Second teen pleads guilty in slayings of Dartmouth professors

HAVERHILL, N.H. -- The shocking details of how two bored teen-agers butchered husband-and-wife Dartmouth College professors in their home in a plot to steal their ATM cards spilled out in court Thursday as the case ended with both youths sentenced to long prison terms.

Robert Tulloch, an 18-year-old former high school honor student, dropped his insanity defense, pleaded guilty to murder and received the mandatory sentence of life without parole in the stabbing deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop.

His best friend, 17-year-old James Parker, was sentenced later in the day to 25 years to life as an accomplice to murder, bringing an end to a case shocking in its savagery and senselessness. Parker had struck a plea bargain in December and agreed to testify against Tulloch.

"I'm sorry," Parker said, crying in the courtroom. "There's not much more I can say than that. I'm just really sorry."

Tulloch calmly gave mostly yes-and-no answers to the judge's questions and offered no explanation or apology.

Schemed together

At the hearing for Tulloch, prosecutor Kelly Ayotte described how the two teen-agers went from stealing mail to committing murder as part of a scheme to make a lot of money and run off to Australia. She recounted how they made abortive attempts at four other houses before they talked their way into the professors' Hanover home on Jan. 27, 2001, by posing as students taking an environmental survey.

The teen-agers were packing foot-long commando knives bought over the Internet and duct tape, according to the prosecutor.

Zantop led the boys into his study, gave them each a chair and sat down at his desk. The professor answered Tulloch's questions for 10 minutes while Parker took notes. When the interview was done, Parker thought they were going to leave and abort the plan, according to the prosecutor.

But Zantop told them they should be better prepared for the next survey and said he had a friend who could help them with research.

When Zantop opened his wallet to give the boys the friend's business card, a wad of cash poked out, and Tulloch abruptly reached into a backpack, grabbed one of the knives and lunged at Zantop, stabbing him repeatedly in the chest, Ayotte said.

Susanne Zantop came running when she heard her husband's screams. At Tulloch's direction, Parker slit her throat, Ayotte said. Tulloch then stabbed the woman all over.

'Brutal attack'

"It was a brutal attack. There was a terrible struggle there," the prosecutor said.

The pair fled with Zantop's wallet, which had what they believed were PIN numbers for ATM cards. But they decided that using them would be too risky.

They were ultimately traced to the crime weeks later by way of the commando knife sheaths they had mistakenly left behind. They were captured at a truck stop in Indiana.

In the months after the attacks, townspeople and the news media offered a host of exotic theories about the slayings -- a thrill-killing, revenge for some kind of slight, even neo-Nazi hatred of the Zantops for speaking out against the Holocaust in their native Germany. But ultimately prosecutors said it was a robbery, with the victims picked at random.

Tulloch had previously pleaded innocent by reason of insanity but told friends he decided to plead guilty because of the strength of the prosecution's case and his desire to spare his family the pain of a trial. His lawyer opposed the move.

"Robert wants it to be known that it is untrue that he had no remorse," said Russ Kellogg, a friend of Tulloch's who said he had visited him in jail.

Susanne Zantop, 55, was head of Dartmouth's German studies department. Her husband, 62, taught Earth sciences.

Ayotte said the attack had its genesis two years earlier when the once-inseparable buddies from the little town of Chelsea, Vt., began thinking up ways to collect $10,000 and go to Australia.

Ayotte said the boys ordered stun guns on the Internet, but Tulloch's mother intercepted them. Tulloch suggested talking their way into homes and demanding ATM cards and PIN numbers at knifepoint, then killing the victims.

"Tulloch discussed with Parker that they would have to be able to kill people so that they could be sort of 'bad-asses' when they went to Australia," the prosecutor said.

Their first attempt was in a Vermont town six months before the Zantops were killed, Ayotte said. Dressed in black and using old Army knives, they dug a grave for the bodies, but left when the homeowner answered the door holding a gun. In another attempt the same day as the murders, they went to a Zantop neighbor's house, but no one was home.

After the slayings, they wiped the blood off their hands in the snow, changed their clothes and went to a bookstore, where they read about how soldiers cope with killing, Ayotte said. They later drove back to retrieve the knife sheaths, but a police car in the driveway scared them off.

Veronika Zantop, a daughter who is a doctor in the Seattle area, spoke before Tulloch's sentencing.

"There's no statement in the entire world that can capture the absolute horror, disbelief, pain, sadness and anger that my sister, my family and friends have experienced since the murders," she said.

"Rather than focus on the inhumanity and monstrosity and the sheer stupidity of their brutal and senseless deaths, I try to console myself by trying to perpetuate the essence of my parents."