Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders (20 page)

Overscheduled Child,
with experts proclaiming the overbooking of kids a national curse. By 2000, one community even tried to counter the trend by organizing a townwide time-out to focus on family and family quality time. The people of Wayzata, Minnesota, created Family Life 1st and set up a Web site,
www
.familylife1st.org.
The next year, the affluent New Jersey suburb of Ridgewood picked up on the idea, dubbing the slow-down “Family Night.”

Chelsea wasn’t part of that world. The concern wasn’t about finding ways to lighten the teen load or soften teen stress. Educators and parents instead found themselves coping with high schoolers who had too much free time. Elsewhere, an empty appointment book might be a red flag for a teenager who was adrift and maybe heading for trouble. But in Chelsea it generally signaled the opposite—success. The Chelsea student with free time was the student who’d accelerated and piled up graduation credits way in advance of senior year, a trend that began in earnest with Robert and his sixth grade classmates.

Having finished algebra in seventh grade, Robert, Kip, and the oth-ers took algebra II at the start of eighth grade. It was a class mostly filled with freshmen and sophomores, and taking the course meant juggling the youngsters’ schedules. The high school had adopted block scheduling, an increasingly popular format for carving up the school day. Instead of taking five courses a semester, with each daily class lasting about forty-five minutes, students took three courses a semester, with each period lasting ninety minutes. Instead of taking an entire year to complete a course, it took just one semester.

This meant Robert and the others earned their second math credit halfway through eighth grade. “We got done with algebra II and we all did pretty well and so we took geometry,” said Kip. Before entering high school, the group of fourteen-year-olds had three credits—fully satisfying the Chelsea school system’s graduation requirement in mathematics. Robert also studied French in eighth grade, earning a fourth credit.

Freshman year Robert went into academic overdrive. Before regular classes met, he’d arrive early to take an advanced-placement course. Then he took three regular courses as well as a half-credit

course during “S block,” a shorter, forty-five-minute period that was also part of the day’s infrastructure. He was on a pace to earn four or more credits a semester, or about nine for the year. “Robert kind of got ahead of being ahead,” said Kip. By the end of his freshman year, Robert had stacked up about thirteen of the required twenty-three high school credits; this meant he had three years to obtain just ten more credits. He then continued a full course load his sophomore year. By junior year he could take just one course a semester and still end up with more than enough credits to graduate.

It was an early release program of sorts that was not at all what educators had intended. Explaining to parents the difference between the old, conventional, seven-period school day and the more progressive block schedule, school officials stressed that ninety-minute-long classes enabled students to probe more deeply into a particular subject. The new three-period school day would “allow teachers to do more projects, group work,” and the “work is often more in-depth.”

In theory, educators had hoped students motivated to get ahead on credits would develop new and broader academic interests to pursue during their last two years. The idea was to treat juniors and seniors as “adult learners,” said principal Pat Davenport. Like college freshmen, they would have freedom and flexibility in choosing what to study. Educators believed this would help “bridge” high school and college life. Reality, however, was different. The combination of the block schedule and the acceleration of a special group of students in DeRoss Kellogg’s sixth grade class became the engine of a new student culture. Students began piling up credits early on in high school so they would only have to take a few, if any, courses later on. The new dynamic might have begun with Robert’s group, but it did not stop there. Jim Parker and his classmates, and succeeding classes, got on a roll of entering high school with a healthy head start in the race to acquire

credits.

“Freshman and sophomore year we just like loaded up with classes,” Brad Johnson, Jim’s classmate, said about the strategy he and his friends adopted. “You’re going into senior year and, it’s like, it seems like I should be done with school.”

“I am done,” Matt Butryman said about his status at the end of his junior year. “Like all my requirements are finished up this semester. Next year I could do nothing if I wanted to. Which I won’t. My parents wouldn’t let me.” The credit count was on the minds of most Chelsea teenagers. “I’m going to have all my credits done by second semester,” projected Sada Dumont, a sophomore, about her upcoming junior year.

“Don’t tell the principal this!” joked Tyler Vermette, who also had accumulated almost enough credits to graduate by the end of junior year.

Starting with advanced students like Robert and Kip, upperclassmen began taking fewer courses. Many Chelsea teens spent less and less time in school. The culprit, inadvertently, had been the block schedule format—aiding and abetting the increasing amount of free time kids had in a school day. For just as block scheduling created ninety-minute chunks of class time, it also created ninety-minute chunks of down time for students with a free block. The Chelsea school day, beginning at 8:30
A
.
M
., went like this:

A Block: 90 minutes B Block: 90 minutes

LUNCH: 11:50
A
.
M
. to 12:30
P
.
M
.

S Block: 45 minutes C Block: 90 minutes

The accelerated students like Robert, who began cutting back his coursework in junior year, would make cameo appearances. They might arrive late in the morning for a half-day of school, or they might come in the morning and leave for good around lunch time—depending on whether the course they needed was held during A Block or C Block. Even though the Chelsea school officially was a closed campus, meaning students were to be in the building during school hours and not roaming about, the advanced students, with parental permission, were allowed to sign out. In practice, the school seemed far more open than closed. Robert generally came and went as he pleased. It was particularly easy for Robert, because he lived within a short walk of the school.

Easy come, easy go was a privilege the go-getters had earned—a sign not of dropping out but rather of achievement. High school mostly became a patchwork of classes and hang-time at one or the other’s house. The problem, Kip Battey said, was that the school seemed front-loaded. “They had everything all lined up for us for the first two years of high school,” he said. “By the time you get to junior and sen-ior year, it’s almost like they’re pushing you away. Because they’re not giving you a whole lot of options.”

It wasn’t as if educators and parents were blind to the new kid culture that had taken root with little fanfare. Fine-tuning was attempted along the way. The total number of credits necessary to graduate was increased, from twenty-one in 1996 to twenty-three by 1999. Some new upper-level courses were added, depending on the availability of funds. But given the budget constraints in a town as tiny as Chelsea, this was a rare luxury. In fact, the high school’s program of studies directly addressed this limitation: “Because it is difficult for a small school to offer a large variety of courses or sometimes for a student to fit a regularly scheduled course into his/her schedule, an independent study option is available. It is the student’s responsibility to initiate independent study through the teacher involved.” Finally, sensing younger students were rushing to pile up credits at the front end of high school, some of the courses Robert and his classmates had taken as freshmen were put off limits, with enrollment open only to juniors and seniors.

Parents also began to wonder, where was the accountability? “What should happen to a senior who has completed all of his or her requirements?” asked one. “Should he or she be cut loose and told to come back at graduation time?” Even some students in Robert and Jim’s classes were uneasy about how kids worked the system.

“It gives you just way too much free time,” said Matt Butryman.

T
he 1980s and early 1990s had seen a steady stream of newcomers to Chelsea, folks like the Parkers, the Savidges, the Courtses, the

Purcells, the Tullochs, and others. New parents and young couples who were looking for a country upbringing for their newborns or soon-to-be born, and the pastoral town indeed seemed like toddler heaven. But as their kids grew up, the teen years became another challenge altogether. The hard part of being a teenager in Chelsea? Teen after teen answers the question with an eye-roll. “It’s
so
quiet,” said Sada Dumont. Not only were many kids finding out they had more free time during the school day; the age-old, small-town quiet embraced by parents was suffocating to teenagers eager to flex. Cora Brooks, with the eye of a poet, sometimes detected faraway looks shadowing the faces of teenagers she’d known from Halloweens past. To her, the teenage impulse to want to get out into the world was always stronger in towns as isolated and small as Chelsea—an appetite only whetted by the Internet surfing that allowed the kids to “be all over the world” online. Emerging from their virtual world, they’d confront Chelsea reality—a community where people tended not to have much money, where you

needed a car to get anywhere.

“Coming into Chelsea is like going back in time,” Brooks would say. “It’s a town that doesn’t easily satisfy the wanderlust to want to discover the world.”

The crew of boys coming into puberty around 1997 did have each other, the heyday of their togetherness occurring the first half of high school, their freshman and sophomore years. They’d invented games like ball tag, for example, or threw themselves into volleyball, golf or, best of all, Ultimate Frisbee. The Crew began playing in ninth grade, in the spring when the snow melted, and became addicted. They played all through the summer and then into the fall, usually taking over center field on the baseball diamond next to the school. They’d play during the school day, starting a contest during a free period and going until school was over when some boys had to split for soccer or baseball practice. Picking teams became an art, because each boy developed different strengths. Coltere Savidge had the reputation for being a good catcher, but, said Zack, his throw was “kinda funky.” Casey also had great hands, “whereas Jimmy had a really nice throw.” Zack and Robert were known for their all-around game. “Robert could

throw a real good Frisbee too,” said Zack. Their interest grew beyond Chelsea, in large part because they tired of the same old lineup. “It always sucked just playing each other,” said Zack. The boys talked at one point about forming a team and joining a regional league, but the idea, like others, didn’t pan out, and their playing days waned by the time Robert and the others became juniors.

Robert, Jim, and The Crew also participated in the annual town and school events, which in a small community practically required maximum kid participation if the events were going to come off. During Winter Carnival 2000, Jim performed in skits that drew hearty applause, applying blackface and a big round nose to portray the Big Bad Wolf. When a photographer moved about the carnival taking pictures, Jim mugged for the camera, flashing his trademark grin and pointing his finger at the lens, Gotcha! “He captured you on stage,” one Chelsea school administrator said about Jim’s theatrics.

During the Spring Festival 2000, Robert and Jim teamed up for the raft race down the snowmelt-swollen First Branch of the White River. The event was more hokey than competitive; this was Chelsea, after all. “The raft race is not really a race,” said Kip. “Kids build these abominable rafts you’d never think would even float.” Kip’s younger brother and some friends tried putting an inflatable couch on some planks. “Half the time they were in the water,” said Kip. “That’s the competition.” Robert and Jim were more serious about the race than most. “They actually made something that could go fast,” Kip said.

Bystanders could clearly see how the two teens had sprouted. Robert had always been physically ahead of most of his classmates, taller and lanky, and he now towered at six-foot-three. His arms pulling the paddle through the water displayed a strength more man than boy, though his long legs were more bone than muscle. His nose had come to dominate his face, making his eyes seem recessed and his expression dour, almost sullen. Long gone was his pre-teen girlish look; now his light-brown hair was cut short, with bangs plastered on his forehead from the river spray. Jim had grown with him, particularly during a big spurt his sophomore year. Instead of the rounded, cheeky look of elementary school, his face was strong and lean, and he was over six

feet himself—an inch shorter than Robert. His dark-brown hair— which at times he dyed blond—was even shorter than Robert’s.

The two young men raced down the river, in shorts, shirtless, their chests covered only by flotation vests. Robert was in front, a study in focus, eyes ahead, leading them faster and faster downstream. Jim was, as always, right behind him, his shoulder and bicep muscles bulging as he stroked under Robert’s command. Together, they paddled their inflated-tire raft from a starting point behind Will’s Store to the finish line behind the Shire Inn on Main Street. Their teamwork was unmatched—though others might scoff at the absence of real competitors, Robert and Jim met their goal: they finished first. Then, just for kicks, Robert being Robert and Jim being Jim, they capsized their winning raft and tumbled into the river.

I
n some ways, The Crew was a bunch of straight-arrows: the boys were uninterested in the partying commonplace to teenhood.

Generations of Chelsea teens drank beer and smoked pot at parties in the woods. “I’ve never been to one,” Coltere Savidge once said about the gatherings. “A lot of people do.” Zack Courts was the same as Coltere—just not into drinking or smoking. He’d rather race a motorcycle. Kip Battey, Casey Purcell, Robert, and Jim—the party circuit never became central to The Crew’s lifestyle. The common ground they did share with boys in America was girls. Dating was more an individual pursuit than a group exercise. Jim dated different girls for brief periods, while during high school Robert mainly went out with Christiana Usenza. The two, said Jim, “were always trying to get together.” It was one area Robert wasn’t chatty about with Jim. “I’m going to be stereotypical here for a second, but I don’t think guys really talk about that as much as girls do,” Jim said.