Zantop One-Year Anniversary Sunday
Maggie
Dartmouth Murders Trial To Begin
HANOVER, N.H. (AP) - Bob McCollum's celebration of his 76th birthday last
January was interrupted when a woman burst through his door with horrific news.
The retired doctor rushed about 100 yards to the home of Half and Susanne
Zantop and found the butchered bodies of the Dartmouth College professors.
After police arrived, he wanted to leave but investigators made him wait,
sitting near the bodies, to answer their questions. He tried to look away, but
evidence of the slaughter was everywhere in the blood-spattered home.
A year later, prosecutors have charged two Vermont teen-agers with murder.
They say the boys didn't know the couple, but just wanted to rob and kill them.
That rings hollow with the Zantops' friends, who say the evidence -
surveillance notes in one boy's bedroom, thousands of dollars in valuables
untouched, knives purchased well in advance - doesn't indicate a random crime.
"There is nothing we knew about them or their home that would make it or them a
logical choice, or even illogical, for a robbery in the middle of the day,"
McCollum said. "I've quite honestly quit trying to process it."
He and the rest of the community of 9,600 people hope for answers when one boy
stands trial in April, with the other teen scheduled to testify against him.
On Jan. 27, Susanne Zantop, 55 and head of Dartmouth's German studies
department, had sent e-mails to colleagues and invited a friend to dinner that
night. Half, 62 and a member of the school's Earth sciences faculty, prepared
for a conference.
Sometime that Saturday afternoon, police say, James Parker, then 16, and Robert
Tulloch, then 17, drove 40 miles from their homes in Chelsea, Vt., entered the
Zantop home and stabbed the couple and slashed their throats in a violent
frenzy.
Roxana Verona, the friend Susanne Zantop had invited to dinner, arrived around
6:30. No one answered, so she let herself in the unlocked door and found the
bodies sprawled in pools of blood.
She fled through the snow to McCollum's house, but can't escape the memory.
"This image I have of them laying down on the floor," she says, her voice
trailing off. "To work it out, I try to make them stand. For me, they are
really standing up. I just don't want to see that again."
There was no obvious reason why someone would want to kill the couple. They
were respected in their academic fields, and well known for their generosity -
students and colleagues had open invitations to their home.
Both German-born professors worked for human rights and justice, including
getting their native country to face up to its Nazi past. The killings occurred
on Germany's Holocaust Remembrance Day, an apparent coincidence.
Investigators found sheaths for two unusual 12 1/2 -inch, military-style
knives, and one sheath had a fingerprint.
Investigators learned that two of the SOG SEAL 2000 knives had been bought on
the Internet by Parker, a contractor's son, and they questioned him and
Tulloch, a class clown and leader in student government.
The boys gave their fingerprints and, within hours, police had matched Parker
to the fingerprint on the sheath and Tulloch to a bootprint from the scene.
But by then the boys were gone. They had taken a car from Parker's mother,
abandoned it in Massachusetts, and were hitchhiking their way to California.
In the meantime, according to court records, investigators found two knives in
Tulloch's bedroom, both bearing traces of Susanne Zantop's blood, and one
showing traces of her husband's blood.
The boys were caught in New Castle, Ind., after a trucker giving them a ride
used his CB radio to help find the teens another ride. A police officer who
overheard the call posed as a trucker and arranged to meet them. The teens gave
false names and excuses until Tulloch heard a dispatcher describe him over the
officer's radio.
"That's me," Tulloch said. "You've got us."
Both were charged with first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory sentence
of life in prison without parole.
Last month, Parker, now 17, agreed to plead guilty to a charge of accomplice to
second-degree murder. In exchange for his testimony against Tulloch, now 18 and
planning to use insanity as a defense at his trial in April, prosecutors will
seek a sentence of 25 years to life.
Meanwhile, the Zantops' classes have been reassigned. Their home has been sold
and now has a play gym outside instead of police cruisers. Soon the gardens
Susanne Zantop tended so carefully will bloom again.
The couple's friends are still dealing with the tragedy.
"Our group of friends got closer in a way," Verona said. "Each time we meet, we
talk about them. They are with us in a way."
But celebrating life is tough.
"We will celebrate Bob's birthday," said McCollum's wife, Audrey. "We'll have
to think about what we can introduce that, hopefully over time, will put down
positive imprints. It's going to be very heavy."
--
Maggie
"There are no stupid questions. There are, however, many inquisitive idiots."
-- Unknown
Hownow
<maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC> wrote:
> Good summary of the case:
They had the one-year-later retrospective up here last week of the
unsolved slaying of a professor slashed to death in his downtown office
in a music studio at the University of Toronto on the Friday afternoon
eight days before the Zantop killings.
It still surprises me that no Toronto newspaper that I have seen ever
did a "no-connection" story with this slaying and the Zantops -- even a
no-story makes a story in an unsolved murder case.
And if I were with the cops I'd be letting the public know that we did
investigate the possibility no matter how tenuous, if only to show your
tax dollars at work.
Because of the time frame, the Saturday afternoon Zantop slayings rated
only a few brief back-pages paras for a couple of days up here; and the
story picked up only a bit with the arrests.
The Toronto slaying is being investigated on the theory that it's tied
to the prof's gay lifestyle.
- hm
SteveF
interesting that Parker circled Jan 26th and not the 27th.
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/026/region/Suspects_write_meditate_in_jai:.s
html
Steve
DedNdogYrs
I can't get it. Can you paste it into a post?
Dogs & children first.
Mare
Suspects write, meditate in jail as their town moves on year after murders
By Harry R. Weber, Associated Press, 1/26/2002 16:08
CHELSEA, Vt. (AP) A year after the murders of two Dartmouth College professors,
the teen-age Vermont suspects who once did everything together spend their days
in separate New Hampshire jails awaiting a courtroom reunion this spring.
But they'll be on opposite sides when they meet again: Robert Tulloch, 18, as
defendant in the stabbing deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop in their Hanover,
N.H., home, and James Parker, 17, as witness for the prosecution.
Parker, who pleaded guilty to reduced charges in exchange for his testimony,
was 16 at the time of the Jan. 27, 2001, murders. Tulloch, whose trial on
first-degree murder charges is set to begin April 22, was a senior and a member
of the school debate team.
Their lives in the jails where they've spent most of the past year are tightly
controlled, but they still have many of the comforts of home access to a
television set, a phone, a basketball court, an exercise room, a ping pong
table and school books.
Neither one has had any behavior problems, jail officials say.
Parker spends his days playing cards and Monopoly with the handful of other
inmates in the maximum security unit at the Belknap County Jail in Laconia,
N.H., said Jan Hale, a corrections officer. He also meets with a counselor
every week, does homework faxed to the facility from his Chelsea school and
practices yoga with books provided by the jail.
''He does meditation and stretching,'' Hale said. ''He's actually getting kind
of good at it.''
Parker also likes to draw, Hale said.
''He mostly does watercolors and charcoal drawings,'' she said. ''He has a
wooden model that he can twist and then draw. A lot of his stuff is abstract
stuff, colors.''
Inside Parker's cell, a calendar hangs on the wall with Jan. 26, Saturday's
date, circled.
Also on the wall in his cell is a watercolor drawing of a young man that
resembles him and a note regarding art supplies. There is also a note that
says, ''letters to gram.''
Tulloch is being held at the Grafton County Jail in Haverhill, N.H., about 60
miles northwest of Laconia and home to the superior court where the trial will
be held. He spends his day writing letters and reading ones sent from his
family and friends, said jail superintendent Glenn Libby.
Tulloch, also housed in the maximum security unit, is allowed out of his cell
during the day to play basketball, foosball and roam around in a narrow
walkway. Like Parker, Tulloch, an honors student, was given the opportunity to
continue his education, but has declined, Libby said.
''Nothing really stands out about him,'' Libby said. ''He fits in. He's not out
of place.''
Some days Tulloch is in a cell by himself. On other days he has a cellmate. It
depends on how many people are on pre-trial detention in the 108-bed facility,
Libby said.
''At times he can be very talkative,'' Libby said. ''At other times he's been
known to keep to himself.''
People in the teen-agers' hometown of Chelsea, Vt., seem to have reached a
largely private settlement with the shocking events of a year ago.
''Nobody thought that the boys could have been charged with something like
this,'' said Karen Campbell, owner of Dixie's II, a restaurant across the
street from Tulloch's home where the family often eats. ''But the more that
comes out, I don't think there's much denying it now.''
Prosecutors say the married German-born professors were killed during a
robbery. The teens were arrested three weeks after the murders at an Indiana
truck stop.
At Chelsea Public School, the faces have changed in the last year, as many of
the suspects' classmates have gone on to college. Those that remain at the
school of 300 pupils still keep tabs on the court hearings, but have less to
say publicly.
''They haven't forgotten about it, but they just don't talk about it as much,''
said Josh Larkham, 12, as he played in the snow outside the school on a recent
afternoon.
School officials and the teens' families, for their part, continue their
collective silence, refusing repeated requests for interviews.
''I think the town's moving on,'' said Orange County Sheriff Dennis McClure.
''I think the people are just the same as they were before this. That hasn't
changed. Everybody still relies on each other.''
The television satellite trucks that once lined Main Street are gone, but the
impact the intense media scrutiny had on the town of 1,200 still lingers,
officials say.
''We don't usually deal with a national media here in Chelsea,'' McClure said.
''When they came in to town, these were the sharks of the news media. I think
it's probably affected the way anybody is going to talk to a reporter in
Chelsea from now on.''
DedNdogYrs
accused of, but then people are innocent until found guilty.
Dogs & children first.
SteveF
"DedNdogYrs" <dednd...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20020201062323...@mb-cl.aol.com...
Its odd how parents are held accountable unless its a really serious crime.
asbest...@deja.com
wrote:
A child raised by horrible parents.... would have learned (via tv,
movies, school. etc.) that murder is wrong.
Whereas, marginal parents might have taught the child to steal, lie,
rage, drink, etc. Therefore, they are guilty-- of failing to teach
the child appropriately.
Did you ever explicitly tell your children NOT to:
break and enter,
murder,
play in the street,
Generally, don't stab your neighbor isn't a conversation starter.
da boss
da boss
Luk
asbestosboss wrote:
> A child raised by horrible parents.... would have learned (via tv,
> movies, school. etc.) that murder is wrong.
>
> Whereas, marginal parents might have taught the child to steal, lie,
> rage, drink, etc. Therefore, they are guilty-- of failing to teach
> the child appropriately.
The unpredictable factor is the temperament of the child
himself. Children of the same parenting can turn out
very differently. Remember Ted Kaczynski. His
brother was a model citizen.
> Did you ever explicitly tell your children NOT to:
> break and enter,
> murder,
> play in the street,
>
> Generally, don't stab your neighbor isn't a conversation starter.
That's a good question. And one many parents ask themselves
after their children grow up. So much of that seems unnecessary
at the time the kids are kids.
Luk
SteveF
<asbest...@deja.com> wrote in message
news:3c5bf56d...@netnews.worldnet.att.net...
It's usually done by example. The family values are clearly stated by the
way the parents act.
Teenage topics such as drugs and sex have to be personally dealt with.
If a child is a bully, the parents are blamed for not giving that child the
proper love. If the child kills his schoolmate he is left alone to deal with
the consequences.
Steve