On paper, John Tassinari was a child prodigy awarded a student Nobel Peace Prize and hailed by state educators as a “model†scholar.
Online, the muscle-bound accused wife killer is a firearm fanatic who posts pictures on his MySpace [website] page of naked women tied up and asks, “Who doesn’t love a 12 gauge?â€
The alter ego bled through yesterday after Tassinari, 29, allegedly confessed to murdering his beautiful wife Barbara, also 29, by shooting her 12 times outside their Abington home late Tuesday night in a fit of jealousy, police said.
The couple, who have a 1-year-old son together, wed Nov. 6, 2004. The bride wore black.
“He sounds like the perfect psychopath,†Kevin Borgeson, a serial killer profiler and professor of criminal justice at Salem State College, said of Tassinari.
“It’s the guy who has these monsters who live inside and can’t control them, but outside will live a life of normalcy,†Borgeson said.
Tassinari is a National Merit Scholar and 1996 graduate of Braintree High, where he once basked in the spotlight of “John Tassinari Day.†Former Commissioner of Education Robert Antonucci once called him “a model of what everyone should be striving for.â€
By day, Tassinari, a mechanical engineer, has been quality manager of his father Paul Tassinari’s Holbrook precision machining company Mica-Tron Products.
By night, Tassinari, a 2000 graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute like his dad (1976), appreciated his stereo loud and his TV shows - “South Park,†“Prison Break,†“The Sopranos†- violent.
His mother, Dawn Marie Goodrich, is a poet who writes of heartache and emotional betrayal. She once described love as “like a thousand stabbing knives.â€
“As a Virgo,†Tassinari wrote on MySpace, “I get too wrapped up in the small details of life.†Barbara, he said, “helps me to remember to step back and enjoy it all.â€
The lives Tassinari has likely destroyed are a stark contrast to the inventions he was lavishly lauded for building - a cable-crossover exercise machine for the WPI Fitness Center and an airplane wing profile, tested by MIT, that increases lift and reduces drag.
In 1996, the wing design won him a trip to Sweden to receive the Glenn T. Scott Nobel Peace Prize Award presented to the top two students at the annual International Science and Engineering Fair.
Tassinari’s then faculty adviser at WPI, John Zeugner, said at the time of his straight-A pupil, “The invitation to the Nobel awards is a tremendous honor, one that recognizes both his intelligence and his promise.â€