Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders (39 page)

“Where, where in the house is it, do you know?” he asked.

When Bruno told him, Mike remained unenlightened. He’d never seen the markings, didn’t have a clue. “I never really went into his room and looked around,” admitted the father.

Father and son got no closer after Robert and Jim’s incarceration. Mike Tulloch was only a sporadic visitor to the Grafton County Jail; by contrast, Diane was a regular during twice-weekly visiting hours.

Teacher DeRoss Kellogg also routinely made the hour-long drive to see his prized pupil. Meanwhile, John and Joan Parker were seeing Jim as much as they could. The Parkers also hired a therapist to see Jim weekly and made arrangements with the Chelsea Public School so Jim could resume his studies and earn his high school diploma. Similar arrangements were set up for Robert, but he ended up rejecting the schoolwork and the chance to get his diploma from Chelsea.

By the end of the daylong police interviews, the families were spent. But they were also unwavering in their support of Robert and Jim. During each interview investigators reviewed the incriminating physical evidence against the boys, including the discovery of the two SOG SEAL knives in Robert’s room, the dramatic breakthrough that still hadn’t been made public. But each family member expressed incredulity that Robert and Jim could kill.

“There’s got to be some other explanation,” said John Parker.

Diane Tulloch explained how she and Mike gave Robert a lot of space because he was trustworthy. Then she blurted out, “This is, I just trusted him. Um, this is, this is not really a, a Robert I really know, this kind of stuff.” And she knew her son well. “He was, um, very close. I mean, is. I treat him like he, he doesn’t exist anymore. We’re very close.”

Kienan Tulloch, before breaking down in tears, began by offering a philosophical defense of his brother. “Everybody’s capable of murder, but no, I don’t think he did it.”

T
he families were sticking by the boys despite learning about the mounting physical evidence, but the public forum was a different mat-

ter altogether. Townspeople learned two weeks after the families were interviewed that two combat knives were found in Robert’s room, and that blood detected on the foot-long knives matched Susanne’s DNA. What’s more, documents made public in court in New Hampshire revealed that Jim’s fingerprints were on the knife sheaths found by investigators in Half’s study, and a bloody footprint in the Zantop home matched Robert’s left boot.

For weeks after Robert and Jim were arrested, Chelseans had steadfastly rejected the notion that two Chelsea boys could be involved in murder. They might not be Eagle Scouts, but cold-blooded killers—no way. It had to be a horrible mistake, a case of police incompetence or, worse, two country boys being framed.

But disclosures about the knives in Robert’s room had the force of a tidal wave. It was cold, hard evidence that left many feeling ill. Kip Battey began saying about his two pals: “It looks like it happened, you know, and that they are involved.” Even DeRoss Kellogg acknowledged in May, “The physical evidence is really tough.” The teacher was nonetheless determined to stick by Robert, the former student he regarded as family. “Do you have a son?” Kellogg would ask. “If your son was accused of committing a serious crime, would you stop loving him?” During Robert’s arraignment on murder charges May 1, a brief hearing that lasted less than five minutes, Kellogg called out to Robert in court to let the boy know he was there. “The media went zonkers when I called out to him,” Kellogg later wrote in an e-mail. “It was all I could do to get my wife and myself back to our car.” Before driving off, though, Kellogg tarried long enough to give reporters a view of Robert to compete with the portrait of a killer. “I enjoyed his quick wit and his desire to learn,” the teacher said about the Robert he knew in sixth grade. “He was one of those kids—every teacher gets one or two a year, that you say, ‘Boy, I wouldn’t mind if my classroom was full of kids like this.’ ”

The steady run of incriminating details began to wear down the people of Chelsea. “If this turns out to be true, these boys who came by on Halloween as kids, it’s a sorrow for all of us, and it’s a worse sor-row, to me, than losing two boys to suicide,” said Cora Brooks. Comments began increasingly to take the boys’ guilt for granted. “How stupid is that?” Diane Mattoon said about the fact the boys hid the murder weapons in Robert’s bedroom—a stupidity that seemed ironic in that Robert always acted like he was so smart. Hardest hit were the grown-ups—Chelsea parents.

“People want to know if they are responsible in some way,” said Andy Pomerantz. The conversation at dinner tables and at The Pines

or at Dixie II’s had moved beyond the initial blow to the cosmic: the mysterious
how
and
why
. People in Chelsea began speculating about possible motives, ranging from a thrill kill to a burglary gone bad to a crime of passion.

“I refer to it mentally every day,” said David Savidge. His daily drive to work in Chelsea village took him past the Tullochs’ home on Main Street, and he often looked up at Robert’s bedroom window. “Everyone is thinking, ‘What went wrong?’ ” Savidge said. Why would two Chelsea boys do this?

The youth reaction, it turned out, was different. While their parents went on guilt trips, most teens shrugged off the hunt for explanations, at least outwardly. In late May, around the time of Jim’s birthday, Tyler Vermette decided to write about his classmate in a journal for psychology class. He shared old memories, like the big birthday parties Jim had when they were in grade school. “I wrote about how I missed him,” Tyler said.

Sophomore Sada Dumont said kids at school would sometimes just start talking about the two boys “as though they are not even in jail.” She said, “Somebody I know is in love with Jim still and was just say-ing how hot he was, and she went off about that. You wouldn’t even think he was not around.” The occasional dinnertime talk at the Dumont house revealed a generational divide: “She wants to know why they did it,” Sada said about her mom, “and I want to know why they are being framed.”

Mostly Chelsea’s teens would say they weren’t trying to figure out what happened in the Zantops’ house. Why waste the time, they’d say, obsessing about the unknowable. Coltere Savidge, as straight and steady as they come, had little interest in his parents’ anxious excava-tion to find meaning. “My parents stay up and wonder how, and why, and what could we have done?” Coltere said. “I think that is completely ridiculous, because you are just speculating on something you have no information about whatsoever. So you’re going to drive yourself crazy thinking about it.”

17
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Two Graduations

O
n Sunday, June 10, Hanover’s College on a Hill celebrated its 231st graduation ceremony. Lexuses, BMWs, and Mercedeses moved in a

procession along Wheelock and Main Streets. Green-and-white tents sprung up like giant mushrooms, some held in place with scaffolding disguised as Ionic pillars. Parking was impossible, except for fiftieth reunion celebrants from the class of ’51, who had special privileges. Cell phones were everywhere, as were women in strappy sundresses and floppy hats, men in blazers and rep or bow ties, and well-groomed purebred dogs, with a glut of golden retrievers. State and local police kept traffic moving and an already civilized crowd civil. Music from a brass ensemble in the Baker Library Tower provided the feel of a medieval festival.

The elegant Daniel Webster Room at the Hanover Inn, across from the Green, was serving a lunch menu with appetizers of iced Spinney

Creek oysters with cucumber and Roma tomato relish for $7.95, escar-got with soft polenta and beurre rouge for $7.75, and entrées of crispy grilled sweetbreads for $22 and grilled mahimahi for $26. The Gap store opened early to catch the cotton-loving Sunday morning graduation crowds. Outside Lou’s Bakery, card tables brimmed with huge muffins, fresh bagels, orange juice, and gourmet coffee. In front of College Supplies, an old woman and a young girl sold disposable cameras and blank tapes for camcorders. They were competing with the official 2001 Dartmouth Commencement Video, a $45 tape spliced together from film shot by a team of green-shirted cameramen.

One hundred eighty-eight flagpoles, each ten feet tall, ringed the Green. From them flew a United Nations’ worth of flags. Thousands of folding chairs were arranged in impossibly straight lines, and young attendants wandered through the crowd offering free bottles of Vermont Pure Natural Spring Water. With temperatures hovering around eighty degrees, the sixty-four-page commencement program was widely recognized for its effectiveness as a fan.

The college’s official Heirlooms and Artifacts were taken from their sacred resting places like crown jewels brought to a coronation. Among them were the 1769 parchment charter that established the school with the permission of England’s King George III; the ornate, gold-and-silver, 1785 Flude Medal worn by the college president; and the 1848 Lord Dartmouth’s Cup, borne exclusively by the College Usher when escorting the venerated members of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees to the viewing stand.

At ten in the morning, the 1,050 undergraduates and 515 graduates lined up behind the flags of Dartmouth and the United States to march down the center of the Green. Proud mothers and fathers crowded the four-abreast graduates, snapping pictures and offering flowers, kisses, and handshakes. One mother slathered sunscreen on the neck and ears of her gowned son while he stood obediently still. A lone bagpiper began to play and the rows of new graduates broke cleanly in half, to allow their professors to walk through an aisle they created. “C’mon guys, smile,” one professor in a scarlet red gown exhorted. “It’s a great day. Exams are over.”

Many of the graduates wore sunglasses and a few wore Hawaiian leis. But the most common accessory was a ribbon bearing the inscription “Half & Susanne.” The ribbons, in Susanne’s favorite color, pur-ple, were the idea of two graduate students in the earth sciences department, Todd Myse and Margaret Quinn. It was the most noticeable reference to the murders, but not the only one.

“We know all too well that no community is apart from the intru-sion of tragedy,” college President James Wright said in his speech to the departing seniors. “No peaceable kingdom is immune from violence. But the test of a community is not whether it is protected from bad and evil, but rather how it responds to these things when they come upon us without warning or reason. By this test, we can, in the midst of our pain, take pride.”

He never mentioned the Zantops by name, but his reference was universally understood. It was hard to find physical remnants of Half around the campus, but a few remained of Susanne: A pink lipstick kiss graced her photo on a faculty roster, and one of her winter-term course offerings—“Topics in Literary Theory: Postcolonialism”—was still listed on a bulletin board in Dartmouth Hall.

The student speakers said nothing about the Zantops. The valedictorian, Brian Stults, who had a perfect 4.0 average in his double major of mathematical social sciences and quantitative political science, talked about the “adversity” Dartmouth graduates faced. He didn’t mean murdered professors. He meant competing with Harvard in sports, taking organic chemistry classes, and choosing among the different dining halls for dinner.

The commencement speaker, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, urged the graduates to be “doers,” not “drifters.” Then she offered job counseling: “I hope people really do look at international careers, because national boundaries are very much out of date.” It was a sentiment Half and Susanne might have spoken themselves.

After the traditional hymns were sung and the diplomas were handed out, the crowd rose to join in the singing of the Dartmouth Alma Mater, ending with the lines:

For the sons of Dartmouth,

For the daughters of Dartmouth, Around the world they keep for her, Their old undying faith;

They have the still North in their soul, The hill-winds in their breath;

And the granite of New Hampshire Is made part of them till death.

Then the brass ensemble began playing again, accompanied by the bells of the Baker Library, and the graduates marched out. Lunch reservations would soon be kept, graduation presents opened, and good-byes said.

As Dartmouth enjoyed its most festive day, the Zantop home on Trescott Road was deserted. None of Half and Susanne’s protégés would be dropping by after the ceremony to show off their caps and gowns. None would quietly take Half aside to thank him for his patient teaching, or Susanne for her inspiration and energy.

There would be no big meal for friends and colleagues, no talk of the summer-vacation weeks to come at the Hiram Blake Camp. No wine glasses held high, no new recipes to try, no updates on Veronika and Mariana’s progress in the world. No Susanne and Half stepping outside to stand together, Half’s arm around Susanne’s shoulder, Susanne’s arm around Half’s waist, to watch the sunset in the mountains of Vermont.

In two weeks, New Hampshire authorities would return to the house for yet another search. A dozen state troopers and Hanover police detectives, including Chuck West and Frank Moran, would walk shoulder to shoulder, scouring the grounds for more than four hours. The sight of them would renew unpleasant memories for neighbors of the night five months earlier when Roxana Verona found the bodies. Lead prosecutor Kelly Ayotte would explain only that the ground had been covered with snow the last time investigators visited, and it was possible the spring thaw exposed more evidence. Nothing was found.