Cobra Killer (24 page)

Fearing Cuadra and Kerekes would possibly fall out of sight again, one of the police investigators in Virginia made the decision to stop them. Pennsylvania authorities moved immediately to get to Virginia, driving straight through.
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As Virginia Beach Police surrounded their car with lights and sirens and weapons drawn, Cuadra and Kerekes apparently paused for a moment, trying to decide whether to stop for the police cars that now surrounded them. It was a brief delay, and the two were arrested without incident.
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Now officially charged with criminal homicide, conspiracy to commit criminal homicide, abuse of a corpse, robbery, burglary, theft, and two counts of arson, Cuadra and Kerekes were separated at the Virginia Beach Police Department and waited alone in interview rooms for detectives from Pennsylvania to arrive for questioning.

Attempting to “interview” Harlow and Joe

Detectives Higgins and state police detective Daniel Yursha were sent in to attempt to question Cuadra, while state investigator Leo Hannon and FBI Special Agent James Glenn met with Kerekes.

Cuadra was in no mood to talk. “He said, ‘I have an attorney, I want an attorney, I have Barry Taylor,’” Higgins recalled. “We said, ‘OK, but we’re going to read, if you want, we’re going to read these charges to you.’”
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That done, questioning of Cuadra stopped and Higgins and Yursha left the room to prepare to book Cuadra at the Virginia Beach lockup to await extradition to Pennsylvania. “What I remember the most is that we left the room and when we were going back in, (Cuadra) says to us, he looks up at us and says, ‘Joe didn’t do this.’ He just volunteers this as we walk in the door to tell him he is going to go to the lockup and that he would be hearing from us again,” Higgins said.
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Prevented from questioning him further because of his request for an attorney, Higgins told Cuadra that if he and his attorney decided they wanted to make a statement, Pennsylvania detectives would return immediately to Virginia. “I told him, ‘We would love to sit down with you and hear your side of the story,’” Higgins said. That never happened.
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In the short time they did spend together, Higgins came away unimpressed with Cuadra. “He is a male prostitute, and he comes across as soft, by the way he speaks and his mannerisms, but I can see right through that,” Higgins said. “I can see him for what he is, he is a prostitute. He acts like that to get people to do what he wants, to manipulate people.”
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Hannon and Glenn would fare no better with Kerekes, though there were more fireworks. Kerekes would later describe the exchange as a “soap opera” as he and his lawyers successfully sought to suppress statements the always talkative Kerekes made to the officers. He said his first and only words to investigators were, “I want a lawyer.”
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Hannon and Glenn filed a report reflecting a very different type of meeting. Their report shows they first approached Kerekes in an interview room at the Virginia Beach Police Department at 8:20 P.M. and continued talking to him, on and off, until at least 10:04 P.M. that spring evening.

Hannon said he followed his normal procedure, informing Kerekes that he was under arrest, read him his Miranda rights, and informed him that he intended to read him the actual charge from the court. “I told him I didn’t want to hear it,” Kerekes would later say. “I just put my head down and he went on (reading).” Kerekes insists no one read him his rights, and they ignored his twice repeated requests for an attorney. “I asked twice for a lawyer, I never once interrupted…my head was down, I was just listening,” Kerekes said.
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During a July 2008 suppression hearing on the matter, Hannon testified about his version of the interaction with Kerekes, and outlined his normal procedure in such instances, including reading the Miranda rights statement to an arrested person, and reading the full criminal complaint against them. He said he also confirmed Kerekes date of birth and Social Security number.

Hannon said Kerekes repeatedly said he understood that he was under arrest and that he understood his rights. In a synopsis report he wrote about the interview later, Hannon stated that Kerekes said, “I understand the words, but I don’t understand why I’ve been charged with this. This is sad, but I never knew Bryan Kocis. All I’ve ever known of him is what I’ve read in the newspapers.” Kerekes posture during his denials was “upright. His expressions were direct, and his speech was lucid and confident,” Hannon said.
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When Hannon attempted to read the full criminal complaint and probable cause affidavit to Kerekes, he was repeatedly interrupted. When Hannon read from the report that computers seized from Kerekes’ home “proved to contain valuable investigative information,” Kerekes said that would be “impossible” because the computers formerly within his home were “dummies” and “didn’t contain anything.”
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Kerekes interrupted again later, saying the Las Vegas meeting between him, Cuadra, Roy, and Lockhart was “a harmless meeting” and challenged assertions in the complaint based on information obtained from Lockhart. “Are you gonna believe the words from the lips of that boy?” Kerekes reportedly said. “It wasn’t about money. We have money.”
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Kerekes would again challenge information in the complaint about the Nissan Xterra rented by Cuadra in the hours before Kocis’ murder, saying, “We rented that for the weather. We had some bookings to get to.”
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When the detective reached the point in the probable cause affidavit outlining Kerekes’ e-mails to Roy that investigators uncovered—e-mails where Kerekes said “we’ll tell them (the police) that you hired us”—Kerekes blurted out that he sent the e-mail in “a drunken rage” resulting from his anger on how Roy and Lockhart had stopped talking to them after Kocis was found dead.
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As he continued to read the criminal complaint and reached the part detailing the actual murder of Kocis, Hannon said Kerekes began to weep, swearing on his mother’s name that he had not killed Kocis. He reportedly said to Hannon, “What are you looking for?” Hannon replied, “I want the truth.(Kerekes) started talking but I cut him off and advised him to speak with a lawyer if he wanted to make a statement (because of Kerekes’ earlier assertions that he wanted counsel present).”
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Hannon said he also explained the extradition process Kerekes would face in being removed from Virginia and returned to Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Asked if he had any questions, Hannon said Kerekes only inquiry was: “Are (Sean) Lockhart and (Grant) Roy in custody?” which was answered in the negative.
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Trashing the evidence

Kerekes and his attorneys at the time, Shelley Centini and John Pike, argued that reading the formal criminal complaint to Kerekes constituted “the functional equivalent of interrogation” and that the detectives were attempting to set up “a situation they should have known would likely elicit a response.” Kerekes opinion was that “(Reading the complaint to me) was inflammatory. They highlighted these parts. They wanted me to say something.”
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Centini and Pike were also seeking to block admittance of any evidence taken from Cuadra and Kerekes’ home during the February 2007 search, and sought to suppress recordings of their conversations with Grant Roy and Sean Lockhart in California in April 2007. They attempted to argue that all of this evidence was not collected consistent with Pennsylvania law, and therefore should be thrown out.

Taylor frequently raised similar concerns during the time he represented Cuadra and Kerekes. At the time of their initial arrest, Taylor said there were serious questions “about how strong the evidence really is.”
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Taylor also raised allegations that the Virginia RICO investigation was used mostly to advance the Pennsylvania murder case. Graydon Brewer, an attorney briefly engaged by Kerekes, agreed, saying, “I believe it was a coordinated effort between Virginia authorities and Pennsylvania authorities that the search warrant and seizures were intentionally timed with the arrest, so that they would not have any assets to retain the counsel of their choice.”
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Former Luzerne County District Attorney David Lupas commented on the unique nature of the Kocis murder investigation. “(This was) not your run of the mill, but again the investigators followed the leads and follow the evidence wherever it takes them,” Lupas said. “This investigation basically, literally, went from coast to coast from Virginia to California.”
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Assistant DA Michael Melnick insists that the search warrant of the Virginia Beach home was carried out consistent with Virginia law because he said that is where the home is located. The tape recordings were done consistent with California and federal law because that is where they were conducted.

One more call to Sean Lockhart

Before Cuadra and Kerekes even knew they should be on the run, and less than twenty-four-hours after Bryan Kocis’ throat had been slit from end-to-end, they couldn’t resist notifying Lockhart how they believed his “Kocis problem” had been resolved.

Lockhart said he reported to his temporary job as a clerical production assistant at a construction company on January 25, 2007 as normal. The day was about to fall apart.

Around 9:00 A.M., Lockhart’s cell phone rang. The number popping up on the screen was Harlow Cuadra’s. “I hadn’t heard from Cuadra in a couple of days, in a week maybe,” Lockhart said, indicating he was irritated to be hearing from them again.

When Lockhart answered, it was Kerekes on the phone. “Joe says, ‘Hold on, Harlow wants to talk to you,’ and Harlow comes to the phone and I guess he was in the shower or something and he says, ‘Go to WNEP.com.’”
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Lockhart did as Cuadra suggested and called up the TV station’s news site. “The center article, the main article, right there was (this) major fire at 60 Midland Drive and I clicked on it and read the first few lines,” Lockhart said. “I just got the feeling in my stomach where something terrible, out of your control had happened. I shut (the laptop).”
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Lockhart said Cuadra blurted out, “I guess my guy went a little overboard.” Shocked by what he was hearing, Lockhart said he had to go, and quickly hung up the phone.
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Frozen in fear by what he had read and what he now knew Cuadra was suggesting had been done to Kocis (a man he had talked to less than twelve hours earlier), “I left work immediately and I went home to Grant,” Lockhart said.
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Lockhart and Roy had a tense conversation, with Roy also calling up the WNEP website to see what was being reported. “We had no clue, but I just remembered our feelings of fear and confusion,” Lockhart said. “We didn’t know what was going on.”
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Roy said he was “scared to death” by the unbelievable news they were reading online about Kocis’ death and “concerned that we might be next.”
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Lockhart and Roy decided it was best to “go along” in order to avoid any danger for themselves, but Roy put into motion immediately a plan to contact attorneys Ezekiel Cortez and Bernard Scoble of San Diego, but eventually also the police in Pennsylvania.

The lawyers offered good advice: keep away from Cuadra and Kerekes and don’t talk to anyone alone. Roy also told Cuadra and Kerekes directly, by phone, to leave him and Lockhart alone. For once, the Virginia Beach couple complied, at least temporarily.

Meanwhile, lawyers for Lockhart and Roy approached local and federal police authorities indicating their clients had information relevant to a pending homicide investigation back in Pennsylvania. Roy would eventually make six separate trips to Pennsylvania, and Lockhart three of his own to assist authorities.

Harlow and Joe on the run

During the weeks between the February 10, 2007 search warrant on their home and their arrest on May 15, 2007, Cuadra and Kerekes worked to keep a low profile. “We ran for our lives,” Kerekes would tell Roy and Lockhart during a luncheon meeting taped by authorities. “We were living in the ghetto in South Beach, okay, and ah, it’s been horrible, we act like we have all this (money), we don’t…we cash advanced everything. We’re in so much debt, we’re probably going to have to do another bankruptcy, it’s just horrible…it’s been hell. We haven’t slept at home in three months, we’re at hotels every night,” Kerekes said.
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Cuadra admitted he couldn’t sleep at home for fear the police would burst in at any moment. “We don’t sleep there, we’re back home during the day, but can you imagine sleeping there? No, we started sleeping in hotels,” Kerekes said.
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Both men said their reportedly $500-an-hour attorney, Barry Taylor, told them to stay out of sight in Miami. “He was telling us to stay in South Beach, to stay there, it’s not safe,” Kerekes said on the Black’s Beach police tapes. “I said, ‘Barry, everything looks good for us here, I wanna go home, I don’t wanna lose our house.’”

Kerekes admitted on the same tape that he had lied to Taylor about having at least $100,000 to pay his legal fees. The couple even authorized Taylor to conduct a never-conducted auction of their personal possessions, but called it off after an argument ensued over how the proceeds would be used. They also conducted an on-camera interview with TV producers from MTV’s
Real Life
program to tell their side of the story, but the segment was never aired.
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