More on What Mark Said on the Scene of His Truck Fire

As mentioned a number of times on this blog, NYSP investigators of my brother’s death in a suspicious truck fire insisted that Mark himself had caused the fire, either accidentally by spilling gasoline in the cab of his truck or, more likely, by deliberately pouring the gasoline to commit suicide.  They jumped to the conclusion of suicide, despite the suspicious location of Mark’s truck fifty feet into the field across from his house, with a gas can in the cab, where he never put gas cans, and a pool of Mark’s blood found in his driveway the night of the fire.  Although the Cattaraugus County District Attorney at the time of the truck fire determined that there was no evidence of suicide, the NYSP investigators persisted in maintaining the likelihood of suicide, even when they were informed that a wound on Mark’s forehead had been observed by two firefighters on the scene and that soft-tissue damage to his forehead and the left side of his face had also been observed by his attending physician at the burn unit.

Both NYSP Senior Investigator John Wolfe and current Cattaraugus County District Attorney Lori Rieman insisted that Mark’s death could not have been the result of foul play because he had spoken to several people on the scene.  In a telephone conversation in October 2005, Sr. Inv. Wolfe rejected the possibility of foul play in Mark’s death, insisting that Mark did not say anything about being attacked to the two firefighters.  Wolfe did not respond when I stated that two firefighters who put the flames out on my brother heard only the words "gas" and "gasoline can" and could not understand anything else.  When I mentioned that the third firefighter could understand nothing Mark was trying to say, Wolfe simply made the dismissive remark, “Oh, is that the guy with the nine-iron?” alluding to that firefighter’s suggestion that the wound he saw on Mark’s forehead looked as though he had been struck on the head with a golf club.

In a face-to-face meeting in May 2010, D. A. Rieman insisted that my brother had spoken to several people on the scene and would have mentioned a specific name if he was the victim of foul play.  Her detective John Ensell, who had been the senior NYSP investigator in Mark’s case and was present at the meeting in 2010, apparently agreed since he made no objection to Rieman’s claim.

A previous post (November 30, 2011) discussed both (1) what my brother’s wife and firefighters on the scene said in their witness statements about Mark’s ability to speak and (2) what another firefighter and a neighbor reported they heard Mark say.  This post re-examines their statements, partly in light of information relayed to me after the post of November 2011.

It is not clear to what extent my brother could have spoken lucidly to his wife Susan.  She says in her witness statement that after seeing flames in the field and calling 911, she rushed out and found Mark crawling away from the truck (on this issue, see post of May 29, 2023) and tried to put the flames out on him (on the lack of burn marks on that white sweatshirt, see post of November 30, 2018).  The first emergency worker, an EMT who was also a close neighbor, arrived within a few minutes and saw my brother with two-foot flames shooting from his entire body.  At any rate, Susan states that she asked Mark, “What did you do?” and that he replied, “I did nothing.”  If Mark did say those specific words to his wife, they certainly would not imply suicide nor an accident in spilling gasoline on himself.

Gary Wind, the first firefighter on the scene and at the time a deputy sheriff, says in his witness statement taken the night of the fire that Mark “was talking to me and said something about gas.  I couldn't make out what he was saying."  In late 2012, when I learned that he had become Police Chief in Salamanca, I was able to contact Wind, who clarified a number of points about the scene of the fire.  He emphasized that Mark was trying to communicate something with the word “gas,” among other words that Wind could not understand.  Mark was obviously reaching out to Wind, since he recognized his voice (though he couldn’t see because of the severe burns over his entire face) and called out “Gary!”  In a later conversation, Wind re-emphasized that he had been able to understand only the word “gas.”

In his witness statement, firefighter Mark Ward states that my brother Mark "was able to talk," but he could understand only the words "gasoline can," which he says my brother uttered twice.  Unlike Wind’s, Ward’s statement was taken on Oct. 2, 2003, nine days after the truck fire, when the whole incident was the subject of considerable discussion in that small community.

Firefighter Wayne Frank, who arrived on the scene immediately after Wind and Ward, was not asked to give a witness statement.  Frank, however, told me that he had not been able to understand anything at all that Mark tried to say.

Dan Smith, Mark's neighbor at the opposite end of Whalen Rd., who told me in 2008 that he went to the scene after seeing flames in the field, said that my brother had spoken around ten words to him.  He added that Mark had recognized him and said, "Hi!"  But when I asked Smith what else Mark had said, he replied that he could not recall at that point.  It is unclear how Mark “recognized” Smith since, as previously stated, my brother (with third-degree burns over almost his entire body) could not see firefighter Wind but recognized his voice.

However, firefighter Wind informed me that Smith was not present when they were putting the flames out on Mark and would probably have seen Mark only when they were loading him into the ambulance. The main investigator Edward Kalfas’s narrative in the police report clearly states that Mark could not communicate at any point on the transport to the Erie County Medical Center.  Given that none of the three firefighters on the scene could understand anything other than “gas” or “gas can” and that Mark could not communicate at all en route to the burn unit, he would not have been able to speak ten clear words to Dan Smith or anyone else before being placed in the ambulance.  Smith must have been mistaken in his recollection that Mark had spoken intelligibly to him.

There is obviously a difference between uttering inarticulate sounds or unconnected words and actually communicating through coherent speech.  My brother’s attempts to tell what had happened were clearly unsuccessful.  Yet the authorities with whom I spoke illogically took the only intelligible words my brother said to the firefighters who put the flames out on him, “gas” and “gas can,” as evidence that Mark had not been the victim of foul play, when in fact they could just as easily be interpreted as an effort to try to explain that he was in fact the victim of foul play.