Welcome back! Yeah, a year has gone by, and sadly we are all still awaiting Cobra Killer: Gay Porn Murder and the Manhunt to Bring the Killers to Justice by Andrew E. Stoner and Peter A. Conway. It looks like the new expected due date is now May 22.
Well that's fine! I think we have a few items to chat about on this sacred anniversary in the meantime. Starting with, the eagerly awaited revelation of our "Mystery Guest!"
Meet Rick Altman
Ladies and gentlemen, our Mystery Guest is none other than Rick Altman (or Altmann...the spelling seems to be somewhat flexible here), the puppetmaster behind the whole Brat Boy School/Ethan Reynolds collapse.
For a refresher course in that whole affaire, just click these links here, here, here, here and here.
Now as you may recall, one bit of unfinished business was, that despite our best efforts, we were never able to procure a photograph and unmask the elusive and camera-shy Mr. Altman. Like all good con artists, Altman had always made a habit of ducking away from the camera lens, according to those who knew him.
Well I am happy to finally announce...we got 'em. Or I should say, one of his victims did. The following new (and largely unnoticed) blog got brought to my attention via a comment thread I accidentally left open: STOP RICK ALTMANN!
I think this blog is fairly self-explanatory, so I'll just add a couple of points. One, despite being around since January of 2010, and despite the blockbuster revelation of the long awaited Altman photo back in July of 2011, it does not seem to have gotten a lot of attention. I hope this post changes that.
And two, lets take a quick look at what Ethan Reynolds has been up to lately. He's trying to make a comeback, it would seem! He has a underdeveloped web site out there, but really catches my eye are his much more active Facebook and Twitter accounts. Now...I want everyone here to check those. Click on those links, and take a good hard look at them, keeping in mind that the actual personality of the real Ethan "JR" Reynolds is that of a "shy, non-talkative" individual who has difficulty stringing two sentences together. In the words of the SRA blogger:
"I was shocked to find that real life "JR" was NOTHING at all like the JR I'd come to know online (because he wasn't the guy I'd been chatting with! It was Rick). Online, "JR" was very intelligent, funny and charismatic, while real life JR (Ethan) Reynolds was shy, non-talkative, very immature and certainly didn't come across as being all that intelligent."And by the way, I've had verifications of this from other sources as well...in person, the real Ethan "JR" Reynolds is about as colorful and witty as a fence post.
I'm going to cut to the chase here, guys: I believe the old Brat Boy fraud is back. I believe "Ethan Reynolds" is, once again, a Milli Vanilli act, with Rick Altman being, once again, the true author of all his Facebook and Twitter posts. And I believe the ultimate objective behind this deception is the desire to commit fraud. And therefore, I am sounding the alarm.
You know, this has been a Kocisphere related blog for the most part, but we have deviated on occasion. This Ethangate scandal was one such instance, Mason Wyler and his fake rape claim was another. If I had to say what was the one theme that united all these stories, it would be this: the exposure of fraud and chicanery in the gay community. It doesn't matter if it was Mark@boisrus.com or Rick Altmann or Mason Wyler trying to pull the wool over the your eyes, this blog ALWAYS stood for ripping that wool off.
So, that's why I make this the lead item of the 2012 Reunion. If I'm right, and the old Brat Boy con is on again, then I think it's this blog's duty to raise the hue and cry. And now we have a photo to use as well...nothing scatters the cockroaches like shining a flashlight RIGHT upon them. If at least one future "Ethan fan" has his life savings preserved thanks to this post, well, then it has served it's purpose.
Now, on to other items of note...
S-P-L dot comWell, a whole year has gone by, which can mean only one thing: Brent has a new website! Or I should say Sean does. As The Sword somewhat exagerratingly puts it, Sean Paul Lockhart aka Brent Corrigan is now on his 7 millionth web site, with the latest one being Sean-Paul-Lockhart.com.
One point I have to make at the outset: Wow, we have now come FULL circle. This whole megadrama began because Brent...oooops, no, wait, now it's Sean...felt he HAD to be able use the name Brent Corrigan. He couldn't just do porn as Sean Lockhart, or Fox Ryder, or Trent Horrigan, or Ethil the Frog, OR ANYTHING OTHER than Brent Corrigan. Costly lawsuits must be risked, so surrender, no retreat! Don't call me Sean, for I am BRENT, dammit! Hear me roar.
Fast forward to today. Sean's current attitude towards the disputed name, which in days of yore led to a nasty lawsuit, a controversial settlement, ruined business partnerships, and oh, incidentally, a murder, can be summed up in a recent Advocate interview he did:
Have any filmmakers asked you to use the name Brent Corrigan in order to capitalize on your adult following?So he'll only use Brent as an "a.k.a." and only if "they" insist. Otherwise, he could almost care less now about the precious name. How times have changed.
I realize this transition won’t happen over night. Right now my aim is to be credited as Sean Paul Lockhart, which is my birth name. But if for promotional reasons, filmmakers need to do the a.k.a. thing, I’m completely on board with that...
The new site come with a new bio, which I always find interesting as a view into his current mindset. Plenty of fodder for reunion discussion contained herein, methinks...such as a forthcoming memoir ("Incorrigible") having been already optioned into a movie deal. Hmmmm...
Harlow's Cell Phone, Part Deux (Yes, I'm Beating This Dead Horse Again)
Last year during our Reunion, I posited the theory that Harlow was using an illegal-for-him-to-have smartphone with an internet connection, which he had used to monitor (and even post things to) blogs and message boards such as this one. This theory was roundly poo poo-ed by you all.
Well dammit, I'm doubling down. READ THIS NEW ARTICLE. Go on, read it! There, done?
NOW, TRY to tell me with a straight face that I'm crazy on this. Go on, just TRY!
I'm telling you folks, he HAS a phone! That funeral posting by him a couple years ago WERE from him, I am certain of it. And he's probably reading this post right now AS WE SPEAK.
Prison slackness over this issue is a national disgrace. The effort to put an end to it must start somewhere, however, and I say it should begin with PA state prisoner Harlow Cuadra! So, write your Congressmen...tell 'em you demand an immediate cavity search of Harlow and the confiscation of his illegal phone NOW.
Chapter One
Lastly, let end this year's reunion with a perusal of the tantalizing opening lines of Chapter One of PC's Cobra Killer, due out May 22:
Chapter OneThe most eyebrow raising part of this intro, IMO is this: "He thought he was nearing the end of a protracted and bitter fight that had brought him scorn and to the brink of arrest on federal child endangerment laws."
During third week of January 2007, Bryan Kocis boarded an airplane in San Diego for a long flight back home to Pennsylvania. He was filled with excitement and hope. It was a trip he had taken many times before over the last several years as his home-based gay pornography business began to grow. He’d found financial success in producing gay porn in the most unlikely of all places – tiny Dallas Township, Pennsylvania – and his company soon rivaled anything being produced in the porn capital of the world: the San Fernando Valley of California.
He carried with him on this return flight to Pennsylvania a signed copy of a legal settlement that he thought ended an issue that had nagged him for more than a year. He thought he was nearing the end of a protracted and bitter fight that had brought him scorn and to the brink of arrest on federal child endangerment laws.
The settlement settled a lot. But it ended nothing.Five days later, Kocis, 44, was dead, his head nearly severed from his body, his body curled into a fetal position and pierced with 28 separate knife wounds to the abdomen and chest. His body was charred with second and third degree burns that would render him unrecognizable. Police retrieved dental records to identify him. His life had ended on the leather sofa in his living room as his home was reduced to a smoking hull of burned up dreams.
Bryan Kocis was dead and the hunt for what had brought such unparalleled violence to Dallas Township, Pennsylvania, was just beginning.
The violence that took Kocis’ life would send shockwaves across the community, and ultimately across the country. His murder would reveal more about Kocis than most people ever knew, and even more about an unexpected enterprise operating from a base in stoic, conservative northeast Pennsylvania.
As details emerged, first neighbors, then the community and ultimately everyone would know that Bryan Kocis had built a successful gay pornography business from his modest home – an undertaking that may have contributed to his death. His secrets would unfurl for all to see, revealing a complicated conspiracy.
There was never any question the investigation into the murder of Bryan Kocis would be a joint effort. Dozens of officers from local, state and federal agencies would be involved, led by the Pennsylvania State Police Major Case Investigation.
“Right from the outset we worked with the police and this investigation rested with the state police, as it should have,” assistant district attorney Michael Melnick said.Pennsylvania State Trooper Michael Boone, a 15-year veteran, was one of the first to arrive at the murder scene, a simple one-and-a-half story home at 60 Midland Drive at about 9:45 p.m. on Wednesday, January 24, 2007. Snow flurries had began to fall. His job: Process any evidence that could be collected from the scene.
Boone, a member of the state police’s Forensic Services Unit, took measurements, made diagrams, and captured the scene in photographs and videotape. His first photographs included exterior views that showed intense burning to the front porch and entry to the home, burning so intense the ceiling and roof of the small porch began to collapse before firefighters could extinguish the flames. Outside, two small snow shovels were leaned against Kocis’ BMW parked next to the house. The intense fire had damaged the car, even melting headlamp casings.
On the porch itself, a charred wooden bench and the remnants of what appeared to be melted plastic one-gallon gas tank. (2) The front door was burned and charred; the exterior “storm door” melted in place. Neither of the doors showed signs of forced entry. Inside the blackened living room, a portion of the ceiling had collapsed and heavy melting damage had occurred to a giant big-screen TV and entertainment center Kocis had just purchased a few weeks prior as a Christmas present to himself. The room’s picture window was blown out, the metal bar separating the panes dumped onto the sofa below. It was just part of the fire debris that fell upon the sofa, and Kocis’ lifeless body, as the fire raged.
“(Kocis is) still lying on the couch,” Boone said in describing the scene. “He’s found lying on his back. This debris would have come down on top of him.”
Boone’s photographs showed that most of the sofa’s cushion and stuffing had burned away, the frame being all that remained of the couch. “Mr. Kocis’ body (was) lying here,” he reported.
Close-up photos of Kocis’ body showed his severely slashed throat, his skull almost severed from his body, as well as knife wounds to his left chest and abdomen. After Deputy Luzerne County Coroner William Lisman removed the body, and a large pool of blood and other biological fluids remained.
As snow showers continued until after 1 a.m. and a slight accumulation began to show, investigators decided to place plastic tarps over exposed areas of the house to preserve all the evidence they could. One long, cold night of investigating was coming to a close, but days of hard work in the Pennsylvania winter lie ahead.
Melnick, the assistant DA, got his first look at the scene in the morning light of Thursday, January 25.
“It was bitterly cold that day,” Melnick said, recalling that as he stepped under a yellow police line tape surrounding the Kocis home, he was greeted with a stern ‘welcome’ from State Police Detective Steve Polishan who didn’t know Melnick from Adam.
Melnick recalls Polishan telling him, “Very nice to meet you. We’ll meet you back at the Dallas Township Police Department.” Melnick took the hint to back off and waited to meet the detectives later in the tiny squad room of the Dallas Township Police Department, just a mile east of the murder scene.
It would be two more days before investigators from the District Attorney’s office were allowed in the scene. State fire marshal and homicide investigators spent those two days painstakingly combing the burned rubble of the Kocis home, some detectives down on their hands and knees sifting for clues.
Among the pieces of evidence collected by Trooper Boone was “a small little razor blade knife” found underneath the burned love seat. Behind the front door, on a small half-circle table, police recovered Kocis’ untouched wallet, a money clip with $60 cash in it, sunglasses, a pocket knife, and keys to his prized BMW. Police also found loaded handguns stashed throughout drawers in cabinets and end tables in the home. Kocis’ family members would later recover $1,800 in cash left in a kitchen drawer. In the kitchen sink, two long stem wine glasses and a broken wine bottle (damaged in the fire) and cocktail shaker were found.
Investigators did not find any fingerprints on any of the items collected. It was no surprise. “Heat is very bad for a latent print,” Boone said. “The latent print is going to be as a result of secretions from the body and the pores of the fingertips.”
Boone said the heat destroyed any remaining sweat or oil needed to leave a print from anyone who was in the room before the fire...
Huh. Well I don't know about you guys, but that last bit about the "brink of arrest" is news to me. We know that Grant and Br...Sean went to the FBI, but we've always been led to believe nothing ever came of this. Are we to infer from this that, in reality, these efforts brought Bryan to the "brink of arrest?"
Perhaps PC can clarify...if not, well, I guess we'll all find out on May 22! That, and many other interesting hitherto unknown details as well, hopefully. Can't wait!!!
