Cobra Killer (17 page)

Roy laughed nervously and said “No,” and Cuadra seemed intent on removing the tension again. “Well, anyways, anyways, the news is good now,” he said.

It seemed to work. Kerekes never returned to his “joke” about Roy wearing a wire and said, “Yeah, it’s all good, it’s all good now. We’re home…and we told ourselves that, when we go home from this, we’re gonna start sleeping there.”
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Before the group parted, Kerekes was again swinging back into an apologetic mode, offering: “I apologize, Grant, for hurting you guys and messing things up, I really do. I messed up our lives, too.”
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As the day wound down, Lockhart’s uneasiness seemed to reach a pinnacle. “I’m gonna go home and I’m gonna throw up,” Lockhart declared to no one in particular. He would blame it on drinking coffee, eating lobster bisque for lunch and worries about his family. It was more likely the culmination of the pressure he felt carrying on a conversation intended to get Cuadra and Kerekes to implicate themselves.

There would be no direct admissions of guilt this day, Kerekes noted that “We have some information that…we’ll tell you the whole beans once we’re naked on the (beach) and filming, but ah, let’s just say after we have a sure word, there’s some things that you really need to hear ….”
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Kerekes was alluding, in a rather clumsy manner, to a claim Cuadra had made that Kocis was working on a separate deal behind Roy and Lockhart’s back, even while settlement negotiations were continuing.

As one might expect after an afternoon of negotiations over producing a gay porn video, the conversation ended with Lockhart discussing anal douches and baby hair trimmers that Cuadra could use in order to prepare for the next day’s potential sex scenes.

Once Cuadra and Kerekes were dropped off back at the Marriott just after 6:00 P.M., Roy and Lockhart began debriefing between themselves as they drove to the park to have the wire removed. Lockhart was still in agony. “I’m scared of them,” he said. “I have never felt like this before. This is probably one of the hardest things in the world.”
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At 6:15 P.M., detectives removed the wire from Roy’s body and began planning their next move.

A day at the beach

Roy and Lockhart weren’t done with their clandestine role in the investigation. Both agreed to participate a second time, on Saturday, April 28, at a scheduled meeting and “photo shoot” at Black’s Beach in San Diego County.

Roy and Lockhart met up with investigators again at 1:26 P.M. behind a Von’s Supermarket in La Jolla. There Roy was provided “a tape recording key fob” or a key remote for a vehicle holding a recording device. “The key fob was being used because Roy would be executing the wiretap at a nude beach and therefore couldn’t be body wired,” State Trooper Hannon wrote in his report. The key fob activated, Roy and Lockhart set off for a second day in a row to the Marriott Hotel to pick up their guests, Cuadra and Kerekes.

The group traveled to the Torrey Pines State Nature Reserve, noted for its “outstanding natural scenic views and as the home of the rarest pine tree,
Pinus torreyana
,” a tree that reportedly only grows at Torrey Pines and on Santa Rosa Island off the coast near Santa Barbara. The park also boasts that it preserves the last salt marshes and waterfowl refuges in Southern California.
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For tourists of all kinds, including gay men, the park is known for its nude and semi-nude beaches. The high broken cliffs and deep ravines on headlands overlooking the ocean provide a true challenge for hikers to reach Black’s Beach, and did for the monitored party as well, taking them about fifteen minutes to climb down to the water’s edge.

Again unknown to Cuadra and Kerekes, police were listening and watching their every move at the beach from boats far off the coast, and from officers strategically located in the cliffs surrounding the beach.

The group would spend only about two and a half hours at the beach under mostly cloudy skies overhead, but what they discussed, and what Cuadra and Kerekes ultimately disclosed, would prove pivotal.

Getting Cuadra and Kerekes to the beach was a task; both were immediately impressed and somewhat intimidated with the height of cliffs overlooking the ocean beach. “God, I’m actually scared, I’ve never seen anything like this,” Kerekes exclaimed. “Oh yeah, this must about twenty stories in the air if you were in a building,” Cuadra added. “I will never forget this.”
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As the group climbed down the rocks to get to the beach, Kerekes cautioned Cuadra to slow down; “You don’t wanna get dirty or scratched, alright?”
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Cuadra successfully climbed the rocks wearing sandals, not shoes, and caused more concern when he had to slip away once on the beach to find somewhere to urinate.

It didn’t take long, though, for “the shoot” to start, with Roy and Kerekes in the role of co-directors, both giving their partners frequent instructions on what to do, how to stand, or how to act.

Cuadra and Lockhart wasted little time in getting to know one another, although initially everyone remained clothed. Eventually, Lockhart, Cuadra, and Kerekes would strip. Roy would only remove his shirt, according to the tape. “Let them get to know each other a little bit,” Kerekes suggested as Cuadra and Lockhart walked ahead on the beach.

Starting off with still photos, Roy and Kerekes can be heard giving the duo directions on how to pose. “Let me see one with a pout, relax boys,” Roy said. “It’s the beach, take your shoes off, relax, they’re gonna get nasty.”
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The still photos completed, videotaping began with both Roy and Kerekes operating the camera, capturing about seven minutes of “set up shots.”

As time wore on, the conversation drifted repeatedly into “business talk” as the men discussed troubles with keeping their porno websites up and running. Unknown to Cuadra and Kerekes, a key fob in Roy’s waistband and later on a beach blanket where Cuadra and Lockhart sat, captured every word spoken.

The tape soon captured Cuadra volunteering information he said he had heard from Kocis discussing by phone an idea of how to get Roy away from Lockhart and how to get Lockhart back in alignment with Cobra Video. Cuadra also claimed Kocis referred to Lockhart behind his back as “a little bitch.” Whether real or made up, the effort was in earnest: Cuadra and Kerekes wanted to drive a wide wedge between them and anyone else wanting Lockhart’s talent and time.

As the conversation moved on, Roy mentioned as an aside that he gave his business partner copies of all of the necessary 2257 release forms for various shoots that had already occurred. Roy’s casual remark inadvertently succeeded in opening the floodgates of incriminating information. Cuadra, apparently misunderstanding, assumed Roy was referring to Bryan Kocis and the 2257 forms belonging to Cobra Video, and started to volunteer that any such documents at Kocis’ house and were now gone.

Cuadra still didn’t get it and talked on, “Well, if you guys wanna take care of Cobra once and for all, I mean, I don’t think there’s a real hurry on it, unless (Kocis) had a copy of all that paperwork at his lawyer’s office, it’s all gone.”
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How would an innocent man with no involvement in Kocis’ murder and the blaze at his home know that? This was just the
first
incriminating statement Cuadra would volunteer that day.

Roy seemed surprised that the information was coming out so easily.

“Really? All his records?” Roy asked.

“It’s all gone,” Cuadra declared. “He had, umm, a big box of master tapes, DVD tapes. That’s all gone. Yeah, so, unless he had a copy of it somewhere, it’s all gone.”

Cuadra went on to suggest that since he knew Cobra’s consent forms were now gone, “you guys could contact the FBI somehow, discreetly, and go, ‘Hey, I think someone else is underage,’ (and the FBI) is gonna go up to them (and say), ‘We wanna see model releases.’”

Cuadra at that point turned to Lockhart and said that he had watched the master tape from Kocis’ collection that included the scene with Lockhart and Cobra’s other major “star,” Brent Everett.

“We watched them all at our house,” Kerekes chimed in.

“Yeah, yeah, and they’re gone now…they’re disintegrated,” Cuadra added, being unspecific about how he had destroyed Kocis’ master tapes and DVDs.
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In all, Cuadra and Kerekes admitted on the Black’s Beach tapes to having seized as many as fifty-five of Kocis’ tapes (presumably taken during the murder, burglary and fire at Kocis’ home), and watched them over a period of two days at their Virginia Beach home and then destroying them. “I saw all I needed to see,” Cuadra said. “I was gonna keep one of them and give it to you (Lockhart and Roy) as a gift…but it’s too hot right now, let me just get rid of it.”
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He added that he had been “given” from Kocis “a couple of (other) items that are disintegrated now, also…(Kocis) had a Rolex, ah, ‘BCK’ (engraved on the back), and, and well it’s gone.”
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Cuadra had spilled the beans on a key piece of evidence unknown to anyone who hadn’t held Kocis’ Rolex watch in their hands. The initials “BCK” were carved into the clasp of the watch—something only those closest to Kocis knew.

Kerekes urged Cuadra to continue gloating, and he did, mentioning that all of Kocis’ editing software and three computer towers and two laptops were also taken and later destroyed. Cuadra, apparently comfortable that he wasn’t being taped because of his nudity and that of Lockhart, was on a roll and really opening up. He openly criticized statements by police investigators that they had seized Kocis’ computers that provided solid leads and that whomever was admitted to Kocis’ home the night of the murder had to have known him.

“That’s bullshit,” Cuadra said. “Because we did some recon work, and the door doesn’t have a peephole in it…it has two square blocks of, ah, windows, way up on the top, and Bryan’s not tall enough to see through that.”

As if it were an afterthought, Cuadra leaned into Lockhart and added: “It was quick. He never, he never saw it coming.”
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Roy saw the opening that Cuadra had created, openly implicating himself in Kocis’ murder.

“You were in there with him for a little while?” Roy asked.

“Yeah,” Cuadra confirmed.
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Repeating his claim that Kocis referred to Lockhart behind his back as “my little bitch” and “the product,” Cuadra again turned to Lockhart and said, “So don’t feel too bad, man.”
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Cuadra said he had thought about not telling Lockhart what he alleges Kocis was saying: “(You) might as well have a decent memory of the guy, but fuck it, two drops in a bucket, fuck it now, ya now. That, that dude was all about making a buck, that’s it.”
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Kerekes added his opinion that there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make a buck, “but ya don’t hurt kids along the way. I don’t screw kids over, that’s one thing they could come back to me, we don’t have any bad blood between us and the kids. It’s, like, ‘I got your two grand in my pocket for today’s scene and a little bonus,’ and you know ‘I’m gonna do you guys right’ and I’m gonna do every kid that ever works for us, right?”
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Business talk aside, Cuadra and Kerekes again drifted into dangerous territory, providing investigators listening on the key fob wire (and for jurors later) a rather detailed account of Cuadra’s one-night stand that ended in Kocis’ murder.

Kerekes noted that Kocis had prepared a contract for Cuadra prior to his arrival and was ready to pair him with other actors he had in his Cobra line-up. “And (Kocis) acted like he didn’t know him, of course, but he had planned on instantly writing Harlow a contract,” Kerekes reported.

Investigators later came to the conclusion (or at least agreed with it by accepting a guilty plea from Kerekes) that Kerekes’ knowledge on what transpired inside Kocis’ home must have been based on details told to him by Cuadra. Not everyone would agree—the argument about whether Kerekes had actually been inside Kocis’ house the night of the murder would go on and was never decided, in no small part due to the evolving story offered by Kerekes.

There was never any argument, though, that Cuadra had been inside the home. “I’m used to drinking with my clients, I only have a sip or two,” Cuadra said, setting up the scene between himself and Kocis.
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“I only have like a sip or two while I keep pouring it and pouring it for them, so by the time the doorbell rang, and (Kocis) got up, he was kind of stumbling, and ah, that was it.”
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His version would be the one repeated later at trial—that “someone” burst into Kocis’ home that night and committed the murder in Cuadra’s presence. Kerekes never seemed fully on board with that version, later trying to make it seem Cuadra “happened upon” the murder, and always insisting he was never present.

Cuadra had more details to offer, though.

He reported Kocis had just purchased a 65” Sony plasma TV for his living room—a new item delivered just days before. He also said the room was equipped with a $20,000 sound system. Other details he reported were Kocis’ upcoming plan to go to California for business and details about the upstairs bedroom and the steep roof-ceiling line in the Cape Cod-style house. “It was all there,” Cuadra said. “It must look like shit by the time what’s his name was done, but yeah, he was trying to figure out how to operate it while I was there.”
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