The investigation into my brother Mark’s death in a suspicious truck fire clearly focused, with no real evidence, on the likelihood of a suicide (see esp. post of March 27, 2012). In the case of Dale Tarapacki, the young pharmacist also killed in a suspicious truck fire, a suicide theory appears to have underpinned the investigation. The issue of a suicide letter in each case has been discussed in a previous post (see July 31, 2019). This post discusses further the problem of suicide as a presumed motivation that led to the alleged accident resulting in Tarapacki’s death.
The entry for 6/22/05 in the report of the investigation into Tarapacki’s death by the Cattaraugus County Sheriff’s office states that “i[t] has been ruled that the victim died as a result of acute alprazolam intoxication complicated by inhalation of products of combustion and thermal injury.” The report then notes: “At this time this investigation is closed.” Surprisingly, however, the only entries related to investigative actions by the Sheriff’s office are limited to three days, April 11 (the day of Tarapacki’s death) to April 13, 2005.
The entry for 6/22/05 indicates that the Sheriff’s office had simply been waiting for the medical examiner’s report to close the case officially. I do not have access to the actual medical examiner’s report. My own FOIL request for the police report for Tarapacki’s death was outrageously denied (see post of March 19, 2016), but someone who did get the police report and related documents through a FOIL request volunteered to send them to me.
The closure of the case immediately after the medical examiner’s determination of the cause of Tarapacki’s death suggests that the investigators assumed Tarapacki had knowingly taken a fatal dose of alprazolam (i.e., Xanax). An individual with whom I communicated mentioned revealing to the investigators that a week or two before his death Tarapacki had been in an overwrought state and specifically asked, “What if someone is trying to kill me?” Tarapacki may have had legitimate reasons for his fear and apparently continued to live his usual life.
As a pharmacist, Tarapacki would have been keenly aware of the dangers of an excessive amount of such a drug. The Sheriff’s report, moreover, provides no real explanation for Tarapacki taking the drastic action of an overdose of alprazolam. The only evidence mentioned in the report comes in an entry for 4/11/05, when Sheriff Dennis John, the undersheriff, and an investigator searched Tarapacki’s residence. According to the entry, “Sheriff John found a note apparently hand written by Dale Tarapacki which made mention that Tarapacki would be in a mind state of hurting himself.”
Obviously, Tarapacki would not have written, “I am in a mind state of hurting myself.” What did that note actually say? How did the Sheriff’s investigators know or why did they conclude that Tarapacki himself wrote that note? Did they ask Tarapacki’s mother or father or the mother of his two young daughters to verify the handwriting as his? Or was this determination based on a more casual assumption on their part, as the phasing in the report (“apparently hand written by Dale Tarapacki”) might suggest?
It is also surprising that the investigators did not question this apparent suicide note in light of the supplemental report for 4/11/05, in which it is recorded that a neighbor saw Tarapacki leave his residence with a fishing pole, which hardly suggests a suicidal frame of mind (on the issue of fishing poles, see previous post of May 1, 2022).
Several individuals who knew Tarapacki well, including another pharmacist, have contacted me with information about him in the period just before his death. They were all clear that Tarapacki was dissatisfied with his new position at the Native American pharmacy. Some stated that he had actually quit that job before the pharmacy had even opened, but they were certain that he was definitely not suicidal.
The extremely compressed (three-day) active investigation into Tarapacki’s death reflects a lack of thorough consideration of the issue of Tarapacki’s state of mind immediately prior to his death, especially as it concerns the alleged suicide note and the medical examiner’s finding of alprazolam intoxication.
With no firm verification of the handwriting on the note, how could the investigators know that someone else had not written that note? There also appears to have been no effort to account for Tarapacki’s whereabouts in the three hours between 11:45, the last documented time he was seen, and 2:45 p.m., the alarm time for his truck fire on remote Hardscrabble Road. With no awareness of Tarapacki’s whereabouts during that crucial period, how could the investigators be sure that someone else had not given him that drug without his knowledge?
