The Problem of the Lack of a Timeline by the NYSP in Their Investigation of Mark’s Death

Timelines are considered important tools for police in investigations of suspicious deaths and murders as they arrange the events in chronological sequence, providing a coherent framework for assessing a case.  However, after Atty. Michael Kelly met with the lead investigator of my brother Mark’s case and his immediate superior in 2005, Kelly indicated that there seemed to be no timeline or charts detailing the scene of Mark’s truck fire.

A timeline in Mark’s case should presumably have begun with events from the day before the truck fire.  A primary event would be the personal argument at a local club between my brother Mark and off-duty police officer Mark Marowski that resulted in Marowski calling in to the Salamanca police to have my brother arrested for DWI on his way home.  That altercation, however, is not even mentioned in the police report (on that issue see most recently post of February 28, 2025).

Related information for a timeline would be statements made by members of the club who were present during that altercation.  The police report refers to interviews of members of the club who claimed that Mark had been behaving “unusually” and “not like himself” the day of the truck fire.  However, Atty. Kelly reported that at their meeting in 2005, the lead investigator, Edward Kalfas, told him that he had not found anyone who had seen Mark out the day of the truck fire (see post of November 29, 2021).

Kalfas, then, presumably made an error in the police report, confusing the two dates.  If he had made a timeline, which generally includes both dates and specific times of the day, that mistake would probably not have happened.  As it stands, though, his error keeps Ofc. Marowski out of the picture and insinuates abnormal, potentially unstable behavior on Mark’s part.  (On an anonymous letter reporting that Marowski was having an affair with Mark’s wife at the time of the truck fire, see post of August 11, 2014.)

Events on the day of the truck fire, of course, would be crucial to a timeline.  The only references in the police report to Mark’s activities during the day prior to the fire come from Mark’s wife Susan in her witness statement.  She states that “Mark had been drinking beer and maybe slightly intoxicated during the afternoon”; that they “were watching television around 7:30 pm”; and that “around 8:45 Mark left the house to go [to] downtown Salamanca.”

A problem with Susan’s reference to Mark during the afternoon is that several individuals told me (and, I believe, reported to Kalfas) that they had tried to reach him by phone during the day but got no answer.  Atty. Kelly found this discrepancy problematic and suggested to the two NYSP investigators at their meeting in 2005 that it would be useful to know if Susan had gone to work the day of the truck fire.  Apparently, they did not check with the local school where she was a secretary.  A timeline including these discrepancies might have encouraged Kalfas to dig more deeply to try to resolve them.

While Susan refers to Mark leaving at 8:45 p.m. for downtown Salamanca, Kalfas acknowledged that he had found no one who saw Mark out that day, including that evening.  It is not clear if Kalfas checked all the possible clubs or bars.  But clearly it was very important to find out where Mark was in the hours before 11:00 p.m. or so, the time of Susan’s 911 call about the truck fire.

Perhaps Kalfas’s unwarranted assumption that Mark committed suicide (see post of November 30, 2023) blinded him to the possibility of foul play, and therefore he did not consider it crucial to learn where Mark had been in the hours before the fire.  Yet, as mentioned in the post of August 11, 2014, the writer of the anonymous letter sent to me stated that Mark was at the house of a neighbor right before the fire and that the neighbor indicated that Mark was not so intoxicated as the police believed.  There is no mention in that letter of depression or a suicidal tendency on Mark’s part, either.

Had Kalfas interviewed the neighbor whom Mark had visited the evening of the truck fire?  (On problems with Kalfas’s interviews of Mark’s close friends, see post of September 30, 2024.)  Had he also interviewed the writer of the anonymous letter, also quite possibly a neighbor?  If he had, did Kalfas deliberately ignore information that was crucial to an investigative timeline and should have been entered into a timeline?

If not, Kalfas might well have found out that kind of essential information by checking Mark’s and Susan’s phone records (landline and cell).  Mark might very well have called the neighbor before going over to visit that person.  A check of the phone records would certainly have filled in some of the information relevant to a full, precise investigative timeline, including the phone conversation that Susan states she was having when she saw the flames in the field across from their house (on which, see posts of February 28 and April 30, 2019).