This post discusses an important omission of fact in the police report of my brother’s death. As I learned early in the investigation his into death, Mark had got into an argument with an off-duty Salamanca policeman at a local club that resulted in the officer calling the Salamanca police as soon as Mark left the club, and he was arrested for DWI on his way home. By early December 2003, I was informed that it was Officer Mark Marowski who had argued with my brother and made that call to the Salamanca police. I also learned that Marowski himself was a problematic individual, who had reportedly been put on desk duty because of his abuse of alcohol (for more on Marowski, see post of October 17, 2014).
A copy of the police report that I obtained by a FOIL request revealed that the N.Y.S.P. Investigator failed to mention anything about the argument and call to the police about Mark. Yet since the quarrel and Mark’s subsequent arrest for DWI took place the very day before the suspicious truck fire that claimed my brother’s life, some mention of it should have been made in the police report.
In particular because of information about Mark’s injuries obtained after the case was closed, Atty. Michael Kelly wanted the investigation to be re-opened. When Kelly met with Edward Kalfas, the lead investigator in Mark’s case, and his then-superior John Wolfe in 2005, he asked among other things why Marowski was not mentioned in the police report. According to Kelly in a phone conversation with me not long after the interview, Kalfas did not respond to that question but did acknowledge that Officer Mark Marowski had called in on my brother to report him for a possible DWI.
Kalfas, then, clearly knew what specific off-duty police officer had got into the argument with my brother at the Holy Cross Club in Salamanca and that he had called in to have Mark arrested for DWI on his way home. When I spoke by phone with Kalfas for the first time shortly after Mark was killed, he told me that my brother had been arrested for DWI following an argument with an off-duty police officer the day before the truck fire, but he did not reveal the name of the officer. About six weeks later when I met with Kalfas in person at the Olean office of the N.Y.S.P., I asked him what police officer had quarreled with my brother, but he denied ever having mentioned the issue to me and said, “You’d have to have it on tape to prove it.”
Here is Kalfas’s entry in the police report on 9/25/03 concerning my brother at the Holy Cross Club the day before the fire: “Member interviews [names 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.’” There is no explanation of what “strange” and “not like himself” mean in that context and clearly no mention of an argument with a police officer and Mark’s arrest shortly thereafter.
Who were these witnesses? The space with their names blacked out is enough to accommodate two names, three at most. Where are their witness statements? Apparently, Kalfas did not have them give any, since they are not included in the police report. Why did they find Mark’s behavior “strange” and why was he “not like himself”? Two points were reported to me about that argument: (1) that my brother was upset because his son had been picked up for DWI after coming home from college to attend the funeral of a friend and thought that his son should have been treated more leniently because of the situation and (2) that my brother won a pool at the club that day, which Marowski (reportedly quite drunk) wanted Mark to split with him, but he refused to do it. If either or both of those things happen to be true, it would be understandable that my brother was “not like himself” that day.
Nonetheless, this is the point where Kalfas should have mentioned the argument between my brother and Marowski and the ensuing DWI. Why didn’t he? Instead, Kalfas postpones any reference to the DWI until his entry for 10/02/03, where he summarizes his interview of the arresting officer. He does not mention Marowski’s call to the Salamanca police, which he should have mentioned at least at this point in his report.
Three different members of the N.Y.S.P. hierarchy either did not respond, or they dismissed the issue, when I asked each why Marowski had apparently never been questioned (see post of September 14, 2014). Wolfe in 2005 and Lt. Allen in 2007 each remained silent when I brought up the issue. Capt. George Brown in 2006 insisted that the argument was “irrelevant to Mark's death,” but offered no support for that opinion. At an interview I requested with Cattaraugus County D.A. Lori Rieman in 2010, Kalfas’s immediate superior during the investigation, John Ensell, was also present. There, Ensell stated that Marowski had been interviewed, but offered no details or clarification.
Ensell also insisted, “It wasn’t much of an argument, anyway.” If that is the case, how would one explain what was reported to me by a person who was bartending at the Holy Cross Club two days after the argument between my brother and Marowski? At that time, my brother lay dying from his burns at the Erie County Medical Center and someone was phoning in reports on his condition to the club. According to that bartender, Marowski, who was present, was boasting about getting Mark arrested for DWI and was “proud” of it (see post of October 17, 2014).
If accurate, Marowski’s reported remark resonates with ill-will, not to mention a total insensitivity to the severe suffering of another human being. And what about the report of an affair between Marowski and Mark’s wife Susan at the time of the truck fire, which came to me in an anonymous letter in 2014 (see post of August 11, 2014)?
Was Marowski being protected from the very beginning of the investigation? If so, police protection of their own in this case was a terrible failure of justice. Those who cared for Mark deserve to know the truth about what happened to him.
