Cobra Killer (36 page)

It was a question Kerekes would not answer, Cuadra said, as Kocis lay dying. He said Kerekes ordered him to “just get the fuck in the car,” an order Cuadra said he followed and waited there for about fifteen minutes before Kerekes returned and the couple fled. Before leaving, however, Cuadra said Kerekes loaded several of Kocis’ personal items, including computer towers.

Cuadra said he never noticed any fire while they were still at the scene and only learned about that later from media reports he read online.

Cuadra described a frantic scene that followed. He said Kerekes almost immediately pulled into a nearby gas station to get rid of the paperwork and laptop computer belonging to Kocis, thrown into a trash can adjacent to the gas pumps. From there, he said, a still angry Kerekes took the back seat and ordered Cuadra to drive back to Virginia.

“I’m driving erratic as hell, I’m scared,” Cuadra said. “He’s telling me, ‘Stay in a straight line, Harlow. Slow down, speed up.’ I don’t know what to do.”
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Despite his stated fear at what he has just witnessed, allegedly watching his lover and business partner brutally murder another man, Cuadra said he stayed in the vehicle and continued driving. Eventually, Cuadra said, he began arguing with Kerekes about what had happened. “Then he starts on me,” Cuadra said, retelling how he said Kerekes accused him of breaking their agreed-to escort rules: “You were going to fuck him. You were going to fuck him all night long, weren’t you?”

It was then, Cuadra said, Kerekes struck him as he drove into the night southward. “I drove all the way back home nonstop, (stopping) only once to get fuel, that was it,” Cuadra said. He tried to ask him again why he had done this, Cuadra said, but Kerekes kept telling him to “shut the fuck up” or would strike him and add, “Baby, not now. Not now.”
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Later he said Kerekes began coaching him that the two of them could never talk about what had happened ever again. Cuadra said he saw problems with that, noting that many others knew they were planning a trip to Pennsylvania, including Kerekes’ mother.

Figuring out their stories and keeping them straight would come later. For now, Cuadra said he was tired when he finally arrived home in the pre-dawn hours and collapsed on his bed and slept for hours.

“I completely shut down after that day”

Cuadra described for jurors the days after he returned to Virginia as ones where he “completely shut down.” He said he cringed as he heard what he thought was Kerekes on the phone gloating to Lockhart the very next day about having hired a hit man to take care of Kocis. Despite Lockhart’s testimony to the contrary, Cuadra denied he ever spoke to Lockhart the day after the murder. Cuadra did confirm a subsequent call came in a few hours later from Grant Roy in which he told Kerekes to stay away from him and Lockhart.

The empty weeks that followed found Cuadra and Kerekes seeking out legal advice from their attorney, Barry Taylor, who warned them to stay away from law enforcement and Lockhart and Roy. The couple only visited their home a few additional times to pick up items as they stayed a week or so at a time at various Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida hotels.

The day the search warrant was served on their home the couple fled even further south to Florida, but not before raising some additional cash by pawning Cuadra’s Rolex watch that he considered “a wedding band” from Kerekes.

Cuadra told jurors it was at this point he wanted to come forward to talk to police because he had been identified publicly as “a person of interest” in the murder of Bryan Kocis. Conflicts about whether Taylor represented Cuadra or Kerekes combined with Kerekes’ insistence that he keep quiet, meant Cuadra never came forward to talk to investigators.

Hidden away in a small condo in South Beach Miami, Florida, Cuadra said he continued to struggle to eat, sleep, or keep his spirits up. He said Kerekes refused to let him go anywhere on his own, and he rarely left the condo. The couple paid for their expenses, he said, with about $100,000 in cash Kerekes reportedly had hidden in a backpack.

“At first, Joseph started drinking everyday, early in the day now,” Cuadra said explaining their nightmarish refugee life. “He didn’t even wait until the afternoon anymore. Early in the day, he was hammered.”
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By now, spring had arrived and authorities continued to piece together, bit by bit, who had killed Kocis. It was also during this period that Roy and Lockhart reached out to investigators and began filling in some of the holes in the story. If Joseph Kerekes knew that, he certainly would have never e-mailed Roy and Lockhart about jump-starting their porn production plans. His entreaties to them, perhaps reflecting the alcohol abuse that was occurring, included an open threat to Roy and Lockhart about the Kocis murder followed quickly by a hasty “I’m sorry.” It was a familiar, brutish style that Kerekes personified, Cuadra said: act rash and violently and quickly apologize and try to make amends.

Cuadra said he experienced more wrath when he allegedly challenged Kerekes for having reached out to Roy and Lockhart to restart their porn project. Cuadra thought it was a bad idea, but if Cuadra was having any effect at slowing down Kerekes’ moves to get back into porn production, it didn’t show. Soon the infamous trip to San Diego was in the works and meetings with Roy and Lockhart were set up that ultimately would bring the end to freedom for Cuadra and Kerekes.

Cuadra said his continual badgering of Kerekes and his expressions of opposition to going to San Diego brought on another violent outburst. “He grabbed me and he pinned me to the wall and he said, ‘So what? I killed him. So what? I got away with murder. It’s on the back burner,’” Cuadra said Kerekes yelled.
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It was part of an emerging pattern, Cuadra said, during their final days of freedom where he said Kerekes abused large amounts of alcohol and was often “out of control” and was “self-destructive.” Whatever Kerekes’ behavior was, it didn’t cause Cuadra to flee or refuse the trip to San Diego. In fact, he went along and was recorded in both meetings with Roy and Lockhart as being an active participant in the current plans.

Cuadra’s story: It was all Joe

Back when he was arrested in May 2007, Cuadra provided an unprompted outburst for investigators while he sat at the Virginia Beach Police Department awaiting questioning: “Joe didn’t do it,” the detectives said he offered without prompting.

His story was going to change.

By the time of his March 2009 trial, Cuadra had turned that statement on its head and basically argued that the murder of Bryan Kocis and all related activities to that were all Joseph Kerekes’ idea.

So why did he change his story? In Cuadra’s words, beyond being frightened of Kerekes, he said he worried Kerekes would get the death penalty. “I said, ‘Joe didn’t do it’ (because) I felt bad even saying everything I had said…I did not want them to kill Joe. You know, I love him. He had already killed somebody, but I didn’t see a reason why somebody else should die.”
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Cuadra’s attorney Paul Walker then led him through tedious and lengthy explanations about various statements he was recorded making during the luncheon and beach meetings in San Diego. A classic example, prior to meeting with Roy and Lockhart, Cuadra said Kerekes got threatening: “He scolds me real bad. He reprimands me. He gets right into my little zone and he’s, like, ‘Harlow, you’re going to sell this. You’re going to sell it, you’re going to sell it.’”
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From there, Cuadra said Kerekes controlled everything he said or offered on the tapes, including specific information about Kocis’ home and stolen property that had never been released publicly before. On the tape, it sounds like a coordinated effort with Cuadra and Kerekes trying to move forward with their grand plans to make porn movies with the great Brent Corrigan character. At trial, however, jurors were asked by Cuadra and his counsel to believe that the tapes just reflected a frightened defendant doing as he was told by a dominant, threatening Kerekes.

“Then when I thought that part of the conversation would be over, Joseph starts talking business again (with Roy), and obviously, that’s going nowhere,” Cuadra claimed. “So Joseph gives me this little look and pushes me towards him, like, ‘keep talking, keep talking, make (Roy) happy.’”
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Cuadra used this explanation to cover why he was recorded saying that Kocis had died quickly. He said he was saying whatever it was he thought Roy wanted to hear. He also said his comments about “feeling good” about seeing Kocis go down was just more of Kerekes coaching him. He testified that Kerekes told him, “Baby, you got revenge” for what his stepfather allegedly did to him.
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“I was very immature out there (on the beach), but I was scared,” he said. “That was not me. That was not something that I would do. You know, Joseph promised me that if I did that, that would be the end of Sean and Grant, and I would never have to talk to them again, never have to deal with that again, that he would put it behind us and that we can go on with a life.”
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Cuadra even offered jurors alternate theories on why and how police investigators were able to uncover his approaches to former clients, begging them to help provide an alibi for the day Kocis was murdered. As expected, it was all Kerekes’ idea.

He described for jurors an elaborate “communication system” inside the Virginia Beach Correctional Center (where he was initially housed) that Kerekes used to keep in contact with him. He said notes slipped to trusted inmates would be carried to and from Cuadra and Kerekes in exchange for a candy bar or other favors. The notes from Kerekes, he said, ordered him to seek out alibis.

Later, under cross-examination, Cuadra said Kerekes even tried communicating with him in elevators inside the Virginia Beach Correctional Facility when both men were brought in for hearings. “Sometimes, after certain court hearings, they would stick both of us in the elevator together,” he said. “They would make us face the wall of the elevator and he would be side by side with me; and he would bump into me like playfully, and I would look at him. You know, there never was any security. He could have bitten my nose off.”
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Three-way phone calls that Kerekes and Cuadra conducted later on, set up by their friend Renee Martin, were also Kerekes’ idea, Cuadra said (something Martin also confirmed in her testimony). It was all too much for him, Cuadra said, and eventually contact with Kerekes ended and not only did their physical paths diverge, but so did their stories. Kerekes eventually admitted guilt to a portion of the crime and accepted a plea agreement. Cuadra wanted to go to trial.

Bringing Cuadra’s Trial to a Close

“Mr. Melnick, you’re the only one out of ninety (witnesses)…the only that that is calling me a murderer or an accomplice or a conspirator. Your statements, Mr. Melnick, are not evidence.”

—Harlow Cuadra fighting back under
cross examination

Cross-examining the witness

No one could blame assistant DA Michael Melnick if he relished the rare chance to cross-examine a defendant in a major murder case. It’s an unusual circumstance and one many prosecutors would undoubtedly savor. Melnick did not disappoint. He was well prepared and alternately polite and bombastic in his approach to Cuadra, a man who had openly declared himself on the witness stand “a gay porn star” in the heart of conservative northeast Pennsylvania.

Melnick started by reminding Cuadra of his “plans” sent to his friend Renee Martin on how to pick apart the growing mountain of state’s evidence and to put the victim, Bryan Kocis, on trial. Melnick also gained ground by emphasizing that Cuadra had successfully pulled (Melnick called it “manipulated”) more than $70,000 from one of his former escort clients to finance his defense.

Melnick then read back to Cuadra a transcript of a taped phone conversation between him and Martin where he cast himself as “poor Harlow” and admitted that he would rather go to “the slammer” by himself than implicate Kerekes. “My self-esteem was so low at the time that (Kerekes) gave me this, I just wanted to protect him,” Cuadra said. “That is basically it. I knew that by everything that had happened, that they would give him the death penalty if he did come to trial and he knew that himself.”
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Melnick continued to pick apart what he called Cuadra’s portrayal of Kerekes as “The Terror of the Tidewater” and his strong influence over Cuadra’s actions.

Particularly damaging to Cuadra’s claims was another taped three-way conversation between him, Kerekes, and Martin. Apparently still believing he would take the blame for the crime, Cuadra is recorded as encouraging Kerekes to keep the BoyBatter and BoisRUs enterprises going. “Honestly, I need you to run the escort service,” the tape recorded Cuadra saying to Kerekes. “I need you to run the porn site. I need you to film these kids.” The tape captured Kerekes replying, “I will. So even though Renee is saying move to Dallas, you want me to stay here (in Virginia)?” Cuadra replied on tape, “Yeah. I would actually want you to stay there. I need you to film kids.”
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This was more damning evidence that flew in the face of Cuadra’s repeated claims that Kerekes was the dominant, abusive, and sometimes violent boss of their operations. Here on tape was Cuadra mapping out their company’s future with apparently Kerekes at the helm while Cuadra served a jail sentence. Cuadra denied to Melnick that he was ordering Kerekes to do anything. “I was not giving him orders, maybe it may have sounded like an order, but I don’t tell Joseph Kerekes what to do.”
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