More about Police Protecting Their Own

This post considers the issue of police protecting their own in the investigation into my brother Mark’s death.  Salamanca police officer Mark Marowski was never investigated for his role in getting my brother arrested for DWI after their personal argument at the Holy Cross Club the very day before Mark’s suspicious death.  Yet Marowski’s serious problems with alcohol, gambling, and dependence on prescription drugs as well as his hostility toward my brother were well known, and according to information recently relayed to me, Marowski was having an affair with my brother’s wife Susan. (On Marowski, see posts of August 14, September 14, October 17, November 16, and December 14, 2014.)

There appears to have been a similarly cavalier attitude toward Peter Rapacioli, whose son-in-law is the brother of a veteran Salamanca police officer.  (On Rapacioli, see posts of May 15, June 26, and December 24, 2013, and April 19, 2014.)  In an entry in the police report (for September 25, 2003, with the name redacted), Rapacioli claims that he called to speak with Mark about a football pool but, not finding him home, spoke with my brother’s wife (in a conversation that allegedly lasted for about half an hour).
  

That (alleged) conversation took place immediately before Mark’s truck suspiciously went up in flames in the field across from their house.  As the State Police investigators were well aware, my brother and his wife had not been getting along at all for some time and were about to get divorced.  The State Police also knew about allegations that Rapacioli himself had been having an affair with Mark’s wife.  Yet they never checked the telephone records and refused to check them when requested to do so several times after the investigation was over.

According to Rapacioli (who called in June 2013 to berate me for mentioning him on my blog), he had been interviewed several times by the State Police during the investigation into my brother’s death.  Yet the police report mentions only the one interview with Rapacioli, at the very beginning of the investigation.  The police report entry makes it appear that Rapacioli was simply asked to verify the (alleged) call and to give his view as to whether Mark himself might have caused the truck fire.

Why aren’t the other interviews alluded to by Rapacioli recorded in the police report?  In my telephone conversation with him last August, Troop A Captain Steven Nigrelli stated that Cattaraugus County D. A. Edward Sharkey had known about the (alleged) phone call between Rapacioli and Mark’s wife Susan and that Sharkey insisted the case be closed.  Capt. Nigrelli also said that the State Police cannot obtain telephone records.  Yet Sr. Inv. John Wolfe told me back in 2005 that he would get the phone records if the case were re-opened.

A recent post (January 16, 2015) discusses the e-mail sent to me by Capt. Nigrelli summarizing the results of the inquiries and interviews that he asked State Police BCI staff to carry out as a result of our conversation last August.  As pointed out in that post, the summaries of the three interviews are highly problematic.  The one concerning Mark Marowski does not appear to represent any serious effort to determine if that now-retired police officer was in fact having an affair with my brother’s wife and if he was involved in Mark’s death.  The other two summaries do not accurately reflect the actual statements and information relayed to the BCI interviewer.  These interviews, as summarized in Capt. Nigrelli’s e-mail, look merely like "window dressing."

Capt. Nigrelli’s e-mail’s does not identify who this BCI interviewer was or indicate if there was more than one BCI interviewer.  But I have been led to believe that Sr. Inv. Christopher Iwankow conducted the interviews.  If so, that adds another problematic element to the investigation into Mark’s death.  According to the police report entry for September 25, 2003, “Investigator Christopher Iwanko [sic] attends the autopsy, taking photographs, fingerprints and a blood kit from the victim.” Iwankow thus had a role in the investigation into Mark’s death from the beginning.

What concerns me here about Sr. Inv. Iwankow is his response to an individual who called the State Police office in western New York in an effort to help me get the photos of the scene of Mark’s truck fire through a FOIL request.  In May 2011, independent criminologist Will Savive informed me by e-mail that he had spoken with a State Police official named Iwankow, who told him that they usually purge the records after five years.  Will added, “Oddly enough, he remembered the case.”

Shortly afterward, I spoke with Will by phone and let him know that according to the police report Iwankow had attended Mark's autopsy.  He then told me that at the end of their phone conversation he asked the State Police official for his name in case he had any follow-up questions.  But with my information about Iwankow’s connection to the investigation, Will was very concerned about how that State Police official had reacted to the request for his name.  According to Will, Iwankow did not reply at once, but instead hesitated for a good twenty seconds before identifying himself.  Why was Iwankow so reluctant to reveal his name?  Would any police official who had participated in an honest investigation have reacted in such a manner?

After filing a complaint about the investigation into Mark’s death with the U. S. Attorney’s office in Buffalo in 2004, I was advised to speak with the FBI agent in Jamestown.  In my first conversation with him, Agent Brent Isaacson stated that, although it wasn’t fair, the police are given the benefit of the doubt in controversial matters of this type.   But how far does such leeway extend?  Where is justice when the police are allowed to cover up the brutal murder of a decent man like my brother, who was doused with gasoline and burned to death?

More Special Treatment for a Police Officer: Mark Marowski's DWI Arrest

This post concerns the DWI arrest in 2006 of Ofc. Mark Marowski, who had my brother Mark picked up for DWI after a personal argument at a local club in 2003.  That happened just one day before Mark’s suspicious death. After a brief article appeared on the officer's arrest for DWI and speeding, the irony of Marowski's own DWI did not escape the relative who sent me the clipping from the Salamanca Press.  But since then much more disturbing information concerning Marowski has surfaced, including the claim in an anonymous letter that he had been having an affair with my brother's wife Susan and the report by an eyewitness that Marowski boasted about getting my brother arrested for DWI.  Marowski's own DWI is of interest here for the circumstances under which he was arrested for DWI and speeding while a member of the Salamanca police force and the treatment he was accorded by the legal system for his violations of the law.

Recently, I obtained the public records of Ofc. Marowski's DWI arrest from the Conewango town court, where his trial took place after Cattaraugus County D. A. Edward Sharkey recused himself because of a possible conflict of interest.  For convenience, a copy of the individual reports by the two arresting officers who pursued Marowski when he was observed driving at a very excessive speed in the city of Salamanca appears immediately after my discussion of this incident.

First of all, the two Salamanca police officers who were operating traffic radar apparently did not realize who was driving the green car they saw speeding on Central Ave. in Salamanca.  It was going at the very high speed of 62 mph in a 30 mph zone, an especially reckless act during the daytime (shortly after 6 p.m. on May 19) in a section of the city that is both residential and commercial.  It was all the more irresponsible because with his level of intoxication (determined by testing to be .14) as well as the high speed, Marowski would have had considerable difficulty controlling his vehicle if he had had to brake for a pedestrian or another vehicle turning onto Central Ave.  Coincidentally, my brother Mark's DWI arrest happened on that same road (and also by Ofc. Whitcomb), but he wasn't speeding.

According to Ofc. Daryl Whitcomb’s report, after he and his partner pulled off the intersecting street to make a traffic stop, Marowski appeared to speed up even more and to flee.  It seems strange that Marowski sped up, only to make a turn nearby into a local car wash, where he pulled his car in behind some storage sheds.  After Ofc. Whitcomb radioed a sergeant to come to the scene, Marowski opened one of the storage spaces and began to back his other car out.

From the alcohol on his breath, his glassy eyes, and his impaired speech, it was clear to Ofc. Whitcomb that Marowski was drunk.  He also failed three of the five sobriety field tests administered to him, slurred his speech in reciting the alphabet, didn’t follow instructions for some of the tests, and was unsteady on his feet. Marowski himself admitted that he had been drinking “too much.”  As indicated on the DWI “Bill of Particulars” signed by Ofc. Whitcomb, Marowski stated that he had in fact been drinking from around 1 p.m. at the Holy Cross Club, for five hours before his arrest. Yet he still “argued some” with Whitcomb before he agreed to be handcuffed.

Ofc. Bocharski reported Marowski’s statement that his “career was over.”  It seems ironic that Marowski should have bemoaned the demise of his career at that point.  As several individuals from the Salamanca area have observed, Marowski had been abusing his position as a police officer for many years, and I was informed by a reliable source that he had been warned within the police department about his drinking.

Marowski seems to have got off lightly at his DWI trial in Conewango, which is on the border of Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties.  The charges against him were reduced.  The copy of the plea bargain in the court records indicates that the NYS 1192.3 charge was reduced to a 1192.1, which according to a legal website (Crotty and Saland) is “the lowest possible drunk driving and DWI offense in New York State.”  His 1192.2 charge (common law intoxication) was “merged and dropped.”  His 1180d charge, which according to a legal website (Gary S. Miller) entails points determined by speed (8 points for going 31 to 40 mph over the limit), was reduced to the lesser 1110a charge (obedience to traffic control devices, carrying 2 points, according to the Avvo website).  The plea bargain explains, “The People consent to such Disposition for the following reasons: interest of justice.”  Marowski was fined, and his driver's license was suspended for ninety days.

Was Marowski held fully accountable for his recklessness?  Given his history of abuse of alcohol, it does not seem so.  But, then, he also seems to have been given favorable treatment when interviewed recently by the N. Y. S. Police at the request of Capt. Steven Nigrelli (see post of January 16, 2015).  How can one explain the ready acceptance of Marowski’s questionable responses, except by assuming that his status as a retired police officer continues to provide protection.  Did the N. Y. S. Police even read the reference in the anonymous letter to an affair between Marowski and my brother's wife (see post of August 11, 2014)?  The writer makes a clear statement, with support (“Firstly, Sue was having an affair with Mark Marowski.  She was observed riding a 4-wheeler with him on numerous occasions”).  Showing no bias, the writer takes a moral stand about what was done to my brother (“I could see how he would be hard to live with—but he did not deserve to die!”).  It's a shame the authorities have not done likewise.