The Problem of My Brother’s Whereabouts Shortly before His Truck Fire

This post considers further the issue of where my brother Mark was shortly before a pool of his blood ended up in his driveway and his truck went up in flames in the field across from his house in rural Great Valley, N.Y., on September 23, 2003 (see posts of August 22, 2012, and March 3, 2014).

When I spoke with acquaintances of Mark’s in the weeks after his death, no one seemed to have any idea about his whereabouts the entire day of the fire. In conversations with me by phone and at one point in person, the N.Y. State Police investigator Edward Kalfas was not forthcoming with information and apparently was not pleased that I had made some inquiries of my own.  He simply insisted that it looked like a suicide, but offered only the flimsiest of explanations for that view (see esp. post of March 27, 2012).

In an interview with Atty. Michael Kelly in September 2005, Kalfas acknowledged that he had not found anyone who saw Mark out the day of the fire.  Mark’s wife Susan says in her witness statement that he was at home that day but left around 8:45 p.m.  (Kalfas’s entry in the police report for September 25, 2003, that members of the Holy Cross Athletic Club commented that Mark “was very upset at getting arrested for DWI the day before the fire,” was presumably a careless error.  Mark clearly did not go back to that club in the evening after his DWI, and Kalfas did not learn of anyone who saw him out the next day.)

According to an anonymous letter sent to me (see post of August 11, 2014), just before the fire Mark was at the house of a neighbor, who insisted that he could not have had as high a blood alcohol level as was reported (on the problem of the blood alcohol level, see posts of September 1, September 23, and October 29, 2013).  Although a neighbor thus privately acknowledged being with Mark not long before the fire, that person presumably had not come forward during the investigation (nor had spoken publicly about it later) to provide an assessment, based on direct observation, of Mark’s physical and mental state the night of the fire.

Someone who knew my brother well informed me that Mark presumably would not have gone to visit anyone on Whelan Road that evening.  My brother was certainly not at the home of EMT Cheryl Simcox around the corner on Cross Road (see Cheryl Simcox’s witness statement).  Others on that street as well do not seem to have been likely candidates for a late-evening visit.

The broader neighborhood, however, included Mark’s friends Todd Lindell, Sidney Lindell, and Alexis and Jim Wright.  According to Alexis, Jim had tried unsuccessfully to reach my brother by phone earlier that day, and then they drove by his house around 5:30 but did not go in (see post of September 29, 2019).  Sidney Lindell told me that he assumed Mark would have been embarrassed about his DWI.

Todd Lindell stated that on the day before the truck fire my brother was at his house well into the evening after Todd retrieved Mark’s truck from the impoundment.  In addition, Todd mentioned that that he had seen my brother on a daily basis for years and had an "open door" policy for him.  Did Mark take advantage of that “open door” the evening of his truck fire?  Todd also made the suggestive comment: “Mark would be alive today if he had not gotten the DWI."  Yet he did not return my call when I tried to contact him again, even though he had stated that he would be happy to talk to me any time (see also posts of August 14, 2015, and December 31, 2017).

In small towns, privacy is a scarce commodity; everyone seems to know everyone else’s business.  Later in the fall of 2003, my brother’s son Brian called, informing me that the autopsy report was out and that it ruled Mark’s death “an accident.”  Puzzled that a determination was made while a police investigation was still ongoing, I asked about the Medical Examiner’s explanation.  Stating that there wasn’t one, Brian offered to send me a copy of the report.  He also asserted, “My mother heard that you have been talking to people around Salamanca about Mark's death.”

It took time to learn the identity of some individuals who were on the scene and to find out where some lived.  A number of years after my brother’s death, I located one of them, who expressed surprise that I had not been in contact sooner and observed, “You’ve talked to everybody else.”  Small towns talk.

Was it small-town pressure that kept the person whom Mark visited shortly before he was burned to death from coming forward?

Problematic Police Behavior in the Investigation into My Brother's Death

This post discusses problematic behavior by the New York State Police investigator related to certain insurance issues in the case of my brother Mark’s death.

Some time after Mark’s truck fire, it was relayed to me that his auto insurance company was concerned about the circumstances of the fire and was holding back on paying out for his truck.  Although I did not know then with what company Mark had insured the truck, after obtaining the police report through a FOIL request in September 2004, I learned that Nationwide was the insurer.  When I contacted the company later in September to find out about their concerns, a Nationwide agent mentioned that they had paid out on the policy for the truck but not on a second policy for medical bills.

Another agent then informed me that they were going to arbitration with Mark’s wife Susan over the medical bills.  According to the agent, they had determined on the basis of their own investigation that the fire was not an accident.  Among other things I had learned from the police report, I mentioned the pool of my brother’s blood found in his driveway the night of the fire.  Expressing surprise at this information, the agent stated that the lead investigator, Edward Kalfas, had not revealed anything about blood found on the scene.  The agent added that Kalfas also would not let Nationwide see the police report.  After that conversation, I sent the police report to the Nationwide agent.

Inv. Kalfas’s failure to inform the insurance company about the pool of Mark’s blood is troubling.  Withholding that information prevented Nationwide from making a fully informed determination about the cause of the truck fire.  Since the police report does not mention the wound on Mark’s forehead, which I learned about first in 2005 from my brother’s attending physician at the burn unit and later from two fire fighters (see most recently post of January 29, 2019), Nationwide certainly did not have the full facts they needed to make a sound and accurate judgment about the fire.

When I brought up this issue with Buffalo criminal attorney Michael Kelly in 2005, he stated that Kalfas should have let Nationwide know about the pool of blood.  The Nationwide agent had informed me that they were maintaining the position that Mark’s death was a suicide because of comments made off the record to their investigator and because of the heavily redacted nature of the police report, which made the case difficult to assess accurately.  At the end of the arbitration process, the agent reported that they did not have to pay the medical bills, which were made the responsibility of another company.

Why did Inv. Kalfas withhold such important information about my brother’s truck fire that certainly did not point to an accident or a suicide?  Who made the comments “off the record” that suggested a suicide?  In spite of numerous suspicious facts (esp. Mark’s blood on the driveway, the wound on his forehead, and the gas can in the cab of the truck), my brother’s death was ultimately declared an accident by then District Attorney Edward Sharkey.  However, the New York State Police continued to insist that they thought it a suicide (see most recently post of November 30, 2019).

Did Kalfas not only withhold significant information from Nationwide but also suggest to their investigator “off the record” that Mark had committed suicide?  According to Mark’s and my half-sister, Susan told her that Kalfas had helped her with an insurance issue by talking directly to the representative of an insurance company.  Did that help also involve withholding information about the blood in the driveway from Nationwide and any other insurance company concerned with Mark’s death?

The Problematic Assumption that Mark Put a Gas Can in the Cab of His Truck

Previous posts (see July 22, 2012, and October 30, 2018) have brought up the problem that a gas can was found on the passenger’s side floor of my brother’s burning truck.  Since Mark put gas cans only in the back and never in the cab of his truck (see posts of September 22, 2010, and August 11, 2014), it is highly improbable that he put that gas can in the cab.  Yet the New York State Police insisted that Mark must have put it there and then spilled gasoline on himself, either inadvertently in a state of intoxication or deliberately in an effort to commit suicide.  Other posts have countered these claims by the State Police (see February 2 and July 22, 2012).  This post examines what was reported about the gas can on the scene of the truck fire and shortly afterwards.

Firefighter Mark Ward (also, as then superintendent of the Salamanca school system, the boss of my brother’s wife Susan and a close personal friend of hers) mentions in his witness statement that my brother had said the words “gasoline can” twice on the scene.  In his own witness statement, firefighter Gary Wind says that he heard my brother utter “something about gas,” but acknowledges that he “couldn’t make out anything he [my brother Mark] was saying.”  The State Police may well have taken Ward’s statement to imply that my brother was referring to using the gas can.  However, in her witness statement, Susan says that when she rushed to the scene, she asked Mark, “What did you do?” and that he replied, “I did nothing.”  Those words would suggest that Mark had not caused the fire by pouring gas into the tank or spilling it in the truck.  Otherwise, wouldn’t he have said something like “It was an accident,” or “I was putting gas in the truck”?

In her witness statement, Susan also mentions that shortly before the fire she heard a noise in the garage, which she thought was from the cats, but later adds, “After the fire, I realized that Mark had taken a plastic 5 gal. can of gas out of the garage but I don't know what he did with it.”  Early the next morning at the burn unit of the Erie County Medical Center, according to Carol McKenna, who is Mark’s and my half-sister, Susan told her that my brother had been putting gasoline in the truck and had got burned.  According to Carol’s son Tom, Susan told him at the burn unit that Mark had been putting gasoline into the tank with a cigarette hanging from his mouth when the fire started.

According to Mark’s and my cousin Dennis Pavlock, who was contacted about being a pallbearer at Mark’s funeral, Mark and Susan’s son Brian also told him that his father (whom he referred to as “Mark”) had been pouring gasoline into the tank when the fire started.  Brian, however, was apparently not at home, but away at school, at the time of the truck fire.  So Brian would not have had first-hand knowledge of what had happened.  Not long after, according to a long-time friend of Mark's and Susan's, Susan said that she had seen Mark carrying gas cans to the truck.

The three statements that Susan reportedly made about Mark putting gas into the tank or carrying a gas can (or cans) to the truck suggest that she may have seen someone with the gas can walking toward the truck or standing beside it.  But when the fire occurred around 11 p.m, the truck was fifty feet into the field across from their house, and the driveway leading from their attached garage to the street is about 100 feet long.  In addition, there would not have been substantial public street lighting on rural Whalen Road.  Under such circumstances, could a person accurately identify a man standing at or near Mark’s truck in the distance?