More Problems about the Phone Records for the Night of Mark’s Truck Fire

As previous posts (December 27, 2012; May 13, 2013; October 25, 2016; and February 28, 2019) have pointed out, the phone records for the night of my brother’s truck fire should have been examined.  It is standard investigative procedure to check phone records, especially when a person is killed under suspicious circumstances and when the victim’s marriage is known to have been in trouble.  In Mark’s case, the circumstances of his truck fire were suspicious: a pool of his blood was found in his driveway that night; the truck was parked fifty feet into the field across from his driveway; and a gas can was found in the cab of his truck, where he never put gas cans.  The New York State Police also acknowledged that Mark and his wife Susan had serious marriage problems and were clearly approaching a divorce.

The State Police, then, should have obtained the phone records to verify Susan’s claim in her witness statement that she was on the phone for approximately half an hour prior to the fire.  They should also have checked to determine if Pete Rapacioli initiated that alleged call, supposedly to speak with Mark about a football pool.  If that call took place, the State Police should also have determined whether it was made by landline or cell phone (on both ends) and how long it lasted.  By checking the phone records, they could also have learned how many times Rapacioli had called Mark’s house that day and how many calls had actually been received.

In addition, the landline records for Mark’s house might have indicated if other calls had actually been made or received by Mark himself that day (unlike his wife, Mark to my knowledge did not have a cell phone).  Although Susan says in her witness statement that Mark was at home during the day, at least two acquaintances said that they had not been able to reach him, and one had expected a return call from him but did not receive it.

During the investigation, the State Police also did not check to learn if Mark’s wife went to work the day of the truck fire.  If she did go to her job that day, Susan would not have known for certain whether Mark remained at home through the late afternoon.  If she did not go to work, cell phone and landline calls could possibly have been made or answered by Mark as well as Susan.  Susan could then have explained why Mark had not answered calls to his house made by friends that morning or afternoon.  In 2005, Atty. Michael Kelly urged Sr. Inv. John Wolfe to find out if Susan went to work that day, but Wolfe apparently did not follow up on that request.

Rapacioli’s inconsistent statements to me about calling Mark’s house that day are also a matter of concern.  Just weeks after my brother’s death, a friend of Mark’s encouraged me to call Rapacioli, whom I did not know, because he thought that Rapacioli might have seen Mark that day.  Rapacioli then told me that he had tried to reach my brother early in the day, but made no reference to any call around 11 p.m.  However, in 2013, when he called me to complain angrily about being mentioned on this blog (see post of June 26, 2013), he claimed to have tried to reach Mark numerous times throughout the day.  When reminded of his failure to mention that (alleged) phone call around 11 p.m. back in 2003, Rapacioli did not deny it but retorted, “You knew about the call anyway.”  In fact, I had known nothing about any such phone call in the period immediately after my brother’s death.

Another problem of consistency concerns a statement Rapacioli reportedly made to Mark’s and my cousin Dennis Pavlock.  In November 2004, Dennis mentioned that he had run into Rapacioli at the Holy Cross Club (the place where, the day before his truck fire, my brother had got into a personal argument with off-duty police officer Mark Marowski, who then called the Salamanca police to pick him up for DWI).  According to Dennis, Rapacioli told him that he had in fact spoken to Mark on the day of the fire.  If that is true, what was the need for a phone call to Mark’s house around 11 p.m.?

Along with their dismissal of the pool of Mark’s blood found in his driveway that night and the wound to his forehead, the failure by the New York State Police investigators to obtain and examine the phone records for the day of my brother’s truck fire contradicts their claim to have conducted a “thorough investigation.”  Such negligence could not have been the result of mere inertia or even simple incompetence on the part of the New York State Police investigators.