Cobra Killer (28 page)

It was clear Cuadra was
telling
Maliki what the agreed to alibi was as much as he was trying to recall it—complete with placing the Nissan Xterra in his driveway the day after a similar vehicle was spotted at the murder scene.

Other attempts were made by Cuadra and Kerekes to find alibis among some of their former escort clients, none of them successful.

The troubles with Joe’s alibi

Joseph Kerekes tried, it seems, an evolving approach to explaining exactly what was or was not his involvement in the death of Bryan Kocis. He settled on the version that he agreed to as he pleaded guilty, that he was not at the Kocis home and did not personally or physically participate in slaying Kocis. Beyond that, the story has been a little muddy.

In July 2007, Kerekes granted a jailhouse interview to reporter Ed Lewis of the
Times Leader
to explain himself. Kerekes wove a tangled story of how he and Cuadra made up the model application for Kocis as part of a legitimate business deal to link up their BoyBatter productions with Cobra Video. Kerekes explained that Cuadra using the fake name “Danny” was an attempt to keep Kocis interested, since they feared Cuadra would be viewed as too old (beyond age twenty-five) to be part of Cobra’s target audience.

In this version, Kerekes said that Cuadra went to Kocis’ home around 7:00 P.M. on the night of the murder and that Cuadra called him and said something was wrong and that he was leaving. Cuadra would later tell him, Kerekes said, that he smelled smoke in the house and heard a noise and fled.

Kerekes’ story continued that the couple immediately left the Fox Ridge Inn and fled south on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to return to Virginia. “Harlow said he got there (and) the door (to Kocis’ home) was partially open,” Kerekes told the
Times Leader
. “He looked inside and saw an overturned table and smelled smoke. He said he saw someone on a couch or chair, and heard a noise upstairs, like someone was about to come down.”
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The problem with this version is that it is completely at odds with the known timeline for the crime, eyewitness accounts from neighbors, and is at odds with physical evidence at the scene that showed no overturned table in Kocis’ living room.

The timeline problems suggested by Kerekes’ alibi were most troubling; such as the fact that Kocis was participating in a phone call with his attorney Sean Macias until at least 7:50 P.M., witness statements showing a white SUV leaving the driveway of Kocis’ home around 8:20 P.M., and firefighters notified of a fire at the home at 8:34 P.M.

Kerekes was consistent with saying he stayed at the Fox Ridge Inn in Wilkes-Barre sending e-mails via a free Yahoo account while Cuadra was down the road in Dallas Township. Investigators, however, learned through a flurry of warrants that the last time Kerekes accessed his Yahoo account was at 5:44 P.M. The account was silent, detectives found, until 8:36 P.M., just two minutes after the Dallas Township Fire Department was dispatched to the fire at the Kocis home.

There are other problems with Kerekes story. The state’s Affidavit of Probable Cause and court testimony indicated that the Verizon cell phone Cuadra was using to communicate with Kocis prior to their ill-fated meeting was used for the final time at approximately 6:35 P.M. and the call was relayed by a cellular tower a few hundred yards from Kocis’ house.
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Given that it takes at least twenty minutes to drive from the Fox Ridge Inn in Wilkes-Barre to the Back Mountain area and Kocis’ house, when did Cuadra really leave the motor inn? A 6:30 P.M. departure time that Kerekes gives seems unlikely.

An investigator told the court during preliminary hearings that on the night of the murder “Kocis and ‘Danny’ (Cuadra) made arrangements to meet...” and that those communications were via e-mails, and “(t)he last communication occurred around 7:15 P.M.”
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Another problem arises. If Cuadra left Kerekes behind at the motel room with the computer, was it Kerekes that sent a final 7:15 P.M. e-mail to Kocis forty-five minutes after Cuadra supposedly left the motel? Cell phone records refute the idea of Cuadra being on a cell phone telling Kerekes what to write back at the motel. There’s only one other alternative that fits the facts, especially given the ubiquity of air card access in northeast Pennsylvania: the computer—and most probably Kerekes himself—were both in the SUV with Cuadra, as it headed up Back Mountain. How else to explain what has been documented to have transpired? It’s a claim Kerekes vehemently denied, insisting he was not at the Kocis home.

Another troubling aspect emerged right after the murder as well, as signals from two cell phones registered to Kerekes were processed through a cellular tower on Country Club Road in Dallas Township, a short distance from the murder scene, state police Corporal Hannon said. Hannon told the court the calls were made at 8:36 P.M., two minutes after firefighters were being dispatched to the Kocis home.

All of this raises the many big questions about Kerekes’ alleged alibi: if Joe were at the motel during the time Harlow was visiting Kocis alone, why would two of his cell phones connect to the
same
tower in Back Mountain right after the murder? Was Harlow talking to himself? In fact, why were those two phones anywhere near the house at 8:36 P.M., when Kerekes maintains that Cuadra had arrived at about 7:00 P.M., smelled smoke, saw a body, heard a noise, and took off back to the motel? Put simply, that’s about an hour’s worth of slow-motion panic.
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The problem with all the denials, and really the entire unfolding defense, Cuadra and Kerekes had to construct is captured in what has become known as the Occam Razor principle. The Occam Razor refers to the principle that all things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one. The more facts that defendants must contest and the more explanations they must provide, the more likely they will be convicted. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania succeeded brilliantly in piling up a mountain of facts that left Cuadra and Kerekes searching not only for how to defend the facts piled against them, but also trying to decide which ones to tackle.

Joe keeps talking

It’s not surprising Joe Kerekes once thought of himself as a good candidate to be a preacher. He likes to talk, sometimes too much, and may have terribly undermined his own cause while he waited out the tangled legal back-and-forth that dominated most of the nineteen-month period from his May 2007 arrest to his December 2008 guilty plea.

Given Kerekes’ verbose nature, it’s not unexpected that Pennsylvania investigators ran across jailhouse informants who claimed Kerekes detailed parts of the crime to them.

Robert Tolley was one of Kerekes’ unit mates at the city jail in Virginia Beach while he awaited extradition to Pennsylvania. The thirty-nine-year-old Tolley told investigators that Kerekes openly admitted to killing “some guy in Pennsylvania.”
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Another inmate, John R. Riggs, twenty-five, was housed with Kerekes for about a month at the Western Tidewater Regional Prison in Suffolk, Virginia. He told detectives Leo Hannon and Dallas Township Police Officer Todd Adams during two interviews in June and July 2007 about how Kerekes said the murder was necessary in order to make Kocis “disappear” in order to hire “some porn guy from another state” who was under contract to Kocis. Riggs, serving a sentence for a probation violation for a larceny charge, said that Kerekes placed blame for the murder on Cuadra, saying he stayed in the SUV in the driveway while Cuadra went inside and killed Kocis. Riggs’ detailed account included remarks he said Kerekes made that indicated Kocis was already dead when Cuadra called him into the home, that it was “too bloody” of a scene to clean, that he assisted Cuadra in moving Kocis’ body to a sofa in front of a large screen TV in the living room, and then setting a fire in the home.
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He also provided details that police did not know, that Cuadra had allegedly destroyed items taken from Kocis’ home while the couple had fled to South Beach Miami, Florida after the murder.

Kerekes also gloated, Riggs said, about using sexual favors with police officers and attorneys to get what he wanted in Virginia Beach, but denied he was gay. He also reportedly admitted to taking Kocis’ prized Rolex watch just because “I wanted it.”
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Riggs said Kerekes seemed to be dominant at times with Cuadra, claiming he overheard three-way phone calls between him, Cuadra, and their friend Renee Martin where he heard Kerekes say that Cuadra should “keep his mouth shut” and “don’t talk to anyone.”
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Detectives and prosecutors were quite hopeful about Riggs’ account. He had just over seven months to serve on his probation violation and then would be a free man. He seemed, unlike other jail house informants, to be one without a compelling motive or incentive to lie.

Detective Hannon and Dallas Township Detective Higgins found yet another jailhouse informant who recalled what the talkative Kerekes allegedly told him. Robert G. DeVaughn Rodden, forty-two, said Kerekes sought him out frequently for legal advice while both men shared a cell at the Virginia Beach Correctional Facility.
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Rodden, serving a five-year stint for a stabbing incident, said Kerekes talked freely about how he had traveled to Pennsylvania for the murder. He said Kerekes admitted purchasing a second knife to try and throw off investigators. Kerekes even detailed, Rodden said, a visit to the Wilkes-Barre Wal-Mart in the hours before the murder. The shopping list at the Wal-Mart was unusual. Receipts later seized by investigators revealed that among the Cuadra and Kerekes purchases were KY lubricant, condoms, and lighter fluid.

Rodden said Kerekes also detailed how he had lodged at the Fox Ridge Inn and had “made several phone calls” and used his computer to try and create an alibi for his whereabouts. He also claimed he and Cuadra were not gay, but were into escorting for the money only, and that Cuadra did most of the “mule work” of meeting with clients.
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Kerekes was confident, talking openly about whether he would turn “state’s evidence” against Cuadra, Rodden said, and claimed that he was a wealthy man from his days in escorting and porn. Rodden said Kerekes also stated that “before he got to prison he was doing all kinds of drugs and having a good time.”
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Rodden told detectives that Kerekes “pretty much told him how him (sic.) and that the other guy (Cuadra) did it,” and that Kerekes “probably put the kid (Cuadra) up to it, and now he’s gonna hang him out to dry. I think (Kerekes) was at the victim’s house, though, whether he did the stabbing or not.”
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Rodden reportedly became disenchanted with Kerekes’ casual attitude, one he described as “heartless” about Kocis’ murder, quoting Kerekes as joking, “They haven’t even buried him yet. They have him frozen somewhere.” Rodden also quoted Kerekes as gloating, “They won’t be able to get me for murder. Harlow went out to meet the guy, and he won’t say anything…because I told him not to. I’ll get out in five years and make tons of money off of this.”
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The friend: Renee Martin

One additional informant who would develop along the way, the colorful and sometimes difficult Renee Martin. Martin knew Cuadra and Kerekes as a neighbor from Stratem Court back in Virginia Beach. During that time, she befriended the two men and began to learn more about their business. A “Navy widow” whose husband was often away on military assignments, she grew close to Cuadra, and at least for a time gained the trust of both men. It was a trust she would someday have to betray.

After Cuadra and Kerekes were arrested, Martin’s role in the matter of investigating Bryan Kocis’ death grew. In fact, Kerekes said the couple didn’t know her well at all before the Kocis murder, but that “she was a big supporter of Harlow.”
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At first Martin’s contact with the two, while they were still jailed in Virginia, amounted to moral support and reading to them news reports and blog updates about their case.

Martin’s increased role was aided, however, by her offer or agreement to facilitate “three way conference calls” between Cuadra and Kerekes (who were held in separate jail cells in Virginia Beach pending trial between May 15 and July 16, 2007). Tipped off to the “conference call” arrangements, authorities began audio taping the conversations. The recordings would reveal a painstaking effort on the part of Cuadra and Kerekes (sometimes with the help of Martin) to flesh out and consider various alibi approaches to defend themselves.

In one of the calls, Kerekes “tries out” one of his early alibis by saying he planned to fight extradition by proving he was never in Pennsylvania at the time of the murder. Martin replied, “Yeah, and the problem being with that is, you gave your photo ID for a hotel someplace in Pennsylvania.” Martin told the men during the calls that “the truth is the best way” when considering a plausible alibi, something Kerekes agreed with.
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As a result, in one of the three-way calls Kerekes directly speaks to Cuadra and says, “Ah, Harlow? Listen, we have to go to Plan B. We went there.”

Kerekes told Martin, “You’ve got to explain the truth to Harlow, that we were, ya know,
there
.”
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Martin briefly balked saying she feared any discussion of alibis in her presence “because if they’re listening in on this conversation, and I have three-way’d you, and you guys tell each other what you’re supposed to tell each other, then y’all are gonna get me in trouble.”
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