Cobra Killer (38 page)

“Motive, money, Kerekes,” D’Andrea said were the three things jurors needed to know about who killed the victim. He said Kerekes and his “relentless” pursuit of Lockhart required that he remove Kocis as an obstacle. Motive, money and Kerekes when added to the questions without answers raised by prosecutors, D’Andrea said, and jurors had no choice but to find Cuadra innocent.

For his part, Melnick started off by saying that he could agree with D’Andrea on one point: “Joseph Kerekes is a murderer, but Joseph Kerekes isn’t on trial. This wasn’t a solo act.”
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He said he also didn’t care how Cuadra threw a football and that nothing disproved that Cuadra was “ripped” in his muscular development from being a “gym rat.” “(Cuadra) certainly had the strength to behead and nearly decapitate Mr. Kocis,” Melnick said.
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Melnick walked jurors through the now well explored mountain of circumstantial evidence looming over Cuadra and his freedom. He noted that Cuadra had purchased lighter fluid the day of Kocis’ murder from a Wal-Mart store in Wilkes-Barre, but did not smoke. It was also the only lighter fluid sold anywhere in the U.S. that day by Wal-Mart, Melnick noted. “(Cuadra) doesn’t smoke, nor does Kerekes but they’re buying lighter fluid in the dead of a Pennsylvania winter,” Melnick laid before jurors.
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Melnick reminded jurors that Cuadra operated what was considered, in the gay porn business, a mediocre website. “But you heard him. What did the defendant call himself? ‘I’m a gay porn star.’ He was a wanna be. He wanted to be a big deal.”
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Melnick asked jurors to question seriously Cuadra’s testimony by considering: “Was the defendant telling the truth? He has the most at stake. He has a significant interest to lie and fabricate, and you have to take that into account. Does it ring true or is it complete, unadulterated fiction?”
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Cuadra’s own words were damning, Melnick said, as he read from a letter Cuadra wrote trying to work up an alibi. “Innocent people don’t need alibis,” Melnick declared.
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Judge Olszewski took more than ninety minutes to read particularly detailed instructions to the jury about their deliberations, admitting from the bench that “these are the longest instructions I’ve ever given to a jury.”
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Olszewski told jurors that Cuadra could be found guilty of homicide in the case whether they believed he actually killed Kocis himself, was an accomplice to someone else killing him, or was part of a conspiracy to plan the murder of Kocis.

The verdict: Guilty

Jurors took three hours and thirty-four minutes (including time taken for smoke breaks and a lunch) to make up their mind. Deliberations were heated at times, jurors reported. On an initial vote, all eight men on the jury voted to convict Cuadra, two of the women voted to acquit, and two said they were unsure, confirmed two jurors, Stavitzski and James Scutt, III. Seated around a large round table in the jury room “everyone started giving their theory of the case, and two of the women were saying, ‘I don’t know if they proved enough,’ and you know, some of us were very passionate about his guilt,” Stavitzski said. “We would tell them all of the reasons we thought he was guilty, we would go over our theories, but it was getting a little heated.”
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Some of the men decided to back up and avoid angering fellow jurors, something they thought would be unproductive to deliberations. A smoke break among the jurors who smoked and lunch helped ease tensions.

After lunch, some of the female jurors still remained unconvinced and sought clarification about whether they could in fact find Cuadra guilty of murder even if they believed he was only an accomplice. The judge confirmed they could, and urged them to continue deliberating.

In the end, they found Cuadra guilty on all twelve counts he faced.

Cuadra sat silently and stared ahead as the verdicts were read. Perhaps heeding admonishments from Judge Olszewski, Cuadra’s outspoken and emotional mother Gladis Zaldivar muttered quietly the word “No, no, no” over and over. Cuadra’s sister Melissa told reporter Coulter Jones from the
Citizens Voice
that her mother was “hanging on by a thread” and that “We’ve believed in Harlow since the beginning that he’s innocent. We know him.”
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Kocis’ mother and father quietly embraced one another and hugged and then shook the hands of Melnick and the rest of the prosecution team.

Outside the courtroom, Cuadra’s mother had lost her ability to control her bubbling emotions. Cries and screams were heard as family members tried in vain to block her from the view of TV reporters and cameras. In broken English she cried out, “Joseph Kerekes! Joseph Kerekes! He is the killer, not my son!” As her family helped her make her way to the courthouse steps, Zaldivar was inconsolable. “My son is a victim! My son is a victim! I need my son!” she shouted and began to sob.
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The penalty phase: Life or death?

Under Pennsylvania law (and other states), the same jury that determined Cuadra’s guilty or innocence must also consider a recommendation on sentencing: they would weigh whether Cuadra would be executed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for his crimes or receive some lesser sentence. Pennsylvania law requires that the jury reach a unanimous decision on a penalty of death. Short of that, Olszewski would be required to impose a life sentence without parole.

Melnick and the District Attorney’s Office had no reason to be hopeful the death penalty was achievable, as local media pointed out that it had been more than a decade since a Luzerne County jury had agreed to impose the death penalty on anyone. In fact, the
Times Leader
noted that since 1985, ten death penalty cases had been heard in Luzerne County and only one, the case of convicted child-killer Michael Bardo, had resulted in a death sentence.
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Melnick’s argument focused on two aggravating circumstances he said existed that favor finding for a death sentence: the crime was committed as part of other felonies (such as robbery) and that Cuadra’s acts put the lives of others at risk (to wit: firefighters who responded to the house fire set after the murder).

He repeated his suggestion that Cuadra had fled the Navy to avoid serving during a period of military conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Did the defendant, as he’s presenting, demonstrate selfless sacrifice or selfish indulgence?” Melnick asked.
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Cuadra’s counsel Paul Walker focused jurors on what he said were mitigating factors in the defendant’s favor, such as his basically crime-free background, his military career and service, alleged sexual abuse suffered as a child, poverty experienced as a child, and his mental and psychological state as a result of his relationship with Kerekes.

“The defense can also ask the jury to show mercy, which is a legally recognized mitigating factor,” reporter Terrie Morgan-Besecker wrote in the
Times Leader
. “It, by itself, can outweigh all other factors in a jury’s decision.”
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Both sides presented testimony, all of it highly emotional.

Cuadra’s mother and his brother José Cuadra outlined for jurors the difficult childhood and adolescence Harlow had experienced because of poverty and alleged childhood sexual molestation. His mother noted, “Before he was born, I fought for his life. And I fight for his life now. That is all I can say.” She told jurors that she acted immediately when she learned her middle son may have been a victim of sexual abuse, and said, “It’s embarrassing, I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I didn’t know,” as she turned sobbing toward her son at the defense table.
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At least two jurors were unmoved by Cuadra’s mother and felt she may have attempted to manipulate emotions of jurors in the courtroom, even “synchronizing” her weeping to that of Cuadra during key moments in the testimony. They also noted Mrs. Zaldivar positioned herself on a hallway bench near the jury deliberation room, and “every time we took that route, she was there crying,” Stavitzski said.
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“She’d be out on the bench, crying out loud,” fellow juror Scutt confirmed, adding that a baby was sometimes present, who was also wailing and crying.
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Jurors Stavitzski and Scutt took note of testimony that revealed Cuadra had had no contact with his family for more than six years, and sent them no money during a period of time he boasted he was making hundreds of thousands of dollars as an escort and porn actor. “If you loved your mother that much, and she’s that poor, why wouldn’t you send her a couple thousand bucks?” Scutt asked.
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During the penalty phase, Kocis’ father Michael also testified on behalf of his family about what the brutal murder and loss of his son had meant to their family. Calling Bryan “my first and only son,” Michael Kocis detailed what he believed were the positive aspects of his son’s life and asked jurors to forgive him for his inability to get out his entire statement without weeping. “We have been through hell,” Michael Kocis said. “It will never be over for us.”
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The jury speaks

“One-by-one, they walked past Harlow Cuadra without looking at him,”
Times Leader
reporter Edward Lewis wrote about the scene unfolding in Wilkes-Barre. He noted the same twelve people who had found him guilty of murder “will walk past Cuadra perhaps for the final time today as they decide if he should spend the rest of his life in prison or be executed.”
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Jury members took just over five hours before returning to the courtroom to report via their elected foreman that they were unable to reach a unanimous decision on the penalty of death. The jury foreman told the judge that the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on one of the two aggravating factors argued by the state. Later jurors revealed that eight jurors agreed that it was Cuadra who had actually cut Kocis’ throat, but four jurors remained unsure or disagreed. As a result, they never discussed the death penalty. “No one (knew) who did the actual deed of slashing the man’s throat,” juror Ellen Matulis told reporters. She said she believed Cuadra could have just been an accomplice of Kerekes in committing the murder.
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Matulis said feelings ran high among jurors during their deliberations. “I’d be a liar if I said voices weren’t raised,” she said. “Obviously, if you got people who want a death penalty, it gets tense. We carried a person’s life in our hands.”
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Another juror, retired postal worker Daniel Austin, said that he felt Cuadra’s testimony was particularly unhelpful to his case. “He shot himself in the foot with the different lies,” Austin said. “In my eyes, Harlow was definitely the one who did the actually killing.”
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Matulis agreed that any thought of “reasonable doubt went out the window when (Cuadra) opened his mouth,” noting that his testimony clearly placed himself at the murder scene.
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Juror Stavitzski agreed, noting that it was next to impossible to match Cuadra’s version of the murder (and his claim that Kocis uttered words after having his throat slashed) with the physical evidence presented by the pathologist. “That kind of set everything in motion for us,” Stavitzski said.
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Fellow juror Scutt said he felt “Cuadra talked in circles on the witness stand,” but it was no wonder. “That entire prosecution team was writing down every word Harlow said on the stand, they were just writing and writing,” he said. “So when Melnick got up there (to cross-examine him), they were handing him all kinds of notes, like it was a shark feeding frenzy.”
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Cuadra’s testimony became key for jurors, Scutt said, characterizing the defendant’s testimony as “the only direct evidence” that jurors heard, “everything else was circumstantial evidence, there was no DNA presented, no eyewitness to point to Cuadra directly.”
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“The most important witness in any criminal case, no matter if it’s homicide, burglary, or whatever, is the defendant himself, because he has the most to lose or gain,” Scutt said. “So, you’ve got to look at the credibility of all witnesses. The defendant himself, you have to put a little more weight on how he testifies and Harlow Cuadra had two years to rehearse his testimony.”
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Even with two years to polish his story, Scutt said Cuadra “still got up there and gave all of these different versions of what happened, and the guy was full of shit. I mean, I’m just being honest…he was full of shit.”
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Stavitzski agreed, noting “Harlow’s testimony was erratic…he had more holes in his story than Swiss cheese.”
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Some of the jurors found precise testimony and evidence concerning a specific “window” in which Kocis was likely killed most compelling. They noted Kocis’ neighbor Amy Withers testified that as she bathed inside her home (located just a few feet north of Kocis’ driveway) at 7:26 P.M., she heard a car door open and close next door. Representatives of America Online reported Kocis’ open access to their services ended at 8:12 P.M. (reflecting the time when the computer towers were likely pulled by the perpetrator). Withers’ friend Amy Zamerowski reported she witnessed the silver SUV backing from Kocis’ driveway precisely as she drove by at 8:26 P.M. en route to her friend’s house next door. Zamerowski said she was inside Withers’ home only five minutes before another neighbor began knocking on the door, warning them to get out because of the fire at the adjacent Kocis home. Records showed the Dallas Fire Department was called at 8:32 P.M. and arrived on the scene less than two minutes later.