More on the Failure of the State Police to Investigate a Statement about a Suicide Letter

Numerous posts on this blog have discussed the suspicious circumstances of my brother Mark’s truck fire in rural Great Valley, New York, in September 2003, and his death the following day from third-degree burns over approximately 90% of his body.  A troubling statement was made to me by my brother’s then 23-year old daughter Christie the evening after the fire.  Christie told me that Mark had left her a suicide letter, which she was revealing only to her mother, brother, and me, in order to protect the insurance money (on the highly questionable nature of that statement, see the post of November 23, 2013).  However, when questioned by the lead New York State Police investigator Edward Kalfas, Mark’s daughter denied knowing anything about a suicide letter. Mark’s wife Susan also told Kalfas that she knew nothing about a suicide letter (see posts of January 31, 2018, and March 31, 2019).

It seemed strange that Christie had told me and not Mark’s and my half-sister Carol McKenna that my brother had left her a suicide letter.  Carol was also concerned about this statement about a suicide letter and confronted Christie about it shortly afterwards, expressing skepticism that I would have fabricated such a story.  As Carol reported, Christie totally denied having had the conversation with me.  If there actually was a suicide letter, why wouldn’t Christie have admitted it to her aunt Carol?  Was there a suicide letter or not?  If there was, those who cared about Mark, including other relatives and his wide circle of friends, deserved to know.

A few weeks later when Mark’s son Brian called to inform me that they had received the autopsy report, I reminded him that the night of Mark’s death he had told me that Christie wanted to speak to me and handed over the phone to her.  Yet when I reminded him of what she had gone on to tell me, Brian stated that he couldn’t remember.

When I reported Christie’s statement about a suicide letter to Kalfas shortly after she revealed it to me, I offered to take a polygraph test about my conversation with Christie.  Kalfas responded that he was not sure what good it would do but would think it over.  He then declined my offer and, after speaking with Christie, dropped the issue of the alleged suicide letter altogether.

Although I also reported the information by letter to Edward Sharkey, then Cattaraugus County District Attorney, he did not pursue the matter.  A few years later when I spoke with Michael Malak, who had been Sharkey’s investigator at the time of Mark’s death, I specifically brought up Christie’s statement to me about a suicide letter.  Malak insisted that such a thing seemed unlikely to have been made up (see post of March 31, 2019).  Since Malak was involved in discussions of the case during the investigation, he apparently was not concerned enough to press the issue at that time.

In a conversation about the case with an old college friend, now a lawyer, who was shocked that the District Attorney had failed to pursue this statement about a suicide letter, she urged me to hire a New York State attorney specializing in criminal law.  In September 2005, Buffalo Atty. Michael Kelly had an interview with Kalfas and his then superior John Wolfe, in which he brought up the issue of Christie’s statement to me about a suicide letter. Kalfas explained that when Christie completely denied knowing anything about a suicide letter, he did not know what to do about the matter (see post of November 23, 2018).  It is absurd that a supposedly well trained New York State police investigator would not know how to discover the truth about any individual’s statement that there was a suicide letter.

Not long after Atty. Kelly’s interview with Kalfas and his superior John Wolfe, I informed Wolfe that I remained troubled by Christie's remarks to me about a suicide letter.  Wolfe replied that he did want to speak with Christie but that she had not returned his call.  A few weeks later, I asked Wolfe if he had spoken with Mark’s daughter yet. He replied that he had not spoken with Christie.  Wolfe then appears to have dropped the matter altogether.

In early 2006, I spoke with Wolfe’s superior, Capt. George Brown.  He dismissed the statement Christie made to me about a suicide letter, insisting that Mark’s daughter had merely said something foolish on the spur of the moment.  However, as I mentioned to Wolfe, at 23 years of age, Mark’s daughter was not a child and would have been well aware of what she was saying.  In 2010, current Cattaraugus County District Attorney Lori Rieman trivialized the issue of Christie’s statement about a suicide letter by saying that she had probably just wanted her mother to collect a modest life insurance policy.

In contrast to the N. Y. State Police investigators and Cattaraugus County District Attorney’s office, Kelly, who had extensive experience as a criminal lawyer after serving in the Erie County District Attorney’s office, emphasized that Christie should have been subpoenaed about that alleged suicide letter.  Why wasn’t she?

Who Actually Spoke to My Brother the Day of His Truck Fire?

The previous post (May 31, 2020) brought up problems about the New York State Police investigators’ failure to check the telephone records for the night of my brother’s suspicious truck fire, that surfaced in an interview in May 2010 that I had with Cattaraugus County District Attorney Lori Rieman and the senior N.Y.S.P. investigator in Mark’s case, John Ensell.  This post discusses an issue related to the importance of the phone records: who actually spoke to my brother the day of the fire?

Although his name is redacted from the copy of the police report that I obtained by a FOIL request, Rapacioli is clearly the individual “involved with the victim through High School Football fund raising” mentioned in an entry by the lead investigator, Edward Kalfas, for September 25, 2003.  As Kalfas puts it, Rapacioli “was on the telephone with Mrs. Pavlock, looking to speak with the victim, when she advised him of seeing the fire and hung up to call ‘911’.”  According to Mark’s wife Susan in her witness statement, that call began at 10:30 p.m. and lasted for about half an hour.   As mentioned in the previous post, D.A. Rieman insisted that the interview with Pete Rapacioli confirmed the phone call that night.

In June 2004, Mark’s and my cousin Dennis Pavlock informed me of a conversation that he had had with Pete Rapacioli at the Holy Cross Club in Salamanca.  He said that Rapacioli had mentioned that Mark was short on the football pool (the one for which Rapacioli had allegedly called my brother’s house at 10:30 p.m. the night of the fire) but would make it up.

In early November 2004, Dennis explained that he had gone to the Holy Cross Club with Gary Subulski, a friend of his and my brother’s, and happened to see Rapacioli, who had previously worked for the railroad, along with Mark and Gary.  During our conversation, Dennis referred to a comment by Rapacioli that he had spoken with Mark earlier on the day of his truck fire (see post of April 30, 2019).  According to Dennis’s account, then, Rapacioli specifically spoke with my brother about details of the football pool on the day of the truck fire.

Kalfas keeps the summary of his interview with Rapacioli surprisingly and disappointingly brief (see the police report though a link on the blog page).  Did he ask Rapacioli if he had spoken to Mark earlier in the day or when he had actually last spoken with him?  Rapacioli himself specifically told me in November 2003 that he had tried, but failed, to reach Mark earlier in the day and therefore called at night to try to reach him (see posts of December 27, 2012, and May 15, 2013).  Moreover, in June 2013, he claimed to me that he had tried unsuccessfully to reach Mark several times during the day (see post of June 26, 2013).  How can one reconcile the discrepancy between what Rapacioli told me as well as the investigator and what he told my cousin Dennis?

Kalfas acknowledged to Atty. Michael Kelly in September 2005 that he had found no one (except for Mark’s wife) who had seen my brother the entire day of the truck fire.  If he had checked the phone records, as well as verified the alleged call in which Rapacioli spoke with Mark’s wife between 10:30 and 11 p.m., Kalfas would have been able to establish whether there was an earlier call (or calls) in which Mark might have communicated to Rapacioli the information mentioned by my cousin Dennis.  If so, Kalfas could then have asked Rapacioli what Mark had told him about the football pool and why Rapacioli had needed to try to speak with Mark again at 10:30 p.m.

Kalfas’s summary of the interview on September 25, 2003, does not mention the length of the alleged conversation between Rapacioli and Mark’s wife.  Did Kalfas not ask Rapacioli what he and Susan had spoken about for almost half an hour?  Kalfas appears to have taken Rapacioli’s statements at face value.  Why?  Was Rapacioli’s family connection to the Salamanca police (see post of March 17, 2015) a factor?