Cobra Killer (29 page)

Kerekes then interjected, saying, “Harlow, it’s pretty, it’s pretty much what we already know, remember what Plan B was, right?”
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“Plan B,” it seems, was based on a “hypothetical” version of events created by Kerekes for the ever-shifting alibi, complete with a “once upon a time” introduction. Kerekes would later say the hypothetical version of events was “pretty much the truth,” offering, “OK, once upon a time, there was a gay escort couple that, ya know, once upon a time that thought maybe working with this movie producer would be good, where as he had access to other young stars that would enhance one of the two (mens’) career, so they set up an appointment to meet.”
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Kerekes’ version this time around notes that the “hypothetical version” of himself stayed back at the motel, while his partner went to the meeting. “When he (Harlow) approached the home, obviously there had been an intrusion and the door was open, hypothetically and supposedly then, he found what was there, and he supposedly and hypothetically ran and came back to the older one (Kerekes), who was in the hotel and they were scared.”
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“Plan B” included discussions of how Cuadra was “in complete disarray” at what he allegedly saw at Kocis’ home, and later cut up and burned the clothing he wore to Kocis’ house.
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The recorded conversations revealed the growing tension between Cuadra and Kerekes, at one point Kerekes asking Martin to leave the line so he could talk to Cuadra alone, a request Cuadra objected to. Kerekes seemed determined to get Cuadra on board with the idea that he was not present at Kocis’ home.

“I know, I know, I know,” Cuadra said. “I, I, I know, I know Joe.”

“And I wasn’t there,” Kerekes replied once more.

“Everything, everything’s in my head, just be very calm, alright?” Cuadra pleaded.

Martin seemed to relish her role as chief information officer, legal adviser, and personal counselor. In the recorded calls, in addition to playing referee to flare-ups between Cuadra and Kerekes, she attempts to reassure both men that “it’s gonna be good.” She tells them that the criminal charges “may disrupt your lives for a momentary time” but that the two would be okay “eventually down the road, as long as everything, ya know, as long as everything comes out.”
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She openly admonished Kerekes to stop “pressuring” Cuadra and that he was “stressing him out, it’s ruining a conversation.” Kerekes replied, “I’m completely stressed out, too.”
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As the investigation wore on and prosecutors and detectives began debriefing Martin, they struggled at times to keep her focused. Her loyalties seemed to be in a state of flux, moving from intense loyalty to see Cuadra and Kerekes through their ordeal to wanting to help authorities solve a murder.

In May 2008, the DA’s office contained an unsecured $50,000 “witness bail” for Martin, now living in Fort Worth, Texas, for her continued cooperation in the investigation. Prosecutors knew by now of her arrangement of three-way telephone conversations with Cuadra and Kerekes and that she had heard “incriminating statements” made during those calls.

Judge Olszewski ordered Martin to maintain weekly contact with investigators based on the DA’s claims that her testimony would “provide substantial and important information about the defendants and their actions, and she was privy to the conversations between the defendants. Renee Marie Martin’s testimony is material to help establish certain elements of the criminal charges currently pending against the defendants.”
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The bond was used to ensure Martin’s participation, something investigators couldn’t be sure of until the very last minute.

Joe Kerekes’ parents had seemingly had enough, and a day after their son and Cuadra (who they said they treated like a son) were extradited to Pennsylvania, they completed the sale of their Virginia Beach home. The timing of their move raised speculation they were tapping all resources they could to help fund their son’s defense. However, Joseph Kerekes insisted the home was for sale prior to his arrest on murder charges.
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One anonymous Virginia Beach source, however, indicated the semi-retired couple had received a poor reaction from some of their neighbors and friends after Joe’s arrest. The Kerekes’ would eventually move west to Kansas to live near their other son’s home and to be near their grandchildren.

The preliminary hearing

Once extradited to Pennsylvania, Cuadra and Kerekes faced a preliminary hearing. Pennsylvania District Magisterial Judge James E. Tupper conducted the two day hearing in late August 2007 that included fourteen witnesses and forty photos of the murder scene. Preliminary hearings are required under Pennsylvania law in order to force attorneys for the commonwealth to present evidence that a crime has been committed and that the defendant is probably the perpetrator of that crime. Judge Tupper’s role, which is normally to adjudicate traffic tickets and other non-felony cases, was to serve as a “gatekeeper” for the higher Court of Common Pleas.

Attorneys for Cuadra and Kerekes were ultimately seeking a dismissal of the charges but couldn’t have been too optimistic about their chances. The hearing did provide them a chance to see inside the state’s case for the first time and learn what type of evidence has been collected against the defendants so far. The state did not unveil every last bit of evidence it had, but it most certainly began to make a very strong
prima facie
case against Cuadra and Kerekes.

The state presented a videotape showing Cuadra and Kerekes in a Virginia Beach pawn shop purchasing a gun and a knife in the days before Kocis’ murder.

Grant Roy was also called as a witness and recalled the now infamous Black’s Beach meeting he and Sean Lockhart had with the accused duo on April 28, 2007. The Luzerne County Coroner also provided graphic testimony on the nature of the attack on Kocis.

The evidence mounting against the two so far was devastating, and there was little question they would continue to face charges. As expected, Judge Tupper found for the commonwealth, upholding the bulk of the state’s charges of homicide, robbery, arson, abuse of a corpse, and conspiracy to commit murder, and allowing the case to go to trial.

Cuadra and Kerekes won a small victory, however, one they wrongly believed would be the beginning of a turn of luck for them. Tupper agreed to defense requests to drop burglary and conspiracy to commit burglary charges against the two. It was the first positive news Cuadra and Kerekes had received.

Pennsylvania prosecutors needed to be able to charge and prove one of eighteen aggravating circumstances in order to seek and/or receive a death penalty in the case. Since the Kocis murder was committed while other felonies allegedly occurred, such as burglary, robbery, and arson were committed, the death penalty remained an option.

“I just think it’s great the burglary charges were dropped,” Kerekes told reporters as he was led back to jail. “We didn’t steal anything from that poor man (Kocis).”
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Cuadra let his new attorney, William Ruzzo of Kingston, Pennsylvania, do his talking. “If I can get the robbery charges dropped, I think that would take death out of the case.” Kerekes’ counsel, Frank W. Nocito also of Kingston, said he agreed and argued before the court that the goods taken from Kocis home could have been done so by any alleged perpetrator only as an afterthought once the murder was completed. “The thought of stealing the goods was done after the murder,” Ruzzo contended. “The motive of the murder was the murder. It wasn’t to take a Rolex watch and computer tower.”
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Melnick was prepared for this argument. He countered that even if the burglary charge was removed, the arson charge remained a strong aggravating circumstance because of the “grave risk of death” it may have posed to responding firefighters.

As he was led away from the hearing to be held without bond, Kerekes blurted out to reporters, “I was never in that house, and I intend to get an expert to prove that.” He added that “I’m confident my lawyer and the evidence will vindicate us.”
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While Cuadra remained silent during most of his “perp walks” to and from the courtrooms of Luzerne County, he did respond during an October 2007 hearing. When a TV reporter asked him how he felt about the case so far, he replied in a low voice, “It sucks. I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill that man.”
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Cuadra details “the plan” for acquittal

As the months dragged on and Cuadra struggled to form a new defense team, he wrote to Martin about “The Plan” that he believed would lead to his acquittal. Time behind bars had convinced him that “this shit’s real as heck now.”
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Cuadra told Martin that his image management would require “obtaining the means to hire attorneys that can tell a good story. That’s all this comes down to,” he wrote Martin. “A good looking defendant is harder to sentence.”
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He asked Martin for her help in making sure no “fat pics” of him were posted online. “Remember, it’s the jeans that made me look like I have a fat ass, not my fat ass that makes those jeans look fat.”
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Cuadra apparently paid close attention to intense media coverage of his case. He told Martin, “Image matters a lot. Notice all the close up of my face? Yeah, they use that youth killer look to make those papers fly from the stand. Thank God I shaved.”
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His letter to Martin suggested there was some “cleaning (of) Joe’s image” needed, to fill in “hard edges” and improve his blog.
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Beyond that, Cuadra had some specific ideas in mind that he believed would help his cause:

• Ready and free flow of information to his attorneys, who faced wading through a tangled maze of evidence and information. “We need to make it easy for them or risk them blowing through it and missing stuff,” Cuadra wrote.
  
• Work to transform “gossip (to) fact” and “make fake facts gossip.”
  
• Secure witnesses and experts to “counter and destroy” the state’s witnesses.
  
• Get pre-trial motions “right and tight,” Cuadra said, invoking a rather slick lawyerly term for a man who was not admitted to the bar.
  
• “Get the image right,” Cuadra wrote, alluding to his elaborate instructions on colors and types of suits, shirts, ties, and shoes he needed Martin to secure for him.
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Cuadra apparently also had launched a plan for supporters of his to show up in court wearing “Free Harlow Cuadra” T-shirts that they had purchased (although he allowed that if supporters showed up at the courthouse who had not purchased a shirt, they should be given one for free). “I need the jury to understand that we have friends and family and (we) are not society’s trash,” he wrote.
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By the time of the 2009 trial, the only Cuadra “supporters” present in the courtroom appeared to be his until-recently estranged family members.

In the months leading up to trial, however, Cuadra was keeping a strong front in place, calling up his military training, no doubt. “We have to be brave,” he wrote to Martin. “America did not win World War II because those brave men at Normandy ran back when a bomb landed in their midst. The troops took Normandy in spite of those bombs and victory was secured because they were brave.”
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Answering those nagging questions

In the days before his defense attorneys finally, apparently, succeeded in getting him to shut up, Cuadra used his blog, harlowcuadraonline.com, to post a variety of responses to questions his “supporters” were apparently raising.

In April 2008, while sitting out a long stretch of more than a year for his case to come to trial, Cuadra said, “My friends and mostly (my) mom thought it would be a good idea to go about this particular blog in a question-answer format.” In doing so, he basically hand-fed prosecutors free background information they were unable to get from interviews with him, interviews he refused to grant investigators.
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Cuadra set off to answer “How I ended up in the middle of all of this?” and why the police intercept tapes showed Cuadra and Kerekes were willing to offer Sean Lockhart so much money to join their team. “Sometime around mid-2006, someone at LSG Media sent an e-mail to my Men4RentNow.com escort ad,” Cuadra explained. “It was basically an application ‘for your chance to work with Brent Corrigan himself’ (and) it was extremely pretentious, so I ignored it.”
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Cuadra said he had no idea who Brent Corrigan was, a claim Kerekes would contradict saying that Cuadra had an intense interest in Corrigan. It wasn’t until he began looking for guys to cast in a new porno film for his BoyBatter site, Cuadra said, that he returned to the idea of contacting Lockhart. Cuadra said he reached out to Lockhart and got back a series of “bitchy responses” from Lockhart complaining about how the industry had used him.

Regardless, Cuadra moved the discussion toward payment rates that would entice Lockhart to be in a BoyBatter porno. “(Lockhart) eventually calmed down and basically wanted residual income along with other benefits,” Cuadra wrote. “Keep in mind that I had no clue who Brent Corrigan was. Here is this bratty kid telling me that he wants half.”
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Despite such concerns, Cuadra openly admits he first offered $10,000 and then $30,000 to Lockhart in order to get him to participate in the porno. These are substantial sums for any performer and if raised, would have wiped out nearly all of the liquid assets Cuadra and Kerekes possessed.
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