Ensell’s Insistence on Mark’s Drinking as the Cause of His Death

Previous posts have referred to the insistence by the N.Y.S. Police that my brother caused his truck fire because of his (presumed) excessive drinking.  When I spoke by phone with several N.Y.S.P. officials not directly involved in the investigation into Mark’s death, virtually all insisted that Mark had caused his own death, most likely by suicide (see esp. post of November 30, 2019).

Contrary to earlier statements she had made to me by phone, Cattaraugus County D.A. Lori Rieman vigorously defended the investigation in a face-to-face interview I had with her in May 2010, which was also attended by John Ensell, then an investigator for D.A. Rieman.  (On that interview in general, see posts of March 23 and April 20, 2011.)  This post focuses on statements made to me at that interview by Ensell, who in 2003 was an N.Y.S.P. Senior Investigator and the immediate superior of Edward Kalfas, the lead investigator in Mark’s case.

At my meeting with D.A. Rieman, Ensell insistently focused on my brother’s drinking. I raised the problem of the gas can suspiciously found in the cab of Mark’s truck, where he never put gas cans (see post of July 22, 2012).  Ensell, however, did not respond directly, but instead emphasized Mark’s drinking.  Yet in December 2003, I informed Cattaraugus County D.A. Edward Sharkey by letter that one specific friend of my brother’s informed me adamantly that Mark never put gas cans in the cab of his truck.  As Kalfas’s superior, Ensell must have been aware that Kalfas had met with D.A. Sharkey and his investigator Michael Malak in late December 2003 to discuss, among other items, letters I had sent to the D.A. with information I had obtained.

In addition, an anonymous individual publicly mentioned the gas can issue in the comment section of an online article by Rick Miller of the Olean Times Herald on the debate between Edward Sharkey and Lori Rieman for District Attorney.   I quote it verbatim:

Injustice wrote on Nov 1, 2009 4:36 PM:

I am sorry that Barb PavLock and Frank Romer had to live with a failed investigation in the loss of Mark Pavlock. Anyone who knew Mark would know that he would not have a gas can in his truck! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Get Sharkey out!!

Similarly, the person who sent an anonymous letter to me in 2014 found it hard to believe that Mark would have put a gas can in the cab of his truck, noting that he or she had seen Mark “transport gas cans in the back of his truck, going to the extent of securing the gas can to the bed of his truck to avoid it moving around the truck bed” (see post of August 11, 2014).

In the meeting with Rieman and Ensell, I also mentioned that, according to my brother’s attending physician at the burn unit, the high serum alcohol level listed in Mark’s autopsy report had to be wrong.  Ensell, however, insisted that Mark had to have been drinking (presumably heavily) the day of his truck fire.  He offered as support the high blood alcohol level reported when Mark was arrested for DWI the day before the truck fire.  (On the problematic circumstances leading up to that arrest, see posts of July 28, 2011, April 18, 2013, September 14, 2014, October 17, 2014, July 15, 2015, and June 21, 2016).  Yet again, I had reported in my December 22 letter to D.A. Sharkey a statement by my brother’s friend Todd Lindell that Mark was taking his DWI in a responsible manner and planned to be careful about drinking in order to keep some form of driver’s license to get to his job as a security guard (see post of March 27, 2012).

In addition, Ensell mentioned comments by “certain people” that Mark often sat in his truck drinking six packs.  An entry for 10/25/03 in Kalfas’s narrative of the police report refers to an individual (name redacted) who stated that he often saw Mark “sitting alone in his truck near his residence” and when he stopped to speak to him, found Mark “drinking alcohol or intoxicated.”

However, that and other statements about my brother’s drinking make no reference to the time period involved and are unsubstantiated.  A different perspective was offered to me by several of Mark’s close friends.  For instance, when I spoke with Sidney Lindell, who lived in the general neighborhood and was a deputy sheriff, he mentioned being surprised to learn that Mark was drinking in that period, as (Lindell asserted) he had been off alcohol for years.

A number of people who knew my brother well indicated that Mark began to drink again in the period when his marriage was disintegrating. According to Ensell himself, it was clear that a divorce was imminent.  Yet Ensell gave no credit to the fact that Mark was heavily involved in volunteer and charitable work during the period of the truck fire, including coaching little league baseball and engaging in a football pool for student scholarships.  As one friend of his mentioned, Mark was looking forward to returning to his favorite sport of golf, at which several friends mentioned he was very good.

When I brought up the subject of the heavy drinking of Mark Marowski, the off-duty police officer who got into a personal argument at a local club with my brother the day before the truck fire and called in to the Salamanca police on my brother when he left the club, Ensell had nothing to say.  D.A. Rieman, however, asserted that Marowski himself later did get a DWI of his own.  (On Marowski’s eventual DWI in 2006, see posts of September 22, 2010, and July 28, 2011).  Again, Ensell had nothing to say.

Although he was very vocal about my brother’s drinking, Ensell himself ironically remained completely silent on the excessive drinking of this fellow police officer.  How would Ensell have responded to the anonymous letter I received in 2014 claiming that Marowski had been having an affair with my brother’s wife?