Several posts have raised the problem that the police report of my brother’s death omits or distorts information relevant to the investigation (see most recently posts of January 31 and February 28, 2021). In addition, because my copy of the police report, obtained through a FOIL request, is heavily redacted, with the names of all (except my own) and other potentially important information blacked out, in most instances it is difficult to determine who actually was interviewed. (For the police report, click the link under “Official Documents” on the blog page.)
This post discusses whether Edward Kalfas, the lead investigator in Mark’s case, ever interviewed Todd Lindell, my brother’s friend who retrieved his truck after it was impounded as a result of Mark’s DWI the very day before his fatal truck fire (see most recently post of December 31, 2020). There is no formal witness statement by Todd Lindell in the police report, since a list of the individuals who gave witness statements was inadvertently left unredacted in the page following Kalfas’s narrative. To judge from Lindell’s own statements to me in a lengthy telephone conversation just weeks after Mark’s death, Kalfas’s entries in his narrative do not appear to reflect an interview of Todd Lindell. An entry for 10/25/03 does refer to three “friends and neighbors” of Mark’s, but mentions only my brother’s drinking, a focus of the police report.
My conversation with Lindell took place on November 11, 2003, when the investigation was clearly in progress. I had phoned Lindell on the advice of Mark’s close friend Jim Poole, who offered to contact Lindell and get his cell phone number for me, since Jim indicated that to his knowledge the last person who saw my brother was Todd Lindell. In addition, I had become aware that Lindell (whom I did not know) had been a close friend of my brother’s and in fact had been a pall bearer at his funeral.
Lindell brought up important points during that conversation: (1) a report of Mark’s comments to him the evening after his DWI about his intention to watch his drinking and his need to drive to his job as a security guard; (2) his awareness of problems in Mark’s family life; and (3) the intriguing statement that “Mark would be alive today if he had not gotten the DWI,” which could not be clarified as I was unable to reach Lindell again (see esp. post of August 14, 2015).
Moreover, Lindell also told me that he had seen Mark “on a daily basis for years.” That statement made it clear that Kalfas certainly should have interviewed him to learn his information about Mark’s mental state in the period prior to the truck fire, to find out if he had seen Mark the day of the fire, and to learn whatever other information Lindell might have had.
Furthermore, Lindell explicitly told me during that conversation that he had not been interviewed by the State Police investigator. It is difficult to project any reason why Lindell would have wanted to conceal an interview with Kalfas. Why did Kalfas presumably ignore Todd Lindell as a source of important information? If he interviewed him after November 11, 2003, the date of my conversation with Lindell, Kalfas did not record it in the police report.
