It is not clear from the redacted police report what, if anything, the lead NYSP investigator of my brother’s death asked about Mark’s use of gas cans.in his interviews with relevant individuals. In particular, did Kalfas ask whether, to their knowledge, Mark ever put gas cans in the cab of his truck? Did anyone inform Kalfas about Mark’s placement of gas cans in his truck?
At their meeting in September 2005, Kalfas informed Atty. Michael Kelly that, according to Mark’s wife Susan, she had bought the gas can, which was half full, and that she had used it to mow the lawn. The latter seemed surprising, as various individuals mentioned that Mark had always mowed the lawn, which--as the photos of the property indicate--was quite large. Kalfas apparently did not supply any context to that information from Susan. Had he asked her why there was a gas can (or cans) in the garage (which she mentions in her witness statement)? Or had she just offered that information on her own?
However, Susan’s claim in her witness statement that she “later realized that Mark had taken a gas can from the garage” is problematic. As a previous post (see October 30, 2018) discusses, at the time when Susan was giving her witness statement in their house, the fire investigation team had just arrived and discovered the gas can in the cab of the truck. Did Kalfas simply accept Susan’s statement as justification for his assumption that Mark put that gas can in the cab of his truck?
Statements by other individuals, however, suggest that Kalfas should have considered another possibility about the gas can in the cab of Mark’s truck. In a telephone conversation a couple of months after Mark’s death, Alexis Wright informed me that she and her husband Jim had been interviewed by Kalfas at some length, since they not only were friends but also had driven Mark home from his DWI arrest the day before his truck fire (on the circumstances leading up to Mark’s DWI, see esp. posts of July 28, 2011; September 14, 2014; and September 28, 2023).
Alexis stated that they had reported to Kalfas what happened when they dropped my brother off at his house after his DWI arrest the day before the truck fire (on what Alexis witnessed, see post of August 22, 2012). In that conversation with me, Alexis also was adamant that Mark never put gas cans in the cab but only in the back of his truck. Although she did not specify whether she had reported Mark’s carefulness with gas cans in her interview with Kalfas, her insistence on that fact suggests that she would have mentioned it to Kalfas.
Moreover, numerous individuals, including two emergency workers on the scene of my brother’s truck fire also emphasized to me that Mark never put gas cans in the cab, but only carefully secured in the back of his truck. Both emergency workers had been interviewed by Kalfas. The writer of the anonymous letter sent to my house (see post of August 11, 2014) also could not believe that Mark would have put a gas can in the cab of his truck, as that individual had seen him on numerous occasions securing gas cans in the back of his truck.
When I met in May 2010 with then-Cattaraugus County D.A. Lori Rieman and John Ensell, who had been Kalfas’s supervisor at the time of the investigation of Mark’s death, I brought up the problem of the gas can in the cab of Mark’s truck. Ensell insisted that Mark’s habit of putting gas cans only in the back of his truck was irrelevant because of his drinking.
But, as I later learned from the anonymous letter sent to me in 2014, a neighbor whom my brother visited immediately before the fire, stated that Mark could not possibly have been as inebriated as the police claimed. Furthermore, an experienced forensic toxicologist informed me that Mark, as a trim, muscular man, would have been in a coma if he had such an extremely high blood alcohol level. The .25 post-mortem serum alcohol level recorded in the autopsy report, factored with the time lapsed between the truck fire and the autopsy, equates to an approximately .425 blood alcohol level at the time of the truck fire (see post of September 1, 2013).
In fact, in 2005 Mark’s attending physician at the burn unit insisted to me that the .25 post-mortem serum alcohol level had to be wrong, and Atty. Michael Kelly informed me that the medical examiner of Mark’s autopsy agreed that the .25 serum alcohol level was too high but said it was what the lab technicians had given him.
The NYSP investigators should have realized that Mark’s serum alcohol level from the autopsy as recorded in the autopsy report was not the same as his blood alcohol level at the time of the truck fire. They should at least have consulted a forensic toxicologist to calculate what Mark’s blood alcohol would have been at the time of the fire.
They would have learned, as the medical experts mentioned above indicated, that the serum alcohol level recorded in the autopsy report was impossibly high and had to be wrong. In fact, the autopsy report was certainly careless in recording Mark’s height incorrectly as 5’7 ½” (67 ½”) instead of 5’11 ½”.
If Mark’s high serum/ blood alcohol level is invalid, what is one left to assume? Even the NYSP investigators had to admit that they could not “prove” that Mark’s death was a suicide, as there was clearly no evidence that Mark was suicidal. Since Mark never put gas cans in the cab of his truck, how can one explain the sudden appearance of a gas can on the floor of the passenger’s side of his truck? How did the driver’s side get saturated with a flammable liquid and the truck end up engulfed in flames? What does that suggest to a reasonable person? But if investigators don’t even consider the possibility of foul play, they won’t find it.
A later post will discuss how I learned, to my dismay, that there is no recourse when the NYSP remain adamant in their insistence about their investigation since they are an autonomous institution, reporting to no one.
