A Follow-up on an Unexpected Phone Call

This post picks up a particular unresolved issue brought up in my post of June 26, 2013, on an unexpected phone call I received from a man identifying himself as Pete Rapacioli, who was obviously not pleased that he had been mentioned on my blog.  Rapacioli said that he himself had not read my blog but had been informed about it by numerous individuals.  My post of May 15, 2013, in fact focuses on the alleged telephone call between Rapacioli and my brother’s wife Susan between 10:30 and 10:55, just before Mark’s truck fire. 

Although it is not the focus of this post, that alleged call remains a matter of considerable concern for a number of reasons.  Here, I will briefly indicate why Rapacioli’s comments in June about the issue were unsatisfactory.  First, his claim to have tried to reach Mark about a charity football pool numerous times throughout the day conflicts with his statement to me in November 2003 that he had only called early in the day, but failed to reach Mark.  Second, Rapacioli’s claim to have called my brother throughout the day is hard to reconcile with the official statement in the police report by Mark’s wife that he was at home in the afternoon and the evening until 8:45.  Third, Rapacioli contradicted himself by stating at one point that he had called “Susie” to give her the amount and the winner of the pool but at another point that he and Mark had needed to coordinate their information to determine the winner.  Fourth, Rapacioli did not explain why he had been on the phone with Susan for nearly half an hour, since it should not have taken him very long at all to report his pool results.

This post, however, is concerned with Rapacioli's response when I brought up a comment by Mark’s friend Jack Plonka in November 2003 that Pete, who is his cousin, planned to read the police report because he had a relative on the police force.  Rapacioli replied that this relative was perhaps Denny Ambuske, his ex-brother-in-law, who had worked on the police force, but he immediately rejected the idea, saying that Denny had already left the force long before Mark’s death.  Rapacioli then claimed that he didn't know who it could be and insisted that he didn’t know why Jack had said that.  From my point of view, it seems unlikely that Jack would have simply made up his statement that Pete planned to read the police report through a relative on the police force, since Jack himself was obviously shocked at what had happened and did not understand how Mark could have been burned to death. 

At the end of his call to me on June 5, as reported in the post of June 26, Rapacioli mentioned that his daughter and her husband lived in the house at the intersection of Cross and Whalen Roads and added that they had slept through the entire incident. Although I asked for his daughter’s name, Rapacioli did not reply.  I then expressed my skepticism that the occupants of that house could have slept through the sirens of police cars and fire trucks and through the noise of the helicopter landing in the field or near to it and that they did not hear the explosion which Cheryl Simcox said had rocked their trailer, not much farther from the intersection of Whalen and Cross Roads (see the post of May 15, 2013).  Rapacioli had no response.

Quite unexpectedly, I recently learned the identity of a relative of Rapacioli's on the Salamanca police force.  An obituary in October for a man named Cas Myers, a long-time banker, noted that Mr. Myers had two sons, Joseph, who lives in Great Valley, and Paul, who lives in Salamanca.  Joseph Myers, it turns out, lives at 6761 Cross Road (see photo below) and is married to Tracie Rapacioli.  Thus, Rapacioli's daughter Tracie and her husband Joseph Myers reside in the house by the intersection of Cross and Whalen Roads.  They were presumably living there together when Mark was killed since Rapacioli said that his daughter and her husband had slept through the incident.

Entrance to 6761 Cross Road, facing the field where Mark's truck burned

Tracie Rapacioli-Myers is married to the brother of the Salamanca Police Chief Paul Myers, who was on the Salamanca police force at the time of my brother's death.  Pete Rapacioli thus is (and was presumably back in 2003) related by marriage to Paul Myers, his daughter's brother-in-law.  How is it, then, that in his phone call to me on June 5 Rapacioli claimed to have no idea what relative of his on the police force Jack Plonka could have meant?  Rapacioli had very quickly remembered the name of another in-law, Denny Ambuske, who he said had been on the police force long before Mark was killed.  Is one supposed to believe that Rapacioli was somehow unable to think of an in-law who was on the force back in 2003 and who is presently Chief of Police?

The issue of Rapacioli's relative on the police force became a concern to me during the investigation into my brother's death after one of my relatives mentioned that the Salamanca police were being very “tight-lipped” about Mark's truck fire.  Their reported silence seemed very odd since Mark had actually lived in Salamanca--or spent much of his time there--all of his life, except for his training in the Army and service in Vietnam.  As mentioned in the post of December 31, 2011, it is not clear why Salamanca police were on the scene of Mark’s truck fire.  Did they have any role, direct or indirect, in the investigation into Mark’s death?  Why, ten years later, was Rapacioli unwilling to reveal his daughter’s name and, by extension, his own connection with a long-term member of the Salamanca police force?

My post of October 29, 2013, made it clear that the State Police investigator knew very well that my brother could not possibly have backed his truck in a straight line down his driveway and into the field, where it went up in flames and he himself lay burning to death sixty feet away.  If he was intoxicated, Mark could not have backed his truck straight down his driveway.  His DWI arrest record the day before the truck fire makes that clear.  If he was not intoxicated, Mark certainly would not have fallen in his driveway, as the police claim; in that case, he would not have left a pool of blood there and sustained injuries to his forehead and the left side of his face.  The insistence by the State Police that Mark caused his own death because of his alleged intoxication simply does not hold up, and they have known it all along.

For my part, I will continue my quest for justice for my brother and will reach out to all relevant authorities until I find someone willing to stand up for what is right and bring Mark's murderers to justice.