A Murderer By Any Name
The infamous Curley murder case, a heinous crime that shocked the city 15 years ago, is back in the headlines today, as Brockton District Court prepares to hear a petition from convicted child murderer Charles Jaynes. Jaynes, who is serving a life sentence for the 1997 murder of 1o-year-old Jeffrey Curley of Cambridge, is hoping to legally change his name to Manasseh-Invictus Auric Thutmose V, a name he says is associated with his Wiccan religion. (According to the Brockton Enterprise, representatives of the Wiccans have distanced themselves from Jaynes, and say they have no knowledge of what the requested name means.)
Jaynes was with an accomplice, Salvatore Sicari, at the time of the crimes, and both are serving life sentences (unlike Jayne, Sicari does not have the option of parole). The pair were affiliated with NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, and had their literature in their car at the time of the murder. A story we published in 2001 about NAMBLA outlines the awful details of the crime:
At about 3:15 p.m. on October 1, Jeffrey left his grandmother’s house wearing a maroon and gold football jersey with the number “32? on it. Reportedly lured by the promise of a new bike, he joined Jaynes and Sicari in Jaynes’ 1983 gray Cadillac, where several copies of the NAMBLA Bulletin were in an envelope behind the driver’s seat.
The three drove to a grocery store in Newton. There, Sicari later told police, Jaynes dragged the 4-foot-7, 80-pound boy into the back seat and tried to sexually assault him. Jeffrey struggled to get away, police said, but the nearly 300-pound Jaynes sat on him, then suffocated Jeffrey with a gasoline-soaked rag. “Don’t fight it, kid, don’t fight it,” Jaynes told the boy, according to Sicari.
In the wake of the murder, the Curley family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against NAMBLA, saying that the organization was stoking its members to take predatory actions against young boys. The ACLU defended NAMBLA, and the case was dismissed in 2008. Today, Jeffrey’s father, Robert Curley, plans to be in court, ensuring that Jaynes will be denied the ability to “hide behind a different name.” Speaking with The Enterprise, Curley said that “somebody needs to stand up and stop him.”
