Further Problems with the Theory of a Suicide or an Accident

This post comes with more reasons for questioning the authorities’ view that my brother's death was either an accident or a suicide.

After my brother was killed, various individuals in the Salamanca area mentioned that Mark's was one of several suspicious deaths within a period of a couple of years.  Apparently, each was ruled a suicide.  One of these cases involved a man found shot in his abdomen.  Two involved men found burned to death in their vehicles.  At this point, I have not been able to obtain much specific information about any of them and thus cannot fully grasp why people found these deaths suspicious.  It would be interesting to know more.  Certainly, the manner of death in each case would not immediately suggest suicide.  One individual put it this way: “Who shoots himself in the gut?”  In another instance, it was said that a pharmacist at the local Rite Aid, who was discovered burned to death in his vehicle, had been about to open a pharmacy on his own and had no reason to commit suicide.  As is well known, self-immolation in the U. S. (and in developed countries generally) is very rare and basically limited to women who are psychotic.

The third case has an unexpected point of contact with my brother himself.  Some time before Mark's truck fire, a man named Bill Duhan was discovered burned to death in his vehicle.  Although learning about the case several years ago, I was told nothing about the circumstances of this terrible death.  Recently, however, Salamanca Police Chief Gary Wind, who (then a deputy sheriff) was the first firefighter on the scene of Mark’s truck fire, kindly agreed to speak with me about some points that I hoped he might be able to clarify.  In that conversation, Police Chief Wind happened to mention that Mark had been on the scene in which Bill Duhan was found burned to death in his car and had been very upset about it.  As Chief Wind specifically noted, my brother said that he would never do that to himself but, if he wanted to take his own life, would instead use a gun (“a forty-five”).

That statement by Mark is yet another reason to reject the investigating authorities’ view that he really committed suicide.  My brother was thoroughly sickened when he saw what had happened to Bill Duhan.  As observed in earlier posts (see September 22, 2010, December 11, 2010, and August 22, 2012), Mark was very connected to life and never showed any suicidal tendencies, and too many aspects of the scene are not compatible with the theory of a suicide (most compellingly, the pool of his blood found in his driveway and the wounds on both his forehead and the left side of his face, observed by his attending physician).  Several posts (September 22, 2010, June 26, 2011, September 22, 2012, and November 1, 2012), moreover, have tried to show that the theory of an accident leaves too many questions about Mark’s death unanswered (e.g., why his truck ended up in the field, how he could have backed it down there after receiving the injuries to his head and losing a pool of blood, why a gasoline can was in the cab of his truck when he never put gas cans there, and how he got saturated with gasoline). 

One specific point that Chief Wind clarified about the scene of Mark’s truck fire makes the official ruling of accident even more problematic to me.  A previous post (February 2, 2012) posed a question related to “two small spots” that Chief Wind had observed about sixty feet from the truck.  When I asked about these two spots mentioned in his witness statement, he said that they were Mark’s clothes, which were on fire near by him.  He added that my brother could have pulled them off and thrown them there.  Mark indeed may well have done that.  He certainly did not want to burn to death.  But one must wonder how the State Police took into account the location of my brother’s burning clothes in light of other information they had about his movements when the truck burst into flames.
 
According to his wife Susan’s witness statement (begun at 11:30 and completed at 11:45 p.m., just after the fire), when she ran out to the field after calling 911, she saw Mark “crawling away from the truck” and tried to bat the flames out on him.  If Mark drove the truck into field, he had to go around it from the driver’s side (presumably running) in order to have ended up where he was found by emergency workers about sixty feet from the passenger’s side.  After running around the truck, he then must have collapsed in order to be seen crawling away from it.  The act of crawling all or much of sixty feet would certainly have taken some time.  Why, then, would Mark have waited until he got so far from the truck to tear his burning clothes off?  He also presumably would have had to get up from the ground to pull his clothes off and throw them.  Did the authorities consider this issue?  There is no direct reference in the police report to those burning clothes.  I would certainly like to know how they treated the location of Mark’s burning clothes and how they explained it.

As mentioned in a previous post (June 26, 2011), criminologist Will Savive stated that Mark could not have crawled from the truck in flames to the place where he was found without leaving a fire trail.  But there is no evidence of a fire trail.  Savive also suggested that if the book of Winston matches recovered from the scene was found near Mark himself (see post of February 2, 2012), then my brother had presumably been doused with gasoline and set on fire right where he was found.  This new information about Mark’s burning clothes would seem to support that scenario of his death.  It points in the direction of foul play.