Why Did Kalfas Ignore the Pool of Mark’s Blood Found in the Driveway?

As reported in previous posts (see esp. May 29, 2012), the night of September 23, 2003, when his truck was discovered burning in a field across from his home, a pool of my brother’s blood was found on an extension of his driveway where he normally parked his truck.  The presence of the blood found on the driveway was not made known to me in any of my conversations with the lead investigator Edward Kalfas in fall 2003 or prior to the end of April 2004 to my attorney Tony Tanke in his discussions with a representative of the Cattaraugus County District Attorney’s office.  I had asked Atty. Tanke to bring up the issue with the D.A.’s investigator because I had learned from Mark’s and my half-sister Carol McKenna in early March that Kalfas had informed her about the pool of Mark’s blood.

It is unclear why the information about the blood found on the scene was not disclosed to me as the closest living relative from Mark’s birth family.  Others beyond the N.Y.S.P. investigators and District Attorney’s office certainly knew about it.  An entry for 12/12/2003 in Kalfas’s narrative in the police report mentions the following about his interview with Mark’s wife Susan: “She has no explanation for the blood located in the driveway.”  In addition, in a chance meeting with a former high school classmate, I learned in July 2005 that he was a firefighter who had been on the scene of Mark’s truck fire and had observed the blood in the driveway.  Much later, I learned from another firefighter that he too had seen the blood. I was also told by a friend of my brother’s that a rumor had been going around shortly after his death that a pool of blood had been found on Mark’s driveway.

Kalfas’s handling of the issue of the blood found on the driveway raised serious questions to Michael Kelly, an experienced Erie County criminal attorney who agreed in May 2005 to review the case and who met with the relevant N.Y.S.P. investigators in September 2005 to urge them to re-open the case.  Kelly was concerned that Kalfas barely mentions the pool of blood in his narrative in the police report, which I obtained in September 2004 through a FOIL request after the District Attorney informed Atty. Tanke in May 2004 that he would not allow me access to it.

Besides his entry of 12/12/03 on his question about the blood to Mark’s wife, Kalfas has an entry for 9/24/03, listing among five items taken from the scene "two cotton swabs with blood samples secured from the victim's driveway—to NYSP Crime Lab Albany" and one for 1/05/04 reporting that the swabs sent to the Albany crime Lab were “consistent with human blood” and D.A. Sharkey’s request that the blood kit taken at the autopsy be sent to the Lab for DNA testing.

More important, as Kelly explained, Kalfas should have put a “rush” order on the blood sent to the N.Y.S.P. Crime Lab to determine if it was human blood.  When Kelly asked Kalfas at their meeting in September 2005 about that issue, Kalfas replied that he hadn’t put a “rush” order on the blood because he didn’t think Mark’s death was a murder.  Kalfas’s logic here is hard to fathom since, according to his entry in the police report, he sent the blood out the very day after the truck fire.  The investigation had barely begun.

Nor was any “rush” order apparently placed for the blood kit sent out for DNA testing in early January 2004, the results for which came back in late February 2004.  The DNA analysis proved conclusively that the blood was Mark’s, but in his entry in the narrative of the police report for 12/30/03 Kalfas had already reported the D.A.’s position: “The case will be classified as an accident, consistent with the findings of the Medical Examiner’s office.”

As Atty. Kelly also informed me, Kalfas should have notified the Erie County Medical Examiner about the blood in the driveway prior to or during the autopsy.  But judging from Mark’s autopsy report (a copy of which was sent to me by Mark’s son), M.E. Sung-ook Baik was not made aware either of the blood or of the suspicious location of a gas can in the cab of the truck, where Mark never put gas cans.

M.E. Baik was obviously not informed about the blood until March 2004, when Kalfas asked him about a possible explanation for the deposit of blood.  The possibility of a nosebleed due to alcohol consumption which M.E. Baik offered at that point would not apply in Mark’s case.  As a highly experienced chemist stated to me, only certain underlying medical conditions, not applicable to my brother, in addition to alcohol consumption could justify that explanation.

Furthermore, Kalfas did not inform Dr. Edward Piotrowski, my brother’s attending physician at the Erie County Medical Center, about the pool of blood, nor, according to the doctor, did Kalfas even interview him.  As Atty. Kelly pointed out, M.E. Baik should also have consulted Dr. Piotrowski about Mark’s condition in the burn unit.  Dr. Piotrowski would presumably have told the M.E. about the soft-tissue damage to my brother’s forehead and to the left side of his face.  As the doctor explained to me, the swelling that he observed would have gone down by the time of the autopsy; it thus might not have raised any particular concerns.  Dr. Piotrowski also had other information that would have been useful to the medical examiner.

If M.E. Baik had been better informed, he might have been less confident that Mark’s death was an accident.  It is shocking that Kalfas failed to disclose the pool of blood to both M.E. Baik and Dr. Piotrowski right after my brother’s death.  That failure, however, enabled the investigator to pursue his ill-founded view of suicide and ignore the very real possibility of foul play.