Trash bin mess was man's remains

Clean-up crew accused of tossing blood-soak truck interiors in trash
Staff writer Tim O'Brien

CLIFTON PARK - Two men hired to strip the interior of a pickup truck where a man killed himself are accused of illegally dumping the bloodied seat cushions behind a CVS Pharmacy.

Police called to the scene Tuesday first thought they had a fresh crime to investigate.

"It certainly looked like someone was covering up a homicide scene and disposing of it," said State Trooper Maureen Tuffey.

But an investigation revealed that the blood and gore they found came from the suicide of Evan Schwarz, 20. Schwarz killed Anthony Marko, 21, on April 16 and then turned a shotgun on himself in front of police while cruising in his pickup truck through the parking lot of the Niskayuna housing complex where he lived.

Tuffey said Schwarz's vehicle reverted to the ownership of the State and Federal Employees Credit Union because he had had an outstanding loan on it. The bank hired TCar Recovery of Burnt Hills to retrieve the car, and that firm in turn hired Action Bio-Care Inc. of Aurora, Ill. to clean it before it could be refurbished and resold.

"They hired two people from this area to clean the car and properly dispose of the waste," Tuffey said.

The men ripped out the seat cushions and other material from the car. Rather than properly disposing of the biohazard, she said, the men threw several plastic bags' worth of material into the dumpster behind the CVS on Route 146.

The two men face citations from the state Department of Environmental Conservation for illegal dumping, she said, but they do not face criminal charges.

Maureen Wren, a spokeswoman for DEC, said she could not yet identify the men. Tuffey also did not have their names.

"Our investigation is still ongoing," Wren said. "There will likely be charges filed upon completion of the investigation. It might not be individuals. It might be a company."

The material was found by a construction crew, Tuffey said.

"There were doing construction work right there, and they were dismayed to learn the dumpster they were going to use was already full of big bags," she said. After they checked the bag's contents to try to find out where the debris came from, they called police.

Tuffey said the two firms hired for the work will not face charges because they appeared to have no knowledge of what the men had done. Tuffey could not provide the names of the two men.

Calls to the two companies Friday were not returned.

Rod Gospodarski, owner of Bio-Recovery Corp. in New York City, said he was called to properly dispose of the material.

"We were called in by the DEC police and State Police to clean up the biohazard scene," he said. He didn't know the circumstances of the death but remembers thinking, "This was someone's Mom, Dad, brother and sister who ended up in a dumpster at the side of the road."