The Problematic Issue of the Whereabouts in the Three Suspicious Deaths

One troubling element linking the suspicious deaths of my brother Mark, Tim Nye, and Dale Tarapacki is the mystery of their whereabouts in the hours before their deaths (on the similarities in general, see esp. posts of April 19, July 23, and December 26, 2016).  Previous posts (August 22, 2012, March 3, 2014, and August 14, 2015) have discussed the problem of my brother’s whereabouts the evening of his truck fire.  This post considers that issue for all three suspicious deaths.

In my brother’s case, it is important to establish a time frame because Mark must have been attacked soon after he arrived home, not long before his truck went up in flames in the field across from his house in Great Valley, N.Y., about 11:00 p.m.  The pool of Mark’s blood found by investigators in the area of his driveway where he normally parked his truck and the head wounds observed by his attending physician at the burn unit make it evident that my brother was assaulted before he was burned to death.

The only formally documented information about Mark’s whereabouts that day is in his wife Susan’s witness statement (see the link at the top right for “police report,” where the witness statement are located).  Susan says that Mark was home in the afternoon but left the house about 8:45 p.m. to go to “downtown Salamanca.”  However, it is difficult to understand why several people either failed to hear from my brother by phone, as expected that day, or attempted unsuccessfully to reach him.

An anonymous letter sent to me in August 2014 offers an important—but unfortunately incomplete—piece of information, which differs from the statement of Mark’s wife.  According to the letter, immediately before the truck fire Mark was at the house of a neighbor, who said that my brother could not have had the high blood alcohol level of about .25 reported in the autopsy report (see post of August 11, 2014).

Regrettably, the author of the anonymous letter did not reveal the identity of the neighbor Mark was visiting, and that person has not come forward.  But shortly after my brother’s death, his close friend Jim Poole told me that the last person who he knew had seen Mark was Todd Lindell.  Todd himself then told me that Mark had stayed at his house for some time after returning from his DWI the evening before the fire (on Salamanca policeman Mark Marowski’s role in my brother’s DWI, see posts of July 28, 2011, April 18, 2013, September 14, 2014, October 17, 2014, and July 15, 2015, and June 21, 2016).  Knowing when Mark left that person’s house would help to fix the time when he actually arrived home and to determine how much time lapsed before his truck mysteriously went into that field and up in flames.

In Tim Nye’s case, knowledge of his whereabouts for the two days prior to his death could offer important information about the reason he was killed.  According to reliable sources, he left his residence abruptly after he received a phone call that seemed to cause him considerable anxiety.  According to one source in particular, Nye’s whereabouts were unknown for almost two days, during which he did not answer his cell phone or return calls, something completely uncharacteristic of him (see post of April 19, 2016).  When his body was discovered in a remote location in Great Valley, a shotgun was found lying close by, and he had apparently been shot in the gut.  Unlike my brother’s and Dale Tarapacki’s deaths which were ruled “accidental,” Nye’s was apparently—and very oddly—ruled a suicide.

In Dale Tarapacki’s case, the very bizarre nature of his truck fire and the apparent gunshot wound to his leg (see posts of May 19, July 23, 2016, and April 30, 2017) should have made his whereabouts that day imperative for the investigation into his death.  But information the police seem to have had about his whereabouts on the day his truck went up in flames on a remote road in Great Valley (before 3:19 p.m., when fire investigators arrived) appears to have been inaccurate.

According to a reliable source, the police claimed that Tarapacki had left to go fishing that day.  However, someone who had spoken to Tarapacki informed me that he had been drinking heavily the evening before his death and that he could not possibly have got up that next morning to go fishing.  One must wonder how the investigators from the Sheriff’s office got the idea that Tarapacki had gone on a fishing trip the day of his death.  How thoroughly did the Sheriff’s investigators check their sources?  Or did they check them at all?