The Murder of John E. Volungis Jr. (Massachusetts)

On a winter night in early February of 1992, John E. Volungis Jr. was standing on the edge of a brand-new life. After years of working toward a career in law enforcement, John was about to take off for his next step in that pursuit.

It was supposed to be a fresh start after navigating a complicated past and an equally complicated marriage. But before he could take that next step, something happened inside the Worcester duplex he shared with his wife. Something no one has ever fully explained.

February 3, 1992

It was the night of February 3, 1992 and for 21-year old John E. Volungis Jr. it was the night before the rest of his life. John was scheduled to leave the next morning to begin six months of active military duty. According to reporting by Dianne Williamson, who covered this case extensively for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, John would be reporting to a U.S. Army Military Entrance Processing Station in Springfield after having enlisted the previous October. He’d be heading to California, and was classified for military intelligence with foreign language training.

John had always kept his sights on a decorated law enforcement and military career. Lee Hammel writes for the Telegram & Gazette that John was working towards becoming an FBI agent, and had even once told a friend he’d like to be president one day. He was committed to these massive goals, even when events in his past threatened to derail his dreams in a major way. But he was past all of that now. His future was about to begin.

John and his wife of 14 months, Bridget D’Iorio-Volungis, had an up-and-down relationship. She was about 12 years his senior – something his parents didn’t necessarily approve of – and during the frequent “off” periods in their marriage, Bridget sometimes saw other people. John had just moved back into their shared duplex at 5 Porter Street in Worcester a few weeks earlier after staying with his parents for several months while he and Bridget were separated.

According to court filings, despite their past relationship woes, Bridget said that they planned to spend the last night before John left town for half a year together eating John’s favorite garlic pizza at the Wonderbar. Before they could get to the pizza part of the evening though, Bridget had mom duties to attend to. She had two children from a previous relationship, and her son had a basketball game that evening. Bridget left work at 5 for the game and planned to pick John up later from his parents’ house. He’d sold his car in preparation for deployment, and had been borrowing one from his parents, so he was returning it to them that night.

Sometime between 7 and 7:30 that night, Bridget picked John up from his mother and father’s home in Auburn. She still had to get her kids over to their aunt’s place for babysitting that night, so Bridget dropped John off at home and went to retrieve the kids from a friend’s house, where she left them to play after the basketball game.

According to reporting by Winston W. Wiley for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, about 45 minutes later, Bridget returned home to Porter Street. She walked through the garage and into the house, but was stopped cold at the sight on the hallway floor.

Around 8:30 p.m. a neighbor on nearby Onset Street was startled from a crime drama on TV by the sound of urgent pounding on his door. It was Bridget. She told her neighbor that John was on the floor and there was blood everywhere. She asked him to call 911 before he and Bridget ran back to where John lay just inside the door to the house from the garage, hoping it wasn’t too late. But when the neighbor saw the state of John, he knew the young man was beyond saving.

A later autopsy found that John suffered multiple stab wounds – upwards of 18 stab wounds, according to one source. Police did not recover a murder weapon from the scene but it was believed to be a survival-type knife. A large black knife sheath was found next to John’s leg.

There was no sign of forced entry; nothing taken from the house. Police believed that whoever killed John had followed him inside before ambushing him, or had been lying in wait for him to walk through that door.

Bridget’s Only Statement

Bridget went with police to the station to give a full statement that same evening. She told investigators that on the afternoon and evening of February 3, she left work around 5 p.m. to watch her son’s basketball game, but she left the game shortly after. She said she had to stop home quickly to change her clothes and grab a tampon, and she checked the phone while she was there (but didn’t make any calls), before heading back out through the garage to return to the game. 

Bridget couldn’t remember if she locked the door leading from the garage into the house, but she remembered watching as the automatic garage door closed before pulling away.

After the game, Bridget said that she drove a relative home before bringing her kids and a friend to the friend’s house for a quick visit while she went to pick John up at his parent’s house. Returning to Worcester, she dropped John off at the duplex on Porter Street sometime between 7 and 7:30 p.m. and opened the garage door so he get could get inside.

From there, Bridget said she picked her kids up from the friend’s house and then brought them to her sister’s house where her nephew was going to babysit. She arranged for them to spend the night there, too, so she and John could spend the evening alone together before he left the next day.

Bridget said that about 45 minutes had passed between dropping John off at her house, transporting the kids to her sister’s house, and returning home. When she walked in, she found John lying in a pool of blood. She said she tried running to three different houses, including her brother’s place on the other side of the duplex next door, but only the neighbor at the third house answered.

Bridget walked out of the police station at 4 a.m. the next morning after giving her statement. When she returned home, she realized all the phones in her house were inexplicably missing. Police found that in fact someone, presumably the killer, unplugged the kitchen telephone and took a phone off the hook in the living room.

In the early days, detectives moved quickly, sending several items to a well-known forensic laboratory in Connecticut, including the leather jacket John had been wearing when he was stabbed. For a brief moment, it appeared that scientific testing might break the case open. But as time passed, no new information emerged. If the analyses revealed anything of value, those findings were never released to the public. The forensic trail, at least outwardly, seemed to vanish.

Police also conducted interviews, including one with Bridget’s brother, who was reportedly home in the adjacent duplex on the night John was killed. He told investigators he hadn’t heard a thing – no knocking from Bridget, no commotion, nothing to suggest his brother-in-law was in danger just a few feet away. His account offered neither clarity nor contradiction; it simply added to the growing list of dead ends.

With little progress from authorities to conclusively answer any questions in the case, John’s parents took their own steps to keep the case alive. They offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of his killer. Despite their public plea, no one came forward with anything that closed the case.

But all the while, another thread in John’s story began to draw scrutiny. According to court documents, Bridget stopped talking to police after her initial interview. She hired a lawyer and reportedly never again asked about the status of the investigation.

In the absence of any further interviews with John’s widow, her actions began to raise some eyebrows. Because Bridget filed a claim for the proceeds of John’s very newly minted term life insurance policy.

As investigators learned, in early January of 1992, John and Bridget each took out matching $150,000 term life-insurance policies with Continental Assurance Company. Both policies were issued on January 9th, and the first premiums were paid that same month for coverage that would extend through July of that year. Bridget was listed as the sole beneficiary of John’s policy. John was murdered less than four weeks after the policies were issued. 

This is an excerpt from the full episode covering the case of John E. Volungis Jr. Press play wherever you get your podcasts to hear John’s story on Dark Downeast.