Man Found Guilty of Killing Boy, 10

A man was convicted of murdering a 10-year-old boy who was lured into a car with the promise of a new bicycle, then suffocated, molested, entombed in concrete and dumped in a river. In a case that nearly returned the death penalty to Massachusetts, a jury in Cambridge found Salvatore Sicari, 22, guilty of first-degree murder in the slaying of Jeffrey Curley. Sicari got the mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. Prosecutors said Sicari helped lure the fifth-grader into a Cadillac in 1997, promising him $50 and a new bike. When the child rebuffed the sexual advances, he was smothered with a gasoline-soaked rag, prosecutors said. Investigators said that Jeffrey had been pursued for two weeks before he was abducted. The case prompted cries last year for a return of the death penalty in Massachusetts. The measure failed by one vote in the Legislature.