Jeffrey John Curley

Jeffrey John Curley
(June 9, 1987 – October 1, 1997)

Jeffrey John Curley was a 10 year old freckled-faced young boy with blue eyes growing up just outside Boston in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was the son of Bob and Barbara Curley and the youngest brother of Shaun and Bobby. Jeffrey played baseball, hockey, and basketball in the neighborhood, was well liked by everyone who knew him, loved to ride his bicycle, was a bright little boy, loved ice-skating and had a great sense of humor; and like many children growing up his age, he was a very innocent little boy, very trusting of others, and once dreamed of being a fireman someday. Jeffrey Curley was the portrait of an All-American young boy who had a passion for life and then on the afternoon of October 1, 1997, while visiting his grandmother’s house near his home, he said to her “Nana, I have to go do something. I’ll be back in 10 minutes.” She was the last person to see young Jeffrey before he disappeared.

The rest of the story of this 10 year old boy, who had the whole world ahead of him will never be truly known, however, from most accounts, this is what happened: Charles Jaynes of Brockton, MA and Manchester, NH, a pedophile, and member of NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association), a then 22 year old, who was already wanted on 75 outstanding warrants in 18 Massachusetts courts and that apparently no one was looking for on the warrants for his arrest, and Salvatore “Salvi” Sicari of Cambridge, MA, a then 21 year old (another pedophile) also with a rap sheet ranging from selling cocaine in a school zone to assault and battery of a mother, lured Jeffrey Curley into Charles Jayne’s 1983 Cadillac Fleetwood with the promise of $50.00 and a new bike.

As reported by Yvonne Abraham of the Boston Phoenix:

“According to Sicari’s confession, he and Jaynes picked Jeffrey up on Hampshire Street between 3:00 and 3:30 in the afternoon of October 1st, promising to buy him a new bike in Newton. They stopped to buy some gas, and Sicari says Jaynes soaked a rag with it and demanded sex from Jeffrey, in the back of the car. The child refused. Jaynes placed the rag over Jeffrey’s mouth and the boy struggled, furiously. Sicari says the 85-pound 10-year-old fought the 250-pound Jaynes for a long time before he died. The young boy fought and fought with his attacker for over 20 minutes until suffocating from the gas-soaked rag jammed into his mouth. Then Sicari says Jaynes put Jeffrey in the trunk and drove to the Honda dealership in Newton. There, they worked on a car for a few hours, while Jeffrey lay dead in the Cadillac. The two then stopped to buy cement, a plastic container, and some alcohol and drove to Jaynes’s apartment in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Jaynes, according to Sicari’s confession, wrapped Jeffrey’s body in a blue tarp and took it into the apartment, then undressed it. He cut a button and a label from the child’s trousers to keep as souvenirs. He laid Jeffrey’s body on a plastic bag on the kitchen floor and sodomized him. Sicari claims Jaynes told him to molest the body too, but that he refused.

At 2:30 a.m., Sicari said, they mixed the concrete in the Rubbermaid container and placed Jeffrey’s body in it, on its side. They put lime on his eyes and mouth to speed decomposition, then drove to South Berwick, Maine and flung the container off a bridge into the Great Works River.”

Sicari was later charged and convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping, and is serving life in prison with no possibility of parole. Charles Jaynes was picked up by police at his work at a Honda dealership in Newton, MA. When Charles Jayne’s boss had called Newton Police, Jayne’s already had 75 outstanding warrants for his arrest and was one of the primary suspects in Jeffrey Curley’s disappearance.

Charles Jayne’s trial was moved out of the Boston area at the request of his defense lawyers, they argued that their client could not get a fair trial because of all of the publicity surrounding the case locally, so the case was heard by jurors in Worcester County, about an hour’s drive west of Boston. On Friday, December 11, 1998, Charles Jaynes was convicted of second-degree murder and kidnapping of Jeffrey Curley and was sentenced to life in prison; he will be eligible for parole in the year 2021.

This senseless and horrible story of an innocent 10 year old boy named Jeffrey Curley who was victimized by two dangerous thugs and sexual deviants, pointed out the serious public safety threat those fugitives with outstanding warrants present to hiring managers and the general public. Throughout the United States, millions of warrants are outstanding for people wanted for very serious crimes, including “murderers,” “cop killers” and “rapists.”

This problem was highlighted extensively during and after the trial of Jeffrey Curley’s killers over a decade ago. The problem was brought to government officials, especially in Massachusetts, while in the late 1990’s, it was estimated to be only 20% of all outstanding warrants were listed with the FBI, which police use for background checks on suspects. The list of outstanding warrants has grown from 340,000 in 1990, to greater than 500,000 over a decade ago, to today’s estimate of between 1.9 and 2.7 million. Clearly, the problem has increased to epidemic proportions, and has gotten worse and not better.

The second case that highlights the outstanding warrant problem involves Christopher Palermo of Pittsburg, NH, a tiny town on the northern most part of New Hampshire, near the Canadian Border. Palermo was arrested in April 2007, after allegedly kidnapping his boss, Jonathan Wolfgram, and forcing him to drive Palermo all the way to a train station in downtown Boston. According to the victim’s statement to the Boston Police, once at the train station, the suspect forced his boss to purchase a train ticket so that he could escape outstanding arrest warrants. Evidently, Palermo told his boss, Wolfgram, that he knew where his (Wolfgram’s) father lived, and said that he would cause harm to him if he did not cooperate. The suspect said that he had hurt other people in the past. Palermo was arrested and charged with Kidnapping, Unlawfully Carrying a Dangerous Weapon, and Several Outstanding Warrants from Gloucester, a county east of Boston, MA.

Incredibly, according to WBZ in Boston, Palermo, after being arrested in Boston, phoned in bomb threats from his Suffolk County Jail Cell, which led to widespread panic and the evacuations of two New Hampshire police stations, a courthouse, and his place of employment, Moose Alley Auto. Police were also tipped off that several automobiles could be booby-trapped with explosives, specifically, the vehicles at his place of employment, Moose Alley Auto, owned by Wolfgram.

As written on August 26, 2008, by Lorna Colquihoun, Correspondent for the New Hampshire Union Leader:

LANCASTER, NH – The man whose bomb threats prompted a massive police response in April 2007 was sentenced Friday to serve up to 7 years in the New Hampshire state prison.

Christopher Palermo, 30, of Pittsburg, NH was convicted in June on three counts of false reporting of explosives after a trial in Coos County Superior Court. At his sentencing hearing last week, Judge Timothy Vaughn sentenced Palermo to serve 3 1/2 to 7 years on all charges, with two of the charges suspended for 10 years. Palermo was brought to trial after he called in bomb threats last year at the Pittsburg Police Department, the Colebrook District Court and a Pittsburg business owned by Jonathan Wolfgram. The threats prompted a massive response effort, including 39 state troopers from as far away as barracks in Tamworth and Concord, New Hampshire, as well as Fish and Game conservation officers, local police and the U.S. Border Patrol. Coos County Attorney Keith Clouatre said it was clear from the evidence presented at trial that Palermo “intended to frighten three separate locations with his false report and the crimes should be treated separately.” Clouatre asked that Palermo receive a 3 1/2- to 7-year sentence on one charge, a suspended 3 1/2- to 7-year sentence on another, and a 1- to 3-year sentence on the third. Public defender Kirk Williams urged a lighter sentence with a time-served sentence. “I am willing to believe Mr. Palermo’s plea for drug counseling was legitimate, and I hope he receives some,” Clouatre said. “However, the chaos and sheer waste of manpower that he caused clearly calls for a prison sentence.” Palermo was also sentenced to 2 to 5 years on a probation violation of a burglary charge out of Grafton County, New Hampshire when he committed these offenses. Please notice that there was no mention of the other outstanding warrants on Palermo’s warrants in Massachusetts, specifically from Gloucester County.

The third example that helps understand the problem with outstanding warrants and Felons who cross state lines, and which was pointed out by Joe Mahr, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, involved Victor Batres-Martinez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico. The story of Batres-Martinez began when he was arrested in Portland, Oregon in November 1992 for cocaine dealing; he was arrested under an alias. Batres-Martinez had past convictions for theft, drug dealing, kidnapping and robbery. He was released on bond, was a “no show” for his court appearance and an arrest warrant was issued by Oregon authorities. He was on the run for nearly a decade until January 18, 2002, when he was arrested in New Mexico as he attempted to illegally cross the U.S. – Mexican border. He gave a fake name, was fingerprinted and there was a tentative match on his fingerprints, but he was driven by U.S. Border Agents and released back into Mexico before they could confirm the match.

The very next day on January 19, 2002, he was again arrested at a different border location in New Mexico, trying to illegally cross the border and this time there was a confirmed match of his identity and his warrant in Oregon, however, Oregon authorities were “only willing to extradite him if he was found in the Pacific Northwest;” according to the paperwork obtained from the Post-Dispatch. Apparently, it would cost too much to have Batres-Martinez brought up from New Mexico to Oregon.

Batres-Martinez is, again, driven by U.S. Border Agents to the border of Mexico and released. Later that same year, in August 2002, Batres-Martinez illegally crossed back into the U.S., travelled by freight train up to Oregon and it was there that he encountered two nuns on a bike path. He violently held down and viciously attacked both of the nuns, brutally raped them and one of the two nuns, Sister Helen Lynn Chaska, 53, died in the attack. Today, Victor Batres-Martinez is serving a life sentence in Ontario, Oregon without the possibility of parole. The Department of Justice reviewed this case and said that Border Agents should have jailed Batres-Martinez in January 2002 as a felon illegally entering the United States.

Once again, there was little attention focused on Oregon’s refusal to extradite this illegal felon and the outstanding felony warrants issued by them.

The final story involving Felons who cross state lines with outstanding warrants involves one, Allan Cameron; this was another case profiled by the Post-Dispatch. The story of Allan Cameron began in Philadelphia in March 2003, where he was arrested for a Felony Assault on a Law Enforcement Officer. After Allan Cameron was arrested and booked, he bonded out of jail, however, he never appeared in court a week later and a warrant was issued for his arrest by Philadelphia authorities. Nine months later, he was in New York on a separate criminal charge, and it was reported that Philadelphia officials sent a fax to NYPD with a request to arrest Cameron at an upcoming hearing in Manhattan. NYPD said that they never got the fax; meanwhile, no warrant was entered by the Philadelphia officials into the FBI Database. A few days later, Cameron was in court again, and this time, New York officials alerted the Judge about the Philadelphia warrant. The judge sentenced the defendant, Cameron, to probation and let him go on the promise that he will turn himself into Philadelphia law enforcement on his open warrant. Not surprisingly, Allan Cameron never goes back to Philadelphia, he instead stays in New York, and still, no warrant was entered into the FBI database.

Cameron resurfaced in April 2005, again in New York, where he was arrested for trespassing, but was released, and then again, some time later, on a weapons charge, where he was sentenced to 3 days community service. In both of these instances, there was no warrant to be found in the FBI.

Then on the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend 2005, in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York, Allan Cameron was pursued by two NYPD officers in an unmarked car, after Cameron ran a red light right in front of them. As they pursued him, he refused to stop; the officers ran his New Jersey tags, which came back as a stolen vehicle. During the chase, NYPD pulled alongside the stolen vehicle on the passenger side and Allan Cameron then fired his 9 mm handgun several times with one of the bullets penetrating under Officer Dillon Stewart’s left arm, the one area not protected by his bullet-proof vest. Despite the grave wound, Officer Stewart and his partner continued to chase Cameron through Brooklyn, where Cameron escaped, but was later found and arrested. Officer Stewart, 35 years old, married and the father of two, died several hours later from the gunshot wound. He was posthumously promoted to the rank of Detective and posthumously awarded NYPD’s Medal of Honor.

Allan Cameron was also identified as the perpetrator who shot and wounded an off-duty New York Police Officer during a botched robbery on November 19. He was convicted of first degree murder for killing Detective Stewart last year and is now serving life without the possibility of parole in Attica, New York. Much has been documented about this tragic story, least of which has been why the warrant was never entered into the fugitive database.