More on the Issue of Head Wounds

There are a number of disturbing similarities between the deaths of my brother Mark and a young pharmacist named Dale Tarapacki, which involved suspicious truck fires in Great Valley, N.Y., about a year and a half apart (see esp. posts of July 23 and August 24, 2016).

A recent post (September 24, 2016) focuses on the issue of head wounds.  It discusses concrete information about head injuries suffered by my brother, conveyed to me orally by his attending physician at the burn unit and by two emergency workers on the scene of his truck fire.  The New York State Police, however, never took into consideration Mark’s head wounds during their investigation and, when later asked about the issue, simply dismissed it.  The same post also notes that, according to a reliable source who had spoken with a police official, Dale Tarapacki had also suffered a serious head injury.  This post is a follow-up on that issue.

It is important that, according to my source, the police official was Dennis John, the Cattaraugus County Sheriff at the time of Tarapacki’s death.  My source specifically mentioned that, according to Sheriff John, Dale Tarapacki had suffered a cracked skull.  Since the investigation into Tarapacki’s death was conducted by his office, Sheriff John would naturally have had full information on the case.

That piece of information, however, seems particularly disturbing in light of statements from a number of reliable sources that Tarapacki had also received a gunshot wound to the right leg.  The remains of two rifles were reportedly found in the rear of the cab of Tarapacki’s burned-out truck.  According to a member of law enforcement at the time of his death, a rifle in the back may have gone off in the excessive heat of the truck fire and hit Tarapacki.  But others have questioned that explanation, especially since Tarapacki was apparently found in the driver’s seat, making it difficult to conceive how a rifle in the back of the truck could have hit the lower part of his body.

Since Sheriff John apparently was concerned enough to mention that Tarapacki’s skull had been cracked, it is difficult to understand why nothing appears to have been made of this physical evidence.  Tarapacki’s death certificate states the cause of death as “acute alprazolam intoxication complicated by inhalation of products of combustion and thermal injury.”  But one must wonder how a trained—and reportedly very intelligent—pharmacist would have inadvertently taken such a large amount of that drug (see post of May 19, 2016).  It is also odd that, according to my sources, no one appears to know where Tarapacki was in the hours before his death.

Regrettably, it is not possible to find out specifically what Sheriff John had concluded about that reported skull injury.  In 2009, Sheriff Dennis John himself was unfortunately found dead from a gunshot wound that authorities—controversially, it seems—decided was self-inflicted.