The Problem of Suspicious Deaths in Cattaraugus County

This post raises the disturbing problem of suspicious deaths in Cattaraugus County.  Numerous posts have brought up problems underlying the investigations into the deaths not only of my brother Mark but also of the young pharmacist Dale Tarapacki and Tim Nye.  In addition, people have also mentioned a number of other suspicious deaths in that area.

Several individuals, for instance, have raised concerns about the death of Cattaraugus County Sheriff Dennis John, who died from a gunshot wound to the head in 2009.  His death was ruled a suicide, but some residents of the county remained skeptical.  I did not know Sheriff John personally, though he was in office when my brother was killed and I wrote to him in my initial effort to obtain the fire investigator’s report on Mark’s truck fire.  I do not have concrete knowledge of the circumstances of Sheriff John’s death.  But when an elected official is determined to have committed suicide, naturally the public must wonder why he would have done so.  In Mr. John’s case, no explanation was apparently provided to the public who voted him in as Sheriff.  People have continued to question whether he committed suicide.

The suspicious nature of the deaths of my brother Mark, Dale Tarapacki, and Tim Nye certainly raises questions about inept, or even possibly corrupt, investigations.  Mark and Dale Tarapacki were killed in suspiciously similar truck fires (see esp. post of July 23, 2016), but both of them were ruled “accidental.”  Tim Nye was said to have been found shot in the abdomen, with a rifle lying nearby (how can a person shoot himself in the gut with a rifle?), yet his death was apparently ruled a suicide (see esp. post of April 19, 2016).  There was no newspaper publicity on any of those deaths, nor any call to the public by the investigating authorities for information relevant to those deaths.

Some individuals have suggested that intimidation has played a role in keeping people from coming forward with information on those three deaths.  In one particular instance, a person mentioned having his life threatened to keep him from revealing what he knows.  As one person recently acknowledged, there is a dark underside to Cattaraugus County.

Why hasn’t the New York State Attorney General’s Office intervened in those (and other) deaths?  Although I wrote a letter of complaint about my brother’s death to then AG Andrew Cuomo in 2007, with copies of the autopsy, fire investigator’s, and police reports, he never responded.  Later, Senator Arlen Specter's office contacted AG Cuomo's office on my behalf and reported that, according to the AG's office, I simply had to deal with the New York State Police about the matter.  As numerous posts of mine have indicated, my complaints to N.Y.S.P. officials fell on deaf ears.  Why are these serious problems with Cattaraugus County of no obvious concern to higher New York State officials?