Troubles in Burgerland?

Hmmmm...:

http://www.luckybucksbarandgrill.com/

Or maybe Lee Bergeron just put Jeremy in charge of the site... LOL!

For the backstory on this, see here.

Moving Out

This from Brent's latest blog post:

"...I’m moving out of the home we live in. I’ve been apartment hunting in San Diego. Grant is really worried about letting me go and he does not want it. But I know that if I get some independence and spend less time here, we will get along better. I know it will take some of the strain off of us. Even if he doesn’t want to admit it, getting some space will save our relationship...."

Read the whole thing.

Not much of a shocker, really, if you have been following Brent's blog the past few months; past posts have told of the strain the murder and trial have placed on then, and the glacial melting of their relationship as a result. A slow, reluctant and (thus far) amicable break up. And you know, I think it's fair to say most relationships would have imploded much sooner, under half the strain and pressure this one was subject to, over the past couple years.

Yet another casualty of Harlow and Joe's actions, two Januaries ago.

It would be additionally unfortunate, IMO, if this also led to the breakup of their website and business arrangements. This is not due to me being a "fan" of Brent per se, but rather (as I have said before) me being a fan of ANY porn star who has the guts to take on the gay porn establishment, use the freedom of the internet to strike out on their own, and break the shackles imposed by exploitive porn companies (ie, Cobra Video).

Let me close this post with a quote from the Crab Catcher Transcripts; this is while they are in the car, driving to pick up Harlow and Joe from their hotel...about to meet them face to face for the first time since Las Vegas:

GRANT ROY: (Coughing)... shit, I need some water.




SEAN LOCKHART: I love you.




GRANT ROY: I love you too, just be strong, be strong,...

"Has Manhunt Destroyed Gay Culture?"

That's the title of Michael Joseph Gross' latest feature article for Out magazine. As most of you will recall, Mr. Gross authored the earlier "The Case of the Cobra Killer" Out feature on the Kocis killing as well.

An underlying theme to Gross' Kocis article was that while the evidence against Harlow and Joe was overwhelming, he felt there was still something lacking from the "gay porn turf war" motive. Expressing no doubt about Harlow and Joe's guilt, he theorized that the missing motive mojo was "radical dissociation" brought on by the current gay cultural trend of online hookups, and the ability to thus create new internet personas willy-nilly:

"Bryan Kocis, Sean Lockhart, Harlow Cuadra, and Joseph Kerekes reinvented themselves online. Military patriotism or fundamentalist faith helped accustom some of them to double lives. But these four were caught up in a mode of reinvention disconnected from the one that in literature and life has united American characters as disparate as Abraham Lincoln, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Horatio Alger, Jay Gatsby, and Tom Ripley.

Those men all left home to start anew. These men just logged on. They created alternate identities in parallel worlds, as most of us do now, imagining that we need not give up anything to do so, believing that our games exact no unrecoverable cost. The difference between us and the characters in the case of the Cobra killer is one of scale, not of kind. Unreal realities, endless flickering between truth and fiction, an addictive stream of possible connections among possible selves, converging in the dead end of a life."

I'll admit my own openness to the theory, having personally catalogued Joe Kerekes' extreme online derangement prior to his arrest.

In the new Out article, Gross picks up that theme again in a big way, with a major expose on the very popular Manhunt online hookup site. Subtitled "A cost-benefit analysis of our quest to get laid," as you can imagine from Gross' previous article...the costs are generally portrayed as pretty weighty, and the benefits miniscule or illusiory.

This new article has already created quite a stir out there, raising eyebrows already on blogs quite a bit bigger than this one.

Now, Gross did not specifically list "increased propensity to drive to another state and murder someone" as one of the costs in this new cost-benefit analysis, so, this new article is not Kocis-related per se. Still, it is interesting, and does touch upon his earlier theme about the impact of online fantasy as being an additional piece to the motive puzzle.

So...Manhunt: Good or evil? Discuss.

Update: Well here's an interesting twist on the story!

Update 2: Update to the update. As before, the Towleroad comments are on fire!

Update 3: And now, Crutchly resigns from Manhunt board.

A Tale of Two Restaurants

What happened in Vegas didn't stay in Vegas, when it came to the infamous Le Cirque dinner between Grant Roy, Sean Lockhart, Harlow Cuadra and Joe Kerekes. On the contrary, that Vegas dinner got extensively talked about and rehashed some time later at the Crab Catcher restaurant in La Jolla, California...by all four of the original participants.

And thanks to PC's posting of the entire set of Crab Catcher Transcripts (CCTs) we can now reconstruct what was said, and who said it, at the mysterious and controversial Le Cirque dinner in Vegas. The CCTs, when studied in detail, pretty much settle any conflicting accounts of that earlier dinner.

At the outset, lets remind everyone of the two different versions of the Le Cirque dinner propounded in this case. First, there is Grant's version, laid out in the arrest affidavit:

"Roy continued by stating that he and Lockhart subsequently met with Cuadra and Kerekes (aka Trent) for dinner at "Le Cirque", restaurant at the Bellagio Hotel. The foursome discussed conducting business at some point and possibly "trading (pornographic) scenes". Roy advised that LSG could not embark in such an endeavor at that time as they were embroiled in pending litigation with Cobra Video, and more specifically, Bryan Kocis. Cuadra then asked questions such as; "what if Bryan left the country, and what if he went to Canada". Roy stated that Lockhart "had a few drinks in him and didn't understand what Harlow was talking about", and stated; "then he'd only come back". Kerekes then stated that "Harlow knows someone who would do anything for him". Roy stated that as he looked at Harlow, Roy knew that Harlow was talking about killing the victim. Roy then stated to Cuadra that they (Roy and Lockhart) didn't need Kocis to leave the country, and the conversation was switched to another subject."

The other competing version out there is the "Angel of Truth" account, posted on Harlow's blog back in August of 2007. There is an excellent discussion of that account on PC's blog here; the relevant quote from it is as follows:

"Then there is the meeting in Vegas with Sean and Grant, Harlow nor Joe approached Sean or Grant about doing anything to Brian, the conversation was the other way around, there is an existing tape, that is the tape that Joe talks about in his email to Sean. The situation at the restaurnt is not as it believed, Sean and Grant gave a good story but Harlow did them one better by breaking two very expensive glasses in the restaurant when they brought up the demise of Bryan, at that point Harlow knocked over the glasses and asked the wait person for the check to get out of there."

First of all, lets quickly deal with this supposed "existing tape" AoT refers to. It is my belief that 1) the tape does not exist (see the the comments to the PC post to see the reasoning behind my skepticism); and 2) in the incredibly unlikely event that it does exist, it certainly does not record the AoT version of events; read on to see why.

So, that out of the way, what are the differences between the Grant version and AoT version? The way I see it, there are exactly two:

Grant's version: Harlow and Joe bring up murdering Bryan
AoT's version: Sean and Grant bring up murdering Bryan

and

Grant's version: Grant says "no" to murder
AoT's version: Harlow says "no" to murder (by breaking glasses).

Those are the only real differences in the dinner accounts. Every other detail I can think of (ie, they ate lamb, it was expensive, Harlow's credit card company picked up the tab, everyone was stupendously drunk, etc...) both parties pretty much are in agreement with.

So, lets turn to the CCTs, and settle those two little discrepancies, shall we? Starting first with, who first brought up this murder talk?

And here's our answer: From PC's CCTs:

JOSEPH KEREKES: Can I ask you something?





GRANT ROY: What?





JOSEPH KEREKES: Did you tell, did you ever tell your lawyer that we all had maybe talked about anything?




GRANT ROY: Yes.





JOSEPH KEREKES: Oh, he knows about it?





GRANT ROY: I told him we sat down, had a meeting and y'all brought it up.




JOSEPH KEREKES: Yea, the truth.

So! Grant tells Joe that "y'all brought it up" (ie, mention of murder), and Joe's response to that?

"Yea, the truth."

Yea, the truth indeed! NOW we all know the truth; Harlow and Joe first mentions murder, NOT Sean and Grant. Joe actively verifies this, on tape.

So, question one is settled, now onto question two...who at the dinner (if anyone) outright rejected any suggestion of 'Canadian emigration?'

And once again...the CCTs ride to the rescue, answering the burning question:

GRANT ROY: ... ... Ya know when I told you In Vegas, when we were sitting there, and I said, that doesn't need to happen because they're gonna come to me first, and that's exactly what the fuck has been happening, what I've been dealing with, and it's, it's, I'm, I'm not happy and he's' been dealing with it, and he doesn't deserve it, cause he had to fight this Cobra shit for the past two years and now this shit.

And what's Joe response to this? Does he object to the premise, saying "oh no Grant, I don't recall you saying this does not need to happen..." Negative. In fact, the next words out of Joe's mouth are:

JOSEPH KEREKES: I understand if you guys want to leave us alone.

Joe meekly accepts what Grant says to him, without protest.

And Grant's not finished. He wants to make sure Hannon and all the other PA, VA, FBI, DEA, SDPD and NCIS boys in the van did not miss this; so, a little later on he once again mentions BOTH who brought it up, and who nixxed it:

GRANT ROY: When we, when we had dinner and you brought that up, I said no, that doesn't need to happen, go home and read his blog, understand there's twenty fuckin pages that say Brent Corrigan and most of it, is because of this fuckin lawsuit we've been involved with, with Cobra, its so fuckin high profile, if anything happens to fuckin Bryan, they're coming after me and him, and me most likely because I was the one that's been most fuckin vocal about this since day one, screaming for everybody to do. their fuckln jobs.

And does Joe deny any of this? NO:

JOSEPH KEREKES: Have they interviewed. you though?

As you can see, Joe's immediate concern here is not protesting Grant's account...but whether Grant said any of this to the cops or not. :-)

So there you have it, the what-was-said-by-who-in-Vegas question...the question we've ALL been wondering about, ALL this time...is now answered in full. The Grant version is the 100% accurate one: Harlow and Joe brought up the murder, Grant immediately shot the idea down. This was never a murder-for-hire situation; the CCTs prove this.

And the status of the Angel of Truth version? Well, to use an analogy: It's like an expensive wine glass falling off a table, shattering into a million tiny pieces!

Oh, and one final matter of business, which I would be remiss if I failed to mention:

JOSEPH KEREKES: I apologize Grant, for hurting you guys and messing things up, I really do, I messed up our lives too.

And as we all know, you don't apologize for something someone wanted you to do...you apologize for something someone did NOT want you to do.

And as we can all see...ah, well, um...I screwed up. LOL...all these months, I've been calling it by the wrong name...all this time, it shoulda been: The Joe Apology.

Quel embarrassment!


Update: From today's Citizen's Voice: "...Grant Roy, a former suspect in the killing, and his business partner and lover, Sean Lockhart..."