Cobra Killer (9 page)

In April 2008, the Kocis family and estate won a default judgment of “undetermined damages” against Cuadra and Kerekes after no one representing either defendant responded to the civil filing in the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas.
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The last remnants of Bryan Kocis and the Cobra Video empire he built came tumbling down as a bulldozer and front-end loader reduced his fire-ravaged home at 60 Midland Drive in Dallas Township to rubble on August 17, 2007. As the
Citizens’ Voice
reported, “The half-charred home, guarded by no trespassing signs and crime scene tape had been a haunting sight for residents of Midland Drive, a constant reminder of the night seven months ago when police found (Kocis) slashed and stabbed to death inside his burning home.”
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Neighbor Nancy Parsons, told a reporter that she felt sorry for Bryan and that “once the ground is smoothed over, it’s like you’re erasing him.”
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The lot containing Kocis’ former home was eventually purchased by Parsons and a grassy lot is all that remains of the site today.

Virginia is for Lovers

“Harlow said something to me once…he said, ‘Bo-bo, sometimes I forget what Harlow I am.’ I didn’t think that much about it at the time, but I think there was so much pressure on Harlow, even pressure I put on him, to be so many things. I think he may have just went off a little.”

—Joe Kerekes

Since 1969, tourism officials in Virginia have attempted to lure visitors to the state by reminding them that “Virginia is for lovers.” The phrase has helped boost tourism to the state
and
it accurately describes the relationship between Harlow Cuadra and Joseph Kerekes. Although Cuadra and Kerekes have said they still love each other, they will spend the rest of their lives apart from one another.

Outside of their personal lives, the two men attempted their own form of luring visitors or “tourism” dollars to their own Virginia enterprise. They were so successful, in fact, that at one point local officials in Norfolk became concerned when a Google search of the city’s name would most often pop up with Norfolk Male Companions at or near the top of the search list. It reflected the huge investment the couple put into marketing their escort business not only in Virginia but all across the Atlantic seaboard—fueled by online links and more than $120,000 annually in advertisements placed in gay publications in Baltimore, Richmond, and Washington, D.C.
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They also invested in themselves—spending most mornings at Big House Gym in Virginia Beach. They chose that gym because it lacked all the clients and “fans” of Cuadra found at Gold’s Gym. Kerekes called their new gym “this little shitty thing (where) you slide your card, and no one is ever there, and if they are it’s just great guys, like bartenders and bouncers.”
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Cuadra said he liked the gym because “you can do whatever you want in there.”
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Doing whatever they wanted is just what they did—including filming Cuadra’s first solo gay porn video on the site. It was the start of more to come.

Cuadra was the star on the Norfolk Male Companions and the www.boisrus.com website touted him as “Virginia’s Hottest Gay Male Escort.” On a profile next to photos of Cuadra clad only in revealing underwear, he falsely listed his age as nineteen (he was well into his twenties), his height and weight, the size of his penis, and that he was a “skater” and “surfer,” basically “an All-American next door bad boy” of Cuban-German descent.
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Another posting on the site listed Cuadra as “Stud Wonder Harlow” and declared him as “the hottest ‘top’ in teen porn and escort world as voted by user review sites.”
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A boy named Harlow

Harlow Raymond Cuadra was born August 5, 1981 in Miami, Florida to a fragile and struggling family, ultimately led by his mother, Gladis Zaldivar. With Harlow’s birth father out of the picture and never a presence, Mrs. Zaldivar attempted to build a normal family for her growing brood of four children. But poverty, a divorce and a struggle to learn English and assimilate contributed to continued challenges. The family eventually settled in nearby Homestead, Florida—a town perhaps best known for having been leveled by the devastating Category 5 Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

During his trial for the murder of Bryan Kocis, a psychologist who examined Cuadra described his childhood as a nightmare, a description confirmed by Cuadra’s older brother, José.
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“We were living on welfare, living on food stamps, it was bad,” José Cuadra said.
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An April 1985 marriage for Cuadra’s mother provided financial support but created new tensions that remained a secret for years to come.

“(Our stepfather) had a fixation with Harlow,” José Cuadra said.
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José said his stepfather, would use the ruse of sending him to the store so that he could have time alone with the younger Harlow. Despite these and other allegations, Cuadra’s stepfather was never charged or convicted of child molestation or any related offense.

Gladis Zaldivar said she did not know about the alleged problem for years until she one day decided to open a letter her husband had written to her son, now away at boot camp for the U.S. Navy. Cuadra said when he was in the Navy, his stepfather wrote him many letters—in Spanish—“love letters…like a man would write to a woman. One day, he gives the letter to my mother and tells her to mail this for him,” Cuadra explained. “Well, my mom opens the letter because she wants to add her letter (in) and…she opened the letter so she can add her own and reseal it and she read it and she was—it knocked her out. That terminated their relationship.”
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Though the repeated years of alleged childhood molestation had been difficult, Cuadra said, “I just grinned and bared (the molesting) because it was better me than my little brother and sister.”
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Cuadra said he went to visit his stepfather in 2001 and came out to him as a gay man. His stepfather reacted poorly, Cuadra said, calling him a “faggot.” Cuadra added, “I didn’t understand (his reaction). He threw me out of the house and I had to walk to get a cab.”
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It was shortly after this Cuadra dropped out of all contact with his family. A phone call from his mother, who Cuadra said repeatedly stated her unconditional love for her son, was no help. “I couldn’t accept it, so I got off the phone with her and I threw the phone into a river…I canceled my phone account and I went with another service, and that was the last time I spoke to my parents, in 2001, and my entire side of the family.”
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In the interim, Cuadra and Kerekes gravitated toward Kerekes’ parents who lived nearby in Virginia Beach, whom they called Momma K and Pappa K. “They were my parents and they loved me,” Cuadra said. “They would bring it up, ‘Harlow, you have to meet your mom. You know, we want to meet your mom. You have to find her, Harlow. You have to get to her.’”
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Despite such encouragement, Cuadra said he still resisted. “I couldn’t deal with it,” he said.
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That separation would last until 2007 when Cuadra’s younger brother ran across his name on the Internet as a possible suspect in the murder of Bryan Kocis. His mother and family reached out to him again, reconnecting via MySpace. Cuadra’s youngest brother, David, said he and his sister ran across Cuadra’s name on MySpace and sent Cuadra an e-mail, but reports he received an odd reply: “Sorry, I don’t know any fourteen-year-olds.” David didn’t give up, instead asking his older brother José, now in his late twenties, to send another e-mail, prompting a reunion.

Discovery of Cuadra on MySpace also meant his family discovered his career in gay porn and escorting. “It was weird at first, but he’s my brother,” José testified at Harlow’s trial. “He was scared that we would reject him because he’s gay. He’s my brother.”
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Cuadra cut off family contact after he got out of the Navy, concerned that his sexual orientation on top of his work as a male escort would be too much for them to handle.
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Shortly after the e-mail exchanges with his siblings, however, the five years of silence were ended as Cuadra visited his mother’s home in Greenville, South Carolina, with his partner and lover, Joe Kerekes, along. The visits would continue even as authorities began to close in on Cuadra and Kerekes on a charge of murder. For Cuadra’s youngest sibling, David, “I didn’t care about that, him being gay. I was happy to get my brother back.”
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His sister Melissa felt likewise: “Harlow told us he was afraid we would reject him because he was in the pornography business and he was gay.”
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In and out of the Navy

Cuadra reported for duty in the U.S. Navy in January 2000, and served two years, eleven months and eight days, including receiving training as a hospital corpsman. His last assignment was at the Oceana Naval Air Station at Virginia Beach, Virginia. It was during this time that Cuadra met Joe Kerekes.
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A civilian spokesman for the U.S. Navy confirmed at Cuadra’s trial that he sought separation from the Navy in 2006 on the basis of his admitted homosexuality—a violation of the military’s controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that outlawed service in the military by openly gay individuals. After a short legal struggle, he received an honorary discharge.
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Cuadra described being in the Navy like being “watched over by a loving yet strict parent who kept me fed, clothed and cared for.”
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Shortly after leaving the Navy, Cuadra moved in with Kerekes.

It was a quick romance. “(Joe) was my first and only, definitely my first and only,” Cuadra told film producer John Roecker in his documentary film
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Gay Porn Stars
.
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Cuadra talked about his first date with Kerekes, which consisted of a public meeting at a Virginia Beach shopping mall. “(Joe) thought I wasn’t interested (in him),” Cuadra said. “Like I met him in the mall just to walk around and entertain him and all and not to let him down? But, no, I was really interested, I liked him. It was kind of like my first date. I didn’t know how to act.”
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It would be Kerekes who would draw the still closeted Cuadra out of the closet. “(Joe) sat me down on my bed and he grabbed my fingers and just interlocked them (with his) and all of a sudden everything was, like, muted and I couldn’t hear anything,” Cuadra said. “(Joe’s) eyes were all teary, his searching brown eyes. Then he goes, ‘Harlow, Harlow, I want to be jealous over you.’”
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The “I want to be jealous over you” line was one Kerekes made up, and one that would closely match how he would deal with Cuadra for the forthcoming years.

Cuadra’s post-Navy years, however, were not ones he completely enjoyed, life becoming difficult with the $10-an -hour jobs he was able to get.
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Attempting to go to school to train as a hospital medical technician, along with a high cost of living in the beach community of Virginia Beach, made making ends meet a challenge. “It was out of free will that I escorted, entirely subject to the law of necessity. I needed a job.”
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Looking back, not only does Cuadra point to Kerekes’ influence over him in coming out, he also credits Kerekes with leading him into escorting—a career that Kerekes had already undertaken. “Well, I wish(ed) I could go to school, but…I met Joe and he got me involved in male escorting, which is like being a call-boy, literally,” Cuadra said. “They called me and I went to their homes. It was the first time I had ever done anything like that. I didn’t know that anything like that even existed, at least not something that organized.”
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Early on, Harlow and Joe used “stage” or “performer” names to meet with their clients. “(When) I started working for Joe way back in the day, it was, like, alright ‘Call me Chris,’” Cuadra said, but clients would be confused. “I would have to sit there and convince them that I’m Harlow, and so I said after a while, I was, like, screw it, just use my name ’cause it’s easier for you.”
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Cuadra says his very first client was a man claiming to be a former professional football player with an intense foot fetish. “He wanted me to just lay back and play with my feet. He even forbid me from clipping my own toenails.”
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Before long, Cuadra reports he ceded much of the control of his life to the slightly older Kerekes, his lover but also perhaps a father figure he had never known. Kerekes took care of “booking” Cuadra, all the while keeping Cuadra’s image front and center on the web. “Running the escort service, we were making a lot of money on a daily basis,” Cuadra said. “We thought that as long as the escort business was on the up-and-up, we do not need to send (porn) content out to be printed on DVDs by factories. We didn’t need anybody’s help; we could do it all in house. That was how the whole thing took off.”
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In Roecker’s documentary, Cuadra’s voice, recorded over a phone from inside a correctional facility, rises with excitement as he describes how he would e-mail webmasters at gay porn sites and ask them to attach links from their site to Cuadra and Kerekes’ new enterprise.

There were problems, however.

Criminal records in Virginia indicate that Cuadra’s escort career led to at least two criminal citations during a September 28, 2004 arrest. At that time, police in Norfolk, Virginia charged him with violations of state law covering body massage enterprises and for operating without a city license (two typical citations used by local authorities to crack down on prostitution). A small mountain of civil complaints against both men—primarily tracing back to their difficulty in paying their bills on time—continued to grow through the years as well. Joseph Kerekes had previously filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 1998 that discharged an undisclosed amount of personal debts in April 1999.
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