More Questions about What Happened the Night of Mark’s Truck Fire

Today marks the eve of the ninth anniversary of my brother’s truck fire.  Given abundant evidence pointing to the suspicious nature of that fire, it is difficult to understand how the investigating authorities came to the conclusion that Mark himself caused the fire by either accidentally spilling or deliberately pouring gasoline on himself inside the truck and why they have continued to insist that my brother’s death could not have been a murder.  This post further considers problems with the State Police’s theory that Mark drove his truck into the field across the road from his property and then ignited gasoline that he had spilled or poured on himself.

There appears to have been a narrow time frame within which the truck could have been driven into the field.  In her witness statement, Mark’s wife Susan says that they were watching television around 7:30 p.m. and that Mark left for downtown Salamanca around 8:45.  My previous post (August 22, 2012) mentions a problem with Susan’s statement that they were watching television together.  But, regardless of that issue, Mark apparently was off the property around 8:45 and did not return until about 10:30.  For, to judge by her witness statement, Susan did not see or hear Mark come up the driveway.  However, she says that around 10:30 she heard a noise in the garage, which she thought came from the cats, but later realized that Mark had taken a five-gallon gas can from the garage.

What would Mark have been doing with that gas can?  The State Police assume that he put it on the floor of the passenger’s side of the truck and then drove to the field, where he spilled or poured the gas on himself and in the driver’s seat area.  As a previous post (June 26, 2011) makes clear, that scenario seems highly unlikely.  Moreover, conflicting statements about what Mark supposedly did with that gas can make it difficult to know what really happened.  There is a significant discrepancy between what Susan says in her witness statement and what a relative reported Susan said to her just hours later. 

In her witness statement, Susan clearly says that she did not know what Mark had done with the gas can.  However, at the Erie County Medical Center the next morning Susan gave a different account to Mark’s and my half-sister Carol McKenna.  As Carol informed me within a few days of Mark’s death, Susan told her that when the fire started, Mark had been putting gasoline into the tank, which had run out of gas.  At the time, of course, Carol had no official information about the fire.  But she expressed concern because later that day at the burn unit Susan gave a second, completely different explanation: the truck's starter had malfunctioned and caused the fire.  Not long afterward, however, Inv. Edward Kalfas revealed what the fire investigator’s report made official: the tank was almost full, and the truck fire was not caused by any mechanical problem.  As mentioned in my post of July 22, 2012, a day or so after the fire Mark’s and Susan’s son Brian told my cousin Dennis Pavlock that the truck had run out of gas.  According to Dennis, when Brian called to ask him to be a pall bearer, he explained that Mark had been putting gas into the tank when the fire started. 

It is also unclear how Susan knew that a gas can was missing.  As my post of July 22, 2012, points out, Susan says nothing about seeing Mark himself until she rushed out of the house after noticing the flames in the field and calling 911.  When did she go into the garage?  Susan’s statement was taken between 11:30 and 11:45 p.m., shortly after the fire.  As recorded in her own witness statement, Cheryl Simcox accompanied Susan into the house at Susan’s own request when they left the scene of the fire and remained with her until about 1 a.m.  Some time ago, I spoke with Cheryl, who was the first person on the scene after Mark’s wife, about this issue.  According to Cheryl, they did not go into the garage after the fire that night. 

Before his truck went into the field, my brother must first have driven it to his usual parking spot in an extension off the long driveway, as a pool of his blood was found in that space when police and emergency workers arrived.  (See photos of the driveway by the link on the right of the page.)  Since the blood was fresh, Mark had to have been in that area shortly before his truck fire.  As my post of May 29, 2012, points out, Susan apparently neither saw nor heard anything unusual in the area of the driveway between 10:30 and 10:55 p.m. as she waited for Mark to return from downtown Salamanca.  But after leaving at 8:45, my brother presumably returned around 10:30, pulled up the driveway, and parked his truck in his usual spot. 

However, since Mark must have been injured in his parking area, it is difficult to grasp how he could have driven his truck to the field.  As mentioned in the original post (September 22, 2010), Dr. Edward Piotrowski, Mark’s attending physician in the burn unit in Buffalo, stated that my brother had “deep soft-tissue swelling” in his forehead (confirmed by a CT scan) and further soft-tissue damage to the left side of his face.  Mark also presumably received a blow to his nose, the probable source of the pool of blood.  After sustaining those injuries, my brother would have needed some time to recover, especially from the blow to his forehead, which may well have knocked him out.  He would hardly have been able to drive his truck immediately at all, much less back it first from the extension into the driveway, then down the remainder of his long driveway and straight into the field.  The only logical inference is that someone else backed that truck into the field.

It is not at all clear precisely--or even approximately--where Mark was when he was first discovered on fire in the field by his wife.  In her witness statement, Susan says that when she rushed out of the house after ending a phone conversation (with Peter Rapacioli) and calling 911, she saw Mark “crawling away from the truck.”  She does not specify his distance from the truck.  But at the burn unit the next morning, Susan told Carol McKenna that Mark was a few feet from the truck when she found him.  However, shortly after at the burn unit, she told Carol’s son John that Mark was 100 feet away from the truck.  This discrepancy (as well as the one about the cause of the fire) was mentioned by Carol to Inv. Kalfas early in the investigation, as he confirmed to Att. Michael Kelly in 2005 when asked why he had not recorded in the police report Carol’s information about Susan’s statements in the burn unit.  Inv. Kalfas replied that he assumed Susan had been upset and confused and therefore he did not think those statements important.  (In her witness statement, however, Cheryl Simcox comments on Susan’s calm demeanor that night, and others made similar remarks.) 

It is unfortunate, moreover, that in his interviews with Susan, the investigator did not have her clarify as specifically as possible where Mark was in the field when she first saw him.  She presumably had a fairly clear idea since, according to her witness statement, she rushed to the field and tried to put out the flames on Mark.  (In her own witness statement, however, Cheryl Simcox mentions that when Susan put down on the counter the white sweatshirt she said she had used to bat the flames, it was clean, with no soot or skin on it.)  Mark’s distance from the truck when his wife approached him was certainly relevant information in the effort to determine how he ended up where emergency workers found him, so very badly burned. 

It is also unfortunate that Inv. Kalfas apparently did not fully consider how Mark had come to be a considerable distance--about sixty feet--from the truck when the first emergency workers found him.  As already mentioned, Susan says in her witness statement that she saw Mark “crawling away from the truck.”  It is very difficult, however, to understand how he could have crawled sixty feet, impaired by fresh head wounds and so fully engulfed in flames.  As Cheryl Simcox told me, two-foot flames were shooting from my brother’s whole body, including his head, when she saw him just a couple of minutes after the 911 call was made.  Even more troubling, how could Mark, with his entire body ablaze, have crawled sixty feet from the truck without leaving a fire trail?  Yet there is no evidence of any fire trail.