More on the Failure of the State Police to Investigate a Statement about a Suicide Letter

Numerous posts on this blog have discussed the suspicious circumstances of my brother Mark’s truck fire in rural Great Valley, New York, in September 2003, and his death the following day from third-degree burns over approximately 90% of his body.  A troubling statement was made to me by my brother’s then 23-year old daughter Christie the evening after the fire.  Christie told me that Mark had left her a suicide letter, which she was revealing only to her mother, brother, and me, in order to protect the insurance money (on the highly questionable nature of that statement, see the post of November 23, 2013).  However, when questioned by the lead New York State Police investigator Edward Kalfas, Mark’s daughter denied knowing anything about a suicide letter. Mark’s wife Susan also told Kalfas that she knew nothing about a suicide letter (see posts of January 31, 2018, and March 31, 2019).

It seemed strange that Christie had told me and not Mark’s and my half-sister Carol McKenna that my brother had left her a suicide letter.  Carol was also concerned about this statement about a suicide letter and confronted Christie about it shortly afterwards, expressing skepticism that I would have fabricated such a story.  As Carol reported, Christie totally denied having had the conversation with me.  If there actually was a suicide letter, why wouldn’t Christie have admitted it to her aunt Carol?  Was there a suicide letter or not?  If there was, those who cared about Mark, including other relatives and his wide circle of friends, deserved to know.

A few weeks later when Mark’s son Brian called to inform me that they had received the autopsy report, I reminded him that the night of Mark’s death he had told me that Christie wanted to speak to me and handed over the phone to her.  Yet when I reminded him of what she had gone on to tell me, Brian stated that he couldn’t remember.

When I reported Christie’s statement about a suicide letter to Kalfas shortly after she revealed it to me, I offered to take a polygraph test about my conversation with Christie.  Kalfas responded that he was not sure what good it would do but would think it over.  He then declined my offer and, after speaking with Christie, dropped the issue of the alleged suicide letter altogether.

Although I also reported the information by letter to Edward Sharkey, then Cattaraugus County District Attorney, he did not pursue the matter.  A few years later when I spoke with Michael Malak, who had been Sharkey’s investigator at the time of Mark’s death, I specifically brought up Christie’s statement to me about a suicide letter.  Malak insisted that such a thing seemed unlikely to have been made up (see post of March 31, 2019).  Since Malak was involved in discussions of the case during the investigation, he apparently was not concerned enough to press the issue at that time.

In a conversation about the case with an old college friend, now a lawyer, who was shocked that the District Attorney had failed to pursue this statement about a suicide letter, she urged me to hire a New York State attorney specializing in criminal law.  In September 2005, Buffalo Atty. Michael Kelly had an interview with Kalfas and his then superior John Wolfe, in which he brought up the issue of Christie’s statement to me about a suicide letter. Kalfas explained that when Christie completely denied knowing anything about a suicide letter, he did not know what to do about the matter (see post of November 23, 2018).  It is absurd that a supposedly well trained New York State police investigator would not know how to discover the truth about any individual’s statement that there was a suicide letter.

Not long after Atty. Kelly’s interview with Kalfas and his superior John Wolfe, I informed Wolfe that I remained troubled by Christie's remarks to me about a suicide letter.  Wolfe replied that he did want to speak with Christie but that she had not returned his call.  A few weeks later, I asked Wolfe if he had spoken with Mark’s daughter yet. He replied that he had not spoken with Christie.  Wolfe then appears to have dropped the matter altogether.

In early 2006, I spoke with Wolfe’s superior, Capt. George Brown.  He dismissed the statement Christie made to me about a suicide letter, insisting that Mark’s daughter had merely said something foolish on the spur of the moment.  However, as I mentioned to Wolfe, at 23 years of age, Mark’s daughter was not a child and would have been well aware of what she was saying.  In 2010, current Cattaraugus County District Attorney Lori Rieman trivialized the issue of Christie’s statement about a suicide letter by saying that she had probably just wanted her mother to collect a modest life insurance policy.

In contrast to the N. Y. State Police investigators and Cattaraugus County District Attorney’s office, Kelly, who had extensive experience as a criminal lawyer after serving in the Erie County District Attorney’s office, emphasized that Christie should have been subpoenaed about that alleged suicide letter.  Why wasn’t she?