by Bob Hamer
12
A NAMBLA HISTORY LESSON
New York NAMBLA Conference
Sunday marked a new day. I successfully sold my undercover persona during the first day of meetings and doubted I raised any suspicions. The Sunday session provided a chance to spend more time with the members in a somewhat smaller setting.
We broke into committees to help draft various pamphlets NAMBLA wanted to publish. We were encouraged to participate on one or more committees. I volunteered to be on the “Privacy” pamphlet committee with Joe P. from California and Rowan and Jim from New Jersey. Other committees included such topics as “Coming Out,” “Responding to the Media,” “How to Handle Arrests and Police Inquiries,” “Age-of-Consent Position,” “SVP (Sexual Violent Predator) Reporting,” “Treating Kids as Adults in the Court System,” “Power Differences,” “Families and Friends,” “Famous Boy Lover Figures,” “Legal Counseling,” “Religious Aspect of Boy Love,” “AIDS Advice,” “Are You a BL?,” and “Do You Love a BL?”
As I found out during my multiyear membership, the organization was poor on follow-through. To my knowledge, no pamphlet discussed at the conference was ever published. In my experience, the conferences had little to do with any organized political agenda. Instead, they were basically conclaves for boy lovers to gather, encourage each other in their “lifestyle,” and share criminal fantasies.
It was during our breakout session that Jim and I spoke at length. Jim, a former teacher from Bergen County, New Jersey, admitted to being arrested in 1982, but the charges were dismissed after three hung juries. The boy he was charged with seducing eventually testified that his psychiatrist coerced the admissions. Jim, however, never denied the seduction. He also discussed his hobby: photography. The conversation was enlightening—and infuriating—as he spoke of photographing students at an all-boys’ school, his hands gesturing to emphasize his points.
There’s a Catholic high school in the area of my neighborhood. . . . So I’m watching the soccer games . . . I mean, they’re out on the field . . . scratching, pushing their [genitals] down like they have [an erection], right on the field. One day this one kid, the most beautiful legs you’d ever want to see . . . he’s sitting there on the bench . . . like this [ Jim gestures as if playing with himself ], right out in the open.
When Paul interrupted our conversation I was somewhat irritated, but Paul elicited answers to questions I dared not ask. Paul introduced himself as being from Sussex County, New Jersey, and a friend of Tim B., the former membership chairman and Green Party member. He was clean-cut and looked to be in his early to mid-thirties. With his buttoned-down appearance, I would have suspected him of being an undercover FBI agent. His dialogue with Jim was enlightening.
Jim: We used to have chapter meetings in New York. . . . But it was so easy to infiltrate then. People show up you don’t know.
Paul: I think Peter tries to screen who comes here, hopefully.
Jim: Yeah, obviously the only reason I came here is because I knew how tight Peter was screening everyone.
Paul: He told me there were some people he decided not to invite. . . .
Jim: This is part of the problem with trying to spread the work out. . . . Someone seems to be all gung ho . . . then turns out to be a very skilled undercover operator.
Paul: Yeah . . . So we can all look at each other like that [with mistrust].
Jim: You know we do. . . . My only credential is I’ve survived twenty-three years in the organization.
Paul: Some people . . . have gotten out of it altogether. Won’t even show up to something like this.
Jim: Well, actually, I did quit; I guess it was back in eighty-three or something. I didn’t like the way they were going.
Paul: Politics?
Jim: Yeah . . . I was doing the publications, which got me well known to the FBI, I discovered later.
Paul: Yeah, well, it’s good maybe that you didn’t keep your name on the list there because you might be part of the lawsuit that’s going on now, the Massachusetts thing [the Jeffrey Curley wrongful death civil lawsuit].
Jim: I don’t know who’s on there, but I suspect it’s the executive . . .
Paul: Although I doubt if it will go anywhere.
Jim: Yeah, but it can be very expensive even if it does not go anywhere. That was my trouble.
Paul: The two guys [convicted of killing Jeffrey Curley] who had the NAMBLA Bulletin around and murdered the kid.
Jim: That’s the other thing. . . . Some of your members could be undercover guys. Some of the members are not the kind of members you really want.
Paul: Right, they could be other things.
Jim: There’s boy lovers and there’s predators.
Paul: Right . . . I wonder what the percentage is?
Jim: I have my own feelings.
Paul: What are they?
Jim: Seventy-thirty.
Paul: More are predators?
Jim: Yeah . . . There are people who are only interested in sex and go after it in whatever way.
I could not have been more interested in the exchange I’d just heard. My ego was fed by their belief that only a “skilled undercover operator” could fool Peter. But most important, a longtime member had just opined that sexual predators comprised 70 percent of the membership. The need for the “safety lecture” may have been valid. Rock wasn’t playing to an “infiltrator”; as it turned out, he was genuinely concerned about those in attendance doing something criminal while at the conference.
My cover was confirmed intact a bit later, when Peter Herman pulled me aside and asked if I wanted to be on the steering committee. I thought briefly about the invitation, smiling inwardly at my success, but respectfully declined. I knew FBI Headquarters would erupt in an administrative furor had I been elected, especially given all the discussion clarifying my investigative role prior to my attending the conference. It was made very clear that we were seeking to identify the criminal activities of individual members, not become a part of the organization’s inner sanctum. To that end, and to avoid even the appearance of attempting to interfere with the men’s legitimate First Amendment rights of assembly, I declined Peter’s invitation, then left the conference on Sunday before voting on any propositions or the selection of the steering committee members. My purpose in attending the conference was not to direct or influence or sabotage the organization, as such; my mission was to determine if members were engaging in criminal conduct. Staying focused was the only way to be successful.
As a part of my preparation for infiltrating NAMBLA, I delved into the beginnings of the organization, which lay in the late sixties, a time when the traditional values and institutions of this nation were publicly questioned and scrutinized. Sex became political and sexual liberation was at the forefront of the counterculture movement.
On June 28, 1969, around 1:20 AM, in New York City’s Greenwich Village, officers from the New York Police Department’s First Precinct conducted an all-too-typical raid on the Stonewall Inn, a West Village converted garage serving as a gay disco. It was an easy target for law enforcement, because the establishment operated without a valid liquor license.
Just a week prior, Judy Garland, deeply loved by many in the gay community, died. As many as twelve thousand men attended her June 27 funeral on the Upper East Side. A wake at Stonewall followed, and emotions were still running high as the police entered, armed with a search warrant.
Although accounts vary as to what actually precipitated the violent disturbance, by the end of the evening an estimated two thousand rioters fought with four hundred police officers. For three consecutive nights the disturbance continued—and a movement was born.
Within a month, the Gay Liberation Front was founded. The sexual revolution was at its height. This revolutionary movement spawned the opportunity for a more open discussion on all aspects of sex, including sex with minors. Among the early participants in this new movement were the founders of NAMBLA.
Almost
seven years later, a December 1977 raid on a home in Revere, Massachusetts, a quiet Boston suburb, generated extensive media coverage of the twenty-four men arrested. Described as an interstate sex ring, the men were charged with child pornography and having sex with boys. Allegedly, the men lured boys to the house to participate in sexual activity that was subsequently photographed and then distributed. The allegations made headlines; news outlets published names, addresses, occupations, and photos of those arrested.
Members of the gay community saw this law enforcement effort as a witch hunt and rallied to support those arrested. One activist, Tom Reeves, organized a meeting at the Community Church of Boston on December 2, 1978. As the evening progressed, about thirty men mobilized and formed NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association. NAMBLA was born for the express purpose of abolishing age-of-consent laws, legalizing consensual sex between men and boys.
Initially, NAMBLA was welcomed into the radical gay community and was an active member of the International Lesbian and Gay Association. The ILGA was founded in 1978 and currently consists of over four hundred member organizations seeking equality throughout the world for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals.
NAMBLA delegates participated in the drafting of ILGA’s early positions on the sexual rights of youth. The ILGA adopted resolutions calling on member organizations to implore their respective governments to abolish age-of-consent laws, to support the right of young people to sexual and social self-determination, and to support the right of every individual, regardless of age, to explore and develop his or her sexuality.
NAMBLA delegates participated for a decade in the association and considered themselves bona fide participants in the radical gay movement, even though many gay rights supporters distanced themselves from NAMBLA and its professed goals. But support by the ILGA waned when, in 1993, the ILGA learned the United States government was seeking its removal from the United Nations’ Economic and Social Counsel as a “consultative body” unless NAMBLA, the Dutch Vereniging Martijn, and Project Truth were expelled from the ILGA. The United States took the position that these three organizations promoted and supported pedophilia; a bill passed unanimously in Congress that threatened to cut off United Nations funding unless NAMBLA was expelled. Even though the ILGA subsequently voted to oust NAMBLA along with the other two organizations, ILGA’s consultative status was revoked, never to be reinstated. However, this action by the ILGA spelled the end of NAMBLA’s acceptance within the gay community.
Through the years, several significant efforts against NAMBLA have taken their toll on the organization’s credibility and viability. NAMBLA did manage to survive the efforts of Mike Echols, a child advocate, who infiltrated the organization and in 1985 published a membership list. His strategy—exposure—had some effect, and would soon be utilized by others.
In January 1992, KRON-TV in San Francisco aired hidden-camera video of NAMBLA meetings being held in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill Public Library. An outraged public balked at a group of admitted pedophiles using tax-supported buildings for their scheduled gatherings. CNN and Geraldo Rivera ran with the story. Two months later, John Miller of WNBC in New York aired the New York chapter meetings. This public exposure caused NAMBLA to end its public chapter meetings in several cities—events alluded to in the conversations I heard at the New York conference. Membership began to decline. Public exposure and the threat of public exposure were powerful disincentives to remaining with the organization.
In 1994, Adi Sideman’s controversial documentary Chicken Hawk debuted. The film exposed the organization through one-on-one, intimate interviews with members. Later, the 1995 NAMBLA national conference, held in Seattle, elected undercover detective Tom Polhemus to the steering committee. The 1996 conference was held in the offices of Denny Mintun in Hayward, California. Mintun later announced via the Internet that he was a government source who had provided information about the membership to law enforcement and Mike Echols’ child advocacy organization.
The event that would prove most damaging to NAMBLA was, however, the murder of ten-year-old Jeffrey Curley on October 1, 1997.
Los Angeles, 1990
January can be beautiful in Los Angeles, especially when the Santa Ana winds blow in from the desert. The smog is cleared from the sky, resulting in a scenic view of the often snow-covered San Gabriel Mountains. In 1990, I was enjoying just such a view from the fifteenth floor of the Federal Building when an agent from another squad approached. He needed assistance with a narcotics investigation.
An informant identified Michael, the manager of a local strip club, as desiring to move ten kilos of cocaine. My FBI colleague needed an undercover agent to meet Michael and negotiate the transaction. It seemed like a quick hit and I readily agreed. At the time I was working another investigation with John, an informant who identified numerous L.A.-based gang members dealing street-level quantities of rock cocaine. John had a linebacker build and arms tattooed with obvious indicia of his gang affiliation. Although he had an extensive prison record, he was likable and I enjoyed our time together. He was educating me as much as I hoped I was positively influencing him. We had been successful in our investigative endeavors, and I wanted to reward him whenever possible with a payday. I decided to bring him along with me to meet Michael. If I was able to put some powder on the table, I could compensate John for his assistance, making him even more grateful to me and the largesse of the federal government. I was hopeful such generosity would advance future investigations where his skills would be needed.
John and I worked out a backstory that seemed plausible. I posed as a tough Hollywood producer who was distributing drugs throughout the industry. Our story would be that we met while doing an after-school special on gangs and soon discovered we both were involved in the drug trade. No one who looked at John would ever question his gang affiliation. The black-and-white team of John and me seemed strange—a gangbanging linebacker and a tough-talking cross-country runner—but once again, the unconventional played well and our “odd couple” act befuddled our target.
Our initial meeting with Michael was at a Denny’s restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, just off the Hollywood freeway. We were within walking distance of several studios and just across the street from the Fox Television Center, home to Mama’s Family and Married . . . with Children. While sitting next to me in the vinyl-covered booth with John facing us, Michael laid out his plans to become a big-time Los Angeles cocaine trafficker. His wannabe act was weak; I’m not sure he had what it took to make it to the show. Throughout his spiel, I kept eating the french fries on his plate without asking his permission. I could tell he wanted to protest, but my boldness caught him off guard. At one point I even slapped his hand as he reached for one of his own fries.
After Michael left the table, convinced we were interested in purchasing whatever quantity of drugs he could produce, John looked at me and shook his head. “You are one cold mother. You’re gonna put the boy in jail and you sit there eatin’ his fries!”
Michael bought our act and never questioned our bona fides. His attempts, however, weren’t nearly as productive. Like many I met in L.A., Michael “knew of someone who knew someone” who wanted to move the ten kilos of coke; he wasn’t sitting on his personal stash. I played it tough with Michael, but I also played it fair. If Michael couldn’t produce the product, I wasn’t interested in making him a drug dealer. After several more unproductive meetings, I moved on with other investigations, believing Michael would become a distant memory who was more suited to being picked up by the local police on a possession charge than being the target of a federal inquiry.
Apparently, though, my tough demeanor made a lasting impression on Michael. The next spring, more than a year later, I was enjoying an annual tradition celebrated by many members of the L.A. FBI family: a large group of us was attending opening day at Dodger Stadium. Just a few minutes before the opening pitch, my pager went off. I looked down and saw an unfamiliar nu
mber. I reluctantly decided to find a pay phone and answer the page. To my surprise, it was Michael. Without fanfare or pleasantries he came to the point: he wanted me to kill two people.
Not having a recorder to document the call, I gave him a terse response, suitable for my bad-boy image: “It’s opening day. Nothing interferes with baseball. I’ll call you tonight after the game.”
Despite giving Michael the impression I was blowing him off, I was so caught up in the excitement of the potential of a new case—a contract killing, at that!—I had trouble concentrating on the game.
By the way, the Padres beat the Dodgers, 4-2.
13
THE MURDER OF JEFFREY CURLEY
He could have ridden across your screen in a McDonald’s commercial or been cast in a local youth production as Huckleberry Finn. By every account the blue-eyed, freckle-faced ten-year-old Jeffrey Curley was “all boy.” He lived in East Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his trouble began when he lost his bike. Losing a bike is not an uncommon experience for many youngsters. Barbara Curley wanted to teach her son responsibility and told him he would have to wait until Christmas to have it replaced.
Salvatore Sicari, twenty-two, a house painter, who lived a block away from the Curley home, and Charles Jaynes, twenty-three, an auto detailer, befriended the youngster—though “targeted” might be a better word. Jaynes and Sicari intended to recruit Jeffrey for sex. Jaynes had recently joined NAMBLA. Sicari and Jaynes learned of the lost bike and devised a scheme to lure Jeffrey into Jaynes’s 1983 gray Cadillac with the promise of a new bike.
On the afternoon of October 1, 1997, Jeffrey left his grandmother’s home after telling her, “I have to go do something. I’ll be back in a little while.” He never returned.