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Mending the human heart

THE RIDE:
A Shocking Murder and a Bereaved Father’s
Journey From Rage to Redemption
By Brian MacQuarrie
304 pp. Da Capo Press $26

Reviewed by Ruth Douillette

The death of a child is a nightmare from which a parent never truly recovers. Much less when the child is a victim of a violent murder, and the family relives the moment not only in nightmares, but also in a courtroom where they must listen to a replay of the grisly details. With the accused in the witness box, face-to-face with the grieving, it’s a wonder that more tormented parents don’t leap the distance to inflict like violence on the perpetrator. Who at that moment would want to turn the other cheek?

Certainly not Bob Curley, father of ten-year-old Jeffrey, who was murdered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1997 by two young men Jeffrey considered to be his friends.

Boston Globe reporter and editor Brian MacQuarrie recounts the days before the murder and the dozen years following it with a journalist’s finely trained eye for detail. Reading of murder is not pleasant, and writing about it can’t have been either, but MacQuarrie accomplishes the task with respect and empathy for the Curley family and its continuing grief.

Plenty of people in the Boston area remember well the daily media reports on what was first thought to be a missing child case, and then, please God, “just” a kidnapping.

Photos appeared daily on the front pages of papers and TV news. Most memorable is the poignant baseball photo: young Jeffrey with a Louisville Slugger over his right shoulder and a brand new baseball cap perched proudly on his head. He looks into the camera with the hint of a smile, the wistful promise of a home run.

When Jeffrey’s body was found in a Maine river, any remaining hope was smothered as cruelly as Jeffrey had been, and come baseball season local Little League games were played in his memory.

The Ride, however, is more than a grim retelling of Jeffrey Curley’s murder, although there is that chapter; “A Ride to Hell” is a wrenchingly vivid description of how Charles Jaynes and Salvatore Sicari lured Jeffrey into their car with the promise of a bike. Jeffrey, upon learning that the payment was to be sexual favors, rebelled and fought until he died a death no one, let alone a child, should have to endure. And then he was raped.

Jeffrey’s parents, Bob and Barbara Curley, were separated. Bob was a Cambridge fireman; Barbara lived nearby with Jeffrey and his two older brothers. It was Barbara who’d kept Jeffrey home from school that fateful day. He’d been sick and was still pale and listless.

“Jeffrey, stay home with me,” she’d insisted against his protests. She still blames herself for this simple request—a bit of mothering enacted daily by many without such a devastating consequence. When Jeffrey felt better in the afternoon, he’d nagged to go out. She’d capitulated. He never returned.

Thus begins the time when the living must choose, with what reserves they have left, to move beyond grief, anger, and guilt to begin healing—or not. It is a uniquely personal thing. For Barbara there was “heartbreak” that drove her to her bed, and still holds her captive. For Bob, there was “unquenchable anger” he’d tried to drown in drink until it nearly killed him—both the anger and the drink.

The book’s main thrust, how the family coped in the dozen years since Jeffrey’s death, focuses in particular on Bob’s journey to regain a functional life.

It’s a testimony to Bob’s internal fortitude that he rose from a depression that was destined to kill him to become a leading advocate in the fight against the death penalty in Massachusetts. Yes, against. Although it wasn’t always so.

Bob would have murdered Sicari and Jaynes himself had he had the opportunity. He wanted vengeance so badly that he was front and center in the annual charge to reinstate the death penalty in Massachusetts. The last execution in Massachusetts had been in 1947.

Curley had never given the issue of the death penalty much thought, but after Jeffrey’s murder he felt execution was fitting revenge and would put an end to his consuming anger.

Both sides approach the issue with philosophical differences unlikely to be bridged. Proponents believe in an eye for an eye; they believe the death penalty is a deterrent. Opponents say it’s not a deterrent, and fear executions of the innocent. Neither side accepts statistics cited by the other, and often it becomes a matter of the heart as to which side of the debate one accepts.

Bob’s heart began to change as he listened to the testimony of other families of murder victims who didn’t demand death.

“It took me a long time to get to the point where I did change my opinion on the death penalty.... It didn’t just happen to me overnight. But that’s just the way I see it...” Bob concluded his remarks at an annual hearing on the death penalty in 2007.

It may not be turning the other cheek, but neither is it an eye for an eye.

This book is finished, but the story continues for the Curley family, which lives a life—without parole—of grief and loss. MacQuarrie, with his solid journalistic approach, makes no attempt to persuade one way or the other on the death penalty. But what he does make clear is the power of the human heart to mend and rise from the ashes of anger and despair. For the Curleys, life goes on as best it can, and Jeffrey’s legacy continues through his father’s successful efforts to block the death penalty in Massachusetts.

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Ruth Douillette retired after 35 years as a middle school teacher, and now freelances as a writer and photographer. Her essays have been published in the Christian Science Monitor, Cup of Comfort, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Under Our Skin, an anthology about breast cancer. Her photography has been featured in flashquake's gallery of art. Ruth is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. For a sample of her writing and photography, visit Upstream and Down~.

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