Cobra Killer (25 page)

Police had their last contact with the duo over the phone on February 12, as they visited with Kerekes’ parents at their Virginia Beach home. During that visit, Joe Kerekes called his parents’ house at least three times, detectives reported, but refused to come there to answer their questions in person, instead asking his parents not to talk to the detectives (a request they complied with, the elderly couple asking the detectives to leave their home).

About a month later on March 9, with funds running very low, a new video was posted on the BoyBatter.com website titled
Drake & Harlow: Beach Bubbles Bird.
Review of the video indicates it was shot at the Clinton Hotel in South Beach Miami, Florida and even shows a Miami Beach police car in the background while the two actors are on the beach. On March 16, another video was posted to BoyBatter.com, this one titled
Drake & Harlow Jack Off, Part I,
clearly shot inside a room at the Clinton Hotel.

Kerekes later provided more detail about their flight to a reporter from the
Times Leader,
saying how the couple stayed for a time in a condo rented with cash for a year in a friend’s name to try and throw off authorities.

It was during this period, however, that Kerekes kept up regular e-mail contact with both Grant Roy and eventually Sean Lockhart, his messages getting more and more aggressive and threatening. On March 3, at 10:14 A.M., a strange message purporting to be from both Kerekes and Cuadra arrived in Grant Roy’s mailbox from Harlow Cuadra’s MySpace e-mail address: “Hey grant, its harlow so when we gonna start filming? I know we had an agreement. Joe.”

A minute later at 10:15 A.M. another e-mail came in to Roy saying, “you need to make some king (sic.) of contract with us before I tell them you hired us joe.”

Apparently convinced threatening was the way to go, another e-mail at 10:17 A.M. was sent to Roy saying, “and we all know what u said to us at the avn in vegas and we have it on tape recorder and out (sic.) conversation at le cirque is recorded as well dont fuck with us.”

Given time to cool off, at 10:43 A.M. another e-mail arrived announcing: “we are going to visit san diego this week or next and we need to meet we hope to see u soon.”
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By early April, Kerekes was playing nice. In a very businesslike April 3, e-mail from Kerekes to Roy, he further approached the idea of a collaboration on a porn project involving Lockhart and Cuadra. Kerekes even queried Roy about whether his settlement with Kocis (prior to Kocis’ death) would prevent a collaboration.

Roy responded by reminding Kerekes that the settlement with Kocis was strictly confidential. He sought to reassure Kerekes—whether in truth or as part of an effort to keep him on a string—that “any proposal that is presented will be in full compliance with the settlement and trademark license issues as they pertain to Brent Corrigan and Cobra Video.”

Roy must have known the desperation Kerekes and Cuadra were under, but still offered, “If this does not provide you with enough reassurance to move forward with the shoot, then we will have no other choice but to cancel or postpone current plans indefinitely.”

Roy promised a forthcoming “proposal” but admonished Kerekes not to “make any announcements, or insinuations on any of your websites or other websites or public forums as already seems to be the case.”
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At the same time, Roy continued his discussions with law enforcement. “They were interested in getting us, having us get together (with Cuadra-Kerekes) for a meeting so they (could) possibly intercept the conversation and see if they would indicate what happened during the crime,” Roy said.
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Kerekes described his months in hiding as just hanging out in “the gay ghetto in South Beach” Miami, where they saw some openly gay churches. Although still claiming not to be gay, Kerekes said, “Harlow said to me that I should have focused on being a pastor in a church like that.”
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Cuadra said Kerekes would walk daily across the street from their rented South Beach condo to a Haitian restaurant called Tap Tap, just five blocks west of the beach. Barry Taylor, like clockwork, called every day around the same time, general checkup, Cuadra said, providing updates on what was happening back in Pennsylvania and Virginia. It was through Taylor, Cuadra said, that the couple learned that no warrants had been issued for their arrest, and that police investigators appeared to be scaling back their investigation of the Kocis murder.

It was just the start of the emergence from hiding Cuadra and Kerekes would enact. The couple went back to their Virginia Beach home, finally, where they found the remnants of the SWAT team entry into their home, including a small hole in the wall and burned carpeting, Cuadra said. Before returning home, however, Cuadra constructed a reunion with his mother and siblings by stopping off at her home in South Carolina en route back from Florida.

At the end of April, just one day after the infamous Black’s Beach meeting and before he was arrested, Cuadra amazingly answered an e-mail from a reporter from the
Times Leader
in Wilkes-Barre. He gloated that all of the publicity surrounding the case and allegations linking him to the crime had helped him make more money (a similar claim he made to Lockhart and Roy on tape). He told reporter Ed Lewis, via e-mail, that the “world was ready for Brent Corrigan and me to film, so here is a preview pic taken yesterday of Brent and I on a nude beach in San Diego before our first shoot.”
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Meanwhile, back at Stratem Court

Simultaneous to their arrests in May 2007, Virginia authorities executed a second search warrant on their Stratem Court home. This second search was a result of an ongoing Virginia RICO investigation launched in January 2006 after police received a complaint that Cuadra and Kerekes were running a prostitution service from their home. Items seized during the second search included a knife, laptop computers, a camcorder, tapes, and a Sprint mobile air card (all later turned over to Pennsylvania authorities).

Virginia investigators said their search was intended to uncover evidence related to booking escort clients, including ledgers or appointment books, lists of client names and phone numbers, and financial records related to Norfolk Male Companion, Inc., Norfolk Gay Escorts, and personal financial records of Cuadra and Kerekes.

After Virginia authorities completed their search of the home, Pennsylvania detectives also took a look around, including Sergeant Doug Higgins from Dallas Township. He described the home as “unimpressive” and noted that “There was a first floor weight room (where a living room normally would be) with a bunch of weights in it” and upstairs bedrooms contained an unusual amount of shoes and boots. “There were a whole bunch of shoes, I mean just a ton of shoes, sneakers,” he said. “Another downstairs room was used to store car parts, and upstairs on the balcony is where all the computers were, about forty of them.” Higgins said one of the bedrooms was set up as a “shoot room” with a bed, lights, cameras, and a surround-sound system all in place. Cuadra and Kerekes’ personal bedrooms “were a mess,” he said.

 The Cuadra-Kerekes home was short on the normal furnishings, in the living room, no couches, chairs, or tables. “It was a nice house, but in my opinion it was nothing fancy,” Higgins said.

Earlier in the day, Higgins said he questioned some of the neighbors on Stratem Court. Few, if any, knew Cuadra and Kerekes at all. “They all said they noticed them washing their cars a lot. They said they noticed people coming and going sometimes and that sometimes they would wave,” Higgins reported.
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Pennsylvania detectives who remained in Virginia Beach for a few days after the search warrant assisted in processing materials seized from Cuadra and Kerekes’ home and their car. In their car, a knife identical to the one the pair were videotaped purchasing at the Superior Pawn Shop was found. “The knife found in their car was a staged knife,” assistant DA Melnick said. “After they murdered Mr. Kocis, Joe Kerekes returned to the pawn shop and the thinking was that he needed to buy a replacement knife in case the police captured them. The Sig Sauer knife in the car was completely clean and (Kerekes) freely admitted that was a fake out. No one believed that they would be carrying around the murder weapon some five months after the crime.”
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Cuadra apparently was convinced that the knife recovered actually helped exonerate the couple. He didn’t count, apparently, on anyone knowing Kerekes returned to the Superior Pawn Shop for a second time and to buy a second knife. Cuadra wrote on his blog while jailed that “the knife that (Kerekes) bought at the pawn shop that day was in the glove box of the BMW, still in the paper and box it was sold to him in, never used, kind of amazing that he could buy the knife, use it to commit a very heinous crime and then restore the knife back to original condition and put it back in the box without a trace of DNA on it…the reason there is no DNA on the knife was ’cause the knife was never used and was in the glove box of the BMW since the day it was purchased.”
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The actual knife used to slay Kocis would never be found, although detectives tried hard to locate it. The cops also tried to find Kocis’ Rolex watch, taken from his body the night he was killed, but never succeeded. “One of the statements from Kerekes said the watch was thrown off a culvert somewhere on a Virginia Beach highway, in a swamp-like area,” Melnick said. “Low and behold, while we’re interviewing witnesses, Leo Hannon is marching through the swamp months after the crime looking for that doggone watch (or knife).”
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Cuadra and Kerekes prepare to defend themselves

Cuadra’s attorney Barry Taylor openly predicted that both Cuadra and Kerekes would eventually require the services of public defenders because their assets were seized. Taylor said he believed investigators did so to deprive the couple of the ability to hire a private attorney on their own.

Taylor vigorously defended the duo, at least initially, but eventually fell back into the background as the criminal case against the men moved away from Virginia to Pennsylvania (and their ability to pay a lawyer continued to dwindle). Cuadra and Kerekes would eventually work their way through many attorneys, paying for them with what resources family and friends could provide, and eventually relied upon public defenders. “Captain Jack”(whose real name is Joseph Ryan), acknowledged he was an active client of Harlow Cuadra’s escort services, and reportedly also provided initial financial help for the defense.

An initial hearing was conducted for Cuadra and Kerekes in Virginia Beach on May 17, in which both men indicated they would fight extradition to Pennsylvania. During a subsequent hearing on June 7, bond was denied for both Cuadra and Kerekes. Kerekes said he could stay with his parents while he awaited trial, but bond was not possible, as Virginia Governor Tim Kaine had already signed an extradition warrant request from Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendel. Joe and Harlow were going back to Pennsylvania.

The duo was not done fighting. Kerekes’ new counsel, James P. Brice, Jr. of Virginia Beach, told reporters that his client had “certain rights under the constitution. If these rights are violated, the state must release them.”
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Brice and Taylor succeeded in earning yet another hearing on the matter to determine whether Cuadra and Kerekes were the correct individuals sought by Pennsylvania authorities, whether they were fugitives, and whether the charges were valid and correct. The lawyers were also fighting to keep authorities in either Virginia or Pennsylvania from seizing their home, bank accounts, and other assets.

During the hearing, Kerekes’ parents attended and as he left the courtroom, Kerekes turned, winked, and smiled at his mother. “She sat crying in the front row,” according to a report aired by WTKR-TV in Norfolk, Virginia. Their attempts to line-up a bail bondsman for their son were unnecessary. No bond would ever be set.

On July 17, Cuadra and Kerekes were finally returned to Luzerne County, Pennsylvania to answer to the string of charges. Both men would soon employ the first of a series of various Pennsylvania attorneys.

As he strode into court ready to start his case against the men, assistant DA Melnick put it simply: “One of our citizens was murdered. It was a business hit, period. That’s the long and short of it.” Melnick and fellow assistant district attorney Tim Doherty noted that the plan they believed Cuadra and Kerekes had hatched and carried out against Bryan Kocis had succeeded on almost every mark. Except one: firefighters responded quickly and put out the fire meant to hide evidence in the case and preserved the grisly crime scene for investigators, most particularly Kocis’ business records.
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Kerekes had something to say as well, yelling out to reporters as he was led from a police car in handcuffs and hand-restraint mittens to a state police post at Wyoming, Pennsylvania. “To answer your questions,” Kerekes told reporters, “No, I didn’t do it.”
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Cuadra kept it simple as well: “Not guilty” is all he would say as he was led to court.
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Cuadra and Kerekes were arraigned before Magisterial District Judge James E. Tupper shortly after arriving back in Luzerne County, but it would be the last time the two men would see one another in a long time. Cuadra was ordered held without bond at the Lackawanna County Prison in nearby Scranton, while Kerekes was jailed at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility in Wilkes-Barre.

Cuadra, while mostly silent when reporters peppered him with questions outside court hearings, was prolific in his views on his short-lived web blog, www.harlowcuadraonline.com. Presumably dictating the entries to supporters on the outside who posted them, he often went beyond the frequent requests for money to fund his defense to address other issues.