WATCHING his son Jeffrey practicing his push-ups, Robert Curley couldn’t help but smile.
While Robert had split with Barbara, the mum of his three boys he lived just round the corner meaning he could see them every day.
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“We were amicable and both focused on doing the best for our kids,” Robert, now 68, says.
“After we’d broken up, I’d moved just around the corner, so I was able to see them every day and keep a protective eye over them too.”
But even with both of his parents furiously protective of their 10-year-old boy, nothing could be done to save Jeffrey from his appalling fate.
On October 1st 1997, Jeffrey had been washing his grandmother’s dog in Cambridge, Massachusetts when he was kidnapped by neighbours Salvatore Sicari and Charles Jaynes.
The pair had lured the schoolboy into the car with the promise of a new bike before suffocating him, abusing him and then tossing his body into a nearby river.
“Although it’s been 28 years since Jeffrey walked out of home and into the clutches of his killers, losing him never gets any easier,” his dad says.
“What our son went through in his last moments will haunt me forever.”
Robert says that he had his suspicions of Sicari but could never have imagined what he was capable of.
“I noticed Salvatore, who I knew was a troublemaker and an oddball, hanging around a lot and I became worried,” he says.
“The last thing I wanted was for him to befriend my boys.”
Robert asked his other son Bob whether he and Sicari were friends.
“He told me they weren’t but explained that he and his friends had noticed Salvatore staring at them,” Robert says.
“It struck me as weird but I felt Bob had got the measure of him, so that eased my concerns slightly.”
Then one afternoon, a couple of days later, Barbara rang Robert in a panic.
Jeffrey was missing.
“It wasn’t like Jeffrey to go somewhere without telling us and I instantly got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach,” Robert recalls.
Barbara had called the police and by the time Robert reached her home detectives had arrived to take down details.
Jeffrey had been visiting his grandmother nearby and had been washing her dog outside when he had disappeared.
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Robert says: “I picked up the phone and called every hospital nearby, just in case he’d been hurt and someone had taken him there. But no luck.”
As night fell, there was still no sign of Jeffrey and the next morning family, friends and neighbours set a search party to help look for the 10-year-old.
“Among them was Sal, who approached me and said that he wanted to help,” Robert says.
“I was still wary of him and then he said something so odd it knocked me for six.
“He told me that people thought he and his best friend Charles were gay but that he liked girls.
“I couldn’t figure out why he was bringing up his sexuality at a time like this
“However, I had bigger things to worry about as the search came to nothing.”
Days passed with no news. Then a week after his disappearance the police arrived at Barbara’s with a devastating blow.
Officers informed the parents that Jeffrey had been found dead.
His body had been found by police divers in a cement-filled container in the river.
His little 10-year-old frame had no chance against the 17 stone brute
Robert Curley
They explained that the 10-year-old had been kidnapped by Salvatore Sicari and Charles Jaynes and they were being investigated on suspicion of murder.
Robert says: “I thought about Sal saying he wanted to help with the search just days earlier and felt completely sickened.
“Barbara couldn’t bear to go, but I needed to see our boy one last time.
“As I looked down at him in the casket, I broke down.
“If he had any injuries, they were covered up, and he looked perfect.
“I vowed to make sure that his killers paid for what they had done to my boy.
“For the next year, we tried our best to get on with our lives, but it was like being in a nightmare.”
In time, Salvatore Sicari, 21, appeared in court and denied kidnapping and murdering Jeffrey.
During his trial, the court heard that after befriending the schoolboy, he and Charles Jaynes, 22, had then lured him into their car with the promise of a new bike.
They then drove in the direction of the bike shop so as not to raise his suspicions.
But after parking at the back of the shop Jaynes got into the back seat with Jeffrey, put his arm around him and held a petrol-soaked rag to his face until he suffocated.
“His little 10-year-old frame had no chance against the 17 stone brute,” Robert says.
“The vile duo had then put Jeffrey’s body in the boot and driven him back to Jaynes’ flat in Manchester, NH, where Sicari had abused him.
“After that, they’d put his body in the storage container and dumped it in the river.”
Sicari’s lawyer placed the blame with Jaynes, saying Sicari witnessed the killing and helped cover up the crime, but that didn’t make him a killer.
But on November 13 1998 he was found guilty and jailed for life without parole for first-degree murder, with a concurrent sentence of 19 to 20 years for kidnapping.
“We wept with relief,” remembers Robert.
“But months later, we had to go through it all again at Jaynes’ trial.”
Who are the UK’s worst serial killers?
THE UK’s most prolific serial killer was actually a doctor.
Here’s a rundown of the worst offenders in the UK.
- British GP Harold Shipman is one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history. He was found guilty of murdering 15 patients in 2000, but the Shipman Inquiry examined his crimes and identified 218 victims, 80 per cent of whom were elderly women.
- After his death Jonathan Balls was accused of poisoning at least 22 people between 1824 and 1845.
- Mary Ann Cotton is suspected of murdering up to 21 people, including husbands, lovers and children. She is Britain’s most prolific female serial killer. Her crimes were committed between 1852 and 1872, and she was hanged in March 1873.
- Amelia Sach and Annie Walters became known as the Finchley Baby Farmers after killing at least 20 babies between 1900 and 1902. The pair became the first women to be hanged at Holloway Prison on February 3, 1903.
- William Burke and William Hare killed 16 people and sold their bodies.
- Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe was found guilty in 1981 of murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven others between 1975 and 1980.
- Dennis Nilsen was caged for life in 1983 after murdering up to 15 men when he picked them up from the streets. He was found guilty of six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to life in jail.
- Fred West was found guilty of killing 12 but it’s believed he was responsible for many more deaths.
Janynes too denied murder and kidnapping, blaming Sicari.
His lawyer claimed he was at most an accessory to murder, despite the police finding the football shirt Jeffrey had been wearing the day he disappeared in Jaynes’ flat, along with a receipt for a storage container and concrete.
On December 11 1998 the jury found Jaynes guilty of second-degree murder and kidnapping and he was jailed for life, with parole.
“We got ’em, I thought, remembering my vow to Jeffrey,” Robert says.
“But while I was glad justice had been done, our hearts were broken.
“While we tried to get on with our lives, Jeffrey was never far from our thoughts and the ache of loss never dimmed.”
Then, 23 years after Jeffrey’s murder, aged 44 Jaynes applied for parole and admitted publicly for the first time that he had kidnapped and murdered Jeffrey Curley to a parole board.
“He claimed Sicari had put him up to the idea of having sex with Jeffrey and then killing him,” Robert says.
The real Charles Jaynes is the devil
Robert Curley
“Together, they’d groomed Jeffrey.
“It broke my heart to hear Jaynes say that when our little boy had got into their car he’d told these monsters, ‘You guys are my best friends.’”
In his parole hearing Jaynes claimed he’d gone through with the murder to impress Sicari.
He also added, “I wanted to see if I could get away with it like on TV and the movies.”
He told the parole board he had kept Jeffrey’s shirt ‘as something to remember him by’.
“Barbara and I went to the hearing to demand he be kept behind bars,” Robert says.
“His admissions didn’t make what he’d done any less despicable and I told the board, ‘The real Charles Jaynes is the devil. That’s the devil right there.’
“Thankfully, his parole was denied.”
Now, five years on, Jaynes has made another parole application, and Barbara and Robert are gearing up to oppose it once more.
“While I still have breath in my body, I will fight to keep the monster who took him from us behind bars,” says Robert.
“That’s the promise I made my funny, cheeky, beautiful little boy, and I’m determined to keep it.”
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