A Closer Look at the Gas Can

This post focuses more specifically on the problem of the gasoline can found on the passenger’s side floor of my brother’s truck the night of the fire.  The gas can raises a host of questions about the events of September 23, 2003, that cost Mark his life as a result of third-degree burns over ninety percent of his body. 

Little is said about the gas can in the police and the fire investigator’s reports.  Here is what the official documents and a statement by the State Police investigator reveal:
           
(1) An entry in the police report narrative for 09/24/03 lists among five items of evidence "the melted remains of a red plastic gas can." 
(2) An entry in the police report narrative for 11/04/03 states the following: “Member received lab results from the Western Regional Crime Lab regarding the melted gas can and burnt clothing from the victim.  Items tested positive for gasoline.”
(3) The fire investigator's report states that the gas can was found in the cab of Mark's truck on the floor of the passenger's side.
(4) In her witness statement (completed at 11:45 on the night of the fire), Mark's wife Susan states the following: "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." 
(5) In a meeting with Att. Michael Kelly in September 2005, Inv. Kalfas stated the following: Mark's wife told him that she had purchased the gas can and that it was half-full, as she had used it to mow the lawn.

Earlier posts (September 22, 2010, and June 26, 2011) raised some basic questions: How did the gas can get into the cab of my brother’s truck when he never put gas cans there?  Who put it there?  Clearly, someone used that can to pour gasoline on the driver’s seat and on my brother himself and lit the match or lighter that triggered the fire.  The fire investigator's report states that the fire started in the driver’s seat area and that there was “preparation,” and the attending physician at the burn unit told a nephew that Mark had been doused with a flammable liquid.  The fire investigator's report also mentions that a lighter was found on the floor of the passenger's side of the truck, and the police report refers to a book of Winston matches secured from the scene but does not indicate specifically where it was found.  Was the gas can open or not when the truck fire actually started?  The police and the fire investigator’s reports do not say, nor do they indicate if testing was done on the can to try to determine the answer.  As I recently learned from a forensics expert, it is important to know if the can was open or not, and forensics specialists could make that determination.  Was Mark in the truck or around sixty feet away from it when he was doused with gasoline?  

Apparently, there was no intense scrutiny of these matters.  To judge from the police report and from oral statements by the authorities, it was simply assumed that Mark had put the gas can in the cab and that he had spilled gasoline on himself in an intoxicated condition or poured it on himself in an act of suicide or lit up a cigarette in a drowsy state after falling asleep in the truck (see February 2, 2012).  Did the investigating authorities take as fact the statement (quoted above) by Mark's wife: "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."  Did they then extend its implications and assume definitively that Mark had put that gas can in the truck?  Besides acknowledging that she didn’t know “what he did with it,” Susan's comment provides no concrete evidence that Mark had any gas can in his possession at the time.  For, according to her witness statement, Susan did not actually see Mark at any point after 8:45 p.m. until she ran out of the house when the truck went up in flames about 11:00 (see May 29, 2012).

Did the investigating authorities give equal credence to the statement by firefighter Mark Ward (also, as then superintendent of the Salamanca school system, Susan’s boss and a close personal friend of hers) that my brother had said the words “gasoline can” twice on the scene in his presence?  Ward’s witness statement, however, differs from that of Gary Wind, who says that he heard my brother utter “something about gas,” but acknowledges that he “couldn’t make out anything he [Mark] was saying.”  A previous post (November 30, 2011) deals with the problematic nature of claims about what my brother reportedly said when emergency workers arrived.  Even N.Y.S.P. Lt. Allen acknowledged to me in 2007 that someone on the scene might have said, ”Did Mark say ‘gas’?” and the others around might have picked up on it.  It may also be relevant that Ward’s witness statement was given not the night of the fire (as Gary Wind’s was), but on October 2, 2003, that is, nine days after the truck fire.  Doubtless, people who had been on the scene were talking with one another about what they had seen and heard.  Was a witness statement given nine days later influenced by the content of these exchanges after the incident?

It is surprising, furthermore, that the authorities were not troubled during the investigation  by false or misleading statements about the gas can that had been made on the scene of the fire and shortly afterward.  Numerous statements related to the gas can were in fact made in the hours after my brother was airlifted to the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo.

Here in this post I am concerned with one comment specifically.  It was reported to me by my cousin Dennis Pavlock, who lives in Florida.  Dennis informed me that Mark’s son Brian had called to ask him to be a pall bearer at the funeral.  According to my cousin, Brian explained to him that Mark had been burned while putting gasoline into the tank of his truck after he ran out of gas.  Immediately after Mark’s death, of course, my cousin did not know that Mark’s truck could not have run out of gas just before the fire because the tank was three-quarters full.  But when he told me about the conversation, my cousin had learned the truth about the gas tank and was very concerned about Brian’s statement.  What motivated Brian to tell Dennis that his father had been burned putting gasoline into the tank of his truck after he ran out of gas?  No one on the scene who gave a witness statement, including Mark’s wife, even suggests the possibility that Mark’s tank had run out of gas prior to the fire.  The bizarre location of the truck in the field would seem automatically to rule out that scenario.  Brian’s statement seems even more unsettling in light of what his sister Christie told me about the same time: she claimed that her father had committed suicide and that he had left behind a suicide letter for her.  She later denied to the police that she knew anything about a suicide or suicide note (see September 22, 2010). 

After hearing many troubling things about the circumstances of my brother’s death, I wrote letters to then Cattaraugus County D.A. Edward Sharkey.  In the one dated March 27, 2004, I reported the statement made to my cousin about the gas can as well as other very relevant information Dennis had passed on to me from a firefighter on the scene.  I also included a telephone number by which he could be reached.  However, Dennis later told me that he had never been contacted by anyone in the investigation.

Given the suspicious circumstances of Mark’s death, everything concerning the gas can should have been seriously scrutinized.  It was, after all, a potential murder weapon.