A gay adult film actor and producer in the US has narrowly avoided the death penalty for murdering a rival producer.
Harlow Cuadra (27), who also worked as a male escort, was last week found guilty in a Pennsylvania court of the first degree murder of Bryan Kocis (44) in January 2007.
On Tuesday, Cuadra was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. The jury of eight men and four women were unable to come to a unanimous decision to give him the death sentence.
Cuandra, along with his former lover and business partner Joseph Kerekes (35) – who earlier pleaded guilty to second-degree murder – stabbed Kocis to death in his home and tried to cover up the crime by setting the man’s house on fire.
The prosecution said that the men killed Kocis so that they could secure a porn actor, Brent Corrigan, who was under contract to Kocis’s company, to star in their own film.
