The Issue of Mark’s Gasoline-Soaked Clothes Revisited

 

The previous post (November 12, 2022) discussed the N.Y.S.P. investigators’ refusal to acknowledge that my brother had been saturated with gasoline or that the burns were very severe virtually all over his body, in contrast to statements made to me and to a nephew by Mark’s attending physician at the burn unit and later confirmed by an experienced forensic toxicologist.  As reported in an earlier post (May 31, 2019), an entry of the principal investigator Inv. Edward Kalfas’s narrative in the police report for September 24, 2003, records that “portions of burnt clothing from the victim” were sent to the Western Regional Crime Lab in Albany, and one for November 4, 2003, records that the clothing “tested positive for gasoline.”

The N.Y.S.P. investigators said virtually nothing about the condition of Mark’s clothes.  In Atty. Michael Kelly’s summary of his conversations with the N.Y.S.P. investigators and in my own conversations with those officials, no reference was made to the fact that Mark’s clothes had tested positive for gasoline.  As the post of May 2019 observes, it was not until 2014 that I learned from Capt. Steven Nigrelli even that the specific items tested were Mark’s shoes and his jeans.

The silence of the N.Y.S.P. investigators about the presence of some of Mark’s clothes on the scene and the location of those clothes is troubling.  Since the first firefighter on the scene of Mark’s truck fire observed clothing close to where he lay, about sixty feet away from his burning truck, my brother must have pulled some of his clothes off in order to put the flames out.  As the forensic toxicologist mentioned above pointed out, even if a burn victim who has been doused with gasoline pulls off his clothes to put the fire out, the skin continues to burn, which explains why Mark’s burns were so severe over almost all of his body.

In fact, Mark continued to burn horribly after taking off the clothes discovered lying near him, as observed by the first emergency worker on the scene.  That individual, an EMT and nearby neighbor, told me that there were two-foot flames shooting from Mark’s entire body when she arrived and saw him lying in the field (see post of October 31, 2019).  The eye-witness report of Mark’s burning body thus supports the informed professional statements of the forensic toxicologist. Mark had obviously been doused with a considerable amount of gasoline, which soaked through his clothing onto his skin.

But where was my brother actually doused with the gasoline?  The N.Y.S.P. investigators insisted that my brother was in the driver’s seat of the truck when the fire started and that he caused the fire himself either by accidentally spilling or, more likely, deliberately pouring gasoline from the gas can, which was found on the floor of the passenger’s side of the truck.  But Mark’s horribly burning body lying sixty feet from his truck, with some of his clothes nearby, contradicts that position.  

For one, a person cannot end up with 90% of his body soaked with gasoline by an accidental, or even deliberate, spill of a gas can while sitting in the narrow, confined space of a traditional pickup truck.  More important, there was no fire trail leading from the truck to where Mark was found (see post of June 26, 2011).  How could the N.Y.S.P. investigators have simply ignored the absence of a fire trail and merely assumed that Mark had actually crawled through the field from the truck?

An independent criminologist thought that after being attacked in his driveway and put in the truck, my brother jumped out of the truck and ran for his life in the field.  Mark then must have been apprehended and doused with gasoline and set on fire close to where he was found, sixty feet from the truck, and gasoline must have been poured separately on the driver’s seat of the truck, where the truck fire originated (see the fire investigator’s report on the saturation of the driver’s seat area).

My brother had to be the victim of foul play, not of his own carelessness.  By virtually ignoring Mark’s gasoline-soaked clothes as well as the pool of his blood found in his driveway, the observed wounds to his forehead and left side of his face, and the suspicious placement of the gas can inside the truck where my brother never put gas cans, the N.Y.S.P. investigators made sure that they would not solve my brother’s death.

The Problem of My Brother Saturated with Gasoline

When my brother Mark died the day after being burned in a truck fire on September 23, 2003, it was not made clear by the N.Y.S.P. investigators just how severe his burns had been.  Even when Mark’s son sent me a copy of the autopsy report in November 2003, the report did not specify the extent of third-degree burns.

The first specific information came on Christmas Day 2003, when my nephew John McKenna, who had been at the burn unit the morning of September 24, mentioned that Mark’s attending physician Dr. Edward Piotrowski had told him that Mark's skin was saturated with a flammable liquid, with burns penetrating to the muscles.  According to John, the doctor added, “This was no accident.”

In late January 2004, on the advice of Atty. Tony Tanke, I contacted Dr. Piotrowski to find out how much of my brother’s body had suffered third-degree burns.  The doctor stated that essentially all the burns were third degree, some even fourth degree, covering approximately 90% of Mark’s body; he specifically mentioned very severe burns on Mark’s chest, his upper body, his legs, and even his head.  In a phone conversation in March 2005, Dr. Piotrowski affirmed to me that Mark’s skin had been saturated with a flammable liquid, presumably gasoline from the can found in the passenger’s side of his truck (where my brother never put gas cans).  He also wondered how Mark had got gasoline on his head.

An eye-witness account of Mark’s condition in the burn unit concretely reinforces what Mark’s attending physician stated about the severity of his burns.  In a phone conversation in October 2005, my nephew elaborated on what he himself had observed about my brother’s condition in the burn unit.  According to John, Mark's feet were burned to nothing; there was no hair left on his head; his face was all burned up, with a brown-yellow appearance to the skin; and his nose was almost burned away, appearing black from the burns.

Given Dr. Piotrowski’s statements about both the extreme severity of my brother’s burns over almost his entire body as a result of saturation with gasoline, it is disturbing that the N.Y.S.P. investigators and the Cattaraugus County District Attorney with whom I spoke denied that explanation.  In October 2005, when I mentioned to N.Y.S.P. Sen. Inv. John Wolfe the issue of Mark being doused with gasoline, he insisted that the worst burns were on Mark’s legs rather than the upper part of the body, thus downplaying the severity of the burns to Mark’s head and torso.  (Wolfe’s claim directly contradicts what both Dr. Piotrowski and my nephew John stated they had specifically observed.)  Wolfe then insisted that suicide was a strong possibility.

When I raised the same issue with N.Y.S.P. Capt. George Brown in February 2006, he simply replied that Mark could have spilled gasoline on himself because of his drunken state.  To my question of how Mark could have accidentally got gas on his head, he simply claimed that the saturation with gas suggested suicide.  Was Capt. Brown unaware that, as recorded in the police report, the Cattaraugus County District Attorney at the time of Mark’s death had explicitly stated that there was no evidence of a suicide?

When I brought up the saturation of Mark’s skin with gasoline in a phone conversation with N.Y.S.P. Lt. Allen in April 2007, he said that he did not know where that is stated in the records.  I referred to Dr. Piotrowski’s statements, but Lt. Allen replied that he did not understand how the doctor could possibly have known that Mark was saturated with gasoline just by examining him, without lab tests.

In a meeting in May 2010 with the current Cattaraugus County District Attorney Lori Rieman and John Ensell, who had been the N.Y.S.P. Sen. Inv. in the investigation into Mark’s death, I mentioned Dr. Piotrowski's statements about the gasoline.  D.A. Rieman immediately replied that she did not know how a doctor could make such a statement.  She added that the police report refers to gasoline on specimens of Mark’s clothing.  Apparently, D.A. Rieman did not consider the obvious and likely possibility that the gasoline had soaked through Mark’s clothes and onto his skin.

The N.Y.S.P. investigators’ and current Cattaraugus County District Attorney’s denial of the extent to which my brother had been doused with gasoline raises yet more questions about the quality of the investigation into his death.  In 2012, I asked a highly experienced forensic toxicologist about the issue of saturation with gasoline.  He stated that the degree of Mark’s burns would indicate that he had been doused with gasoline, asking if Mark’s clothes had tested positive for gasoline.  He further explained that if someone is burned but not doused with gasoline, he could pull his burning clothes off and get the fire out.  But, he added, when a person is doused with gasoline, the skin continues to burn after the clothes are off, which explains why Mark’s burns were so severe over almost all of his body.  In fact, evidence of clothing found near Mark’s body shows that he had pulled off some of his clothes, and EMT Cheryl Simcox, the first emergency worker on the scene, saw two-foot flames shooting from Mark’s body when she arrived on the scene.

Trained N.Y.S.P. investigators should certainly have known that such extensive severe burns indicated that the gas can found on the passenger’s side floor of Mark’s truck had been used to douse his body.  They should also have known that the gas can did not simply cause a fire by Mark accidentally lighting a cigarette while in the driver’s seat.  That would have caused a flash fire and would not have caused gasoline to saturate his body (or douse the driver’s seat area itself).  The N.Y.S.P.’s continued insistence that my brother most likely committed suicide, with no support for that theory, and their stubborn refusal to probe any evidence that contradicted that notion (especially the wound on Mark’s forehead and the pool of his blood in his driveway) goes beyond incompetence.

 

 

A Follow-up to the Problem of Kalfas Ignoring the Pool of Mark’s Blood Found in the Driveway

 

The previous post (September 12, 2022) discussed the problem of the lead N.Y.S.P. investigator in my brother’s death, Edward Kalfas, ignoring the pool of blood found in the driveway the night of his truck fire in late September 2003.  As that post pointed out, Kalfas failed to interview Mark’s attending physician at the burn unit, Dr. Edward Piotrowski, who had important information about soft-tissue damage to Mark’s forehead and the left side of his face.  Kalfas also failed to inform Erie County Medical Examiner Sung-ook Baik about the pool of blood until March 2004, when Kalfas asked him about a possible explanation for the deposit of blood.  In addition, Mark’s attending physician in the ECMC burn unit was never consulted by M.E. Baik.

This post follows up on that failure of the investigation to inform Mark’s attending physician and the medical examiner about the blood evidence in order to help determine how my brother came to die from the severe burns he suffered as a result of that suspicious truck fire.  As mentioned in previous posts (see esp. November 30, 2019), from the very beginning of the investigation Kalfas focused on the likelihood of suicide, though he had no evidence to support that theory.

Kalfas’s fixation on suicide, however, could not possibly justify such a lapse of proper investigative procedure.  Kalfas should have learned about the soft-tissue damage to Mark’s forehead and left side of his face by interviewing his attending physician and should have told both the doctor and the medical examiner about the pool of blood.  If he had, the medical examiner would presumably not have immediately assumed that Mark’s death was an accident, and Kalfas himself certainly would have had to consider the possibility of foul play.

A forensic toxicologist whom I consulted read a copy of the autopsy report and commented that there is not much in that report.  He expressed surprise that M. E. Baik had not consulted with Dr. Piotrowski and explained that the medical examiner could not have drawn proper conclusions about Mark’s death without knowing about his condition when he was hospitalized. He also mentioned that autopsies are frequently done poorly.

It is, then, highly problematic that Mark’s body was released immediately after the autopsy and allowed to be cremated (on the differing statements by my brother’s daughter and his wife about the reason for the cremation, see post of November 23, 2013).  Because my brother was cremated, it was not possible to have his body re-examined then or later to discover the extent of the soft-tissue damage to his forehead and left side of his face observed by Dr. Piotrowski or to examine him for any other damage not originally observed because of the severe burns over 85 to 90% of his body.

If Kalfas was not concerned enough to report the blood information to the two relevant medical personnel and to find out if the medical examiner was communicating with Mark’s attending physician, why didn’t his supervisor, Sr. Inv. John Ensell, follow through?  (Ensell clearly was involved in the investigation.)  If the two N.Y.S.P. investigators were careless, why didn’t Cattaraugus County District Attorney Edward Sharkey ask them to make the effort to get further information?

A Cattaraugus County reporter informed me in 2009 that D. A. Sharkey told him that he had relied on the State Police investigation to make his decision of accident in Mark’s case.  According to Atty. Tony Tanke, who spoke by phone with D. A. Sharkey about the investigation into Mark’s death in May 2004, the District Attorney seemed ill-informed about the case.  But, at the very least, Sharkey should have intervened and not allowed Mark’s body to be released and cremated so quickly.