included here shows what this very decent man, who was my brother, looked like.  Even though the photo is dated, Mark kept his good looks.  But around 11 p.m. on September 23, 2003, he was ravaged by fire.  His pick-up truck burst into flames in a field across from his house in rural Great Valley, New York.  When emergency workers arrived, Mark was found lying in the field, completely engulfed in flames.  He died the following day as a result of third-degree burns over about ninety percent of his body.  Although the circumstances of Mark's truck fire were suspicious, the New York State Police and the Cattaraugus County District Attorney officially called his death an accident but claimed that my brother had in all likelihood committed suicide.  The facts themselves, however, do not add up to either an accident or a suicide.

    This blog is about the failure of the New York State Police to conduct a proper and thorough investigation into my brother's death and the failure of the Cattaraugus County District Attorney to hold them to an appropriate professional standard of investigation.  The narrative below reveals a good deal of the disturbing information that was relayed to me over the course of time.  I tried to make sense of the bizarre circumstances of the suspicious truck fire that took my brother's life and the unfounded claims by the State Police and the District Attorney that Mark had probably committed suicide.  At the same time, the narrative shows that individuals with relevant information failed to come forward and reveal publicly what they knew about the circumstances of my brother's death.  State and local officials in general failed to show any interest in my requests for help on this issue.  Their refusal to help adds to the problem of how difficult it is to get justice in rural New York State. 

    For convenience, the narrative is divided into sections under the following headings: THE SCENE OF MARK'S TRUCK FIRE; WHAT TREATMENT AND TESTS REVEALED ABOUT MARK'S CONDITION; THE INVESTIGATION INTO MARK'S DEATH; MY EFFORTS TO LEARN THE FACTS ABOUT MARK’S DEATH; CRUCIAL QUESTIONS ABOUT MARK'S DEATH; and SOME FINAL THOUGHTS.

THE SCENE OF MARK'S TRUCK FIRE

    Emergency workers appeared on the scene about 11 p.m., within a few minutes after Mark’s wife Susan called 911 to report that his truck was on fire across the road from their house.  In her witness statement, Susan explains that she was on the telephone from around 10:30, waiting for Mark, who had left around 8:45 for downtown Salamanca, to return home.  At about 10:55, she continues, she heard a noise in the garage, which she thought was from the cats; soon after, she looked out the living room window and saw Mark's truck in flames.  Susan then states that in going out to the scene of the fire, she saw Mark crawling away from the truck and tried to put out the flames on him.  She adds that she asked him, "What did you do?" and that he replied, "I did nothing." 

    The first emergency worker on the scene, neighbor Cheryl Simcox, told me that after hearing an explosion from her bedroom and being toned in to respond to the fire, she rushed to the scene within about two minutes and noticed fifty-foot flames shooting from the truck.  She saw Mark lying on the ground fifty to sixty feet from the passenger's side of the truck, with flames about two feet high shooting from his entire body.  She could not understand how my brother had got where they found him.  It seemed very strange, Cheryl said, that Mark was lying in the field opposite the passenger's side of the truck, the door of which was closed, and not opposite the driver's side, the door of which was open.  She was certain that, if the truck had caught on fire while Mark was in the driver's seat, he would not have run around the truck but rather directly away from it.  Cheryl was also concerned about the position of the truck facing Mark's house, as if it had been backed down the driveway.

    As reported in her witness statement, Cheryl found Susan standing at the end of the driveway.  Susan then said to her, "Come on, we have to go put him out, that's him on fire in the field."  Cheryl then used her fire radio to have an ambulance dispatched.  Cheryl states that although Susan tugged on her and said, "Come on, let's go," she thought it too dangerous to approach Mark.  Susan, she adds, kept saying that she had gone over to Mark and asked him, "What did you do?  My God, what did you do?" and that he had responded, "I did nothing."  In addition, Susan told her that she had used the white sweatshirt she was holding to try and bat the flames out on Mark, but Cheryl noticed that, although it had a faint odor of smoke, the shirt was clean, with no soot or skin on it.

    Firefighter Gary Wind in his witness statement says that he believes he "was the first on location."  He states that, in addition to the truck "fully involved with fire to the cab area," he saw "two small spots approximately twenty yards west of the vehicle."  Although not specifying what the first one was, he identifies the "second object on fire" as my brother Mark lying "on his back almost all of his clothing burned off."  Wind comments on my brother's efforts to speak, as follows: "He was talking to me and said something about gas.  I couldn't make out what he was saying."

    Firefighter Mark Ward, who was the superintendent of the Salamanca school system where he knew Mark's wife from her job, arrived immediately after Gary Wind.  According to his witness statement, he observed that the fire was concentrated in the area of the cab.  He says that Mark was about thirty feet (not around sixty, as Gary Wind and Cheryl Simcox noted) from the truck.  Although he thought my brother was dead, he says that Gary Wind (the name is redacted, that is, blacked out) noticed Mark breathing.  He adds that he "grabbed coats" from his car and "extinguished the rest of the fire."  Ward also states that Mark "was able to talk," but he could understand only the words "gasoline can," which he says my brother uttered twice.  Like Cheryl Simcox, Ward says that Mark's wife Susan was holding a white sweatshirt "that she said she had used to try to put Mark out."  Ward, however, says nothing about the condition of the sweatshirt. 

    As he informed me, firefighter Wayne Frank arrived on the scene immediately after Wind and Ward.  He told me that Mark was some distance from the truck, around forty-five feet or so.  Along with Wind and Ward, Frank put out the flames on Mark.  He also said that my brother had tried to talk to them.  However, he insisted that they had not been able to understand anything Mark was trying to say.

    A gasoline can was in fact found in my brother's truck.  The police report lists among five items of evidence "melted remains of a red plastic gas can."  The fire investigator's report is more specific: the gas can was found in the cab of Mark's truck on the floor of the passenger's side.  In her witness statement (completed  at 11:45 on the night of the fire), Mark's wife Susan also refers to a gasoline can, as follows: "After the fire I realized that Mark had taken a plastic 5 gal. can of gas out of the garage but I don't know what he did with it."

    The damage to the truck was heaviest in the driver's seat area of the cab.  According to the fire investigator’s report, the fire started in the driver's seat area and spread through the fire wall, with "heavy damage" to the engine compartment as well as the driver’s seat area.  The report mentions that an "accelerant" was used and that there was "preparation."  It lists textiles, plastic, and gasoline as materials ignited and a match or lighter as the source of ignition.  A lighter was found on the passenger's side floor.

    Although most of Mark's clothing was burned off, some of what remained was removed for investigation.  The police report mentions that "portions of burnt clothing from the victim" were sent to the Western Regional Crime Lab and that those items "tested positive for gasoline."  

    Firefighter Wayne Frank, who helped put the flames out on Mark, observed trauma to my brother's head.  He stated in an interview with Buffalo Attorney Michael Kelly that he had seen a wound on Mark's forehead which looked as if he had been hit by a nine-iron. 

    Although not made public until around early March 2004, a pool of blood was found on the scene the night of the truck fire.  It was located where Mark normally parked his truck, in a paved area at right angles to his long driveway and around half way up.  It was a significant amount of blood, as indicated by police photos taken the night of the fire and later viewed by Attorney Michael Kelly.  No "rush" order was placed when it was sent to a lab.  In late February 2004, test results proved conclusively that it was Mark's blood.

    WHAT TREATMENT AND TESTS REVEALED ABOUT MARK'S CONDITION

    After being given I.V.'s, my brother was placed in an ambulance and airlifted to the Erie County Medical Center.  According to the police report, Mark "was unable to communicate at any time" during the airlift to the burn unit.  According to my nephew John McKenna who lived in the area, Mark's attending physician at E.C.M.C., Dr. Edward Piotrowski, told him shortly before my brother died that he had been saturated with a flammable liquid.  As my nephew reported, the doctor then added that either Mark had done that to himself or someone else had done it to him.  Dr. Piotrowski later told me that he did not understand how my brother had got gasoline on his head as well as the rest of his body.

    When Mark arrived at the burn unit, Dr. Piotrowski, as he later informed me, noticed trauma to my brother's head.  There was soft-tissue swelling on his forehead, the doctor explained, which made him think that Mark might have been hit over the head.  He ordered a CT scan because he thought there might be bleeding in my brother's brain.  The scan, the doctor said, was negative for bleeding but revealed deep soft-tissue swelling in Mark's forehead.  Dr. Piotrowski added that there was further soft-tissue damage to the left side of my brother's face.  He also mentioned mucosal congestion found in Mark's sinus areas.  Since my brother had not suffered from a sinusitis condition, the doctor stated that the only explanation for the congestion was a blow to the nose.

    Mark died at E.C.M.C. early in the afternoon on September 24, about fourteen hours after the fire.  Dr. Piotrowski said that Mark had burns down to the muscle level, a condition which produces a substance that shuts the kidneys down.  He explained that in the end my brother's heart could not respond to the burden of having to pump so much extra fluid around and he thus suffered cardiovascular collapse.

    An autopsy was performed the day after Mark's death by Erie County Medical Examiner Sung-ook Baik, with New York State troopers present.  The report, which came out in November 2003, describes the degree of burns as follows: "The body shows approximately 85-90% of first to fourth degree skin burn.  Some normal skin is recognizable in the back of the upper arm, buttocks, right forearm, and both feet....The entire face and head shows first to third degree of skin burn."  Although much of the medical information is too technical for a lay person to grasp, my brother’s height is recorded as sixty-seven and a half inches, but he was actually seventy-one and a half inches (i.e., five feet eleven and a half inches tall).  The report mentions nothing about the wound on Mark's forehead observed both by firefighter Wayne Frank and by Dr. Piotrowski and verified by the CT scan mentioned above.

    The Medical Examiner states his opinion on the cause of death as follows: "This 53-year old Caucasian male Mark Pavlock died of Flash Fire Burn and Thermal Injuries.  The manner of death was classified as accident.  He had been drinking alcoholic beverages prior to death."  The toxicology report records a blood alcohol level of .25, obtained through a "headspace" test.  The blood alcohol reading for the autopsy was obtained by using Mark's corpse. 

    When I mentioned this high blood alcohol level to Dr. Piotrowski, he insisted that Mark's blood alcohol could not have been that high.  He explained that, even if Mark had been drinking the evening of the fire, his blood alcohol level should have been zero--or only slightly above--because of all the fluids pumped into him during his treatment at the burn unit.  Attorney Michael Kelly later questioned Dr. Baik about this high blood alcohol reading.  The Medical Examiner, Kelly said, agreed that it was too high but explained that it was what the lab people had given him.  Apparently, Dr. Baik did not seek any information about Mark's condition or treatment from Dr. Piotrowski at the Erie County Medical Center.

         
                                    THE INVESTIGATION INTO MARK'S DEATH

    In the police report, David Chandler, the New York State Trooper who responded to the fire, states on September 24, 2003, "Motive and cause of the fire still under investigation."  On the same date, New York State Police Investigator Edward Kalfas states that the Supporting Deposition of neither Mark's wife nor the first responding fireman provides "definitive information" about the cause of the fire.  Inv. Kalfas's narrative for September 24 also notes that among the five items of evidence taken from the scene, two (the gas can and the portions of burnt clothing) were sent to the Western Regional Crime Lab and another (two swabs of blood from Mark’s driveway) was sent to the N. Y. S. P. Crime Lab in Albany.  On the same date, he reports that he met with members of the Cattaraugus County Fire Investigation Team, which concluded that "the fire was caused as a result of human element and not natural causes or an act of God."  Despite the blood evidence and the general uncertainty about the specific cause of the truck fire, the New York State Police Investigator and District Attorney Sharkey made no effort to preserve my brother's body for further examination.  His body was released after the autopsy, and his wife had Mark cremated.

    In his entry in the police report for September 25, Inv. Kalfas mentions interviewing some of Mark's acquaintances.  Although the names of all these individuals are redacted from the police report that I obtained, the first person mentioned is a man (known to be Peter Rapacioli) who was also involved in the charity football pool with my brother.  According to the report, Rapacioli said that he had called to speak with Mark but (as he was apparently not at home) talked with Susan until "she advised him of seeing the fire and hung up to call 911."  The report goes on to say that Rapacioli "had no idea how something like this could happen" and that he described Mark as a "heavy drinker and chain smoker." 

    Inv. Kalfas also indicates that he spoke that day with some members of the Holy Cross Athletic Club.  A small redacted section appears to contain the names of two individuals, who claimed that my brother had been in the day before the fire and had been "acting 'strange' and 'not like himself.'"  There is no explanation of what is meant by these characterizations of Mark's behavior on September 22.  As will be discussed later, Inv. Kalfas does not mention the argument between my brother and an off-duty Salamanca policeman at the Holy Cross Athletic Club on the day before the truck fire.  Inv. Kalfas then states that he interviewed "numerous Holy Cross Athletic Club members who were all in agreement that the victim had been behaving unusually and was very upset about getting arrested for DWI the day before the fire."  Inv. Kalfas, however, acknowledged to Attorney Michael Kelly in 2005 that he had not found anyone who had seen Mark out on September 23, the day of the fire.  It is difficult to understand, then, how these club members could have told him about my brother's reaction to his DWI the day before.

     Finally, in his entry for September 25, Inv. Kalfas mentions re-interviewing Mark's wife and interviewing what appear to be two or perhaps three other individuals whose names are redacted from the report.  The only thing he says about these interviews is the following: "No new information was developed." 

    Inv. Kalfas's next entry is for September 29, in which he states that he "interviewed the victim's sister, Barbara Pavlock [name not redacted]."  He summarizes information I provided as follows: "Barbara Pavlock states she has heard rumors from around town and has an unsubstantiated theory that the fire was not suicide or an accident."  However, my purpose in making contact with the New York State Police was not to repeat "rumors" but to report a telephone conversation in which my brother's daughter claimed to me that Mark had left her a suicide letter.  That conversation will be discussed in detail below.  In the remaining entries for the same day, Inv. Kalfas reports that he interviewed employees at Antone's, where Mark frequently bought gas and cigarettes, and learned that no one there had seen him for a few days prior to the fire.  He also reports that he interviewed employees of M & M's where my brother worked as a security guard, and learned that they had not seen him for a few days [which included his regular days off].

    Inv. Kalfas's entry for September 30 mentions his interview of Mark's and my half-sister Carol McKenna (name redacted).  He states that she "was very upset and advised that she had been contacted by...[brief redaction] Barbara, who was making statements about it possibly not being an accident or suicide."  He adds that Carol "had no relevant information to offer."  Carol stated to me that she had not complained about any conversations I had with her.  Furthermore, she told me that she had informed Inv. Kalfas about her experience at the burn unit the morning of September 24, information that seemed quite relevant to the investigation.

    Inv. Kalfas reports his interview on October 2 with Salamanca Police Officer Darryl L. Wickham [sic for Whitcomb], who arrested Mark for DWI the day before the truck fire.  He fails to state, however, anything about the circumstances of the arrest, which happened immediately after my brother got into an argument with an off-duty Salamanca Police Officer at the Holy Cross Athletic Club.  This issue will be discussed below.  Inv. Kalfas goes on to say that, according to Officer Whitcomb, Mark "was very upset and depressed that the information regarding his arrest would be available to the newspaper."  Wouldn't most people be upset at the prospect of having their name in the paper for DWI? 

    Inv. Kalfas then appears to mention his interview of Jim and Alexis Wright, the friends who picked Mark up and drove him home from the DWI.  His summary is almost entirely redacted, but it is so brief that he obviously did not record much, if anything, about what the Wrights observed when they brought my brother home after his arrest.  Finally, on October 2, he refers briefly to his interview of Mark Ward (name redacted), whose Supporting Deposition he observes is enclosure #6.  (The names of all those who supplied a witness statement were, apparently inadvertently, left unredacted in a list immediately following Inv. Kalfas's narrative in the police report.)

    Inv. Kalfas has entries for three dates in the remainder of October.  On Oct. 10, he mentions his interview of Cheryl Simcox (name redacted), whose Supporting Deposition he notes is enclosure #7.  On Oct. 14 and 25, he refers to contact with Nationwide Insurance, CNA Insurance, and United Transportation Union.  He also reports interviews with several individuals on Oct. 25.  On that date, he re-interviewed Mark's wife Susan, noting that she "repeated the same account she gave the night of the incident and also in her Deposition."  In addition, he reports his interview with my brother's daughter Christie (name redacted), referring in part to my information about Christie's telephone conversation with me.  He summarizes it as follows: "She had no information regarding rumors of a suicide note or pre-planned funeral arrangements."   On the same date, Inv. Kalfas reports his interviews of three of Mark's "friends and neighbors," who he says referred to my brother as "often drinking." 

    The two entries for November reveal that Inv. Kalfas conducted one interview.  On Nov. 4, he received results from the Western Regional Crime Lab, affirming that the remains of the gas can and the burnt clothing tested positive for gasoline.  On Nov. 22, he interviewed an individual (name redacted) described as a "good friend of the victim," who also mentioned Mark's drinking and offered the opinion that "when he got the DWI with his name in the paper, I think it pushed him over the edge."  This individual, however, does not indicate if he saw or spoke to my brother on September 22 after his DWI or on September 23 at any time prior to the truck fire.  All of my brother's friends with whom I spoke (more than ten) told me that they had not seen Mark out the day of the truck fire and did not know of anyone who had seen him.

    There are entries for three dates in December.  On Dec. 10, Inv. Kalfas reports that further examination of Mark’s truck revealed the position of the transmission in "Park."  The truck was then released to a representative of Nationwide Insurance.  On Dec. 12, Inv. Kalfas reports that he re-interviewed Mark's wife, who "answered the same as she did the night of the fire and on the 10/25/03 re-interview."  He adds that Susan "has no explanation for the blood located in the driveway and also stated there was [sic] no notes or letters left by the victim."  On Dec. 30, he reports his meeting with District Attorney Sharkey and the D. A.'s investigator Michael Malick [sic for Malak].  He states that, among other things, they discuss letters that I sent to Inv. Kalfas and to D. A. Sharkey.  The latter asks Inv. Kalfas to interview one other individual (name redacted).  Inv. Kalfas adds that this person was immediately interviewed but "was unable to provide any information."  After informing the District Attorney of the results of this interview, he reports D. A. Sharkey's statement that "despite rumors and innuendo, there is no evidence to support the possibility of homicide or suicide.  The case will be classified as an accident, consistent with the findings of the Medical Examiner's office."

    Two supplemental reports reflect the conclusion of the investigation.  The first has three entries.  On February 24, 2004, Inv. Kalfas received a copy of the DNA analysis of "the blood submitted 01/05/04."  He states: "The Report finds the blood found at the scene is that of the victim, Mark Pavlock."  On March 4, he reports a meeting he had with D. A. Sharkey, his investigator Michael Malak, and N. Y. S. P. Sr. Inv. John Ensell at which the D. A. asked him to interview Medical Examiner Sung-ook Baik "regarding a possible explaination [sic] for the blood found at the scene and a re-interview of the victim’s wife, Susan Pavlock."  On March 11, Kalfas reports his interview of Dr. Baik at the Erie County Medical Center.  He summarizes the results as follows: "After reviewing the photographs [of the autopsy and of the scene] and his own record he stated that during the autopsy he found no, pre-hospital, wounds which would have produced bleeding.  He did suggest that, given the victim's blood alcohol concentration, and the physical effect of alcohol, the victim may have likely suffered from a nosebleed.  Dr. Baik added that alcohol dilates blood vessels and a simple nosebleed could produce excessive bleeding."

    In the second supplemental report, Inv. Kalfas refers to his interview (requested by D. A. Sharkey) of Mark's wife Susan on April 28.  He summarizes it as follows: "Mrs. Pavlock answered all questions in a forthright manner, however no new information was developed."  He then states that, also at  D. A. Sharkey's request, "Mrs. Pavlock was additionally asked if she would submit to a Polygraph Examination.  This request was denied."  This supplemental report concludes as follows: "Case remains open pending further direction of the DA's office."  Judging from the police report, however, the investigation essentially ended at this point.

    MY EFFORTS TO LEARN THE FACTS ABOUT MARK’S DEATH

   
    In the period following our mother's death in November 2000, I hadn't been to upstate New York much and thus had not seen my brother very many times.  From telephone conversations and letters, he seemed fine.  So, shortly after 7:30 a.m. on September 24, I was stunned to get a telephone call from a total stranger, a friend of Mark's wife named Ann O'Brien,  informing me that my brother had been badly burned.  Early in the afternoon a message was left for me that Mark had died.

The claim of a suicide letter

    After being unable to reach my brother's wife by telephone during the afternoon, I called their house early in the evening.  Their son Brian told me that his mother was in the shower and, after speaking briefly with me, informed me that his sister wanted to talk to me.  Mark's daughter Christie then promptly told me that she knew how her father had died.  Mark, she claimed, had committed suicide, but she was not telling anyone else other than her mother and brother in order to protect the insurance money.  When I expressed my disbelief that my brother would have taken his own life, Christie stated that he had been depressed over the deaths of our father and mother.  I knew for certain that was not true and told her that I didn't believe her.  Christie, an M.A. student in Psychology, insisted that my brother had "low self-esteem" and that such individuals often commit suicide.  She also said that Mark had told her frequently that he no longer wanted to live.  Christie then added that Mark had left her a suicide letter, which began as follows: "By the time you read this, I will be dead."

    As soon as I found out who was conducting the investigation into my brother's death, I called the Olean office of the New York State Police and reported Christie's claim about a suicide.  The following day, I spoke by telephone with Inv. Kalfas and repeated the information to him directly.  I also reported the information by letter to D. A. Sharkey in December 2003.

    When I asked Attorney Michael Kelly to speak with the State Police investigator and his superior John Wolfe in 2005, Inv. Kalfas said that Christie had denied knowing anything about a suicide letter and he had not known what to do about the matter.  I later spoke by phone with Sr. Inv. Wolfe, who stated that he wanted to talk to Christie about the issue but she had not returned his call.  Nothing further appears to have been done.

     When I recently met with the current Cattaraugus County District Attorney, Lori Rieman, to express my concerns about the investigation into my brother's death, she dismissed the importance of Christie's claims to me about a suicide letter.  D. A. Rieman stated that Christie might well have destroyed the suicide letter and therefore the State Police investigator could not have done much about it.  As I indicated, however, Christie's statements about this alleged suicide letter did not at all seem credible.  The question remains: why did Mark's daughter claim that he had left her a suicide letter?

Insurance issues

    Because Mark's daughter linked her claim of a suicide letter to the issue of insurance money and relatives in the area were raising questions about insurance policies, California attorney Tony Tanke, a friend who offered his assistance immediately after Mark's death, contacted the railroad that had employed my brother in order to advise them about the ongoing investigation into Mark's death.  Between September 2004 and February 2005, I made inquiries with my brother's insurers listed in the police report and with another after learning that his disability policy with the railroad had been sold.  An agent for Nationwide, which did its own investigation into the truck fire, informed me that Inv. Kalfas had not told them about the pool of blood found in the driveway and refused to let them see the police report. 

    In discounting the significance of Christie's statement to me about a suicide letter, D. A. Rieman suggested that Mark's daughter might simply have wanted her mother to collect the modest insurance money.  The new District Attorney had also invited John Ensell, Kalfas's immediate superior during the investigation, to the meeting.  Mr. Ensell insisted that the insurance money had in fact been only $17,000.  Because that figure seemed far too low for a number of reasons, I asked him how he knew for certain.  He stated that they had checked the insurance policies through the New York State insurance data bank.  His information, however, was incomplete since I had uncovered a single policy (with a company not listed in the police report) that was said to be worth more than the total claimed by Mr. Ensell.

Mark's state of mind before the truck fire

       
     Inv. Kalfas told me early in the investigation that my brother had been depressed over three things: 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.  I immediately started to contact Mark's friends and continued to do so for some time.  Virtually all of his friends, including at least three who had known him since grade school, were adamant that there was no way whatsoever my brother had taken his own life.  Two different friends who saw my brother in the evening after his DWI, Todd Lindell and Alexis Wright, insisted that he had not seemed depressed.  To the contrary, both stated that Mark had been concerned about keeping his driver's license so that he could get to his job as a security guard.  A few friends pointed out that Mark was an experienced hunter who owned several guns and under intolerable circumstances would have used a gun.  As a paratrooper in Vietnam, Mark had seen what happened to soldiers whose helicopters had crashed and burned and recalled those experiences with emotion when he returned.  In his witness statement in the police report, Jim Wright says, "I believe I knew him very well, and well enough to know he didn't have any suicidal tendencies." 

    Numerous individuals mentioned that Mark had told them about things he was looking forward to, such as returning to his favorite sport of golf and throwing a big party for his son when he graduated from college.  A cousin in the area who had frequent contact with Mark assured me that he had definitely not been depressed about putting his dog away.  Neighbor Cheryl Simcox said that she had frequently seen Mark out on his property mowing the lawn, doing yard work, and performing other chores.  She also mentioned Mark's reaction when a mutual acquaintance of theirs committed suicide several months earlier: my brother wished that he had known of the man's intention so that he could have tried to talk him out of it.  With both of our parents gone, Mark let me know if any relatives or friends in the area had died and always expressed deep sadness and disappointment if they had not lived to an advanced age.  He, too, had hoped to live a long life.  

The issue of Mark’s drinking

    I was very surprised to learn that my brother had been doing any drinking, since he had gone off alcohol completely several years before.  In my experience, he was usually drinking a cola or something similar.  When I asked close friends of his about this issue, one said that Mark had started doing some drinking about two years earlier, and another indicated that he was drinking more noticeably about six months before his death.  Others said that Mark did not drink when he worked or when he was involved in activities such as coaching Little League baseball.  A few specified that he drank mainly in the evenings and on his days off.  Several mentioned what they believed was the reason why my brother had begun to drink again.  Expressing skepticism at the view that Mark had caused the truck fire because he was very drunk, more than one person emphasized that my brother could hold his alcohol.  Several insisted that Mark would never have risked getting drunk and driving his truck the day after getting a DWI.  He was not a fool.

The DWI after an argument with an off-duty police officer

    Early in the investigation, Inv. Kalfas told me that my brother had got a DWI after an altercation with an off-duty police officer at a local club.  When I called Mark's friends in late 2003, several people revealed to me that my brother had been set up for his DWI by a Salamanca policeman named Mark Marowski after they got into a personal argument at the Holy Cross Athletic Club.  The two were not strangers: they had known each other since grade school.  The details of the argument are unclear, but reportedly my brother thought that his son should have been treated more leniently when he was stopped for DWI because he had just come home for the funeral of a close friend.  But immediately after my brother left the club, Officer Marowski reportedly called in to the Salamanca police to have my brother arrested on his way home to Great Valley. 

    Because Inv. Kalfas in the police report does not even allude to this argument, he thus does not indicate if he questioned members of the Holy Cross Athletic Club about the altercation between my brother and the off-duty policeman.  It appears that he made no effort to find out if the hostility on Officer Marowski's part ended with that phone call.  The authorities also never checked any phone records, at my brother's house or anywhere else.  Instead, Inv. Kalfas's narrative in the police report makes it seem that my brother did little else but drink.  That is far from the truth.

    It is a bitter irony that in May 2006 Officer Mark Marowski himself was arrested for speeding and DWI.  Numerous individuals said that he should have been picked up many times before.  Although he was suspended from the Salamanca police force, Officer Marowski was allowed to retire with his police pension.

Communicating with Inv. Kalfas and the District Attorney

    During the period of the investigation and over the course of time relevant information I learned about the truck fire was reported to officials.  While the investigation was ongoing, I wrote three letters to Inv. Edward Kalfas and three to D. A. Edward Sharkey.  I received no response to my letters from Inv. Kalfas and only a perfunctory reply from D. A. Sharkey to my first letter to him.  I wrote a fourth letter to D. A. Sharkey in 2008; he did not reply.  On November 4, 2003, I went up to the Olean office of the New York State Police to speak with Inv. Kalfas directly and to see my brother's truck before it was removed from the police compound.  He was obviously not pleased that I had come.  When I started to write some information down a few minutes into the meeting, he abruptly left the interview room and, on returning, refused to continue the interview.  After I saw the condition of Mark's truck, I brought up the subject of Officer Mark Marowski.  Inv. Kalfas denied that he had even mentioned to me my brother's argument with an off-duty police officer and added, "You'd have to have it on tape to prove it.  We're done here.  I'm not talking to you any more.  I have my job to think of."
   
    During the investigation, Attorney Tony Tanke spoke several times by telephone with the District Attorney's investigator Michael Malak and, when it ended, with D. A. Sharkey himself.  Attorney Tanke found D. A. Sharkey rude and ill-informed about the case.  The District Attorney could not offer any credible scenario for Mark's truck fire yet insisted that the cause of my brother's death was either accident or suicide, and most likely suicide.  D. A. Sharkey's claim of a suicide, however, contradicts his statement on December 30, 2003, as recorded in the police report, that "there is no evidence to support the possibility of homicide or suicide." 

    D. A. Sharkey gave Attorney Tanke two concrete pieces of information about the investigation.  First, he said that the Medical Examiner had explained that a deposit of Mark's blood found in his driveway was caused by a "bump on the nose."  (The police report, however, states that M. E. Baik explained the pool of blood as the likely result of a nosebleed caused by Mark's alleged high blood alcohol.)   Second, he stated that Mark's wife had been asked by the State Police, at his request, to take a polygraph test, but had refused to do so.  D. A. Sharkey added that I was not entitled to any information from his office and would have to obtain the police report through a FOIL request to the New York State Police, even though I am the closest living relative from Mark's birth family.

The information from Mark's attending physician

      To find out if he could clarify something about the drugs administered to my brother during his treatment, I called Dr. Edward Piotrowski, Mark's attending physician at the Erie County Medical Center, in early 2005.  Dr. Piotrowski told me that he had never been interviewed by the police about Mark's death and assumed that they had not needed anything from him.  The doctor then gave me very important information about my brother's condition.  As I've already mentioned, Dr. Piotrowski revealed that there was deep soft-tissue swelling in Mark's forehead, further soft-tissue damage to the left side of his face, and mucosal congestion in his sinus areas that could only be explained by a blow to the nose if he had not suffered from a sinusitis condition.

    Emphasizing that almost all his burns were third degree, Dr. Piotrowski stated that he could not understand how my brother had got so badly burned.  He insisted that even if Mark had caused a flash fire by lighting up a cigarette with an open gas can in the cab of his truck, it should not have soaked him with gasoline.  In addition, the doctor told me that Mark's hands, including his palms, were very badly burned, which made him think that my brother had tried to put out the flames on himself and had not been attempting to commit suicide.  When I told him that there was no mention of wounds in Mark's autopsy report, he explained that the swelling on my brother's face would have gone down by the time of the autopsy and the wound on the forehead might not have been noticeable.

    After a few conversations with him, it was clear that Dr. Piotrowski was nervous about what he had revealed to me.  He told me not to mention his name to anyone in the Salamanca area and expressed concern about getting a $50,000 fine if he violated the HIPAA law.  From the middle of 2005, he no longer returned my calls and would not respond to Attorney Michael Kelly’s request to speak with him.  Although Attorney Kelly urged Sr. Inv. John Wolfe to speak with Dr. Piotrowski, the State Police never interviewed him.  Later in 2005, when I contacted Sr. Inv. Wolfe, he said that he had not been able to interview Dr. Piotrowski because the doctor had not returned his call.  In 2007, I spoke with N. Y. S. P. Lt. Allen, who told me that Capt. George Brown had asked Sr. Inv. Wolfe to track Dr. Piotrowski down in December 2005.  According to Lt. Allen, the doctor said he could not remember the case and could not say anything without having the medical records in front of him.  As Lt. Allen admitted, Dr. Piotrowski did not get back to Sr. Inv. Wolfe, and they did not pursue the matter further. 

The information from firefighter Wayne Frank

   
    At a high school class reunion in 2005, I happened to speak with classmate Wayne Frank.  When I asked if he had known Mark, he nodded and said that he had been on the scene of my brother's truck fire.  Although at first unwilling to say what he had observed, Wayne gave me some information.  He said that the State Police had made him leave when Mark was taken away by ambulance and that he had not been asked to give a witness statement.  Wayne 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 indicated that whoever had parked the truck there knew what he was doing.  He added that although the suicide theory was discussed that night, he did not believe it.  After saying a number of things that cannot be disseminated here, Wayne stated that he thought the police should have checked for Mark's nine-iron but did not explain what he meant.

    Not long after this conversation, Attorney Michael Kelly did a follow-up interview with him.  Wayne admitted that he had seen a wound on Mark's forehead.  He also said that he and Gary Wind had been concerned about the way the truck came out from the driveway: tire marks in the grass were in a totally straight line, which did not seem consistent with backing the truck down in haste because of an emergency.  Appearing uncomfortable about the situation, Wayne said to Attorney Kelly, as he had to me, that he would deny in court what he had revealed.

    When Attorney Kelly met with Inv. Kalfas and Sr. Inv. Wolfe in 2005 to discuss problems with the investigation, he brought up the statements made by Wayne Frank as well as by Dr. Piotrowski.  He advised them to interview Wayne as well as Dr. Piotrowski and urged them to re-open the case.  But, by all accounts, they did not interview Wayne.  The State Police remained adamant that Mark's death was either an accident or a suicide and would not re-open the case.
                           

 The telephone records

    In addition to failing to interview individuals with important information, such as Dr. Piotrowski and firefighter Wayne Frank, the authorities did not check any telephone records for the day of Mark's truck fire or the preceding day when he was set up for the DWI.  There are several reasons why those records should have been checked. 

    Given the argument between my brother and Officer Mark Marowski the day before the truck fire, Inv. Kalfas should have been interested to find out if there were any phone calls between the two later that day or on the day of the fire.  In addition, Peter Rapacioli's statement, as noted in the police report, that he had called the house just before the fire, apparently to speak with Mark about the football pool for scholarships, should have been verified.  10:30 p.m. is an odd time to be conducting business.  The claim to me by Mark's daughter Christie that he had left her a suicide letter was apparently not investigated in any serious way.  The truth about Mark's psychological state could have been probed by checking the telephone records for conversations my brother had with various people the week or so before his death.  All of Mark's friends I contacted insisted that they had observed no indication of depression on his part around the time of his death (or at any other point).  Furthermore, since none of Mark's friends apparently either heard from him or saw him on the day of the truck fire (and according to one close friend, Mark had left a voice mail message the evening of his DWI that he would get back to him), the State Police investigator should have been interested to find out if my brother had made or received any calls the day of the truck fire. 

    When he met with Inv. Kalfas and Sr. Inv. Wolfe in 2005 at my request, Attorney Michael Kelly asked them to check the telephone records.  But shortly afterwards, Sr. Inv. Wolfe said they would not do so unless the case were re-opened.  I wrote a letter to Sr. Inv. Wolfe urging him to check those records.  When I spoke to him later by telephone, he reiterated his refusal to check the phone records unless the case were re-opened.

                               

 CRUCIAL QUESTIONS ABOUT MARK'S DEATH

(1) How did Mark's truck end up in the field?

    How and why Mark's truck ended up in that field remains a troubling, unanswered question.  Although the position of the truck facing his house across the road from his driveway might suggest that it had been backed down there because of some emergency, there were no indications that the truck had caught on fire before it was driven into the field.  In addition, Mark's truck had not run out of gas before he could turn into his driveway, as some people initially seemed to think, since the fire investigator's report states that the tank was about three-quarters full.  Here are explanations offered to me by State Police officials when I contacted them in 2006 and 2007: (1) according to Capt. George Brown, Mark drove his truck to the field, most likely to move it away from the property in an effort to commit suicide; (2) according to Lt. Allen, Mark, intoxicated, got confused after falling and hitting his head and then drove the truck into the field.  The first relies on an assumption of suicide that has no basis in fact.  The second explanation makes no sense at all.

(2) Who put the gas can into the cab of the truck?

    The gas can in the cab of Mark's truck is at the heart of the mystery of that fatal night.  From his experiences as a paratrooper in Vietnam, my brother knew very well not to put gasoline cans in the cab of his truck.  He put gas cans only in the back of the truck.  More than one of his friends strongly insisted on this point.  On the evening of the fire, he seems to have had no need for a gas can at all.  Since his tank was nearly full, he clearly had not gone into his garage and retrieved the can to add gasoline to an empty tank.  As the police report observes, no one at the nearby gas station where Mark often filled up his tank had seen him for at least a couple of days.  So he obviously hadn't just taken the can there to refill it.

(3) How did Mark end up saturated with gasoline?

    The police report acknowledges that the portions of Mark's burnt clothing removed on the scene tested positive for gasoline.  As my nephew reported to me, Dr. Piotrowski told him that my brother had been saturated with a flammable liquid.  According to Mark's and my half-sister Carol, Inv. Kalfas told her that Mark had been saturated with gasoline.  As Dr. Piotrowski explained to me, even if Mark had caused a flash fire by lighting up a cigarette with an open gas can in the cab of his truck, it still should not have soaked him with gasoline.
   
(4) How was Mark's head injured?

     The wound on Mark's forehead observed by both Wayne Frank and Dr. Piotrowski and the soft-tissue damage to the left side of my brother's face observed by the doctor are incompatible with the theory that Mark was drunk and fell down.  Those wounds, furthermore, are difficult to reconcile with the theory of a suicide that both the State Police and the District Attorney said they really believed.  Yet another dubious explanation was offered by the State Police: when asked by Attorney Michael Kelly in late 2005 about the soft-tissue swelling on my brother's forehead, Sr. Inv. John Wolfe referred to it as "positional," suggesting among other things that Mark could have been hit on the head when they put him into the ambulance.  As Dr. Piotrowski emphasized, however, my brother had deep, not superficial, soft-tissue swelling in his forehead.

(5) How did a pool of Mark's blood end up in his driveway?

    The blood is barely mentioned in the police report, even though the amount was significant.  More than one expert whom I consulted rejected Dr. Baik's explanation of alcohol causing a nosebleed.  In addition, my brother had no history of nosebleeds.  Dr. Piotrowski told me that he did not think that the wound to Mark's forehead could have caused the pool of blood.  But he added that a blow to Mark's nose certainly could have. 

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

    The silence about my brother's death in the Salamanca area has been uncanny.  Not even a brief story about his truck fire appeared in either of the two local papers.  An article in the Olean Times Herald that was "set to run" was abruptly stopped.  Numerous individuals have given me information about the events surrounding my brother's death, much of which cannot be stated here.  But virtually no one has been willing to state publicly what they know about Mark's death.

    A few years ago, I went to speak with an elderly woman still living in the neighborhood where my brother and I grew up.  She mentioned that Mark had kept in touch with her, in part because he used to come over to chat with her husband, a World War II army officer who had been a mentor to my brother and other local soldiers during the Vietnam era.  She was distressed about Mark's death and added that people who knew things about it did not want to get involved.

    As it appears from the police report, none of my brother's neighbors except for E. M. T. Cheryl Simcox made any official statements about the immediate circumstances of the fire.  Did no one see or hear anything?  One of Mark's neighbors, as I was told by an acquaintance of the man, claimed to have heard a commotion on my brother's property just before the truck burned.  But when I spoke to him, that individual had a very different story.  Another neighbor named Dan Smith, who arrived on the scene some time after the first three firefighters, told me that my brother had spoken several words–about ten--to him.  When I asked what my brother had said, he replied that Mark had recognized him and said, "Hi!"  Puzzled that my brother would have uttered so casual a greeting under the circumstances, I asked Smith what else Mark had said.  He replied that he could not recall.  Shortly after Mark's death, I spoke by phone with his friend Todd Lindell, who had lived nearby (though not on the same road) in Great Valley, and learned that my brother had spent the evening immediately after the DWI at his house.  At the end of the conversation, Todd said, "Mark would be alive today if he had not gotten the DWI."  He did not explain that comment.  But when I tried calling him back a few times for clarification about the evening of Mark's DWI, there was no answer on his cell phone, and he did not respond to the message I left.

     Three specific individuals have information that would have helped to put pressure on the State Police to seek the truth about what happened the night of Mark's truck fire.  They are Dr. Edward Piotrowski, firefighter Wayne Frank, and Mark's neighbor and E.M.T. Cheryl Simcox, all of whom gave me additional information that I cannot state in this narrative.  These are three apparently very decent people, who failed to do the right thing and come forward to reveal–or reveal fully--what they know about my brother's death.  But they are not the only ones who have remained silent.  And so, those responsible for Mark's death continue to make a mockery of justice.  But I promised my brother at his grave that I would do everything I could to get to the truth about his death and to see that justice is done for him.

    Federal officials informed me that murder is a state crime.  I contacted every relevant local and state official who might help get justice for my brother, to no avail.  Some never even bothered to reply to my letters.  Most disappointing were the responses from the office of the Governor and the Attorney General of New York State.  Governor Eliot Spitzer's office initially expressed concern and interest in the matter but then totally withdrew, with no explanation.  In response to efforts on my behalf from Senator Arlen Specter's office, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office simply insisted that I had to deal with the New York State Police about the matter.  Did the Attorney General's office somehow fail to grasp that the New York State Police were the problem to begin with and that they had never responded to my complaints in a meaningful way?

    A few good friends, especially Frank Romer, have encouraged me to persist.  Attorney Michael Kelly has kindly responded to several queries I've made about the case.  Attorney Tony Tanke, who has remained deeply concerned about the suspicious circumstances of my brother's death, has generously continued to give his advice on many issues.  And so, this blog has come into being.  I welcome any relevant comments, advice, and information.