Final Thoughts II

The Investigation
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Ah, the murder investigation period. January 25, 2007 to May 15, 2007. 111 days of my life I shall never forget.

Here's a excerpt from one of this blog's early posts, explaining how I got involved in all this:

"...Then, on Towleroad, I read about the Kocis killing. Wow! Al Capone is dead! My interest is rekindled. Thru links, I am lead to the Jason Curious site (where I had never visited before).

Those early days, Jason's news desk was seemingly the only place in town talking about this story. Jason was doing an update practically every other day. Comments were going into the HUNDREDS (as opposed to the dozens, for his other porn-related posts). And what struck me immediately back then was the obviously FIERCE partisanship I witnessed, between pro- and anti-Brent forces. The Brent bashers were CONVINCED that Brent and some guy named Grant (who? I wondered) did the killing. BROKE into the Kocis home, SLASHED his throat, STABBED his corpse, BURNED his house, then calmly walked out to their waiting sports utility vehicle, DRIPPING MURDER FROM THEIR FINGERS.

Hmmm. I was skeptical. Seemed to me, back then, that someone capable of sending hired minions cross country to skirmish with security would have raised the art of making enemies to a science. Surely, there must be more than this Brent kid and this Grant fellow (who I learned was a boyfriend/manager) who hated this Kocis mobster enough to kill him."

What kind of makes me LOL as I re-read this is that earlier today Sassy made a comment (to the previous post) to the effect that I should be more questioning, and that I should see to it that "the story fits the facts and sense has been made." The ironic thing being, using this methodology was precisely how I successfully deduced, in February of 2007, that Harlow Cuadra was a cold-blooded killer.

And that's what today's Final Thoughts will mostly be about - the blogger investigation of the Kocis murder, and my not-so-humble involvement in it. The blogger investigation (as opposed to the police, or "real" investigation) was conducted by bloggers and commenters after the murder/before the arrest mainly on Jason Curious' News Desk, and then increasingly on Elm's blog.

Here's from another earlier blog post of mine, briefly describing those tempestuous days:

"For MONTHS prior to this, ever since the murder and the revelation of the Drake/Harlow connection, I was one of a VERY small band of stalwarts that had been saying all along that Harlow was the murderer. It's hard to imagine this now, but before Arrest Day this was a VERY VERY minority opinion. The leading theories were that 1) Grant and/or Brent did it; 2) Aaron aka Robert Wagner did it 3) "bb" did it (LOL, ok, only one person thought this); 4) the "15 y/o" did this; 5) a random Brent fan did this; 6) Luzerne County did this, etc etc etc. All of these dominent theories had a common thread: poor innocent little Harlow being framed.

So, back then, whenever I tried to point out that based on what we know, it was near impossible for Harlow to have been framed, therefore, he must be the murderer (ie, Occam's Razor), I would get passionately drowned out by the majority opiners enumerated above."

I should elaborate on this a bit; here is a great example of how one can use basic deductive reasoning to solve simple crimes like this one. Like I said back then, the revelation of the Drake/Harlow connection got the ball rolling. That Bryan was supposed to meet with "Drake," and that Drake was revealed to be one Harlow Cuadra, male escort, of Virginia Beach, meant to me that there could be only three possibilities:

1) The murderer stole Harlow's photo off the internet at random, by trolling escort sites (interestingly, this was Harlow's explanation to the media, when he was first contacted);
2) The murderer stole Harlow's photo off the internet intentionally, in order to frame him; or
3) Harlow was involved in the murder.

A few days after the Harlow/Drake connection was made, some enterprising commenteer made the next big revelation in the "blogger investigation" of the crime - the discovery of Harlow's Photobucket account, which had the famed photo of Brent and Harlow outside Le Cirque, with bow-tie askew.

Of course, we knew nothing of Le Cirque at that time. But by examination of the time/date EXIF data of the photo, I was able to determine it had likely been taken in Las Vegas, the weekend of the big AVN convention that year, which Brent Corrigan was known to have been in attendance at. The date being the significant fact to bear in mind here; this was a relatively recent photo.

Which meant, we could now eliminate possibility 1 from our list above. The odds of a random murderer randomly choosing Harlow's photo from the ENTIRE internet to be Drake, AND Harlow hanging out with Brent Corrigan just days before the murder...astronomical to one against. Either the murderer is intentionally framing Harlow, or...Harlow is the murderer. Those were the only two choices that remained.

Notice that Harlow almost certainly lied to the media when he said the photo MUST have just been plucked off the internet at random. He must, in fact, have known otherwise, having met with Brent in Vegas just days before. He also made another nearly certain lie in that initial interview...that he had no idea who Bryan Kocis was. Needless to say, it would have been extremely unlikely to have just socialized with Brent Corrigan, and not have known who Bryan Kocis was. Not to mention that, in addition to escorting, they ran a competing gay twink porn studio in the very same Mid-Atlantic region as Cobra Video.

These obvious lies by Harlow were certainly suggestive. But the last piece of the puzzle fell into place when news accounts revealed ALL of Bryan's computers had been stolen from the house prior to the murder and arson.

This iced it. We could now eliminate possibility 2 from our list, because stealing the computers that received and held the Drake photo would have been the LAST thing a framer using the Drake photo to frame someone with would EVER want to do (it turns out, in fact, the reason police had the Drake photo at all was because it had been casually forwarded to Robert Wagner...an event our hypothetical framer could never have predicted).

So, I had now eliminated possibilities 1 and 2 from our list. That left 3, and to quote Conan Doyle:

"You eliminate the impossible, and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Thus in mid-February of 2007 I had independently determined, with mathematical certainly, that Harlow Raymond Cuadra was a murderer. There were of course still details to discover (namely, who exactly, if any, were Harlow's co-conspirators) but in the main, I had just single-handedly solved the Kocis murder.

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Trying to make others on Jason Curious see the obvious was not so simple. Few there was interested in logic and deduction; most everyone else there had a pig-headed fixation with question of motive. And that meant Sean and Grant, who had the most compelling emotional motive (with the lawsuit irrevocably settled, a financial motive was far more hypothetical) MUST have been the murderers. And Harlow, who seemingly lacked a motive at the time (this would eventually be prooved otherwise, with PC getting the gold star for his investigation into Harlow's finances) must be innocent.

My frustrations increased when "Mark@boisrus.com" started posting. At first, I did not know what to make of him. I even tried to subtly warn him via tactfully worded comments that one of his escorts was very probably a murderer. Not surprisingly (in hindsight), he ignored my well-meaning advisories.

But my biggest frustration was with the police. As February gave way to March, and March gave way to April...I could not believe they had not arrested Harlow. It was so obvious! And of course, everyone online was making hay of this fact, at my expense. 'But jim...' they would say, '...if Harlow were guilty as you say, certainly the police would have arrested him by now!' Grrrrr... >:-(

Honestly, this is one of the few things about the police investigation (as opposed to the blog investigation, which I am focusing on here) that amaze me: the length of time they allowed Harlow and Joe to roam free. The PA State Police, like I, must have deduced early that Harlow and Joe were killers. They ordered SWAT raid on their house in February, and while I have heard rumors that it was intended they be arrested that night in the house too...they were not there, and they weren't. Harlow and Joe were lulled into a sense of security by the police after that, and given months of freedom.

So why did they wait until mid-May to make an arrest? Of course, we know the reasons in hindsight, the main one being to gather the excellent San Diego sting recordings (which proved not only who was involved, but also who was NOT involved), but what if Harlow and/or Joe committed another murder during that time frame? They were proven violent killers, so the possibility had to be allowed for. So, it seems to me the investigators were taking a terrible risk by delaying arrest for so long.

Yes I know; as things turned out, nothing bad happened. AND much good was accomplished. But it was still a huge risk nonetheless, IMO; that's my only point.

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As to Sean and Grant's potential involvement, I generally kept an open mind during this period. However, the fact that Brent had implicated Harlow early on with his off the cuff "on the run" comment to Jody Wheeler was suggestive of them being NOT involved criminally. It's highly irregular for one unarrested co-conspirator to publicly blow the whistle on another unarrested co-conspirator, for obvious reasons.

So, when Harlow and Joe romped on the beach in late April with Sean and Grant, I must say I was quite surprised. Once again from that earlier post, here's how I described my emotions back then:

"So, Blacks Beach Day, yeah, that was a dark day for us Harlow-did-it stalwarts. I personally was stunned; I could not believe Brent and Grant were so stupid as to give a murdering thug a photo op like this. Did they not realize the obvious, as I did? OR PERHAPS...they knew he was a murderer, because they were all in it together? But, if that were the case...this was not only a stupid move on their part, it was a STUPENDOUSLY stupid move. It made them all look guilty! The whole thing...it was incomprehensible to me back then.

But the most depressing aspect of it all was (from my point of view) was that it indicated that the police APPARANTLY no longer had interest in Harlow and Joe as a suspect. How else could one explain Brent and Grant and Harlow and Joe's fearless decision to associate with one another so openly like this? I was crestfallen."

But as I go on to say, just a couple weeks later, on May 15...I began to feel better. :-)

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And on May 16, 2007...this saga SHOULD have ended. But it did not. as we all know, this no-brainer of a case proceeded to drag on for close to two years.

In my next post, we'll take a look at those two years, the reasons for those two years, and the people most responsible for those two long years. With the discussion of the latter I am tentatively intending to place under a header entitled: The Woodshed.

Update: Here's the magazine cover Michael Lucas tried (and failed) to have to have cancelled: