What Mark’s Attending Physician at the Burn Unit Reported in January 2004

 

About four months after my brother Mark’s truck was discovered engulfed in flames in a field across from his house and he lay suffering severe burns about sixty feet away, I telephoned his attending physician at the Erie County Medical Center to see if he could offer any information about my brother’s condition at the burn unit during the hours he spent there prior to his death.  As a copy of Mark’s autopsy report that I had obtained through his son seemed vague on a number of points, Atty. Tony Tanke suggested that I try to get clarification about a reference to my brother having “approximately 85-90% of first to fourth degree skin burn.”

When I spoke with Dr. Edward Piotrowski, my brother’s attending physician, on January 29, 2004, I mentioned that there was an ongoing police investigation into Mark’s death and explained that I regularly woke up at night with images of my brother burning to death and hoped that some clear information might at least help me understand his condition.

Dr. Piotrowski emphasized that he wanted to help and in a sensitive manner explained the severity and extent of Mark’s burns and the procedures performed to try to save him.  The following is a summary of that information, as I understood it:

Dr. Piotrowski reported that 90% of Mark’s body was burned severely; the burns were mainly third degree, with some fourth degree, which, he explained, is charring, and he noted that only the mid-to-lower back was spared the severe burns.  He stated that there were very severe burns on his chest, his upper body, his legs, and even his head.  The doctor also explained that they had tried to release burn tissue and that a procedure was performed to release fluid and reduce swelling caused by third-degree burns in order in part to facilitate breathing.  He explained that in cases of severe burns the heart has to pump the fluid around and that Mark’s body failed to be able to handle it.  He added that Mark’s blood pressure could not respond, and he suffered cardiovascular collapse.  As Dr. Piotrowski explained, they did not stop treatment, but Mark’s heart gave out.  He specified that among the three crisis stages for severe burn victims, my brother did not survive the first.

It was shocking to learn that my brother had actually endured fourth-degree burns and that he had suffered third-degree burns over so much of his body, including his head.  But the information that Dr. Piotrowski kindly provided, including the efforts he had made to save Mark’s life, did provide me a measure of relief, and I was very grateful.

As is evident from the summary of just the core of my initial conversation with Mark’s attending physician, my brother’s condition was an exceptional instance of burn injuries.  It is also clear that at that stage, when the investigation into Mark’s death was still in progress, Dr. Piotrowski really wanted to help and would have had much useful information for the N.Y. State Police investigators.  (On Dr. Piotrowski’s later statements about Mark’s condition, including the wounds to his forehead and the left side of his face, see esp. posts of September 24, 2016, and August 30, 2020; on the failure of the New York State Police to investigate the existence of Mark’s head wounds, see esp. post of January 29, 2019.)

So why didn’t the lead investigator, Edward Kalfas, interview Dr. Piotrowski and take advantage of his expertise?

 

Problems with the Police Report Concerning Reports by Members of a Local Club

 

Previous posts have discussed various problems concerning omissions and misstatements in the police report on the investigation into my brother Mark’s death (see esp. April 17 and May 24, 2015; January 31, February 28, March 31 and October 31, 2021).  This post examines the issue of two specific entries that concern statements by members of the Holy Cross Athletic Club who reportedly saw my brother in the immediate period prior to his truck fire.

In two entries of the police report for 9/25/03, Kalfas reports the reactions of members of the Holy Cross Athletic Club to my brother’s attitude and behavior in the day or two before his truck fire.  Here are Kalfas’s summaries:

(1) “Member interviews [names redacted, that is, blacked out] at the Holy Cross Club, Salamanca.  They stated that the victim had been in the day before the fire and was acting ‘strange’ and ‘not like himself.’”

(2) "Member interviewed numerous Holy Cross Athletic Club members who were all in agreement that the victim had been behaving unusually and was very upset about getting arrested for DWI the day before the fire."

It is clear that the first summary represents the views of HCAC members who saw my brother at the club on September 22, the day before his truck fire. But the date referred to in the second summary is less clear. Kalfas certainly gives the impression that his interview of these “numerous Holy Cross Athletic Club members,” whose names oddly do not appear even in redacted form, took place after the truck fire, that is, on either September 24 or 25, 2003. Both summaries, however, are problematic.

In the first of these two entries, Kalfas fails to record any possible explanation for my brother acting “strange” and ‘’not like himself.”  There was, however, a perfectly plausible reason for his reportedly unusual behavior. September 22 was the day when Mark was involved in an argument with off-duty Salamanca policeman Mark Marowski.  Furthermore, after my brother left, Marowski called in to the Salamanca police to stop him on his way home, resulting in Mark’s arrest for DWI (on this incident, see esp. posts of July 28, 2011; April 18, 2013; September 14 and October 17, 2014).  Various individuals reported motives for that argument.

Since Kalfas claimed early in the investigation that it looked as if Mark had committed suicide, I called people who knew my brother to find out if they had observed any evidence of depression on his part or if they had any information relevant to his horrific death.  I was soon told that Mark had argued with Marowski over his son Brian’s recent DWI, insisting that the police should have gone more easily on Brian because he had just come home from college to attend the funeral of a high school friend killed in a car accident.

My brother would certainly not have been correct in that view of his son’s DWI, but while polite and reasonable in his normal social behavior, he was, whether justifiably or not, strong in defense of his children.  If the issue of his son’s recent DWI was at least a factor in the argument with Marowski, Kalfas should have made that clear, and Mark’s behavior on that day would have seemed understandable, if out of character for him in general.

Another possible motive for the argument concerned pool tabs at the Holy Cross Club.  Reportedly, Mark won a sizable pool that day, which Marowski thought my brother should split with him.  Not surprisingly, Mark refused.  If that incident is true, one can imagine how a person might react to a demand like Marowski’s.  My brother was overall a generous person, as even one of the bartenders at the HCAC at that time pointed out.  However, although he had known Marowski since grade school, they were definitely not friends, and Marowski’s own poor conduct and dishonesty is well documented (see posts of September 14 and December 14, 2014; and February 17, 2015).

Why, then, did Kalfas fail to mention Marowski’s name in his report of my brother acting “strange” and ‘’not like himself” at the Holy Cross Athletic Club the day before the fire?   It seems difficult to believe that Kalfas wasn’t aware that Marowski was a Salamanca police officer with well known drinking problems.

Kalfas’s second entry (#2 above) is problematic beyond the lack of clarity about the date of the interviews and the failure to record the names of any of the HCAC members who reported that Mark was “very upset about getting arrested for DWI the day before the fire.”  It, too, makes no reference to Officer Marowski, whose phone call to the Salamanca police station resulted in Mark’s arrest for DWI.

Furthermore, it is difficult to comprehend how Kalfas could possibly have learned from members of the HCAC that Mark “was very upset about getting arrested for DWI the day before the fire.”   In September 2005, Atty. Michael Kelly met with Kalfas and his superior John Wolfe to discuss the investigation.  As Kelly reported, Kalfas stated that he had found no one who had seen Mark out drinking at the Holy Cross Club or anywhere else the day of the fire.

In addition, following his arrest for DWI the day before the fire, Mark himself did not have the opportunity to go to the club because he had to get his friend Todd Lindell to retrieve his truck from the impoundment and then, as Lindell informed me, he stayed through the evening at Lindell’s house. Moreover, the writer of an anonymous letter to me states that Mark was at the house of a neighbor just before the fire (to read that letter, which also reports an affair between Marowski and Mark’s wife, see post of August 11, 2014).

Atty. Kelly suggested the possibility that Kalfas might have confused Mark’s DWI with his son Brian’s DWI a week or so earlier.  However, the phrasing in the relevant part of the entry (…”was very upset about getting arrested for DWI the day before the fire") argues against a simply careless error.  If Kalfas had written only the phrase ”was very upset about getting arrested for DWI,” one might assume that he had unwittingly left out the words “his son” before “getting arrested for DWI.”  But by adding the phrase “the day before the fire," Kalfas was obviously referring to Mark’s own DWI as if it was a probable basis for my brother’s supposedly depressed state of mind.

These two entries for 9/25/03 illustrate a recurring tendency in the police report to distort information and emphasize unsupported claims about my brother’s allegedly aberrant behavior or depressed mental state and thus to reinforce the N.Y.S.P. investigators’ view that Mark caused his own death and thus was not the victim of foul play.

Why Did Kalfas Fail to Reveal the Existence of the Pool of Blood Found on Mark’s Driveway?

One of the most disturbing elements of my brother Mark’s death in a suspicious truck fire in Great Valley, New York, on September 23, 2003, is the pool of his blood found that night in his driveway right next to where he usually parked his truck (see esp. post of May 29, 2012, with photos of the property).  DNA analysis of the blood proved it conclusively to be my brother’s.  What is also troubling is that N.Y.S.P. Inv. Edward Kalfas, the lead detective in the investigation, failed to make the existence of that pool of blood known publicly for several months, even to individuals who in their own official capacities required that information for full and accurate reports.

News about the pool of my brother’s blood came to me informally on March 9, 2004, by our half-sister Carol McKenna.  According to Carol, Kalfas had recently revealed to her that testing on a pool of blood found on Mark’s driveway the night of the fire proved conclusively that it belonged to Mark.  Although Atty. Tony Tanke spoke several times about the case with then Cattaraugus County District Attorney Edward Sharkey’s investigator Michael Malak, Atty. Tanke was not informed about the pool of blood, but in late April 2004 asked Malak about the information I had received from Carol McKenna.  Malak then acknowledged that a pool of Mark’s blood had indeed been found on his driveway.

Because D.A. Sharkey informed Atty. Tanke in late May 2004 that he would not release any documents to me from his office, I filed a FOIL request to the N.Y.S. Police for the police report, which I did not receive until September 2004.  It was very surprising to see that Kalfas’s narrative on the investigation barely mentions the pool of blood.  In an entry dated 9/24/03, Inv. Kalfas lists among five items taken from the scene "two cotton swabs with blood samples secured from the victim's driveway—to NYSP Crime Lab Albany."  In an entry dated 12/12/03, for an interview with Mark’s wife Susan, Kalfas states: “She has no explanation for the blood located in the driveway and also stated there was [sic] no notes or letters left by the victim.”

Until D. A. Sharkey ordered a blood kit to be sent out for DNA testing in early January 2004, Kalfas makes no other reference to the pool of blood, even though its presence in the driveway near Mark’s usual parking spot would reasonably suggest that it might well be his blood.  The N.Y.S.P. Forensic Investigation Center’s report, dated February 23, 2004, details the DNA testing results.  When I consulted Buffalo criminal attorney Michael Kelly in May 2005, he was concerned that Kalfas had “buried” the blood evidence in the police report.

Kalfas’s lack of information to Mark’s insurer Nationwide during the investigation is disturbing.  When I contacted Nationwide in late September 2004, they reported that they had paid out on the truck but not on another policy for medical bills.  A Nationwide agent with whom I then spoke informed me that their own investigation had determined that the fire was not an accident.  She seemed surprised when I told her that a pool of Mark’s blood was found on the scene the night of the fire.  The agent then revealed that Kalfas had not told them about the blood and refused to let them see the police report.

In my initial consultation with him, Atty. Kelly emphasized that Kalfas should have told Nationwide about the pool of blood.  The blood on the driveway was an important piece of information for the insurance company to determine the cause of the truck fire and to decide whether and when to pay out funds.

Why didn’t Kalfas tell Nationwide about the blood?  Why did he refuse to let them read the police report?  Was he concealing something?

It is also a matter of concern that Kalfas did not mention the pool of blood to Mark’s doctor at the Erie County Medical Center, where my brother had been airlifted the night of the fire.  According to Atty. Kelly, Kalfas claimed at their meeting in September 2005 that he had called to speak with the attending physician at ECMC, who had nothing to say.

Mark’s actual attending physician, Dr. Edward Piotrowski, however, told me in February 2005 that he was concerned about my brother’s condition, in particular because he could not understand how Mark could have sustained such severe burns over more than 80% of his body and how Mark could have suffered soft-tissue swelling on his forehead.  But, he added, no one from the investigation had ever questioned him; so, he assumed that they knew what had happened.

If Kalfas spoke to any medical personnel at ECMC, it appears not to have been Dr. Piotrowski.  The doctor himself was surprised when I told him about the pool of blood (see esp. post of March 31, 2018, with Dr. Piotrowski’s own suggestions about the pool of blood).  If Kalfas had told him about that blood in the driveway during the investigation, Dr. Piotrowski would have been able to take that information into account in order to assess more fully the physical facts about Mark’s condition that troubled him, and he would have been able to help the state police investigators arrive at a proper conclusion about how my brother actually ended up sustaining such horrific burns.

In October 2004, Carol McKenna mentioned the explanation that Kalfas had given her for the pool of blood: Mark had likely cut his hand on the gas can.  There is no evidence that Mark ever handled that can (found in the cab of the truck, where he never put gas cans) the night of the fire, and the can itself, according to the fire investigator’s report, was plastic (not metal).  In any case, Kalfas’s explanation seems far-fetched at best.

In their meeting in September 2005, Atty. Kelly asked Kalfas why he barely mentioned the pool of Mark’s blood in the police report.  According to Kelly, Kalfas replied that he did not think Mark’s death was a murder.  A proper investigator derives conclusions from the evidence, especially physical evidence on the scene, and does not impose pre-conceived ideas on the evidence.