Cobra Killer (31 page)

Pennsylvania experts and other forensic pathologists contacted, however, doubt that Cuadra was telling the truth. Pathologists confirm that any person who had suffered the gaping neck wound that took Kocis’ life (including severing his vocal chords and esophagus) would have been unable to speak during or after the attack.

The brutality of the attack apparently bothers even Kerekes. Mentioning the twenty-eight post-mortem stab wounds to Kocis’ body, prompting the original mutilation of a corpse charge, “tells me there was something really, really wrong with Harlow. I think he was really angry about his life, about (allegedly) being molested as a boy,” Kerekes said, his voice trailing off. “And I think Harlow was angry with me, too.”
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Preparing for an unusual case in Luzerne County

The media in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton had closely followed the story of the Bryan Kocis murder case. Rarely do stories come along in this quiet part of northeast Pennsylvania that include such sensational elements as violent murder, gay porn, gay escorts and prostitution, and clandestine tape recordings of suspects while on a nude beach thousands of miles away at the Pacific Ocean.

As a result, continued pressure was placed on Judge Olszewski to consider granting defense motions to move Cuadra’s upcoming trial out of the county. Olszewski held firm and said the case would be heard in Luzerne County. He did allow a rather unusual set of “juror questionnaires” by Cuadra’s defense team to go forward. Those seventy-one questions pressed potential jurors in the county about a variety of issues, including the publicity surrounding the case; their views on sexual orientation, pornography, and prostitution; the violent nature of the crime; and their views on capital punishment.

The questionnaires provided a brief pre-trial glimpse into what lay ahead. Questions posed to potential jurors included:

• Do you perceive that homosexuals are more or less likely to commit crimes or engage in criminal conduct?
  
• Have you, members of your family, or close friends ever:
  

• —made a joke about homosexuals?
  
• —referred to homosexuals by using a derogatory term such as “fag,” “queer,” etc.?
  
• —felt uncomfortable in the presence of a homosexual, whether in a public facility, metropolitan area, or neighborhood?
  
• —avoided situations where contact with homosexuals would be anticipated?
  
• —avoided TV or media programs where homosexuals would be depicted simply because of that fact alone?
  
• —commented about the propriety of homosexuals living in committed relationships?
  
• —remarked or objected to the demonstration of homosexual civil marriage ceremonies?
  
• —refused to associate yourself with homosexuals?
  
• —commented on a perceived connection between homosexuals and disease including but not limited to HIV and the AIDS virus?
  

• Would you find the testimony of a homosexual less reliable than someone else’s just because they were homosexual?
  
• Are you conscious of any prejudice or bias against homosexuals?
  
• Are you or any member of your family or close friends’ members of any group or organization that advocates against homosexuality?
  

The probing questions went on, including a variety related to pornography:

• Are people engaged in the pornography industry more likely to commit crimes or to engage in criminal activity?
  
• Do you object to those who profit from the display of homosexual activities or pornography?
  
• Would the fact that the defendants (and the victim) were involved in homosexual pornography in any way affect your ability to be a fair and impartial juror?
  

Potential jurors also were probed on their views on capital punishment, including:

• Would you reject or reduce the weight of evidence presented by defendants to support a claim that life without parole should be imposed?
  
• Would you automatically hold that in a case such as this, the death penalty should be imposed, without regard to the weighing process for evidence?
  
• Do you believe the death penalty should be automatically imposed every time a person is convicted of first degree murder?
  
• Do you have any religious, moral or other objections to the death penalty to such a degree that it would prevent you from sitting as a juror or imposing a sentence of death?
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Experienced counsel

Attorneys for both the state and Harlow Cuadra brought a lot of previous experience to the trial, although their time to prepare was very different. As reporters noted, the state had twenty-six months to prepare its case for trial. Defense attorneys had three months.

Defense attorneys Joseph R. D’Andrea and Paul J. Walker took on their client on December 10, 2008. They were the last in series of attorneys who represented Cuadra along the way. D’Andrea and Walker were appointed to the case by Judge Olszewski after Cuadra’s previous attorneys, Stephen Menn and Michael Senape, were relieved of their duties after a conflict of interest was determined.

D’Andrea was well known to Luzerne County residents mostly because of his work defending a former Scranton, Pennsylvania police lieutenant in the shooting death of his wife. Walker met D’Andrea while both worked as assistant district attorneys in nearby Lackawanna County.

For the state, assistant DA Michael Melnick was an experienced criminal court litigator, as was assistant district attorney Shannon Crake. Melnick had eight years of experience as an assistant district attorney prosecuting high profile Luzerne County cases, while Crake had three years experience as a DA. Joining the state’s team was Allyson Kacmarski, who joined the DA’s staff about a year before the start of the Cuadra trial.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Cuadra

A total of 125 Luzerne County residents received summons to appear on Tuesday, February 17, 2009 to be considered as jurors in the case of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania versus Harlow Raymond Cuadra. Jury selection started slowly—only one person OK’d for jury service after a full day of questioning of candidates. Prosecutors and defense attorneys, under Pennsylvania law, were each given twenty “strikes” or excuses to drop any particular person as a juror.

While potential jurors were excused for typical reasons, such as having heard publicity about the case, schedule conflicts, or health concerns, some were dismissed because of their openly stated prejudicial beliefs. One man said he did not support the death penalty, while another complained that the state of Pennsylvania never seemed to get around to executing anyway and therefore did not want to serve. Another told attorneys that “I’m prejudiced against (Cuadra’s) lifestyle, gay pornography; I can’t deal with that.”
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As attorneys for both sides questioned an unnamed woman known only as “Juror No. 99” she volunteered, “I just can’t believe he did it. He looks like a kid.” She was not seated for the jury.
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In the end, attorneys questioned 122 of the 125 potential jurors over the course of a week before settling on a panel of eight men and four women, as well as four alternates (three men and one woman). Among them were a retired Army depot employee, a retired postal worker, a restaurant hostess, a metro transportation employee, and a housekeeper.

Family members for the victim and for Cuadra were present during each step of the selection process. Cuadra, appearing each day in a suit and tie, offered a quiet “Good morning” to potential jurors on the first day and waved at them.
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The murder trial of Harlow Cuadra finally began on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 in Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas II. For four weeks, jurors would hear an incredible parade of eighty-six witnesses put on by the state in making their case for Cuadra’s guilt. Cuadra’s defense would start and finish in just one day.

There was little doubt in the minds of the two prosecutors who lead the trial against him: Harlow Cuadra was more than capable of inflicting the fatal blow to Bryan Kocis’ neck. As Melnick put it, “Cuadra was a little, raw-boned (man) at the time. There is no question that he could do this, that he was able to do this against a middle-aged man who was not expecting this at all. My gut feeling is that Cuadra acted alone. Harlow was very wily in his sexual whims and clearly he was able to captivate people…with his charisma and Mr. Kocis fell for it hook, line, and sinker.”
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Assistant DA Crake points out that “there seemed to be this effort to make (Cuadra) appear to be very weak and mild at the time of the trial” and that he had lost a great deal of weight between the time of his arrest in May 2007 and his trial in March 2009. At trial, Cuadra also sported never-before-seen framed eyeglasses that seemed to add to his youthful look and seemed to be placed on and off his face with great regularity, depending on what was occurring in the courtroom.
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Cuadra himself supported that idea in a jail-house letter he wrote to one-time friend and confidant, Renee Martin. In it he admits to dropping his weight down to 130 pounds “with shoes on.”
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Among the concerns Cuadra expressed to Martin in a pre-trial letter dated October 13, 2007 was the manner in which he was being portrayed on various websites. Objecting to the use of the phrase “Stud Wonder” to describe him on the www.boybatter.com site, Cuadra wrote to Martin that his “Plan” to be acquitted had a lot to do with image. He apologized to Martin “that you have seen how ugly ninety-nine percent of gay men are” and “it’s terrible how they sit back and do nothing.”
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Opening statements

In his opening statement lasting an hour, Melnick told jurors that Cuadra’s actions were “the horror and heavy tidings given to the Kocis family in the new year. This is a case that stretched from the shores of the Atlantic to the sands of the Pacific.”
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As Melnick graphically described the wound to Kocis’ neck, the victim’s mother, Joyce Kocis, wept. Melnick said jurors would hear Cuadra in his own words and his own voice describing how Kocis died quickly in the attack and that “Actually seeing (Kocis) go down made me feel better inside.”
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Melnick said Cuadra wanted to lure “the Tom Cruise type of gay porn” to his company and Kocis was standing in the way of his plans.
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Meanwhile, Cuadra’s co-defense attorney Joseph R. D’Andrea said in his fifteen-minute opening statement that “our defense is simple, Harlow didn’t do it.” D’Andrea asked jurors to play close attention to evidence they would hear that implicated others, such as Joseph Kerekes, Grant Roy, and Sean Lockhart in the murder of Kocis. “They hated him…they wanted him dead,” D’Andrea said.
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D’Andrea centered quickly on what would become a foundation of the defense: the murder of Bryan Kocis was the work of Joseph Kerekes, not Harlow Cuadra. “Joe was the dominant partner,” D’Andrea told jurors. “Joe was controlling and he controlled Harlow, both on the personal and professional level.” Kerekes only cared about making money, D’Andrea said, and thought nothing of “prostituting his own lover, Harlow, to make money. Harlow sits here innocent and he has the protection of innocence throughout this trial.”
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Key pieces of evidence tell the means

Although physical evidence linking Cuadra or Kerekes to the murder of Bryan Kocis remained nearly impossible for police and prosecutors to uncover, there were several key pieces of circumstantial evidence that helped them tell the story in trying to convict Cuadra at trial. Prosecutors wasted no time in getting to that evidence.

Among some of the telling circumstantial evidence found came from Scott Walsh, a security manager for the Wilkes-Barre Wal-Mart store. Walsh testified about $139 of items prosecutors alleged Cuadra and Kerekes purchased at 11:20 A.M. on the day of the murder using a credit card, including the rather conspicuous purchase of Ronsonol lighter fluid in snowy Pennsylvania in January. Barbeques end in this part of the country when the snow flies, and lighter fluid is not a hot seller during the winter months, Walsh said. In fact, Walsh told jurors out of the more then 5,700 Wal-Mart stores across America, the Wilkes-Barre store was the only one to sell any lighter fluid that January day.
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Cuadra and Kerekes’ other purchases were less telling. Retrieved receipts would show the couple purchased Trojan ultra thin condoms, Magnum large condoms, KY brand “natural feeling” liquid lubricant, a slide lighter, a multi-tool kit, Jet-Alert caffeine tablets, ibuprofen and aspirin tablets, chewing gum, lip balm, and shower gel. Wal-Mart was unable to produce a videotape of the purchases, however, as the request for that came beyond the date which the store typically records over older tapes. No Wal-Mart employee could positively identify Cuadra or Kerekes as having made the purchases, either.
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Other circumstantial evidence came in the form of records of a pre-paid cellular telephone purchased by Cuadra and Kerekes. The pre-paid phone records recovered by police showed it was used sparingly during its short life span of January 22 to 24, 2007. Beyond its activation, the phone was used “a number of times” to call Kocis’ home, police said. The first outgoing call being on the phone was placed on January 22 at 7:26 P.M., bouncing off a cell tower located on Bells Road in Virginia Beach, just a few hundred yards of Cuadra and Kerekes’ home. The last call on the phone was placed on January 24 at 6:35 P.M. and relayed off a cell phone tower on Country Club Road in Dallas, Pennsylvania, just behind Kocis’ home.