Joseph Kerekes and the Bryan Kocis Murder Case

Joseph Kerekes is a convicted murderer serving life without the possibility of parole for the January 2007 killing of Bryan Kocis, a gay pornography producer stabbed to death in his Dallas Township, Pennsylvania home. Kerekes and his romantic and business partner Harlow Cuadra were both convicted in the Kocis murder, a case prosecutors described as a business-motivated slaying rooted in the adult film industry. Kocis was stabbed 28 times and his house was set on fire to destroy evidence.¹ Kerekes pleaded guilty in December 2008 and is incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon.²

Who Kerekes Was Before the Murder

Before the killing, Kerekes had lived several lives. He served briefly as a youth pastor at Bethel Temple, a conservative Assemblies of God megachurch in Hampton, Virginia, and enlisted in the Marines, from which he was discharged after a confrontation with a drill instructor.³ He later settled in Virginia Beach and built a gay escort service. Around 2000 he met Harlow Cuadra, then a young Navy recruit stationed in Norfolk, through a Yahoo chat room. Kerekes persuaded Cuadra to leave the Navy and move in with him.⁴

Together they ran Norfolk Male Companions, a male escort service charging two hundred dollars an hour, and a military-themed pornography website called Boybatter.com.⁵ They claimed the escort business employed active-duty military personnel and brought in roughly a million dollars a year.¹ The reality was different. By late 2006 the couple had accumulated nearly a million dollars in debt while driving Dodge Vipers and Corvettes and wearing Rolexes.³

Why Kocis Was Killed

Bryan Kocis, 44, owned Cobra Video, a gay adult film studio in Dallas Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. His biggest star was Sean Lockhart, who performed as Brent Corrigan. Lockhart had reported to the FBI in 2005 that he was underage when he appeared in several Cobra Video films, and he and Kocis fell into bitter litigation, with Kocis suing for breach of contract and trying to trademark the Brent Corrigan name.⁶

Cuadra and Kerekes saw Lockhart as their way out of debt. They believed a video pairing Cuadra with Lockhart could be a “porn blockbuster” worth a million dollars, but Lockhart’s contractual obligations to Kocis and the pending lawsuit stood in the way.⁶ At a dinner during the January 2007 Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, the pair made comments to Lockhart and his partner Grant Roy that prosecutors would later cite as premeditation. Cuadra asked, “What if [Kocis] goes to Canada?” and Kerekes added, “Harlow has this guy who will do anything for him.” Lockhart and Roy testified they were disturbed enough to warn the pair to stay away.⁷

How the Killing Was Carried Out

On January 23, 2007, Cuadra and Kerekes visited Superior Pawn and Gun Shop in Virginia Beach, where Cuadra used a Visa card to buy a serrated folding knife and a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver with ammunition. Cuadra rented a silver SUV. Kerekes prepaid in cash for two nights at the Fox Ridge Inn in Plains Township, about eleven miles from Kocis’s home.⁸

To get inside Kocis’s house, Cuadra had created a Yahoo email account under the alias “Danny Moilin” and posed as a young model interested in filming for Cobra Video. Kocis invited “Danny” over on the evening of January 24. There were no signs of forced entry.⁶ According to Cuadra’s later trial testimony, he entered the house first while Kerekes waited in the rental. About twenty minutes later Kerekes went inside. Cuadra claimed Kerekes was the one who attacked Kocis and slashed his throat. Kerekes emerged around fifteen minutes after that carrying two laptops, computer towers, and other stolen items.⁹

Kocis was stabbed 28 times, including a wound that cut his throat from ear to ear, and the house was set on fire.¹ Emergency responders found his body inside the burning residence.¹⁰ The pair dumped a laptop and papers at a service station and drove back to Virginia Beach.⁹

How Kerekes Was Caught

The fire did not erase the trail. A Pennsylvania State Police computer expert recovered emails sent from Cuadra’s computer establishing the “Danny Moilin” ruse. Cuadra’s Visa records tied him to the pawn shop, and store surveillance video showed both men.⁹ Kerekes’s driver’s license had been used to check into the Fox Ridge Inn near the crime scene.⁶ A February 2007 raid on the couple’s Virginia Beach home turned up two Sony video cameras with scratched-out serial numbers that matched equipment missing from Kocis’s house.⁸

The decisive evidence came through cooperation from Lockhart and Roy. Pennsylvania State Police enlisted the pair to arrange recorded meetings with the suspects. In late April 2007, Roy wore a recording device during meetings with Cuadra and Kerekes in San Diego, including at a nude beach where Cuadra made incriminating statements. Asked whether Kocis suffered, Cuadra said, “Don’t worry, he went quick,” and added, “Seeing that fucker going down… it made me feel better inside.”⁶ Cuadra and Kerekes were arrested in Virginia on May 15, 2007, and extradited to Pennsylvania that July.¹¹

Kerekes’s Guilty Plea and Sentence

In December 2008, Kerekes pleaded guilty in the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas before Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. He was convicted of second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit robbery, theft by unlawful taking, tampering with physical evidence, and conspiracy to commit tampering with physical evidence. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole on the murder count, plus an additional 56 months on the remaining charges. He was also ordered to pay more than $2,500 in funeral costs to Kocis’s estate and $250 in homeowner’s insurance.¹²

Because he pleaded guilty, Kerekes has no right to a direct appeal of his sentence.²

Refusing to Testify Against Cuadra

As part of his plea, Kerekes had agreed to testify against Cuadra.¹³ He never did. At his own sentencing he had already declared, “I absolutely will not testify for the state against Harlow.”¹² When called during Cuadra’s February 2009 trial, he walked to the witness stand, refused to say anything on the record, and left the courtroom quickly without looking at Cuadra. Cuadra was convicted of first-degree murder and eleven additional charges and, after the jury deadlocked on the death penalty, was sentenced to life without parole in March 2009.¹⁴

What Kerekes Has Said From Prison

Kerekes has given several interviews from prison that mix apparent confession with retraction. In a 2016 phone interview with WTKR, he rejected the widely reported claim that debt drove the murder. “We did not do any of this because we were in debt,” he said. “We did this because we wanted more, and we thought we could get away with it.” He described his mindset at the time this way: “We were blurred and blinded by greed, and we thought that we were Gods.”⁵

Speaking to Crime Watch Daily, Kerekes initially appeared to confess to being the one who wielded the knife: “I was in there, I heard it, I was jealous, and I said this is enough.” He later retracted that statement, telling a producer he had said it to help Cuadra, whom he still called the “love of my life.” He then settled on a formulation that acknowledged responsibility without clarity: “Though my hand did not swipe Kocis’s neck physically, it did in every other sense.”¹

In the same segment he characterized Kocis as someone who “needed to be removed to further our business” and claimed he and Cuadra had dealt with “other people” similarly “a couple other times in the past.” No other charges have resulted from that claim.¹⁵ Author Andrew E. Stoner, who interviewed Kerekes for the 2012 book Cobra Killer that was later adapted into the film King Cobra with James Franco playing Kerekes, described him as “open and calm” while discussing the act of cutting the victim’s throat.¹⁶

No physical evidence ever established which of the two men actually held the knife. As one report put it, “there was never any hard evidence that proved one man was more responsible for Kocis’ death over the other.”⁵ Both are serving life without parole in the Pennsylvania state prison system, Kerekes at the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon.²

1
True Crime News. Crime Watch Daily Investigates True Story Behind King Cobra Film
2
Standard-Speaker. Upcoming Film Depicts Slaying of Luzerne Gay Porn Producer
3
Out Magazine. Update: The Case of the Cobra Killer
4
Times Leader. Trial Reunites Harlow Cuadra With His Family
5
WTKR. Cobra Killer
6
Out Magazine. Update: The Case of the Cobra Killer
7
Philadelphia Gay News. Porn Star Testifies in Murder Trial
8
Rolling Stone. Death of a Porn King
9
Philadelphia Gay News. Defendant Testifies in Porn Murder Trial
10
Times Leader. Snapped: Killer Couples Episode Retraces Murder of Dallas Township’s Bryan Kocis
11
Dallas Voice. 2 Adult Video Actors Face Charges in Death of Porn Video Executive
12
Times Leader. Kerekes Gets Life Sentence
13
Justia. Commonwealth v. Cuadra, No. 717 MDA 2014
14
The Advocate. Cuadra to Serve Life in Prison
15
Times Leader. Jailhouse Interview With Dallas Township Gay Porn King Killer to Air
16
Nuvo. Hoosier Author’s Book Becomes a Murder Movie Starring James Franco