A Follow-up on a FOIL Request for Records on the Death of Dale Tarapacki

A previous post (March 19, 2016) reported on the inadequate response by Cattaraugus County to my FOIL request for records on the death of Dale Tarapacki.  As a number of individuals in the Salamanca area informed me, Mr. Tarapacki was one of two others who also died under suspicious circumstances in Great Valley, New York, within a year or so after my brother Mark was found engulfed in flames in the field across from his house in rural Great Valley.  His burning pickup truck was located about 60 feet away, with a gas can on the floor of the passenger's side--a very suspicious detail since my brother never put gas cans in the cab of his truck.  Dale Tarapacki also died as a result of a suspicious truck fire.  In his case, the official explanation for the truck fire, according to the fire investigator's report, appeared difficult to grasp even for an experienced mechanic, as the post of March 19 details.

Although my FOIL request for the official records related to Dale Tarapacki's death resulted in my receiving only the fire investigator's report, subsequently a private individual gave me access to his death certificate.  This post raises concerns about the combination of factors that the death certificate mentions as leading to Tarapacki's death.  Those factors include the truck fire itself.  According to an addendum (“corrected 7-1-05”), Tarapacki died as a result of “acute alprazolam intoxication complicated by inhalation of products of combustion and thermal injury.”  My intention here is not to challenge the medical explanation per se but rather to question how it happened that Tarapacki himself caused the truck fire and remained in the truck long enough to inhale the deadly smoke of the fire (“products of combustion”) and suffer fatal burns (“thermal injury”).

Alprazolam, a drug classified as a benzodiazepine and commonly prescribed under the brand name of Xanax, is used to treat anxiety and depression.  Someone who knew him well said that around the time of his death Tarapacki was feeling some anxiety, and according to widely known published information, the effects of excessive amounts of alprazolam can include drowsiness, confusion, and muscle weakness, among other symptoms.  But Tarapacki was a pharmacist, who would have known how much of that drug—or any other drug—would be dangerous to ingest.  He certainly would not have wanted to take his own life--or to risk it--under the particular circumstances in which he actually died.  Another friend of his who was suspicious of the truck fire reported that Tarapacki as a pharmacist had mentioned in conversation that there are peaceful ways to die.  His own manner of death was anything but “peaceful.”

Even if somehow he did carelessly overdose on alprazolam and suffer the likely symptoms, it is then difficult to grasp how he kept trying to accelerate the truck after it became stuck on remote Hardscrabble Road.  As the fire investigator's report suggests, Tarapacki had been alert enough to continue to accelerate in an aggressive manner, to no effect; he thus reportedly caused the wheels to spin excessively after the rear drive shaft broke and punctured the fuel line.  (See post of March 16, with a copy of the fire investigator's report: "The wheel bearings of the front passenger wheel were blown out of the housing as a result of the front drive shaft being engaged and under extreme RPM's during attempts by the driver to move the vehicle.")

The official explanation for Tarapacki's death seems, then, to raise more questions than it answers.

A Follow-up on a FOIL Request for Records on the Death of Tim Nye

A previous post (February 18, 2016) reported on the very inadequate response by Cattaraugus County to my FOIL request for records on the death of Tim Nye.  Mr. Nye was one of two individuals whose deaths, as I was informed by numerous individuals, occurred under suspicious circumstances in Great Valley, New York, within a year or so of my brother’s truck fire.  The other was a young pharmacist named Dale Tarapacki, whose body was found in his burned-out truck (on my FOIL request for the records on his death, see the post of March 19, 2016).

In violation of both the spirit and the letter of the New York State FOIA law whose purpose is “to promote open government and accountability,” Cattaraugus County initially refused to provide any records, including the police investigation report, even in a redacted form, and on appeal sent two scant pages, consisting of the “Incident Maintenance” sheet and the very brief report by the officer who discovered Nye’s body with a shotgun lying close by.  Merely reiterating the unacceptable claim that the requested documents were “intra-agency materials of the Sheriff’s Office,” Records Appeals Officer John Searles again denied me access to the police investigation report, even in redacted form.

Although I did not obtain the documents that my FOIL request should have provided, I have learned more information about Tim Nye’s death through other means.  I happened to speak with a relative of Tim Nye who provided some troubling information related to his death.  This individual informed me that on the day of his death, Tim received a phone call at dinner time and, appearing very anxious, said that he had to go out.  Tim Nye never returned home.  [Posted on April 27, 2016--The following adjustment has been made at the request of someone who claims to be a reliable source: After he left following the phone call, no one heard from Tim for two days, and he did not return phone calls during those two days, which was not like him.]

According to Tim’s relative, he had been shot in the gut, confirming what an EMT who knew Tim also told me.  Apparently, Tim had been heavily in debt.  His relative also informed me that at the time of his death Tim no longer lived on Hungry Hollow Road, as he had broken up with a girlfriend who owned a house there.  One must wonder, then, why Tim Nye was found shot to death on rural McCarthy Hill Road in Great Valley, as indicated in the report filed by the officer who found his body with a shotgun lying at his feet.  Tim’s relative stressed that his death was no suicide.

Because I was given no access to the police investigation report, I cannot say for sure what the official ruling was.  But according to virtually everyone who has mentioned Tim Nye’s death to me, the authorities ruled it a suicide.  However, the presumably reliable information relayed to me by Tim’s relative does not at all suggest a suicide.

How thorough was the investigation into Tim Nye’s death?  Was murder even considered?  There would appear to have been a rush to judgment by the investigating authorities similar to that which occurred in the case of my brother Mark’s suspicious death.  In my brother’s case, the authorities clearly did not want to expose any possible involvement by then Salamanca police officer Mark Marowski, who had got into a personal argument with my brother at a local club the day before his truck fire and then called in to the Salamanca police to have him arrested for DWI and who had allegedly been having an affair with my brother’s wife (see esp. posts of August 11, September 14, October 17, November 16, and December 14, 2014, and January 16 and February 17, 2015).  Did the police have something to cover up yet again in this case?

Another FOIL Request to Cattaraugus County

The previous post (February 18, 2016) reported on the results of my FOIL request to Cattaraugus County for records on the death of Tim Nye. Mr. Nye was one of two individuals whose deaths, I was told, happened under suspicious circumstances in Great Valley, New York, within a year or so of my brother’s suspicious truck fire. In blatant violation of both the spirit and the letter of the New York State FOIA law, Cattaraugus County refused to provide any records, including the police investigation report, even in a redacted form. To my appeal of their denial of the records, Cattaraugus County sent two pages, consisting of a copy of the “Incident Maintenance” sheet and of the very brief report by the officer who discovered Nye’s body with a gun lying close by, but still denied me access to the police investigation report.

This post reports on the results of my FOIL request to Cattaraugus County for records on the death of Dale Tarapacki, a twenty-seven year old pharmacist whose body was found in his burned-out truck in Great Valley.

Since my initial FOIL request on Tim Nye met with an absolute refusal, it came as no real surprise that Cattaraugus County also denied me all records on Dale Tarapacki’s death. The explanation for the denial was essentially the same as that for the Nye records: “Pursuant to Public Officers Law [section] 87 (2) (a) the records requested are compiled for law enforcement purposes and are inter-agency materials.” However, as mentioned in my letter of appeal, the New York State courts have made it clear that “blanket exemptions for particular types of documents are inimical to FOIL’s policy of open government” and that “FOIL imposes a broad duty on government to make its records available to the public.”

As with my appeal in the Nye case, I soon received a response from Records Appeals Officer John Searles, this time with a copy of the fire investigator’s report on Dale Tarapacki’s death. But, once again, he denied access to the other records, which he added “consist of 11 pages of intra-agency investigation reports of the Cattaraugus County Sheriff’s Office.” As with the response to my appeal on the Nye records, I replied to Mr. Searles in a letter of February 10, 2016, stating that I considered his position unwarranted and in violation of the New York State FOIA law.

The fire investigator’s report provides information about the condition of Dale Tarapacki’s truck, which was discovered with his body inside, but it seems to raise more questions than it answers. (Copies of the fire investigator’s report, my FOIL request, my letter of appeal, and Mr. Searles’ response appear at the end of this post.) Without the police investigation report, it is impossible to understand what could have happened to bring that young man’s life to such an unfortunate end.

Having no basis myself for interpreting the analysis found on the second page of the fire investigator’s report, I asked an experienced car mechanic to look it over and give me his opinion. He certainly had questions about the explanation provided for Dale Tarapacki’s truck fire. Here are some major points of concern raised by the mechanic: (1) It is hard for a drive shaft to puncture the fuel line. The shaft in Tarapacki’s truck may have had a bad joint, but that is not a common occurrence. (2) A broken drive shaft makes a great deal of noise; Tarapacki thus would have been very aware of a major problem with the truck. (3) Gas lines are very well protected. (4) The spinning wheel bearings would have taken some time to blow out of the housing, and Tarapacki would have had the opportunity to get out of the truck.

At the end of the fire investigator’s report, the determination is made by the Sheriff’s Office that the truck fire was accidental. However, the broken drive shaft seems very puzzling. It simply raises too many questions that need to be answered. And Tarapacki himself seems to have had plenty of time to get out. So why was he found dead inside his truck?

To add to the puzzle of this case, a reliable source informed me that Dale Tarapacki’s death was ruled a suicide. But since I have been denied access to the police investigation report, it is impossible for me to verify what the final ruling was and on what grounds it was made.

A FOIL Request to Cattaraugus County

A previous post (October 16, 2015) cited a comment from the Salamanca Topix site (dated May 2013) linking my brother’s death to others that happened around the same time under suspicious circumstances yet were apparently ruled suicides.  One of the individuals named in that Topix comment was Tim Nye.  As also mentioned in that same October blog post, I did not have any official information about the death of Tim Nye or the other individuals, including a young pharmacist named Dale Tarapacki, whose body was found in his burned-out truck, and therefore I could not make any assumptions about the investigations into their deaths.  But for several years various individuals in the Salamanca area, in referring to my brother’s truck fire, have brought up the deaths of Tim Nye and a Rite Aid pharmacist (Dale Tarapacki) as similarly suspicious incidents.  This post reports on my efforts to get information about Tim Nye’s death through a FOIL request for the official records.

Since I had obtained the investigation report and related documents, with redactions, on my brother’s death through a FOIL request to the New York State Police, I submitted a FOIL request to Cattaraugus County for the records on Mr. Nye.  To my complete surprise, my request was denied, with the explanation that “[r]ecords are compiled for law enforcement purposes and are inter-agency or intra-agency materials, not statistical or factual tabulations or data.”  The Cattaraugus County response merely restated the language of section 87 (2) (g) of the New York Public Officers Law.  But, logically, how could such official documents related to the death of Mr. Nye not contain factual data?  I appealed that decision, citing that the purpose of the Freedom of Information Law is “to promote open government and accountability” and that if a police report or any related document has any factual data, then that information has to be disclosed.

Soon afterward, I received a response from Records Appeals Officer John Searles, with two pages related to my request and with a reiteration that records “are compiled for inter-agency or intra-agency purposes.”  The two scant pages, however, contain very little information.  [They are posted below, along with my original FOIL request, my letter of  appeal, and Mr. Searles' letter of reply.]  Neither Mr. Nye’s name nor his address appears on either of these documents.  An internet search listed his address as 4445 Hungry Hollow Road in Great Valley.  If that is the case, then Tim Nye lived in the same neighborhood as my brother.  The date of the incident, as recorded in the documents sent to me by Mr. Searles, is September 2, 2004, which was less than a year after my brother’s death.  The first officer on the scene is listed as Andrew Rozler (a deputy sheriff, who, I was informed, lived on Cross Rd., close to my brother’s house).

The few factual statements provided are not very informative.  The “Incident Maintenance” sheet lists the location (i.e., of the discovery of the wounded Mr. Nye) as “Hungry Hollow Great Valley,” yet the other sheet, with a very brief narrative, states that “[p]atrol found above vehicle parked with the door open on McCarthy Hill Road in the Town of Great Valley.”  It is thus unclear where Tim Nye was actually found.  Was it near an intersection of Hungry Hollow and McCarthy Hill roads?  The following is the only information given about Mr. Nye himself: “After checking the scene, patrol found the victim laying [sic] on the ground with a shotgun laying [sic] next to his feet.  Victim had suffered an apparent gunshot wound.”  No mention is made concerning the location of the wound.  Although the penultimate sentence of this brief narrative states that the officer “requested an ambulance,” nothing further is indicated about Mr. Nye’s condition.  The sixth and final sentence is redacted.

I replied to Mr. Searles on January 20, 2016, that this was an unsatisfactory response to my FOIL appeal and that Cattaraugus County was required by the FOIA law to release all documents with factual information pertaining to the death of Timothy Nye.  He responded on January 27 with the same rationale as before, justifying the denial on the basis that the records “are intra-agency materials of the Sheriff’s Office” and adding the following: “Specifically, these records consist of nine pages of intra-agency investigation reports of the Cattaraugus County Sheriff’s Office.”  I sent a final letter to Mr. Searles on February 10 stating that I considered his position “completely unwarranted and in violation of the New York State FOIA law.”

Why should Cattaraugus County refuse to provide access to records that should, at least in part, be available to public scrutiny?  Are they trying to hide facts about suspicious deaths from the public?  How can they get away with such violations of the law?  As some individuals have suggested, officials know that people of modest incomes cannot afford to go through an expensive lawsuit to obtain records that should be available under FOIL.  But that does not speak well of our justice system.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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