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.
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