Justice for Bill Durney
Bill Durney, Sonya Durney, 1976
The Murder of William Durney
William Durney, who went by Bill, was a character. He drove a big gas tanker and joked with his siblings, “When the aliens come, I want to be a groovy guy. They can get their gas from me.” Driving around Massachusetts in the middle of the night, delivering gas, might be a little lonely or a little quiet, but he didn’t mind. He liked his job. It was a good job for a big company and he had a family of three kids to support. He didn’t need a lot of sleep and it gave him more time with his friends and family.
He had picked up a shift that Thursday because Christmas was coming up—he still had plenty of time, though, it was just October 9th, 1980. He had a 10-hour shift from 6:00PM to 4:30AM. He drove his personal vehicle to the main terminal in Waltham, Massachusetts, and checked in. As usual, he had four runs to complete that night. Each run took about two-and-a-half hours. The way it worked is he would drive the truck to a gas station, offload the gas into their tanks, and head back to the main terminal to refill again. The nice part about doing it at night was that there were so few cars on the road it was much easier to maneuver the big rig.
According to Bill’s log, he pulled into a gas station called Joe’s Shell at 1:30AM. It was about 30 miles north of his terminal in Waltham. It was either his third or his fourth and final run of the night. He started to prepare the truck and the station for the transfer of gasoline by removing various caps on the truck and the hatches at the gas station. The quantity of gas that was to be transferred was later described as approximately $10,000 worth—in 1980, gas was going for about $1.00 per gallon, so perhaps that was around 10,000 gallons of gasoline, which is a large full tanker.
Joe’s Shell was closed, but he knew the procedure. It was right off of I-93 in Methuen at the Pelham Street exit. Just on the other side of the highway was a Howard Johnson. Bill probably came right up I-93 with his big full tanker and took the exit and pulled right into the gas station parking lot.
Something went horribly wrong right around this time, even before he started pumping any gas.
Bill Durney was shot and killed by someone wielding a .22 caliber handgun. He was struck twice—once in the back and once in the upper arm. Given the fact that he was shot in the back, it seems like Bill must have been trying to get away from the shooter.
He made his way on foot, bleeding and fatally-wounded, toward the underpass. He may have been heading toward the Howard Johnson, which was open 24 hours a day, but he didn’t make it. He made it a ways—by our estimation, about 700 feet—and stopped at a metal jersey barrier that overlooks a creek. But he seems to have run out of power at this point, because that’s where he was later found.
At 4:15AM, his colleagues back at the Waltham terminal contacted police. They were worried because he hadn’t yet returned—they told police that they had expected him back about an hour prior—perhaps around 3:15AM. He was long overdue, and he had not contacted them to report any delay. They told the police where to go—his scheduled stop was at Joe’s Shell at 135 Pelham Street in Methuen.
Around 4:30AM, police found his truck at the gas station. It was still running. The doors were unlocked. The lights were on. They found the covers of the tanks removed, but the gas transfer had not yet been started. His wallet, a paycheck, and some coffee money were still in the truck. It was the dead of night—sunrise wasn’t until 6:52AM. Bill was nowhere to be found.
The cops looked around for a little while, but then they left. After all, it was no crime to leave a running truck in the parking lot of a gas station. They relayed the information back to his headquarters. Little did they know, the driver of the truck lay dead or dying just a short walk away.
Around 6:40AM, with the glow of the early morning light, Bill’s body was discovered by a passerby. From the roadway he had been semi-concealed by the guardrail and the darkness. He was wearing a gray work jacket with matching pants, white socks, and a pair of work boots.
Police responded again and they started putting things together. They believed, at first, that Bill had suffered from a medical emergency—a heart attack perhaps. But when they moved his body, they discovered that 30-year-old Bill Durney had been murdered.
Bill Durney
Bill grew up in North Reading, Massachusetts with a big family. He was the oldest of five—three boys and two girls.
Bill was a charmer in high school. His younger brother, Bob, remembered him as a good student and even part of the student council one year. His younger sister, Lori, recalled that he did well with the ladies in high school. He smoked cigarettes. He liked cars. He drove like a maniac—Bob remembered catching rides with him where he would hold on for dear life. He was clean-cut and was always well-dressed. Lori said, “Not a hair out of place.”
In his high school portrait, Bill has short coarse dark-brown hair, well-coiffed, with no sideburns. He is handsome. His skin is smooth and unblemished. His ears protrude prominently.
Lori remembered his ears. He was a goofball, always playing around and telling stories. She said, “He could fold his ears over, and he could stick them in the little hole [and they would stay like that!].”
He looked out for his siblings. Lori remembered him fighting with their parents about her needing braces. One time he helped her deliver kittens. He sometimes took her for rides in his Mustang.
But despite his seemingly normal high school experience, his home life was anything but.
His father was physically-abusive. He graduated in 1967 from North Reading High School, and he was eager to get away—he had endured a difficult childhood with a violent and alcoholic father. One of his close friends was entering the military, and Bill looked at it as a way out.
Bill enlisted in the Army. He would end up serving for about 3 years—from 1967 to 1970. He trained to become a medic and, when he was deployed, he worked at hospitals in Vietnam caring for the wounded. His brother believes that he was stationed in Vietnam for one of those three years. His brother said that he was a “scrub tech” who worked in the operating room.
When he got back from war, he lived at home for a little while. He came home with a physical ailment—his feet had experienced “jungle rot” from having been in wet combat boots in a hot and humid climate. He was given a monthly disability payment for this lingering condition. However, it didn’t seem to affect his gait. Mentally, his brother Bob said, “He was a mess. He’d sit in a corner of the house for hours. He had a hard time readjusting.” Mentally, Bill was struggling.
Before enlisting, he had expressed interest in pursuing a career in medicine, perhaps even becoming a doctor someday, but on his return, he told his sister, “I’ve seen enough over there.”
Bill had not lost his love for fast cars, though, and he got a “monster of a Mustang” when he got back.
Bob remembered him getting chased by the police, but he never got caught. He was soon driving big trucks (but not yet gas trucks) for work. He traded in his Mustang for an MGB, a model manufactured by the British auto company MG. His brother, Bob, had the same car, and remembered one night Bill raced home, eluding the police. Bob arrived 10 minutes later and then the police showed up and give him a ticket—they thought he was the one racing through the streets.
Around this same time, Bill was having fun betting at Rockingham Park, a horse track in Salem, New Hampshire. He’d get a racing guide and make plans. Bob said that he had a catch phrase that he would often repeat: “I’m gonna win, because I have a system. I have a system, Bob.” And he never won.
Bill met Cindy, who was a year and a half his senior, and they would go on to marry in 1973. They moved to Gloucester, Massachusetts, a coastal city northeast of Boston.
Cindy was part of a big family—the youngest of 8 siblings—and they were all very close. They welcomed Bill. Cindy’s older sister, Jill, said that it was a “deep realization” for Bill to become a part of a functional and loving family. She remembered her first impressions of him: “Tall... dark... handsome... good to my parents... had a funny sense of humor... used to always wear leisure suits.” It was the mid-1970s after all.
Bill quickly became a beloved member of the Braceland family.
His wife’s oldest sister, Joyce, and her husband, Walter, were leaders of a social group of family and friends that would party together—they had been doing it for years. The name of the group was the “The Restless Rustlers.” A rustler is someone who steals livestock from farms—a term that conjures images of the Wild West. One time the social group was at a restaurant and they stole a big cow bone—and thus the name was born.
Walter loved Bill—thought of him like an adopted son. They would regularly golf together and he even helped Bill to construct a putting green at his house. Walter and Joyce were quite a bit older than Bill—they were 25 and 22 years older than him respectively. Closer to his age was family friend, Jim Robinson, with whom he became very close. He, too, had served in Vietnam. They were best friends—the kind of friends that could call any time, day or night, and would do anything for one another.
Jim and Bill would golf together all the time. Bill loved it. In Jim’s words, “He was a fanatic! But Bill sucked. He’d shoot 105, 106... I sucked too! It was a fairly even match; we enjoyed it. We never got upset, we just had fun. It was a nice time away from the wives.”
In 1974, Bill started working for Shell as a tanker truck driver doing deliveries, and that same year, he and Cindy bought a house together on Beacon Street in Framingham, Massachusetts, a suburb about 30 minutes west of Boston. Cindy was soon pregnant and would give birth to their oldest daughter—Sonya Durney—in 1975. For the next five years, Bill would have the best years of his life.
The Braceland family and the Restless Rustlers had plenty of social gatherings and Walter’s son, Bill’s nephew-in-law, Chris Munger fondly remembered him playing piano for people. He would sing, too, but his best-friend Jim recalled, “Bill would come over and sit there and sing along with my brother [who was in a band], and he sucked at that too!” He may not have been the best singer, but he could carry a tune and was always the life of the party. His sister, Lori, remembered, “There was all this gossip when there was a gathering... ‘Where’s Bill? Where’s Bill?’ ... He was funny, smart, a story-teller.”
And he knew how to lay it on thick—he’d tell Lori, “You’re the only one that makes the best sandwiches...” And sure enough, she would soon appear with one of her perfect sandwiches, just the way he liked. He knew how to use a little flattery to his advantage and people—women especially—indulged him. He was a great host. He was the star of the show.
Bill and Cindy had two more kids—Joseph Durney in 1977 and Richard Durney in 1979. And though Bill was busy with young children, owning a house, full-time work, the Restless Rustlers, and his in-laws, he stayed in touch with his family, even though it was sometimes difficult. Bill’s mother, according to Lori, “hated Cindy,” because she was so, “unhelpfully attached to Bill.” She loved Cindy, too, but it was a tense relationship. And Cindy wasn’t afraid to speak up. Going to see his parents was sometimes complicated by his dad’s drinking. Cindy’s sister, Jill, said that “Bill would have to go in and make sure his father wasn’t drunk [when they went to visit].”
Bill and Cindy and Jim and his wife June would travel together—they all got along great—Jim remembered a couple of epic trips—one to Las Vegas, one to Tampa, Florida. He said that they rented a big 35-foot RV and drove 24 hours straight down to Florida to spend three weeks together. Jim said that he and Bill—just the two of them, not including the wives—polished off 25 cases of Heineken over the course of the trip. That’s 24 bottles a case, or 600 beers. Jim said, “I’ve never met someone who could drink beer like him; it was unbelievable.” He said that they were on the way back and were closing in on Massachusetts when Bill asked if he wanted a beer—it was their final bottle.
Another time they went to Vegas together. They did a lot of betting and Jim said “the wives weren’t particularly happy about it... We all lost.” At one point, Jim and Bill were on their own on Fremont Street and a lit sign for “The Golden Goose” beckoned to them—it was a strip club. They went in and were making friends with the servers and dancers and Bill was spinning a tale about how they were American Airlines pilots. The girls were excited, asking, “Can you get tickets for free?” Meanwhile, the wives, having returned to where they last saw their husbands, knew immediately where to find them. Cindy and June walked in—the girls asked them, “Are you the wives of these pilots?” Cindy retorted, “What f***ing pilots?!”
In Jim’s words, “the wives put up with us.”
According to Jim, they “never had any run-ins with the law,” and he remembered “not one bad memory at all.”
It was 10 months after their final child was born that Bill would be shot dead in the middle of the night in a gas station parking lot. His kids were 5, 3, and 10 months. None of them would ever get to grow up with their father.
Jim said simply, “It devastated me when he died.” And Jim wasn’t alone. Walter called his son, in tears, to relay the news.
The investigation
When the police responded to the scene at 4:30AM, they didn’t find Bill. The truck was still running. The lights were on. The transfer of gas hadn’t begun. They found the log that indicated that he had arrived at the station at 1:30AM.
They responded a second time at 6:30AM when Bill’s body was found about a quarter-mile away from Joe’s Shell by a passerby. At that point, they treated Joe’s Shell as a crime scene and began to investigate.
The most important discovery in the case was quickly made—there were five .22 caliber bullet cartridges that were discovered on the pavement near the truck, but only two of the rounds had been discharged. The other three cartridges were still intact, and police said that they were misfires. I assume that firearms experts reviewed the rounds and found evidence of a firing pin having struck the round, but it failed to fire. This means that 3 out of 5 rounds had a malfunction and had to be manually ejected from the firing chamber, which means that the shooter had to clear the chamber by racking the slide on the gun. The gun used has been described by police as a .22 caliber handgun. This information was reported in the newspapers contemporary to the time. We have gotten a bit more information from Bill’s family. The five cartridges recovered were all .22 caliber—which refers to the diameter of the bullet. However, the cartridges were labeled with two different types. Four of the rounds were marked .22LF and one was marked just .22. LF is not a common designation in ammo, so it could be an inaccuracy. A similar, more common designation is LR, an acronym meaning “Long Rifle,” which refers to the length of the round. .22LR is the most common length of .22 ammunition, and despite it including the word “rifle,” in its name, it is the most common round used in .22 caliber handguns. If the rounds are, in fact, marked LF, it could stand for “lead free,” which, as the name implies, contain no lead. These types of rounds are used to reduce exposure to lead, which can accumulate in indoor shooting ranges or can contaminate meat in hunting. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, also known as the ATF, was sent the rounds, and they produced some findings. They concluded that the rounds came from a Llama .22 caliber handgun. It’s unclear to us how they were able to determine the manufacturer or model of the gun that was used by the assailant. The only explanation of their logic is that the Llama .22 was a gun known to misfire, which could explain the high number of rounds that had to be manually cleared (3 out of 5, or 60%). But to put this in perspective, a good misfire rate on a .22 would be .5%, or 1 out of 200 rounds. A 60% misfire rate means something was wrong—either the ammo or the gun had defects.
According to the family, Bill was shot twice—once while facing his assailant and a second time, in the back, when he was turned away. Joe’s Shell was across Pelham Street from an apartment complex—it may be the one at 71 Mystic Street, which is about 500 feet south of Pelham Street. A witness, not identified in the newspapers, evidently told police that they heard two shots fired around 1:30AM. Presumably, these are the two shots that killed Bill Durney.
One of the questions that arose in our minds was how did Bill communicate with his headquarters—was there a radio in his truck? It was 1980—before the cell phone era—but it was at the height of the CB radio craze. Truckers all across America had CB radios in their cabs. The fad gave birth to new lingo that became part of broader American culture—10-4, roger, what’s your 20, over and out. I thought that surely Shell would have outfitted the truck with radio communication, but according to Chris Munger, and contemporary newspaper coverage from the Lawrence Eagle Tribune, that was not the case—Bill’s truck was not equipped with a radio. However, Bill’s daughter, Sonya, remembers there being a radio in the cab, but to be fair, it was a long time ago, and she was just five years old.
So how did Bill communicate with HQ? I assume he stopped at a payphone in a pinch, but otherwise, he just operated on a schedule. He was only gone for 2-3 hour stints and then he’d be back to refuel. If he’d had a radio in the cab, though, perhaps he might have relayed some information to HQ about what was happening at Joe’s Shell.
Cops canvassed the area and gleaned a few more tips from some shoe-leather police work. A passerby, at 2:20AM, said that they had seen a single man at the gas station—white, male, about 5’6”, with an average build and shoulder-length blond hair. Another witness said, that at 3:20AM, they had seen three men at the gas station. One was white, male, about 5’6” — it’s possible he was the same male seen by the 2:20AM witness. The other two were Black males, one of whom was about 5’6” and the other was about 5’9”. One of them was wearing a white sweatshirt. At 3:30AM, a third witness saw two men at the station, one of whom was wearing a white jacket.
The Waltham terminal was expecting Bill back around 3:15AM, and they contacted police an hour later, at 4:15AM, so all of these sightings would have been in the two hours following the shooting, before cops arrived.
At Joe’s Shell, police searched for blood but couldn’t find any. Methuen Deputy Chief Hugh O’Rourke said, “It appears he may have been shot at here, but there was no blood.” Police also found what they believed was a bullet hole in the wood above the station’s restrooms—it’s unclear if it was related to Bill’s murder.
The distance between the gas station and the jersey barrier where Bill’s body was discovered is a matter of dispute. The gas station is no longer in existence. The Lawrence Eagle Tribune reported it three ways—100 feet, 700 feet, and a quarter mile (or 1300 feet). Our estimation is closer to the 700 foot estimate based upon where we believe the gas station would have been located (based on its address—135 Pelham Street), and where we believe the jersey barrier is located—which still exists today and is located on the north side of Pelham Street where it crosses over a small stream.
Police brought K9 units to the crime scene and searched for clues, but they found none. There was blood found near Bill’s body and a work glove next to him.
Bill’s body was brought that same day to a Salem, Massachusetts, hospital, where Dr. Robert Belliveau conducted an autopsy. It was confirmed that he had been shot twice, and it is believed that the fatal shot entered his lung. We do not yet have the autopsy report—it was requested six months ago and has not yet been delivered.
The funeral
Bill’s foreman, Lenny Keyes, told the Lawrence Eagle Tribune, “This place is like a morgue today. It’s unbelievable. What a waste of a good life.” He also said, “If robbery was the motive for the shooting, the hold-up man would have come away without anything. These drivers carry no cash. There is a sign right on the truck. Everything is done with credit. The fellows never carry any money—just enough to make a phone call.”
Bill’s best friend, Jim, recalled that there was often a bag “of credit card receipts, and it might look like a bank bag; maybe someone driving by happened to see it and thought it was a bag of cash.”
Bill’s body was quickly released to the family. The incident happened on the early morning hours of Friday, October 10th, and they conducted a viewing at Valente Funeral Home in Framingham, on Saturday afternoon from 2:00PM to 4:00PM. A second day of visitation happened on Sunday, from 2:00PM to 4:00PM and 7:00PM to 9:00PM.
Cindy’s sister, Jill, told us, “We had a full Irish funeral—two nights of wakes, mass, burial—there were so many people there.” Jim said, “I never saw a crowd like that at a wake—biggest crowd I ever saw at a funeral.”
On Monday morning there was a service at 9:00AM at the funeral home and at 10:00AM a Catholic mass at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes in Upper Falls. Jim did a reading at the mass and when he got to the front, he realized that the church was totally full—the only seat left empty was his own.
Bill was laid to rest at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Needham, Massachusetts.
Shell settles with Cindy
Soon after Bill’s death, Shell acknowledged that it had happened while he was in the process of doing his job, and they shared some liability. They approached Bill’s widow to try and reach a financial settlement. Though we don’t have the details, she hired a lawyer and went to court. According to her sister, Jill, they had to lay out all of the forensic information, the autopsy details, and the timeline. Jill recalls that they agreed to send her money regularly until she was remarried.
Aftermath
After Bill’s death, Jill would go and spend weekends helping Cindy—she was left with a big hole in heart and three young children to raise—Sonya was 5, Joey was 3, and Richard was 10 months. Everyone in the family was stunned to lose Bill—when the call came that there was a death in the family, people thought it might have been Punky, Jill and Cindy’s older brother who had cancer. Soon after Bill’s death, Punky followed in 1981, and their father, George Braceland in 1982. Bill’s father, too, passed in 1982.
Shell offered a reward of $25,000. They were eager to point out that this was the first time in the history of the company that a driver had been shot and killed during a gasoline delivery. Shell Media Relations Spokesman Jimmy Fox said, “We are trying to take that extra step to bring the person who killed our driver to justice. I hope other drivers understand the necessity of our doing this.”
In an article published in March of 1981—6 months after the murder—Methuen police seemed to be running out of leads and looking for more publicity and more tips. They told Alan White with the Lawrence Eagle Tribune that they had pursued dozens of leads without success. They said that the $25,000 reward had, so far, failed to produce any serious leads. Police said that they were partnering with the Lawrence Eagle Tribune and with an organization called Secret Witness to guarantee anonymity to the tipster that brought the killer to justice. They even had a system for collecting the tips. They told tipsters to send their letters to the Lawrence Eagle Tribune, and sign the letter with a unique 6-digit code. They asked the tipster to then write that code again on the corner of the last page of the letter and tear it off. If the tip were successful, the tipster would then be able to produce that torn corner to claim the reward. The paper even published a sample letter for people to use as a template.
Detective John Kiley with the Methuen PD said, “There’s somebody out there who knows what happened. Whether they’re afraid to come forward or what, I don’t know.”
1997 - Family pressure
Unfortunately, that tip never came and the case got little publicity until 1997, 17 years after his murder.
It was at this point that Walter Munger, and his two sons, Chris and Mike Munger, all asked if they could take a look at the Methuen PD case files. Generally speaking, families don’t have much access to case files, but this was a unique situation.
Walter Munger was the former chief at Watertown PD, and both of his sons were cops, too. Methuen PD was cooperative and so, the three Mungers sat down with the files, which stimulated a fresh look at the case.
The Eagle-Tribune ran an article about the reopening of the case and a promising tip came in—we don’t know the details—but it spurred the Massachusetts State Police and the Methuen PD to reinvestigate the case.
That was the last major media push to present.
Sonya Durney
Bill’s oldest child, Sonya Durney, just turned 50 in April. She was just 5 when she lost her dad. It has been 45 years since his death. She lost her mom, Cindy, in 2018. She is now the oldest direct descendant of Bill and she has picked up the mantle of responsibility.
Sonya contacted us in February 2024—she came across something that we had published on Facebook, and we had invited her to “like” our page. She already had a little bit of familiarity with the podcast because one of our team members—Chelsea Hanrahan—is also a librarian like Sonya. Sonya works in Maine at a college library and Chelsea works in New Hampshire for one. This happy coincidence greased the wheels for us to work together on her dad’s case. Oh, and by the way, Sonya is wonderful!
She has been working on her dad’s case off and on for the past 7 years, but she’s really been pushing since the beginning of last year. She has conducted her own microfilm searches for newspaper records. She’s been speaking with the Mungers about what they learned about the case back in 1997. She has been consolidating her dad’s old records. She’s been digitizing old photos. She’s working on getting the autopsy report. And she’s made it very easy for us to conduct interviews. We have talked to more people on this case than on any of our other stories—7 people in total including Sonya—and she lined them up for us.
Sonya contacted Shell, and though it took some time and several follow-ups, she eventually got in touch with their legal department. They agreed, wholeheartedly, to renew the reward offer in Bill’s case for $25,000. It is available now.
But the most significant development is that Sonya was able to get a sit-down meeting with current law enforcement, and a pledge to review the case file. The detective assigned to the case at Methuen PD, Charlie DeJesus, was joined by Massachusetts State Police Lieutenant Peter Sherber, who works out of the Essex County DA’s office, and Essex County ADA Jessica Strasnick—if that last name sounds familiar it is because Jessica Strasnick was the prosecutor on Melissa Tremblay’s case, which we covered recently. Though we spoke briefly to Detective DeJesus, he was not able to get permission to speak on the record with us by the time of our episode’s release. We may have an update in the future after we speak with them.
Sonya is an advocate for her father’s case, and she recently attended Advocacy Con’s inaugural conference in Indianapolis, IN. The event had an impact on her.
Her mother’s obituary reads as follows:
“A young, widowed, mother of three small children might be expected to spend a lot of time feeling sorry for herself, but not Cindy—she purchased a camper and drove the kids to Disney World. Was she sad? Of course! Were her and the kids going to sit around feeling sad? Nope, she would not let that happen. She was truly the best mom, as she managed to bring joy into each and every day, no matter what. To her children she was everything.”
Her mom was a relentless force moving the family forward, and Sonya, too, never looked at herself as a survivor of trauma.
She was blessed to have a great stepdad who came into the picture when she was about 8 years old—Sam Pasquarelli—who is almost exactly Cindy’s age, and is now 76 years old, living in Maine. He and Cindy met because she had hired him to do some renovations to the family’s Framingham house several years after Bill’s death in 1983. They remained together until Cindy’s death in 2018, and though Bill was gone, Cindy made sure he was still included in their lives.
But Sonya still has a hole in her heart that her father once filled. And justice is not out of reach. The killer, if they were 30 at the time of the crime, would be 75 today. And although this is a firearm crime with no witnesses that have come forward at a gas station back in 1980, there are some interesting threads to pull on.
Hopeful evidence
The misfires are a tantalizing clue. The fact that the killer so quickly cleared them—in the heat of committing a murder—suggests that they knew something about firearms. But the fact that they used either a gun or ammo that had a 60% misfire rate suggests that they weren’t very experienced with firearms. It’s tough to square the two.
The witness sightings of people at the gas station at 2:20AM, 3:20AM, and 3:30AM could mean something—6 people were seen in total over that timeframe, and descriptions were provided to the police—but was it the killer returning to the scene of the crime, or curious passersby that saw a gas truck, idling, with its lights on, unattended in the middle of the night.
There’s the question of whether or not Bill was alone in the truck that night. Though it was against Shell’s policy for anyone to ride in the cab with him, Bill sometimes bent that rule. Jim Robinson told us that he rode with Bill in his Mack gas truck—he took him to New Hampshire one time and dropped him back off at his house. Jim said it was just the one time, and it was so loud in the cab that you had to shout to hear one another. Bill’s sister, Lori, said that she knew he had invited his brother Mark on the truck at some point in 1980. Bill’s brother, Bob, said “I met him one night at a Shell gas station in Haverhill.” If he weren’t alone, where would that lead the investigation?
But the most promising evidentiary idea that we’ve heard of in this case is about fingerprints. Unfortunately, the gun has never been recovered—it’s a .22 handgun, possibly manufactured by Llama. But there are five cartridges that were recovered, and are likely still in Methuen’s evidence locker. And some of them never even got hot because they were misfires. The person who loaded the handgun had to individually handle each round as they pushed it into its spring-loaded magazine—likely with their bare fingers. There may be partial fingerprints on those rounds—particularly the misfires—waiting to be matched up.
The most perplexing question though, is why—why did someone kill Bill Durney? At first, police dismissed the idea that robbery could have been a motive because cash was left in the cab. But police in 1997 thought that this could still be a possibility based on their comparison of the crime scene on this case to other similar crimes. We are left with the lingering question—was Bill targeted or was this a random crime. And if Bill were targeted, why?
Perhaps Methuen PD Deputy Chief Hugh O’Rourke said it best in 1980: “Our boys are wearing out their shoe leather on this one. This man had no known enemies.”
If you have information on the murder of William ‘Bill’ Durney from Methuen, MA in 1980, please contact the Detective DeJesus at the Methuen Police Dept at (978) 983-8778 or leave a tip with the Massachusetts State Police Unresolved Case Unit at 1-855-MA-SOLVE.
There is a $25k reward being offered courtesy of Shell.
This text has been adapted from the Murder, She Told podcast episode, Justice for Bill Durney. To hear Bill’s full story along with the wonderful interviews from friends and family, find Murder, She Told on your favorite podcast platform.
Click here to support Murder, She Told.
Connect with Murder, She Told on:
Instagram: @murdershetoldpodcast
Facebook: /mstpodcast
TikTok: @murdershetold
All photos have been edited by Murder, She Told.
Bill Durney as a baby with his mother, Mary (McCormack) Durney, ~1950 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, 17, senior yearbook photo, North Reading HS, 1967 (Sonya Durney)
Bill’s father, Robert F. Durney
Bill Durney, ~17, Army photo, 1967 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~17, Army photo, 1967 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~19, Army photo, 1969 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~22, Cindy Braceland, at Bill's mother's, 1972 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~22, Cindy Braceland, engagement day, November 1972 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~22, Cindy Braceland, Halloween, Reading, MA Nursing Home, 1972 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~22, George Braceland, Newton, MA, 1972 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~22, Horseneck Beach, MA, with Cindy, 1972 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~22, Horseneck Beach, MA, with Cindy, 1972 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~23 Walter Munger, at golf tournament dinner
Bill Durney, ~23, his wedding day, Newton, MA, 1973 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~23, Cindy Braceland, wedding announcement (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~23, Cindy Durney, Bermuda honeymoon, stayed at the Bermudiana (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~23, with his Ford Mustang (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~24, Cindy Durney (pregnant with Sonya), 1974 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~24, Cindy, Bill, Mary, Bob Sr., Cathy, Bob, Noreen, Lori, Thanksgiving 1974 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~25, age estimated (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~25, Sonya, 1975 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~25, Sonya Durney, Cindy Durney, 1975 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~25, Xmas, 1975 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~26, Sonya Durney (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~26, Sonya Durney, Cindy Durney, 1976 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~27, Sonya Durney, Joe Durney, 1977 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~28, Cindy Braceland, Sonya Durney, Joe Durney, Florida, 1978 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~28, June Robinson, Jim Robinson, RV in Florida, 1978 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~28, Jim Robinson, Florida, 1978 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~28, Joe, Sonya, Christmas 1978 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~28, Sonya in Micky Mouse mask, Joe, Halloween, 1978 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~28, Sonya Durney, 1978 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~28, Sonya Durney, Erica Robinson, Jim Robinson, York County Safari, 1978 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~29, Joe, Sonya, Rich, Framingham, MA home, 1979 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~29, Sonya Durney, Joe Durney, 1979 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~30, Cindy, BIll, Rich, Sonya, Joe, 1980 (Sonya Durney)
Bill Durney, ~30, Rich, Joe, Sonya, 1980 (Sonya Durney)
Methuen Police examine crime scene (Lawrence Eagle Tribune)
Walter Munger, top center, his kids, Chris, Rick, and Mike Munger, 1995 (Facebook)
Sources For This Episode
Newspaper articles
Various articles from Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Lawrence Eagle Tribune, and the Middlesex News, here.
Written by various authors including Alan White, Kathy Dolan, Mark E. Vogel, and Robert Melton.
Interviews
Special thanks to Sonya Durney, Chris Munger, Bob Durney, Lori Durney, Jill Braceland, and Jim Robinson. Thanks to Det. Charlie DeJesus, Methuen PD, for taking our calls.
Photos
As credited above. Edited by Murder, She Told
Credits
Research, vocal performance, and audio editing by Kristen Seavey
Research, photo editing, and writing by Byron Willis
Additional research by Ericka Pierce
Special thanks to Chelsea Hanrahan
Murder, She Told is created by Kristen Seavey.