Problems Concerning the Former Railroaders

This post considers puzzling and problematic statements relevant to my brother’s death made by members of a group of former railroaders that had also included Mark.  As I have been told, during their period of employment on the railroad, these individuals routinely had drinks together and were in some ways a close-knit group.  That kind of socializing has apparently continued to some degree to this day, long after their employment with the railroad ceased.

At the time of Mark’s death, the railroad group included the following: Jim Poole, Gary Subulski, Jack Plonka, Bill Lewis, Jim Wright, Pete Rapacioli, and Eugene Woodworth.  Poole, Subulski, Plonka, and Lewis, who were close to my brother in age and had thus known him from their school days, remained close friends.  Lewis, however, had moved to suburban Buffalo and thus did not see Mark on a regular basis.  Wright was a few years older and, according to Jim Poole, a more recent friend.  Woodworth, a neighbor of Marks’s on Whalen Road in Great Valley, was considerably older but still had connections with my brother: as he informed me, he shared a wood splitter with Mark and Jack Plonka and sometimes saw my brother socially.  Rapacioli was also several years older than Mark but worked with him on a football pool and in little league baseball.  Unfortunately, Jim Poole and Jim Wright are now also deceased.

Pete Rapacioli has previously been the subject of discussion on this blog.  Of particular concern is the phone conversation that he allegedly had with my brother’s wife Susan for nearly half an hour immediately before Mark’s truck fire.  Another problematic issue is his claim that his daughter and her husband (the brother of a veteran Salamanca police officer), who were nearby neighbors of Mark’s, had slept through the entire incident of the fire, in spite of the noise of sirens and of the Medivac helicopter (see esp. posts of May 15, 2013, June 26, 2013, and April 19, 2014).  Furthermore, when I informed him that his cousin and fellow railroader Jack Plonka had mentioned that Pete planned to read the police report through a relative on the force, Rapacioli claimed to be unable to recall who his relative on the police force could have been (see post of June 26, 2013).

Another issue concerns Rapacioli's silence about the argument between my brother and Salamanca police officer Mark Marowski that resulted in Marowski calling in to have Mark arrested for DWI.  When he called me in June 2013 to complain about being mentioned on my blog, I brought up the subject of that argument at the Holy Cross Club.  Rapacioli had nothing to say about it and insisted that he had not been present at the club during that argument.  Yet the woman who answered the phone when I called Rapacioli in November 2003 said that Pete had told her very specifically about that argument.  In addition, I was recently told that Rapacioli knew Ofc. Mark Marowski very well, as both of them frequented the Holy Cross Club and other social clubs in Salamanca.

When I talked to Gary Subulski not long after Mark’s death, he mentioned what a good friend my brother had been and how much help Mark had given him when he was undergoing cancer treatments.  He told me to feel free to call if I thought there was anything he could do.  Much later, he mentioned that he had visited my brother’s grave a number of times and noticed the flowers I had planted.  He also said that he was glad that I was continuing to try and get justice for Mark.  My cousin Dennis Pavlock mentioned that Gary had relayed specific information to him about the argument between Mark and Marowski at the Holy Cross Club the day before the truck fire.  Yet Gary insisted to me that he had not been present at the time of the argument with Marowski and that he would have told me if he had been.

However, a few days after I put up a post on the problematic phone call to me from Pete Rapacioli in June 2013, I called Gary and told him that I had a question about Rapacioli.  Gary immediately shouted that he was busy and abruptly hung up the phone on me.  Needless to say, his reaction was completely unexpected and seemed very much out of character.  Had someone told him about my post on Rapacioli?  If so, why would that have mattered, since I reported only the facts about the phone call that formed the substance of my post?

Another member of the railroad group, Eugene Woodworth, made statements about Mark’s truck fire that raise serious concerns.  A previous post (July 28, 2014) discusses contradictions by Mark’s neighbor about the night of the truck fire to then church secretary Judy Bess and to me when I called Woodworth after talking to Judy.  I remain especially concerned about Woodworth’s reported comment to Judy that he had heard a commotion and screams on Mark’s property shortly before my brother’s truck went down the driveway and into the field, where it burst into flames.  Those details do not appear to be of the kind one would fabricate.

Recently, another individual connected to the same local Catholic church mentioned discussing Mark’s truck fire with Woodworth.  According to that person, Woodworth was at first hesitant but then said he thought Mark’s death was likely a murder.  He reportedly also said that he and his wife had seen the flames from their house and that he had gone to the scene.  However, as I was told, Woodworth would not discuss the matter any further.  According to my informant, Woodworth was afraid.

Fear--and perhaps various social ties--clearly seem to have kept numerous individuals from coming forward with information they have about my brother’s death.  The State Police and District Attorney’s office made it abundantly clear that they wanted to close the case definitively on Mark’s death.  It is appalling that there is no venue for individuals to relay relevant information without worries about offending their friends or risking retribution.  Why is there no ombudsman?  Where are concerned and responsive state and federal authorities?  What can people do if they are legitimately afraid?

Pressures Not to Reveal Information

This post considers kinds of pressures exerted on people not to reveal information relevant to my brother Mark’s death.

Clearly, the person who sent me an anonymous letter with very important information late last summer (see post of August 11, 2014) felt pressure not to reveal his or her name.  If true (and nothing in the letter suggests any form of ignorance of the facts or attempts to fabricate), the following two points raised by this individual make it obvious that the New York State Police did not want to solve this case and that they had to be protecting someone: (1) Mark’s wife Susan was having an affair with Salamanca police officer Mark Marowski, and (2) immediately before the truck fire, Mark was at the house of a neighbor, who said that my brother could not have had a .25 blood alcohol level.

According to Inv. Kalfas, he couldn’t find out if Susan had been having an affair, yet the State Police never checked the phone records and refused to do so when asked.  Kalfas also insisted that he couldn’t find anyone who had seen my brother out the entire day of the fire.  But the investigator couldn’t have made much of an effort, for what neighbor or friend would conceal from the police such information about Mark’s whereabouts at the critical time just before his truck mysteriously burst into flames in the empty field across from his house (and just before Mark himself mysteriously left a pool of blood in his driveway)?

Those two points in the anonymous letter are crucial pieces of information for Mark’s case.  Who was the neighbor my brother was visiting just before the truck fire?  Did other individuals beyond the writer of the letter see Susan and Marowski together in public?   (According to the letter, Susan “was observed riding a 4-wheeler with him [Marowski] on numerous occasions.”)  Anyone who has any information about either of these two issues should make it public in whatever way seems suitable.  (If you aren’t comfortable making your name known, you can send a comment anonymously to this blog [as blog manager, I get only the comment and no identifying information about the sender] or anonymously to the Salamanca Topix site.)

From the information contained in the anonymous letter, the writer would appear likely to have been a neighbor of Mark’s and Susan’s.  In a rural community such as Great Valley and the nearby small town of Salamanca, New York, residents are closely intertwined through family relations (as one person put it, everyone seems to be a cousin of someone else you know), neighborhoods, employment (the former railroaders, for instance, will be the subject of a future post), church, and social clubs.  If the author of the anonymous letter lives (or lived) in my brother’s neighborhood, what kind of pressure did that put on the individual?

This blog has exposed problematic statements made by several of Mark’s neighbors concerning the night of the fire: Dan Smith’s claim that my brother, with third-degree burns over almost his entire body, spoke clearly and casually to him on the scene of the fire (see esp. post of March 13, 2013); Eugene Woodworth’s insistence to me and Inv. John Ensell that he knew nothing about what happened the night of the truck fire, even though, according to a church secretary, he had told her about hearing a commotion and screams on Mark’s property just before the truck went into the field (see esp. post of July 24, 2014); and the reported claim by the Myers couple--Joseph, brother of a veteran local policeman, and Tracie, the daughter of Peter Rapacioli, who was allegedly on the phone with my brother’s wife for half an hour immediately before the fire--that they had slept through the entire incident, in spite of the noise from the sirens of the emergency vehicles and from the Medivac helicopter (see post of December 24, 2013).

Since the writer of the anonymous letter referred to my blog, that individual had presumably read my discussion of the problematic aspects of the statements by those neighbors that were so readily accepted at face value, or at least left unchallenged in any way, by the State Police.  What effect would the troubling statements of those neighbors have on another neighbor who wanted to reveal in a straight-forward, honest manner information with very different implications?

The author of the anonymous letter indicated problems in the marriage of my brother and his wife, evidenced by the allegation of an affair between Susan and Mark Marowski and by Susan’s statements about Mark’s drinking.  Another one of my brother’s neighbors told me that she had been aware that relations between Mark and Susan “were not warm and fuzzy” but did not go further than that.  However, a relative of that neighbor informed me that the woman had in fact heard Mark’s and Susan’s arguments but “did not want to get involved.”  Why did she choose “not to get involved”?

How many other neighbors knew about the acrimonious relations between my brother and his wife?  Did they reveal their information to the State Police investigator?  Although Inv. Kalfas told me in the fall of 2003 that he knew my brother and his wife had had a very troubled marriage, he says nothing about that problem in the police report.

My nephew Tom McKenna, who unfortunately died in the early hours of May 23 after having surgery, told me what he had observed when he visited the house about a month before my brother’s death.  Tom was shocked to witness Susan’s overt hostility to Mark, who had come in “slightly tipsy.”  After I reported this information in a complaint about the investigation to the Internal Affairs Division of the New York State Police, I was referred to Capt. Steven Nigrelli, who said that he would follow up on certain points I had made.  Yet after Tom was interviewed on the phone by the State Police official assigned to that task, the summary by the State Police distorted virtually everything Tom had told the official (see post of January 16, 2015).  The State Police have repeatedly covered up information pertaining to Mark’s and Susan’s marital problems, to the allegations that Susan was having an affair, and to all issues related to Ofc. Mark Marowski.

It took courage on my nephew’s part to inform me about such sensitive information (not limited to that incident at Mark’s house) and to be willing to report it to the State Police.  Tom did so in the face of pressures one would not have expected.  After he reported a conversation in which his mother Carol revealed Susan’s claim that Mark had left a suicide letter and I put up a post on the matter (see November 23, 2013), Tom told me that Carol had called him and angrily snapped, “Why did you tell her?”  According to Tom, he replied, “If you didn’t want me to say anything, you shouldn’t have told me.” 

I was also informed that within hours after Tom was interviewed in January 2015 by the State Police about the incident at the house described above, his mother called and told him that if he had anything more to do with this, there would be trouble and that she had better not find out that he was giving me any more information.  She then apparently hung up on him.  It is not clear how Mark’s and my half-sister would have known that Tom had been interviewed.  Had the State Police called her as well?

Suffice it to say that Tom should not have experienced any pressure to keep silent about what he knew concerning the last weeks of Mark’s life, least of all from his own mother.  My dear nephew wanted justice for his uncle and showed his mettle in his efforts.  He unfortunately cannot be here to see justice done for Mark.  But those who also have a conscience can make a difference if they reveal what they know about my brother’s death and not let the State Police continue their travesty of justice.

More on Problems with the Police Report

The previous post (April 17, 2015) discussed the problematic redaction of the names of certain “friends and neighbors” of my brother whose statements are summarized or quoted in Inv. Kalfas’s narrative in the police report.  Those individuals who commented negatively about Mark’s drinking are thus provided anonymity, even though some of their remarks seem questionable.  Furthermore, it is difficult to comprehend who could have made such statements since virtually all of Mark’s neighbors told me that they were not interviewed by the State Police investigator.  This post considers redactions and problematic statements in the police report related to one specific individual, who was on the scene of Mark’s truck fire and gave a witness statement.

The relevant entry in Inv. Kalfas’s narrative is for 10/02/03 (see link near the top right for the police report).  It reads as follows: “Also this date, member met with and interviewed […redaction…] is a friend of the family and a […redaction…].  He was the third person on the scene the night of the fire.  His Supporting Deposition is attached as enclosure #6.”  Although the name is blacked out, a list on the following page (left, one assumes, inadvertently unredacted) identifies that enclosure as Mark Ward’s witness statement. 

The reference to Ward as “a friend of the family” raises questions.  Did Ward describe himself that way?  Or did Kalfas loosely paraphrase him?  In any case, it is not an accurate description.  Mark Ward was clearly not one of my brother’s friends.  I can’t say if he had any kind of relationship with Mark’s and Susan’s two children.  But as the superintendent of the Salamanca school system, where Susan was employed as a clerk in the accounting office, he did know her and was reportedly a close friend of hers. 

What is redacted after the phrase “friend of the family”?  The word “firefighter” would seem logically to fit in.  But why would that have been blacked out?  Ward’s witness statement itself is explicit about his role as a firefighter.  Were the State Police trying to keep something else about Ward secret?

 Inv. Kalfas’s reference to Ward as “the third person on the scene the night of the fire” is also incorrect.  The third person on the scene was in fact firefighter Gary Wind.  As Kalfas indicates in his entry for 10/10/03, the second person on the scene is identified through enclosure #7 as EMT Cheryl Simcox, who saw Mark’s wife Susan standing at the end of the driveway when she arrived on the scene.  By Kalfas’s own calculation, then, Ward was the fourth person on the scene.

Ward’s witness statement (see enclosure #6, after Kalfas’s narrative), taken on 10/10/03 (and handwritten), contains a redaction of almost a full line.  The relevant passage reads as follows: “On tuesday [sic], Sept. 23, 2003 at slightly before 11:00 pm my pager went off indicating a truck fire & possible entrapment at the Pavlock residence on t6 [unclear; see enc. #6] Whalen Rd.  This was not in my fire Dist. […redaction…] and I am within 2 minutes of her house[.]  I responded.”  What reason could there have been for blacking out that rather lengthy section?  In my interview with current Cattaraugus County District Attorney Lori Rieman back in May 2010, I asked that question.  D. A. Rieman replied that it had something to do with Ward’s job.  But Ward was the superintendent of the Salamanca school system and a volunteer firefighter, and his actions on the scene of the fire had no bearing on the need to protect special police investigative procedures.  Information about him should not have been kept secret.

In recounting what he did on the scene, Ward states that the truck was on fire “with the majority of it centered in the cab” and that when he asked “where Mark was, she [Susan? Or Cheryl?] pointed to the field.”  Observing that Mark “was still on fire,” Ward goes on to say that he “went to him and he appeared to be dead but [...redaction of name.., presumably Gary Wind] looked and saw that he was breathing.”  After mentioning that he retrieved coats from his vehicle and put out the rest of the fire, Ward says that Mark “was able to talk–we asked him what happened, and twice he mentioned a gasoline can but these were the only words I could understand.” 

Ward’s statement that Mark “was able to talk” certainly cannot be taken at face value but must be understood only with the qualifiers that follow in Ward’s account.  He makes it clear that he could understand only two words, “gasoline can,” which he says he heard Mark utter twice.  In his own witness statement, Gary Wind, who was there shortly before, and with, Mark Ward says that he could understand only the word “gas.”  Wayne Frank, who told me that he arrived right after Ward, insisted that he could understand nothing that my brother was trying to say (see post of November 30, 2011). 

It is unfortunate that Ward was not more careful in his choice of language because the State Police and the District Attorney’s office later insisted that emergency workers found Mark “able to talk.”  But one firefighter insisted orally that nothing Mark had been trying to say was comprehensible, and the other two heard rather different things, “gas” versus “gasoline can.”

What do those phrases really mean in the context of a man lying near death, after suffering third- degree burns over ninety percent of his body, including his entire head?  They certainly do not substantiate the claim by the State Police and the District Attorney’s office that Mark was eliminating foul play in the fire that had severely burned him and left him on the brink of death.  It was clear to Gary Wind and Wayne Frank that Mark was trying to communicate something to them.  One cannot rule out the possibility that he was attempting to explain that someone had poured gasoline on him and set him on fire. 

It is also a matter of concern that Ward reportedly said something else to another emergency worker.  When I spoke with Mark’s neighbor and EMT Cheryl Simcox in May 2006, I asked if she had heard Mark say anything.  Cheryl replied that she had remained with Susan as firefighters arrived but added that Mark Ward had mentioned hearing my brother say something like "I didn't do anything."  I was concerned about Cheryl’s information since Ward does not report anything like that in his witness statement but, as mentioned above, says that he could understand only the words “gasoline can” and nothing more. 

Mark’s wife Susan, however, did claim that Mark had said virtually those same words to her (see post of November 30, 2011).  Here is what Susan says verbatim in her witness statement: “I tried to put the flames on him out.  I asked him What did you do and he said, ‘I did nothing.’”  Cheryl Simcox similarly records in her own witness statement what Susan told her: she went over to Mark and asked him, "What did you do?  My God, what did you do?" and he replied, "I did nothing." 

It would appear that Ward in his comment to Cheryl was simply echoing Susan’s own words.  Could Mr. Ward have made the same statement to others that he reportedly made to Cheryl?  The claim that Mark said he didn’t do anything is highly problematic in light of the investigating authorities’ insistence that Mark was able to speak to emergency workers and said nothing about foul play.   My brother lost his life in a very suspicious truck fire, yet the State Police investigators never even considered murder and glossed over almost every piece of evidence that did not conform to a pre-conceived theory of accident or suicide.

At the end of his witness statement, Ward says the following: “Sue was holding a sweatshirt (white) that she said she had used to try to put Mark out (fire).”  Ward here appears to accept–but certainly does not contest--Susan’s claim that she used her white sweatshirt to bat out the flames on Mark.  That is also problematic in light of statements by other eyewitnesses who observed that Susan’s white sweatshirt was completely clean, with no burn marks or soot on it.  Cheryl Simcox makes that clear in her witness statement.  At least one other person on the scene of the fire expressed concern orally about Susan’s claim, and at the burn unit the following morning Carol McKenna also noticed that Susan’s white sweatshirt was clean, with no burn marks.  But only Cheryl Simcox’s and Mark Ward’s statements are part of the formal record in the police report.

Susan’s claim about using that white sweatshirt, along with other questionable statements she made (see esp. posts of August 22 and September 22, 2012), should have been pursued by the State Police investigators.  It is a matter of concern that even within the past couple of years, as reported by my nephew (see post of November 23, 2103), Susan told Carol McKenna that Mark had left a suicide letter, contradicting her official statement to Inv. Kalfas that there was no suicide letter (recorded as an entry in the police report for 12/12/03).

Clearly, both Ward and his wife have been close to Susan.  When I phoned the relatives’ lounge at the burn unit late in the morning after the fire and my brother’s house late that afternoon to find out how Mark could have got so badly burned, in each case a friend of Susan’s answered the phone.  Although she did not identify herself, one of those two friends informed me that she was a neighbor and a friend of Susan's.  She added that she and her husband had seen the flames of the truck fire from their house and that he had been one of the first emergency workers on the scene.  This woman was obviously Mark Ward’s wife Barbara. 

When I mentioned to a number of people from the Great Valley area that the Wards had seen the flames from their house, I was told that it would not have been possible for them to do so since their house was not close by and the land slopes down toward their direction.  An online search showed the Wards’ house to be 2.4 miles from Mark’s house.  That seems like too considerable a distance, especially downhill, for the Wards to have been able to see the flames from Mark’s burning truck. 

Given such a situation in which there was a potential conflict of interest, it is inexcusable that Inv. Kalfas did not ask the third firefighter on the scene, Wayne Frank, to give a witness statement.  Furthermore, as Cheryl Simcox informed me, Kalfas did not question her fully, and she did not know how far to go when he took her witness statement.  Complete information about what was observed on the scene of Mark’s truck fire was not sought and was certainly not obtained.