Who is Brent Corrigan? The gay pornstar at the heart of the King Cobra murder

Feb 23 2018
Written by Mayer Nissim

While some of the stars of gay porn are nameless to fans who may know their features like the back of their hand, that’s certainly not true of Brent Corrigan.

As with the likes of Sasha Grey and Jenna Jameson, Brent Corrigan has broken through the niche of adult films to be a legitimate mainstream star, though it happened in the murkiest of circumstances.

Below we give an overview of the life of one of gay porn’s most well-known names.

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What is Brent Corrigan’s real name?

Many gay pornstars don’t get into the business using their real name.

That’s partly because they don’t need every aunt and uncle back home happening across their work when they type their name into AskJeeves.com, plus the old-fashioned reason why the likes of Kirk Douglas (Issur Danielovitch), Elton John (Reginald Dwight) and Tony Curtis (Bernard Schwartz) changed theirs… that’s showbiz.

Brent Corrigan’s real name is Sean Paul Lockhart (which if you ask us is way more showbiz than “Brent Corrigan” anyway).

You may have also seen Brent controversially credited as Fox Ryder, if you’ve rented Falcon Studio’s 2006 film The Velvet Mafia or 2008’s Best of Roman Heart.

How old is Brent Corrigan?

Brent was born on Halloween, October 31, 1986, so as of now, Brent Corrigan is 31 years old.

His age is more than just a bit of trivia. In 2005, his lawyer Chad Belville revealed that when Brent filmed his first porn scenes in the movies Bareboned Twinks, Casting Couch 4, Every Poolboy’s Dream, and Schoolboy Crush, he was just 17, a full year younger than the legal age to star in porn.

“His true birthday is October 31, 1986, so he was 18 in October 2004,” said Chad. “Anything made before that would be, by definition, child pornography. My client’s goal is to get the DVD’s that were made before he turned 18 off the market.”

At the time, bareback twink porn specialists Cobra Videos dismissed the claims as “just allegations”, but distributers Pacific Sun Entertainment voluntarily pulled those first four films from circulation.

The whole controversy actually took Corrigan to an extra level of fame, with some calling him “the Traci Lords of gay porn”, in reference to the former underage porn star.

How was Brent Corrigan involved in the King Cobra murder?

Here’s where things get very dark. After the furore over his age in those first films, Brent began a bitter legal dispute with Cobra Videos and its boss Bryan Kocis – who called himself King Cobra – over the the issue of his age, rights to use the name “Brent Corrigan”, money (of course), and the still-hot issue of barebacking in gay porn.

The matter was being resolved by lawyers who were hammering out an agreement between Corrigan and Kocis, but a deadly chain of events had already been set into place.

Kocis was found dead at his home on January 24, 2007, having been hacked to death in a brutally violent fashion, with his house then set on fire.

Harlow Cuadra and Joseph Kerekes, two escorts from Virginia Beach, were later found guilty of the murder, and prosecutors went on to argue that the men were desperate to work with Brent, and felt that Kocis was in their way.

While Kerekes pleaded guilty, Cuadra went to trial where Corrigan testified against him. Both men were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

The shocking events, which strangely mirrored those of Brent’s Falcon movie The Velvet Mafia in many ways, were recorded in the 2012 book Cobra Killer: Gay Porn, Murder, and the Manhunt to Bring the Killers to Justiceby Andrew E. Stoner and Peter A. Conway

That book was later used as the basis for Justin Kelly’s 2012 movie King Cobra.

Despite receiving strong reviews from critics, Corrigan dismissed the film for its inaccuracies and has long-promised to set the record straight with his memoir (which we’re still waiting for).

Who played Brent Corrigan in King Cobra?

Former Disney star Garrett Clayton played Brent/Sean Paul Lockhart in the movie, and he wasn’t the only big name to appear.

Christian Slater played Stephen Kocis (whose name was changed for the movie) while Keegan Allen was Harlow Cuadra and James Franco was Joseph “Joe” Kerekes. Alicia Silverstone played Janette Lockhart with Molly Ringwald as Amy Kocis

Does Brent Corrigan do bareback porn?

Not anymore. In his earliest days when he tried to leverage his stardom to produce his own porn, Corrigan pledged to insist on actors using condoms.

Tied into other studios though, he was still performing bareback in movies until around 2008. In the years since, Corrigan has become an outspoken advocate for safer sex in porn and beyond.

What films has Brent Corrigan been in?

Like many in the industry, it’s a long, long list…

Over at IMDB, they’ve listed:

That’s quite the mouthful (ahem), and they’ve probably missed a few.

Hang on, some of those aren’t porn films!

You’re right! After the controversy earlier in his life, Corrigan had spots in non-porn movies like Gus Van Sant’s 2008 Harvey Milk biopic Milk and comedy Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild.

He briefly retired from gay porn around 2010, focusing on mainstream indie movies (if you’ll excuse the contradiction) often with a gay theme, like Judas Kissed, Truth, Sister Mary and Triple Crossed, the last of which he also directed. Corrigan returned to porn in 2016.