The Ride: The Jeffrey Curley Murder and Its Aftermath

by Brian MacQuarrie

Overview

The Ride tells the shocking true story of the 1997 abduction and gruesome murder of ten-year-old Massachusetts resident Jeffrey Curley, and how his father, Bob, healed the deep wounds of rage and emerged to become an outspoken critic of the death penalty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786748037
Publisher:	Da Capo Press
Publication date:	06/02/2009
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

For the past twenty years, Brian MacQuarrie has been a reporter and editor for the Boston Globe, where he has covered many major breaking stories. He lives in Boston.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

1 Inman Square 3

2 A Ride to Hell 25

3 The Face of Evil 51

4 The Long Journey Home 79

5 Storm at the State House 103

6 Uncharted Ground 135

7 Collateral Damage 153

8 Questions and Beginnings 167

9 Resurrection 195

10 The Road Home 217

11 Into the Light 237

Epilogue 253

Notes 255

Acknowledgments 259

Index 263

Editorial Reviews

In 1997, the murder of ten-year-old Jeffrey Curley rocked the blue collar Boston suburb East Cambridge, , an idyllic but scrappy community where, in the crime's aftermath, neighbor quickly turned against neighbor. The murder sparked an intense movement in liberal Massachusetts to reinstate the death penalty; at the outset, one of the movement's most outspoken proponents was Jeffrey's father, Bob Curley. In this vivid account by Boston Globe reporter MacQuarrie, Bob Curley wrestles with the demons of grief, alcoholism and vengeance, as well as family conflict and outsiders' opportunistic political agendas, to emerge a staunch, courageous opponent of capital punishment. His saga will hold particular resonance for readers who struggle with their own opinions on the complex issue. While relating details of the horrific crime, MacQuarrie's style is visceral and haunting, but he loses some steam when focusing on Bob's journey-perhaps because MacQuarrie gives the rest of the Curley family such short shrift. Still, this is a gripping, unusual true crime tale, likely to move readers to tears and sure to inspire personal contemplation.
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Publishers Weekly

Boston Globe reporter MacQuarrie chronicles the October 1997 murder of ten-year-old Jeffrey Curley and its devastating effect on his family. What begins as fairly typical, if unusually disturbing, true-crime material quickly turns into the stuff of Greek tragedy as the author plumbs the psyche of the real protagonist of the story-Jeffrey's father Bob, a firehouse mechanic from a working-class section of Cambridge. Bob was estranged from his wife and beginning a new relationship when Jeffrey's horrific murder at the hands of a pair of sociopaths thrust him into the limelight as the de facto spokesman for the reinstatement of the death penalty in one of the most liberal states in the nation. At first, perhaps as a result of the guilt he felt for not being present when Jeffrey needed him most, Bob was eager to play the role that death-penalty proponents asked of him. The sentiment the Curley case aroused in the public developed a momentum that nearly succeeded in overwhelming the anti-capital punishment contingent that was long in power in the statehouse, but crafty politics and unusually courageous politicians turned back the challenge. Then Bob found himself-and worse, the image of Jeffrey in his Little League uniform-being used as a political prop in campaign literature without permission. When the courts dealt Jeffrey's murderer a light sentence, Bob lost all faith in the system to get the right man, let alone determine whether he lived or not. MacQuarrie's familiarity with the physical landscape of Boston and its suburbs lends a captivating verisimilitude to the storytelling, and he masterfully captures the rawness of Bob's emotions as he moved from inarticulate rage to a kind oftranscendent wisdom. A first-rate combination of true crime and social history. Author tour to New England. Agent: Rachel Sussman, Todd Shuster/Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency

Kirkus Reviews