Two Years Ago Today...

...Harlow Cuadra showed up for his scheduled meeting at Bryan Kocis' house, smelled smoke, looked in the open door, saw a body, heard footsteps upstairs, and then ran away.

Kidding!

You know, it's interesting; on one hand we know a lot of crucial details about what Harlow and Joe did two years ago today. We know from the affidavit "Danny" aka Harlow kept emailing and talking to Bryan today, firming up plans for the meeting (finally set at between 7 and 8 pm that evening, "depending on traffic"). We know that Joe too was busy on the computer that day, dealing with website, sales and other adminstrative matters. We know from the Black's Beach Tapes that Harlow and Joe reconned the house in advance of the meeting, specifically checking the front door for peepholes. We know they went shopping at the local Walmart shortly before the murder, buying "lighter fluid, a knife, KY jelly, and condoms."

We know Harlow must have arrived at the house at 60 Midland Drive shortly before Bryan's long conference call ended (according to phone records) at 7:50 pm. In fact, here's a new "musing:"...I actually believe now that Harlow arrived MUCH sooner - 7:30, perhaps as early as 7:00 pm, even. Why? Because as Harlow indicated at Black's Beach, he listened to an extensive portion of this conference call, in which Bryan, Bryan's attorney Sean Macias, and LSG partner Lee Bergeron were all actively conspiring to "send [Grant] packing" "to Texas." As incredible as it sounds, this "backdoor deal" conversation has to be true; you can see my full reasoning on the subject here, but in a nutshell Harlow knew too many details about a condo offered to Brent, plus of the legal issues and attornies involved, for Harlow's detailed account of this conference call to have been fabricated.

If we assume now that Harlow arrived between 7 and 7:30 pm, and was forced to listen to Bryan yammering away on his Blackberry for at least 20 minutes plotting Grant's exile and Brent's condo captivity, that would have given Harlow that much more time perhaps to case the joint...peering into the office where Kocis kept the video cameras and proprietary records, pehaps...locating visually the position of all the smoke detectors...etc. Then, at 7:50 pm, Bryan finally tires of this long conference call (it actually began at 5:35 pm!) and says something like '...hey guys, D(inaudible) is here; it's been fun, but gotta run, bye!'

Anyways, from 7:50pm and until 8:34 pm (when the Fire Department was dispatched)...it's interesting how on the other hand how LITTLE we actually know. The only source for what happened is what Harlow and Joe said at the Crab Catcher and at Black's Beach. And as Michael Gross observes in the Out article:

As damning as these lines appear, it’s impossible to know precisely how to read them. Strikingly, Harlow’s quoted remarks in the affidavit sound more like the statements of a man who witnessed a murder than those of a man who committed one. (Joe, it seems, was mostly interjecting details as Harlow described meeting Bryan.) Harlow’s story, as related by this document, is confusing (and perhaps intentionally presented that way by police; at the time of arrest, it is common to withhold evidence that will be introduced at trial), but other details raise the possibility that a third man might have been present when Bryan was killed. Harlow “stated that he and another ‘did some recon work’” before his meeting with Bryan. And after he arrived at Bryan’s house and they drank some wine together, Harlow said that his “ ‘dude’ ‘came around’, and ‘it was crazy.’”

In other words, we just don't know who actually stabbed Bryan. It mighta been Harlow, it mighta been Joe, it mighta been both (there were a total of two knives purchased, after all). I very much doubt there was ever a "third man" involved so, it has to be one of the three "mightas" listed above. But Harlow was present for the killing; that we know for certain. Indeed, he was instrumental in bringing it about, at the very least.

And I have to think Joe was there too in some capacity. Despite what he said when he took his plea (that he was back at the Fox Ridge Inn) cell tower info places Joe at the Kocis home, not the Inn. He may have been there only to help load the loot into the Xterra, but he was there, I am certain of it.

The upshot of all this continued deception is, we probably will NEVER know precisely what happened at 60 Midland Drive between 7:50 and about 8:30 pm. It seems Harlow and Joe pretty much hate each other these days, with both out of spite seeking to minimize their role, and enhance their partner's role, in the murder. And since neither of them have a trustworthy bone in their body, nothing they can ever say about the murder can ever really be believed. Hence this part of the murder will likely forever remain a mystery.

So, between 7:50 and about 8:30 pm, Bryan is stabbed to death by either/both of Harlow/Joe, the house is ransacked for video cameras, propietary documents, computers and a Rolex watch, then set ablaze.

Oh, and one final rather anticlimactic and comical event: As they are driving like a bat out of hell (well, Back Mountain, actually), probably passing fire engines going the other way with lights flashing and sirens blaring, Harlow or Joe (ie, whoever's not driving) gets on the laptop and at 8:35 pm emails a relatively new client, Matthew Brannon. According to the affidavit, they hit Brannon up for $4000 donation so Harlow could attend "webmaster school" at Old Dominion University (Brannon was skeptical, but eventually allowed a $1000 charge on his credit card anyways).

I think this exchange, coming at this exact time, was perhaps some kind of half-baked (and unsuccessful) attempt to establish an "email alibi." That it actually generated $1000 in revenue probably came a pleasant shock to Harlow and Joe.

After this, I presume they just hit the freeway (there is no record of them having checked out of the Fox Ridge Inn), making the eight hour drive back to Virginia Beach, which they would have reached early the next morning.

Update: You know, there is just SO much evidence against Harlow and Joe in this case that it's exceedingly easy to overlook some of it. A good example is the fact that it was not until I was working on today's post that I realized I had missed Harlow's escort appointments with Matthew Brannon on the 19th and 20th. I've made a whole new post for the 19th ("The New Client") and have edited the entry for the 20th ("The Background Check") accordingly.

Update 2: Totally off topic - the most entertaining porn clip introduction of the week!

Update 3: Moderately off topic - a shakeup in the Luzerne County judicial system, and the current presiding judge is out. The scandal involves two judges who sentenced juveniles to private boot camps that it turns out, they partially owned (and hence profitted from). As I read it, the judges will now sit down at a pow wow in the next three days to elect a new presiding judge amongst themselves...which theoretically could end up being the relatively well-regarded Judge Peter Paul Olszewski.

Update 3(a): Conohan and Ciaverella plead guilty to tax and fraud charges, will serve 87 months. No word yet on whether they've admitted to killing Bryan and framing Harlow and Joe (although if they did all this killing/framing to avoid corruption charges, it doesn't appear to have helped them much in the long run, I must say...).

Update 3(b): Al Flora is Ciaverella's attorney. Ha, just watch, next we'll find out Fannick is representing Conohan....

Update 3(c): Well, no; turns out it's someone else, another lawyer we've actually never heard of before: "Conahan’s attorney, Philip Gelso, declined comment." Frankly I'm shocked! Given how the same names keep getting repeated over the past two years, I was fairly certain we'd all had the entire bar membership of Luzerne County memorized by now. Where'd this Gelso guy been hiding?