Cobra Killer (14 page)

Despite acknowledging the need for a substantial daily and weekly income just to keep their heads above water, Kerekes insists that as things stood in January 2007, “We needed no partnership (with Sean Lockhart), no single actor, no outside help whatsoever” to meet their financial obligations. Going further, he said, “We did not need to murder Kocis at all. Neither did we need (Sean) Lockhart at all. We simply saw something we wanted, as pointless as (the) $30,000 Daytona gold Rolex I wear, so we took it. Oversimplifying? Maybe. True? Yes.”
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Cuadra, seemingly conflicted about his life and its twists and turns, had pushed forward in escorting and porn. He had also set out to find solutions to help salve the financial hemorrhage he and Kerekes faced. Andrew Shunk said he met Cuadra and Kerekes for coffee in early January 2007, and the two began talking about a “new deal” they were crafting for their company. The “new deal” meant bringing the Brent Corrigan name (aka Sean Lockhart) to their fledgling porn operation—contradicting Kerekes’ later claims they were not interested in Lockhart. “They thought that by bringing in Sean Lockhart or Brent Corrigan, that it would bring a six-figure profit within the company,” Shunk said. “(They thought) that combining Brent Corrigan’s experience in the pornography industry as well as Harlow’s, that it would be (a) phenomenon.”
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Shunk said Cuadra told him about the Las Vegas meeting he and Kerekes had with Lockhart and shared their plan to try to lure Lockhart to them with a per-scene payment—as much as $50,000 each—for porn videos made with their company. Shunk said they also planned to cut out Bryan Kocis and Cobra Video.

Shunk next heard from Cuadra, he said, via a text message indicating he and Kerekes were headed up to Pennsylvania. “I assumed it was to see a client,” Shunk said.
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Kerekes said it was Cuadra who “discovered” Sean Lockhart, alias Brent Corrigan online and came up with the idea that Lockhart had superstar potential in the world of gay porn. “To tell you the truth, I never knew who (Lockhart) was until Harlow told me who he was and told me they were (instant messaging) and texting each other,” Kerekes said. “Harlow was very excited about him. I was unimpressed with Sean. He’s very short, and I didn’t see him as anything very special.”
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Cuadra would offer a conflicting version of his actual interest in Lockhart. Cuadra said it was Lockhart who pursued matters online, by phone, via text messages and agreed to a meeting for all the interested parties—Cuadra, Kerekes, Lockhart, and Grant Roy—as part of a trip to the Adult Video News Expo in early January 2007 in Las Vegas. Cuadra said it was Lockhart who wanted the meeting to occur, and not him. Cuadra and Kerekes said they had no plans to attend the AVN event until Lockhart enticed them to do so. “The Vegas meeting was something that came up completely out of the blue,” Cuadra posted on his post-arrest blog. “The night before AVN, (Lockhart) came online stoked about his trip to Vegas. ‘I am surprised you’re not going Harlow,’ (Lockhart) said and how it was all a big industry party or something like that.”
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Cuadra claims Lockhart continued to entice him to Vegas, including an offer to show him the town. If Lockhart would agree to dinner, Cuadra told Lockhart he and Kerekes would make the trip. “(I) figured that if I could include some type of business matter into it, (Kerekes) would be a willing sponsor of the trip,” Cuadra said. He figured correctly, he said, reporting that Kerekes immediately ordered two tickets on Southwest Airlines for them to fly almost immediately from Virginia to Las Vegas.
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Cuadra describes a rather raucous “business dinner meeting” at Le Cirque Restaurant inside the massive Bellagio Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas on January 11, 2007—including two crystal champagne glasses broken during overly enthusiastic toasts. He originally suggested on his blog the glasses were broken in a drunken moment of frivolity. He later claimed, however, the glass breaking was his signal to Kerekes that he wanted to leave the dinner meeting because he claimed Lockhart and Roy were suggesting that Kocis should be killed.
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Oddly, if Cuadra was anxious to get out of the company of Lockhart and Roy, as he would later claim, it didn’t stop him from having Kerekes “take some pics of us mostly for use on MySpace”—ones that were quickly posted online showing a seemingly inebriated Cuadra with his arm lazily wrapped around Lockhart’s shoulder. The same picture was also sent later on by Cuadra to a newspaper reporter at the
Times Leader
in Wilkes-Barre who was covering the murder of Bryan Kocis.

Putting a plan into motion

Once back in Virginia from their quick Vegas confab, investigators believe Cuadra and Kerekes wasted little time setting in motion an elaborate plan to move “the artist known as Brent Corrigan” away from Kocis and Cobra Video and to their struggling enterprise. On January 14, just three days after their Las Vegas meeting, Kerekes, writing under his oft-used fake name Mark, reported “a huge update” for subscribers to BoyBatter site: 

Harlow and Mark just returned from the AVN Awards in Las Vegas where we sat down with Porn Twink mega star “Brent Corrigan” and discussed a partnership in filming and collaboration in porn site efforts and DVD distribution. WOW! So look forward to exciting announcements as we follow down this unknown path with some of the biggest names in our industry.

Kerekes ended the post with a big lie—noting that “sensation Harlow is currently on duty in the field with the marine corps (sic.) but was able to take leave for this important meeting and will return to escorting soon.”
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This would be the first of at least two announcements about Harlow’s availability for escorting as the days clicked down to when they hoped to be in Pennsylvania to make the Bryan Kocis roadblock go away.

Kerekes outlined the start of that effort openly in his jailhouse interview with the
Times Leader.
“We got back from the AVN and we were in our office,” Kerekes said. “I was updating our advertising for our (website) and Harlow was on the other side and did his thing. He set up an account using the name ‘Danny Moilin’ and e-mailed Bryan with a picture.” Kerekes said Kocis was immediately interested. “Bryan instantly e-mailed back asking (Harlow) to send more pictures and pictures in different sexual positions, so Harlow did all that,” he said.
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On January 20, Cuadra placed an online order using his Discover Card, an order that would be impossible to explain away later. Cuadra purchased background information on Kocis, including his home address, phone number, financial information, and criminal history. Two days later, an e-mail account was created on Yahoo.com from the PCs inside Cuadra and Kerekes’ home with the screen name [email protected]. Records would later reveal the account was used only to communicate with two recipients: one a test message sent from Cuadra’s e-mail account, and a series of e-mails sent by “Danny Moilin” to victim Kocis.

That same day, at 11:18 A.M., “Danny Moilin” filled out and sent in an online application via Kocis’ Cobra Video website seeking a modeling opportunity. At 1:23 P.M., a second application was sent via the Cobra site, including revealing, nude images of “Danny Moilin,” later determined to be Cuadra.

Kocis must have been pleased about the new arrival. He immediately forwarded to his friend Robert Wagner a copy of the “Danny Moilin” e-mails and photos and told him they were scheduled to meet at his home two days later.

Joe and Harlow go to Pennsylvania

In reality, the timeline between Cuadra’s initial contact with Bryan Kocis and Kocis’ death is amazingly short. Confirmed by January 22, 2007 e-mails sent between Kocis and who he thought was a young man named Danny Moilin, Cuadra and Kerekes were in Pennsylvania within forty-eight hours of having made their initial contact.

Prior to leaving for Pennsylvania, Cuadra and Kerekes appeared to be men carrying out a plan, however poorly crafted.

At 9:40 A.M. on January 23, the couple rented and picked up a Nissan Xterra SUV from the Enterprise Leasing Company in Virginia Beach, using the driver’s license and Discover credit card of Harlow Cuadra.

A short time later, videotape shows Cuadra and Kerekes entering the Superior Pawn and Gun Shop, just 1.2 miles east of the Enterprise office, where they are video recorded purchasing a Sigarms model FX1SG lock-blade folding knife and a Smith and Wesson .38 caliber revolver and ammunition. The purchases were paid for with a Visa card carrying the name of Harlow Cuadra.

Hours later, at 7:26 P.M. a pre-paid Verizon wireless cell phone is activated and used for the first time, relaying its call off a cell tower on Bells Road in Virginia Beach, just 200 yards from Cuadra and Kerekes’ Stratem Court home.

Kerekes said in a newspaper interview that he and Cuadra left town almost immediately after those purchases, en route to their destination in the Wilkes-Barre area (about 377 miles from their home in Virginia Beach). They checked into the past-its-prime Fox Ridge Inn (one of the only motels in the area accepting cash as payment) in Plains Township, Pennsylvania and waited.

Pennsylvania detectives recovered a receipt from the Fox Ridge Inn carrying the name and driver’s license number of Joseph Kerekes. The address listed started with “1028 Stra…” but was scratched out, replaced by a fictitious address and zip code.

Kerekes said the couple ate dinner at Kentucky Fried Chicken on their first night in Pennsylvania. But they had more on their agenda. Police would later allege the couple ran reconnaissance on Kocis’ home by driving by his Midland Drive home on January 23, 2007, but did not proceed with approaching him at that point.

The next day, Kerekes said the two ate lunch at a Friendly’s Restaurant, visited a gym, and went to a nearby Wal-Mart store.

On the day he would die, Kocis sent another e-mail at 2:23 P.M., this time informing his one-time nemesis Sean Lockhart that a new male model was due at his home later that day for an “interview.”

As the day wore on, Kocis’ cell phone rang frequently. At 5:51 P.M. Kocis took a phone call, ironically, from the estranged business partner of Lockhart and Roy. Just eight minutes later Kocis took a call from the pre-paid Verizon cell phone Cuadra had purchased. Kocis thought he was talking to his expected guest, Danny Moilin.

Moments later, at 6:01 P.M., Kocis spoke again by phone with Lockhart and Roy’s business partner. The content of those conversations was never revealed but may have related to the settlement just reached between all of the involved parties.

At 6:26 P.M., Kocis’ friend Robert Wagner placed his last call to his friend.

At 6:35 P.M., another call from the pre-paid Verizon wireless cell phone is recorded making its last phone call, this one bouncing off a cell tower on Country Club Road in Dallas, Pennsylvania—just 500 yards and within view of Kocis’ home. Cuadra was apparently near Kocis’ home but was too early for his appointment.

Kocis took another call at 6:49 P.M. from a car dealership that was repairing his Aston Martin.

Kocis answered even more calls from Lockhart and Roy’s former business partner at both 7:23 and 7:34 P.M.

His final call, at 7:50 P.M., came from attorney Sean Macias and lasted only a few minutes, as Cuadra had arrived for his appointment.

The 8:12 P.M. call to Kocis from his friend Deborah Roccograndi went unanswered. It likely was coming in as Kocis was in the last moments of his life or was already dead.

At 8:34 P.M., one of Kocis’ neighbors dialed 911 to report flames and smoke pouring from the front of his home. At that same moment, a cell phone registered to Kerekes recorded a call going to the cell phone held by Cuadra. Investigators never determined the meaning of this particular call placed between the two phones held by their top suspects.

“Harlow had a job to do”

“In all honesty, when Harlow left me there at the hotel in Wilkes-Barre that night of January 24, 2007, I was relaxed and lackadaisical and considered Harlow’s ‘outing’ as any normal escort call, an hour with a gentleman for sex for a profit,” Kerekes said. “The only difference was that in this instance, packed with lubricant and condoms was a 30% serrated $300 Sig Sauer knife and a revolver. As Harlow walked out of the room, I waved goodbye. He did not make eye contact, he had a ‘call’ to do. I turned back to my computer and conducted, as normal, business, sending e-mails, canvassing chat rooms and fielding calls to potential escorts.”
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In as straight-forward a manner as can be, Kerekes said, “Basically, as real and true of a picture that night that I could portray to you is (this): I had work to do, and so did Harlow, to kill Bryan Kocis, a task we had prepared two weeks to perform since the idea’s inception between Sean Lockhart and Harlow at that business meal at Le Cirque in Vegas at the Bellagio.” Kerekes insists that Cuadra and Lockhart “forged a bond, a cohesiveness and understanding, both fully aware of the job, its details and its aftermath.”
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He further attempted to demonstrate that Lockhart and Grant Roy were “in” on the planning by saying, “We thought our agreement and desire, conceived in Vegas, was formidable enough to bear the weight of the forthcoming investigative onslaught. Neither the promises from our West coast friends (Lockhart and Roy) or the figurative iron in their backs was strong enough to honor loyalties that were clearly established that night in Vegas.”
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Kerekes lamented that missing from the documents used to charge him and Cuadra was any mention of a conversation he alleged occurred between Cuadra and Lockhart that night in Vegas. He claimed Lockhart said, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” about the ability of anyone to bring down Bryan Kocis. “It wasn’t said in a frivolous undertone, but was a crystal clear challenge to Harlow to proceed,” Kerekes said. “We did.”
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