More on Problems with the Police Report

The previous post (April 17, 2015) discussed the problematic redaction of the names of certain “friends and neighbors” of my brother whose statements are summarized or quoted in Inv. Kalfas’s narrative in the police report.  Those individuals who commented negatively about Mark’s drinking are thus provided anonymity, even though some of their remarks seem questionable.  Furthermore, it is difficult to comprehend who could have made such statements since virtually all of Mark’s neighbors told me that they were not interviewed by the State Police investigator.  This post considers redactions and problematic statements in the police report related to one specific individual, who was on the scene of Mark’s truck fire and gave a witness statement.

The relevant entry in Inv. Kalfas’s narrative is for 10/02/03 (see link near the top right for the police report).  It reads as follows: “Also this date, member met with and interviewed […redaction…] is a friend of the family and a […redaction…].  He was the third person on the scene the night of the fire.  His Supporting Deposition is attached as enclosure #6.”  Although the name is blacked out, a list on the following page (left, one assumes, inadvertently unredacted) identifies that enclosure as Mark Ward’s witness statement. 

The reference to Ward as “a friend of the family” raises questions.  Did Ward describe himself that way?  Or did Kalfas loosely paraphrase him?  In any case, it is not an accurate description.  Mark Ward was clearly not one of my brother’s friends.  I can’t say if he had any kind of relationship with Mark’s and Susan’s two children.  But as the superintendent of the Salamanca school system, where Susan was employed as a clerk in the accounting office, he did know her and was reportedly a close friend of hers. 

What is redacted after the phrase “friend of the family”?  The word “firefighter” would seem logically to fit in.  But why would that have been blacked out?  Ward’s witness statement itself is explicit about his role as a firefighter.  Were the State Police trying to keep something else about Ward secret?

 Inv. Kalfas’s reference to Ward as “the third person on the scene the night of the fire” is also incorrect.  The third person on the scene was in fact firefighter Gary Wind.  As Kalfas indicates in his entry for 10/10/03, the second person on the scene is identified through enclosure #7 as EMT Cheryl Simcox, who saw Mark’s wife Susan standing at the end of the driveway when she arrived on the scene.  By Kalfas’s own calculation, then, Ward was the fourth person on the scene.

Ward’s witness statement (see enclosure #6, after Kalfas’s narrative), taken on 10/10/03 (and handwritten), contains a redaction of almost a full line.  The relevant passage reads as follows: “On tuesday [sic], Sept. 23, 2003 at slightly before 11:00 pm my pager went off indicating a truck fire & possible entrapment at the Pavlock residence on t6 [unclear; see enc. #6] Whalen Rd.  This was not in my fire Dist. […redaction…] and I am within 2 minutes of her house[.]  I responded.”  What reason could there have been for blacking out that rather lengthy section?  In my interview with current Cattaraugus County District Attorney Lori Rieman back in May 2010, I asked that question.  D. A. Rieman replied that it had something to do with Ward’s job.  But Ward was the superintendent of the Salamanca school system and a volunteer firefighter, and his actions on the scene of the fire had no bearing on the need to protect special police investigative procedures.  Information about him should not have been kept secret.

In recounting what he did on the scene, Ward states that the truck was on fire “with the majority of it centered in the cab” and that when he asked “where Mark was, she [Susan? Or Cheryl?] pointed to the field.”  Observing that Mark “was still on fire,” Ward goes on to say that he “went to him and he appeared to be dead but [...redaction of name.., presumably Gary Wind] looked and saw that he was breathing.”  After mentioning that he retrieved coats from his vehicle and put out the rest of the fire, Ward says that Mark “was able to talk–we asked him what happened, and twice he mentioned a gasoline can but these were the only words I could understand.” 

Ward’s statement that Mark “was able to talk” certainly cannot be taken at face value but must be understood only with the qualifiers that follow in Ward’s account.  He makes it clear that he could understand only two words, “gasoline can,” which he says he heard Mark utter twice.  In his own witness statement, Gary Wind, who was there shortly before, and with, Mark Ward says that he could understand only the word “gas.”  Wayne Frank, who told me that he arrived right after Ward, insisted that he could understand nothing that my brother was trying to say (see post of November 30, 2011). 

It is unfortunate that Ward was not more careful in his choice of language because the State Police and the District Attorney’s office later insisted that emergency workers found Mark “able to talk.”  But one firefighter insisted orally that nothing Mark had been trying to say was comprehensible, and the other two heard rather different things, “gas” versus “gasoline can.”

What do those phrases really mean in the context of a man lying near death, after suffering third- degree burns over ninety percent of his body, including his entire head?  They certainly do not substantiate the claim by the State Police and the District Attorney’s office that Mark was eliminating foul play in the fire that had severely burned him and left him on the brink of death.  It was clear to Gary Wind and Wayne Frank that Mark was trying to communicate something to them.  One cannot rule out the possibility that he was attempting to explain that someone had poured gasoline on him and set him on fire. 

It is also a matter of concern that Ward reportedly said something else to another emergency worker.  When I spoke with Mark’s neighbor and EMT Cheryl Simcox in May 2006, I asked if she had heard Mark say anything.  Cheryl replied that she had remained with Susan as firefighters arrived but added that Mark Ward had mentioned hearing my brother say something like "I didn't do anything."  I was concerned about Cheryl’s information since Ward does not report anything like that in his witness statement but, as mentioned above, says that he could understand only the words “gasoline can” and nothing more. 

Mark’s wife Susan, however, did claim that Mark had said virtually those same words to her (see post of November 30, 2011).  Here is what Susan says verbatim in her witness statement: “I tried to put the flames on him out.  I asked him What did you do and he said, ‘I did nothing.’”  Cheryl Simcox similarly records in her own witness statement what Susan told her: she went over to Mark and asked him, "What did you do?  My God, what did you do?" and he replied, "I did nothing." 

It would appear that Ward in his comment to Cheryl was simply echoing Susan’s own words.  Could Mr. Ward have made the same statement to others that he reportedly made to Cheryl?  The claim that Mark said he didn’t do anything is highly problematic in light of the investigating authorities’ insistence that Mark was able to speak to emergency workers and said nothing about foul play.   My brother lost his life in a very suspicious truck fire, yet the State Police investigators never even considered murder and glossed over almost every piece of evidence that did not conform to a pre-conceived theory of accident or suicide.

At the end of his witness statement, Ward says the following: “Sue was holding a sweatshirt (white) that she said she had used to try to put Mark out (fire).”  Ward here appears to accept–but certainly does not contest--Susan’s claim that she used her white sweatshirt to bat out the flames on Mark.  That is also problematic in light of statements by other eyewitnesses who observed that Susan’s white sweatshirt was completely clean, with no burn marks or soot on it.  Cheryl Simcox makes that clear in her witness statement.  At least one other person on the scene of the fire expressed concern orally about Susan’s claim, and at the burn unit the following morning Carol McKenna also noticed that Susan’s white sweatshirt was clean, with no burn marks.  But only Cheryl Simcox’s and Mark Ward’s statements are part of the formal record in the police report.

Susan’s claim about using that white sweatshirt, along with other questionable statements she made (see esp. posts of August 22 and September 22, 2012), should have been pursued by the State Police investigators.  It is a matter of concern that even within the past couple of years, as reported by my nephew (see post of November 23, 2103), Susan told Carol McKenna that Mark had left a suicide letter, contradicting her official statement to Inv. Kalfas that there was no suicide letter (recorded as an entry in the police report for 12/12/03).

Clearly, both Ward and his wife have been close to Susan.  When I phoned the relatives’ lounge at the burn unit late in the morning after the fire and my brother’s house late that afternoon to find out how Mark could have got so badly burned, in each case a friend of Susan’s answered the phone.  Although she did not identify herself, one of those two friends informed me that she was a neighbor and a friend of Susan's.  She added that she and her husband had seen the flames of the truck fire from their house and that he had been one of the first emergency workers on the scene.  This woman was obviously Mark Ward’s wife Barbara. 

When I mentioned to a number of people from the Great Valley area that the Wards had seen the flames from their house, I was told that it would not have been possible for them to do so since their house was not close by and the land slopes down toward their direction.  An online search showed the Wards’ house to be 2.4 miles from Mark’s house.  That seems like too considerable a distance, especially downhill, for the Wards to have been able to see the flames from Mark’s burning truck. 

Given such a situation in which there was a potential conflict of interest, it is inexcusable that Inv. Kalfas did not ask the third firefighter on the scene, Wayne Frank, to give a witness statement.  Furthermore, as Cheryl Simcox informed me, Kalfas did not question her fully, and she did not know how far to go when he took her witness statement.  Complete information about what was observed on the scene of Mark’s truck fire was not sought and was certainly not obtained.