In late 2003, a nephew informed me that when my brother lay dying at the burn unit of the Erie County Medical Center, Mark’s attending physician told him that Mark had been doused with a flammable liquid and that it had not been an accident. When I requested some information from that same attending physician, Dr. Edward Piotrowski, in early 2005, he informed me that he had never seen anyone come into the burn unit with such severe burns and had been concerned about how Mark had got so badly burned.
In addition, Dr. Piotrowski indicated that Mark had been doused with gasoline, even on his head. As a forensic toxicologist later explained (see post of November 14, 2022), because Mark had been doused with gasoline, his skin would have continued to burn, even after he removed his clothes and tried to put the flames out. The dousing with gasoline is the reason why 90 percent of his body suffered third (and even some fourth) degree burns.
When I met with lead investigator Edward Kalfas in person in early November 2003, he immediately said, “It’s looking more and more like a suicide.” However, he said nothing about my brother being saturated with gasoline. He also did not even mention that a pool of blood had been found in the driveway in the area where Mark normally parked his truck.
Kalfas did tell me, inaccurately, that Mark was discovered right next to the truck and was not rolling around (i.e., to put out the flames). In fact, Mark was discovered about sixty feet away from the truck. As Dr. Piotrowski informed me in 2005, there was dirt on my brother when he arrived at the burn unit, suggesting that he had tried to roll around to put out the flames. In addition, the first fireman on the scene observed two small piles of clothing lying close to my brother, suggesting that Mark had pulled off what he could of his clothes in an effort to put out the flames.
When I first spoke by telephone with Kalfas in late September 2003, he mentioned that Mark had got into an altercation with an off-duty policeman at a local club and that after the officer called in to the police, Mark was arrested for DWI. Having learned that Mark Marowski was that off-duty officer involved in the argument with my brother, I asked Kalfas at the November meeting if he knew what the argument had been about. To my surprise, Kalfas immediately denied that he had mentioned the altercation to me and abruptly said that he would no longer speak with me.
It was obvious (1) that Kalfas wanted me to believe that Mark had committed suicide and (2) that Kalfas was also withholding information, including the saturation with gasoline, and distorting facts that might make my brother’s death appear to have been other than a suicide.
Although Atty. Tony Tanke did not speak directly with Kalfas, he was in contact with the Cattaraugus County District Attorney’s office on my behalf throughout the investigation. However, he was not informed about the saturation with gasoline by the D.A.’s investigator or, in a final conversation in May 2003, by the D.A. himself. Nor was he informed about the pool of Mark’s blood found in his driveway the night of the truck fire until he asked the D.A.’s investigator in late April 2004 if information I had heard about the blood was true. He was then told that it was true, as proved by DNA and other testing.
Ironically, as Mark’s and my half-sister Carol McKenna informed me in March 2004, Kalfas told her both that Mark's skin was saturated with gas and that a pool of blood found in the driveway the night of the truck fire proved conclusively to be Mark’s. She also said that Kalfas told her that he considered Mark’s death a suicide but could not prove it. When late in 2004 I mentioned to Carol a report that Kalfas referred to Carol’s belief that Mark’s death was an accident, she replied that the subject of accident had never come up in her conversations with Kalfas.
When in September 2005 Atty. Michael Kelly had a meeting with NYSP Sen. Inv. John Wolfe and Inv. Kalfas, Kelly asked how Mark could have been saturated with gasoline if the fire was an accident, as the police report records the determination of the District Attorney. Kalfas apparently did not respond to that issue directly. But when asked if gasoline had been poured on the driver’s seat, he replied that the area of the truck around the driver’s seat had been completely burned out. Kalfas also stated that because he did not think Mark’s death was a murder, he did not emphasize the pool of Mark’s blood found in the driveway.
It is clear that, very quickly in the investigation, Kalfas jumped to the conclusion that my brother had committed suicide. Kalfas’s explanation to Atty. Kelly of why he barely mentioned in the police report the pool of blood found in Mark’s driveway (and did not divulge its existence during the investigation) reflects a very poor investigative strategy: it was a glaring failure to evaluate the facts before he drew conclusions.
Moreover, in his insistence on the suicide theory, Kalfas’s discussions with me reflect both withholding information and significantly misinforming me about my brother’s location right outside his truck when he was discovered by emergency workers, since Mark was actually sixty feet from the truck and there was no fire trail leading to his burning body. So, how could Mark have got from the driver’s seat of the truck to the spot where he was found without leaving a fire trail? Kalfas’s vehement reaction to a legitimate question about the argument between my brother and Ofc. Marowski, because of which Kalfas ended any further contact with me, also reflects his protection of a fellow police officer who should have been a person of interest in the investigation (see most recently post of September 30, 2023).
