Cobra Killer (23 page)

The goodwill lasted, Hall said, through Kocis’ subsequent visit to San Diego to see the Lockhart videos and up until when the final documents were signed on January 18, in Kocis’ suite inside the W Hotel in downtown San Diego. “I mean, these guys weren’t going to barbeque every weekend, but they had an ongoing professional relationship, like I said, (that) relied on each other in order to make money going into the future,” Hall said. “They all understood that, and they all knew that, and they looked forward to working together.”
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Agreement or not, “Sadly, there were forces unseen to all of us at work that converged and someone lost their life,” Lockhart said. As he and Roy ended their battle with Kocis, they had already begun looking for new models to work on future projects. Part of that search, included the elaborate dinner meeting with Harlow Cuadra and Joe Kerekes at the same time the Kocis battle was concluding. The fury that meeting would release—resulting in Kocis’ murder—would be realized later. For now, the settlement between Lockhart and Cobra was real.
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The end to the struggle with Kocis did not come without a final flair, however. A bottle of Kocis’ favorite champagne, Veuve Clicquot, was opened and before the documents were signed between all parties on January 19, Kocis asked for a moment alone with his former friend and protégé, Lockhart. The two talked alone, outside the company of Roy and their lawyers, for about two minutes. “He took me aside,” Lockhart said. “He hugged me and I hugged him back.”
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“He said ‘I’m truly sorry for all of this. I should have handled it differently; and if I had, then none of this would have happened,’” Lockhart said. Kocis’ words to him were “hard to hear,” Lockhart said, because of the friction that had existed for so long between the two. “It doesn’t just go away,” he said, “but at that moment, it was pretty clear that this man was, had no intention of carrying on the kind of hurt and pain he had caused me.”
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Roy was also convinced it was time to rethink his previously unflattering views of Kocis. “I’m thinking, ya know, maybe (Kocis) was a demon or a pervent or whatever…maybe we turned the tide for him,” Roy said.
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It wouldn’t matter for long what anyone thought of Bryan Kocis.

With all of the documents finalized and signed by all parties, the unthinkable happened. Bryan Kocis was murdered.

Even though everyone was now playing nice, some tension remained. “You can’t dial down that immediately,” Kocis’ friend Robert Wagner said. “It had become a business relationship where they needed to learn to work together. They all had to share a sand box.”
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Lockhart said his “strong feelings of hate and hurt that coursed from both sides had begun to dull and lose their fervor” and that the agreement included a component where Lockhart would have allowed him to “boost my production into overdrive” and to gain valuable producer and director credits.
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An added bonus for Lockhart included his provision that any new productions with Cobra would be shot using condoms. “I was going to be able to continue to go on shooting my work using condoms, the safe way,” he said.
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Lockhart said the deal would free him from Kocis’ control, and would be a relationship governed by a legal settlement. He said he regretted, “there was never a time before Bryan’s death that we were able to change the public tide about each other,” Lockhart said.
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Specific details of the settlement were private and financial penalties were built in for both sides to keep the agreement private. It would have stayed that way except for startling events about to occur.

After the fact, Lockhart and Roy were required to disclose many of the aspects of the agreement they had reached with Kocis to police and later to a jury, including a plan to produce three DVD projects together with Cobra Video, paid for by Kocis (per film costs as much as $60,000 per project). In return, Kocis would take a twenty percent interest in all earnings Lockhart made appearing in gay porn as Brent Corrigan for a four year period. Lockhart would also gain a directing and producing credit for one of the projects—something he had prized since he first met Kocis, who had also agreed to promote any projects completed by LSG that he thought were suitable for his company. Lockhart’s continued HIV-negative status would also have to be confirmed prior to shooting new scenes.
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Little personal contact would have been required with Kocis, Lockhart believes. “Nothing could have happened that would have put Bryan back in my life the way he once was,” he said. “But there was no reason to feel that we could never develop a new, more professional relationship governed by legal laws and clear-cut boundaries.”
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Dinner with Harlow and Joe

Lockhart and Roy’s trip to Las Vegas was jam-packed full of important events. Beyond touring the Sands Expo Convention Center displays by adult entertainment and technology companies of all types and the marathon meetings with Bryan Kocis, Lockhart and Roy had planned to meet with Harlow Cuadra and Joseph Kerekes on Thursday evening, January 11, 2007, just prior to the start of formal settlement discussions with Kocis. It was all a part of moving onward and upward with LSG Media. It’s a meeting that may not have happened at all, except for the persistence of Cuadra and the growing panic he and Kerekes faced against a mountain of unforgiving debt.

Roy had previously tried to reach out to Cuadra, in 2006, via a male escort site, www.men4rent.com, but had been rebuffed. At that time Cuadra considered himself his own gay porn producer and didn’t entertain entreaties from other producers, such as Roy.

Something changed, though, and by November 2006, MySpace and AIM instant messages were coming in from Cuadra, not to Roy, but to Lockhart. And it was Cuadra who was trying to take the lead—trying to recruit Lockhart to come over to his emerging BoisRUs and BoyBatter sites to film with them.

Cuadra’s efforts to interest Lockhart included promises to house him in what he claimed was their $2 million “beach” home in Virginia Beach during the shoot, “pay you very well,” up to $10,000 cash for two scenes, and promised spins in his new Viper or M5. “No joke, we have some cool toys to play with, cars, boats, etc., I’d love to host you,” Cuadra boasted in one e-mail.
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Lockhart said his brief “online” friendship with Cuadra started via MySpace and continued with a few follow-up phone calls. Lockhart said the phone conversations with Cuadra remained friendly in November and December 2006 and included discussion of both men’s experiences in the gay porn industry, and even mention by Cuadra of Lockhart’s past work with Cobra Video. “This is all about work,” Lockhart said Cuadra insisted. “It’s about how ready he was. He was ready right then. There was no delay to do some shooting. They wanted to hire me to shoot for them.”
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Discussions moved along quickly, including Cuadra and Kerekes figuring how they could meet Lockhart’s interest in tapping into residual earnings from DVD sales, rather than just one lump, upfront payment for appearing in scenes.

Cuadra and Kerekes would later indicate that they viewed Lockhart’s residual payment request as obnoxious, but their interest in the emerging porn star remained high. Evidence of that: Cuadra and Kerekes became quite agitated when Cuadra mistakenly was dropped from Lockhart’s online front page “friends” listing on MySpace, a prominent spot on the better-known Lockhart’s page coveted by Cuadra-Kerekes.

Perhaps sensing or fearing waning interest in working with BoyBatter, Cuadra rushed copies of his latest production,
Young Bucks in Heat,
via overnight delivery to Lockhart and Roy. Lockhart and Roy watched the tape, rating its production quality “poor” but admitting “Harlow was a good performer.”
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Lockhart said he was upfront, however with Cuadra about the need to tone his look. “There was a lot of conversation surrounding my objectives in the industry and the models I was looking for,” Lockhart said. “There was a lot of discussion about both of us (Cuadra and Lockhart) being in the best shape possible if a collaboration were to ever come about.” As part of that, Lockhart was direct with Cuadra: he was dissatisfied with his look. He told Cuadra, “Tone up a little bit more. A little bit more muscle (was needed), but definitely more defined abs.”
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The settlement nears closure

As plans were finalized for a joint dinner for the four men, Lockhart-Roy and Cuadra-Kerekes, Lockhart and Roy continued their nearly simultaneous discussions toward resolution with Kocis and Cobra Video.

The four met at the Le Cirque Restaurant inside Vegas’ Bellagio Hotel on January 11, 2007. Lockhart and Roy said they viewed the dinner meeting as mostly social, a chance to meet in person and learn more about one another. Cuadra and Kerekes, from their actions before, during, and after the dinner, obviously viewed the meeting as a key “make or break” meeting for their financial and business future.

Cuadra’s enthusiasm, it seems, bubbled over at times with him embracing Lockhart upon meeting, calling him “buttercup” and openly flirting. Lockhart said he tolerated the behavior, but didn’t enjoy it.
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The three-hour dinner conversation quickly centered on the gay porn business, with Roy and Kerekes driving most of the discussion. Lockhart and Roy both said they made a concerted effort to avoid discussing their near-settlement discussions upcoming with Kocis. “It was a very sensitive time in the mediation and the settlement mode,” Lockhart said. “We couldn’t afford (revealing details,) but what we could tell (Cuadra-Kerekes) was that it was going well, and we were heading in a very successful direction. That was all they needed to know.”
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Their best efforts didn’t seem to satisfy the increasingly aggressive Cuadra and Kerekes. Lockhart said, “It was pretty clear that (Cuadra) was frustrated, that it wasn’t as simple as just shooting, just going in and doing whatever he wanted. He failed to recognize the time constraints that we had.”
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Roy also noticed the aggressive push from Cuadra and Kerekes. “Harlow and Joe both seemed a little eager to get this production underway,” Roy said. “I really wasn’t sure (of the) necessity of the rush, and at various times, I tried to explain to them that I didn’t think it was going to be a problem (to go forward) as long as we were able to get out of this mediation.” Despite this assurance, Roy said, Cuadra and Kerekes remained “eager, excited” and “a little pushy at times.”
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It was at this point, Lockhart and Roy both would confirm later, that Kerekes suggested that settlement talks with Kocis could be sped up if “he went to Europe.” Cuadra changed that up a bit, Lockhart said, suggesting Kocis could “go to Canada” and “never come back” with Kerekes adding, “Harlow has this guy who will do anything for him.”
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Roy immediately understood what the “Europe” and “Canada” suggestions meant. “I just said, ‘Look, guys, this has been an ugly, bitter dispute. It’s been highly publicized online’…I said I felt this (battle with Kocis) had gone far enough, it got ugly enough, and if we continue down that road, somebody is going to get hurt.”
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Roy insists he told Cuadra and Kerekes that “nothing needed to happen” and that he remained confident they would reach a settlement with Kocis and Cobra Video. Roy nervously laughed off the suggestion he fully understood—one that included causing physical harm to Kocis. “I said, ‘No, it’s been ugly, it’s been nasty, it’s behind us, nobody needs to go anywhere in this thing,’” Roy said he told Cuadra and Kerekes.
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Lockhart admits his intoxication prevented him from fully understanding what Cuadra and Kerekes were suggesting. Lockhart said he had downed three vodka cocktails at his hotel room before leaving for dinner because he was only twenty years old and feared getting carded, and denied, a dinner drink. He wasn’t carded, as it turned out, and he drank a glass of wine with every course of the elaborate dinner. At the end of the meal, Lockhart claims his intoxication rendered him “pretty much inoperable. I had a difficult time walking, seeing.”
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Regardless, Cuadra wanted photos taken of him with Lockhart, one of them with Cuadra’s armed slung over the shoulder of his new “buttercup” and another one showing him flipping the finger to the camera. Within hours the photos showed up on the BoyBatter website.

Two Stand Accused

“One of our citizens was murdered. It was a business hit, period. That’s the long and short of it. They had a plan to commit the murder, a plan to carry out the robbery, a plan to destroy evidence, and a plan to profit from the murder. They had a plan for everything.”

—Assistant DA Michael Melnick

As Harlow Cuadra recalls it, Joseph Kerekes was hungry on the morning of May 15, 2007, so they did what they usually did: jumped in the car and headed for one of their favorite spots, Boston Market on Virginia Beach Boulevard. At least that is where they said they were going.

Police investigators in Virginia Beach who had been trailing the couple for weeks thought otherwise. Boston Market was not open at that hour of the morning, causing them to notify Pennsylvania authorities that the couple was “on the move.”

Coincidentally, authorities back in Luzerne County were just wrapping up the final pieces of felony arrest warrants for Cuadra and Kerekes. By 9:30 A.M., they had filed their charges and were underway. “We were going to go down to Virginia Beach anyway,” Dallas Township Police Detective Doug Higgins said. “We had our bags packed and in the car when the Virginia Beach guys called and said, ‘Hey, these guys are on the move, in the car, they look like they have some luggage with them, what do you want us to do?’”
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