by Frankie Edozien

It took two weeks before anyone noticed that John Canora was dead. Police found his Hyundai but let the driver go. They later said they could not find the owner to confirm whether or not it was indeed a stolen vehicle. No report had been filed in any police precinct.

But by the time his relatives had retrieved his decomposing body, out of his basement, Canora, 55, had become New York City’ latest gay man killed because of his sexuality.

This was not a man in the middle of Manhattan’s gay scene; rather he lived quietly in the Howard Beach section of Queens. This modest, middle-class neighborhood that strides Broad Channel over Jamaica Bay is an enclave of well-tended homes mostly owned by Italian-Americans. It became notorious several years ago when residents killed a black man who had wandered into the neighborhood; and for being the home of the late John Gotti, the head of the Gambino crime family, and for being the home base of the Mafia organization.

Canora’s murder, as pieced together from police and media reports, is a cautionary tale of a life lived on the fringe of the “outer boroughs,” where many gay men, especially those past their first youth, live lives of solitude. Often in the closet to family or neighbors and far away from the clubs and bars of the island to the west, they can expose themselves to danger in an attempt to find companionship.

According to reports from the New York City Police Department, in October, the middle-aged man picked up two 17-year-old boys and took them to his well-appointed Howard Beach home. All three allegedly began watching porn and smoking pot.

By the time the evening was over, cops say, Billy Ray Stanton of Far Rockaway and his chum Alex Brown of Jamaica (both nearby neighborhood in Queens) had choked their host to death, pummeled him with a baseball bat and then whacked him with a fire extinguisher.

Stanton and Brown wrapped his body in a blanket and dumped Canora’s body in the basement. They apparently sauntered off, after taking $30, which they split between them. They also took some porn tapes. They each also drove off in one of Canora’s cars-a 2002, Hyundai and a Plymouth Voyager.

When Canora’s corpse was discovered, it took dental records to positively identify him because the beating had been so severe. In a taped confession that was read at the arraignment of Stanton and Brown, Stanton confessed to the killing. “The guy put porno movies [on] and wanted to have sex with me,” “I said ’No.’ I choked him and let him drop when he went limp.”

Brown concurred telling detectives that he saw “Billy choking his friend. Billy told me this is what he does for money.” Canora may have been much older than his attackers, but he was slight and diminutive; Stanton is much taller.

Their “gay panic” defense doesn’t hold much water for Clarence Patton, who has worked for years for the New York City Anti-Violence Project and now heads the organization. “It seems a little bit over-the-top for them to say ’I was defending myself,’” he said. “If that’s the case, you don’t turn around and rob him.”

Canora’s gruesome killing comes on the heels of the bludgeoning of Michael Sandy, a young black man who was lured to a desolate Brooklyn beach only to be set upon someone he thought he was meeting for a hookup. A gang of four white teenagers set upon Sandy once he arrived at Plum Beach. To get away from his attackers, he ran into oncoming traffic on the Belt Parkway, a busy highway. There, he was fatally struck by a hit-and-run driver, who has still not come forward.

According to the New York Police Department statistics, hate crimes have spiked this year with anti-gay bias crimes up about 20 percent so far in 2006. Another murder occurred in Manhattan, when a former top city official was found bludgeoned to death in his Greenwich Village apartment. This, too, appears to have been the result of a gay man having met a man who promised sex but whose intent was robbery.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown has hit the two involved with Canora with a barrage of charges including two counts of second-degree murder; two counts of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Brown was also hit with a resisting arrest charge.

The duo “befriended the victim and then choked and viciously beat him with an aluminum baseball bat…before callously leaving his body in the basement,” the DA said. If convicted, both men face up to 25 years in jail. Their pal, Daquan McGill, who was caught driving Canora’s Hyundai, was not charged with anything. He was also found with Canora’s house keys.