The funeral of the murdered child and a Massachusetts protest by as many as 25,000 strong clearly demonstrates how New England's fury has been unleashed, an anguished response to Jeffrey Curley boy's tragic end. Police surmise that Curley's killers had stalked the child before abducting him.

The suspects, Salvatore Sicani, 21, and Charles Jaynes, 22, both have records of violence. Seventy-five outstanding warrants had made Jaynes a quickly targeted suspect. Sicani is reported to have already confessed, blaming Jaynes for both the killing and, afterwards, an act of necrophila. He is also said to have admitted to helping purchase goods for the disposal of the body, including tape, plastic container and cement. A Home Depot receipt for these goods was found in Jayne's automobile. Before the boy's body had been found Sicani had confessed what he and Jaynes had done with it, a story now verified with a videotape from Home Depot and with the body's recovery. (See GayToday Events, October 7)

The grisly details of this heinous crime have kept Massachusetts and the whole of New England riveted. The occurrence, though not linked to gays by responsible media, is being used in an anti-gay campaign in Maine where religious fundamentalists and evangelicals presently hope to upset the Maine legislature's law protecting gay men and lesbians from employment, credit, housing and public accommodations discrimination. The anti-gay referendum will become a part of the November ballot, and fundamentalists are begging voters to eliminate gay and lesbian civil rights.

It has always been a common strategy of the religious right to link homosexuality and pedophilia, though research shows same-sex molestation statistics rare when compared with the great numbers of male heterosexual assaults on children.

On the New Hampshire bridge from which the boy's plastic body container was dropped, weeping pilgrims flock to the drop site in memory of Jeffrey Curley. Community rage against both pedophiles and NAMBLA is building at an unprecedented pace with newspapers from Boston to Bangor beating anti-pedophile, anti-NAMBLA drums.

The tragedy has been compounded because of a second child's murder, one in New Jersey and in which a convicted pedophile has been implicated— publicly accepting a degree of blame-- by association. In this case, a fifteen year-old teen has been charged in the rape and strangling of an eleven year-old boy. The teen-murderer is reported to have had sexual relations at least four times with a repeat-pedophile who is in his thirties. Public fury is building too against the concept of a free Internet where, reportedly, the older and the younger man linked up in a chat room.

NAMBLA denies the media's original reports that the killers with NAMBLA literature were, in fact, members of the group. "Having NAMBLA literature is not an indication of membership in the organization," said the organization's press release. (See GayToday Events, October 8).

Even so, the Boston Globe's slant on the murder involves an almost total linkage of NAMBLA and the crime. The Globe tells how Robert Curley, the father of 10-year old Jeffrey, placed a missive at a sidewalk shrine to his son, one addressed to Massachusetts' acting Governor that accuses NAMBLA of advocating sex crimes.

On Saturday, the lead editorial in the Bangor Daily News indicated how the Massachusetts murder is affecting Maine. "In the car Sicani and Jaynes used to commit their crime," the News editorial says, "police found literature from the North American Man/Boy Love Association."

The editors continue: "Here's what NAMBLA, easily accessible on the World Wide Web, claims to be: A political, civil rights and educational organization, dedicated to ending society's oppression of men and boys who wish to have consensual sex.

"Here's what NAMBLA really is: a cover for a group of sexual predators seeking to legitimize the rape of children. The awesome federal arsenal of criminal tax, communications and interstate commerce laws have brought down such repugnant groups before—the Ku Klux Klan being a worthy example—and NAMBLA richly deserves the same attention."

The bridge, the Bangor Daily News editors relate, "from which Sicari and Jaynes tossed their heartbreaking plastic tub into the Great Works is a shine covered in flowers, toys and letters, gifts from thousands to a ten year old they never knew."