Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders (47 page)

Intrigued, Robert made a counterproposal. He would participate, but on his terms: he wanted to be a judge. The idea of sitting in judgment, exercising power and control, had special appeal to him. Negotiations ensued and a compromise was reached. Robert would get to decide the fate of others, but only after debating in the first two rounds. O’Brien felt satisfied to have re-enlisted the boy in an organized activity.

W
ith the new year came renewed criminal intent for Robert and Jim. It wasn’t triggered by anything in particular—it was simply that

enough time had passed since the scare at the Patti house, and Robert was growing restless and vengeful as his fellow seniors were looking ahead to college while he was still stuck in his parents’ tumbledown house in Chelsea.

First, though, he and Jim decided to upgrade their weaponry yet again. The stun guns were OK, but they were nonlethal weapons, and Robert wanted something with killing power. One option was the knives they had brought to the Pattis, but those had ordinary blades. If they were going to be traveling killers for hire, they needed specialized weapons. Using money from Christmas, birthdays, and what was left from working for Jim’s father, they went on the Internet, searched under “military knives,” and settled on the SOG SEAL 2000. Jim thought they seemed the best knives on the market, the most durable, “the right kind of knives to have.”

On New Year’s Day 2001, Jim and Robert sat together at a computer and typed, “I would like to purchase 2 of your seal 2000 knives.” With a click of the computer mouse, the message went to Fox Firearms. That same day, Half and Susanne Zantop stood outside their home and waved good-bye to their daughter Mariana and their two closest friends, Eric Manheimer and Diana Taylor, as they drove out of the driveway onto Trescott Road, heading back to New York after their New Year’s celebration.

A day later, Robert and Jim sent their second e-mail to Fox, sealing the deal.

At first, Jim told himself the knives were necessary for their travels. “The main reason why we wanted to get these is because when we were in Australia we wanted to have knives for survival, cutting things, not people,” Jim said. “We wanted to get some really good knives that . . . wouldn’t break in the middle of the desert.”

Eventually, though, he acknowledged the real reason, Robert’s rea-son. The SEAL 2000s “would be better knives for killing people.”

O
n Saturday, January 6, 2001, the long, narrow hallway of the high school wing at Chelsea Public School was crowded with debaters from

high schools in Rutland, Brandon, and White River Junction, Vermont, along with a new team from across the river in New Hampshire. It was the first year of debate at Hanover High School, and coach Donna Strange, a debate veteran and wife of the Dartmouth debate coach, had happily accepted John O’Brien’s invitation to the Chelsea tournament.

Teens filed past one another in the hall, ducking into and out of the various classrooms being used for the all-day competition. Most of the boys wore jackets and ties, and most of the girls wore dresses, respect-ful of debate decorum. Some kids recognized one another from other debates and renewed friendships, while others warily eyed each other, sizing up the competition.

Not having participated in any of the Chelsea team meetings, Robert was, as usual, thoroughly unprepared. Yet he was fortunate: He’d been paired with one of the league’s smartest and best debaters, Jesse Fjeld of Otter Valley Union High School in Brandon. The topic they had to debate was: “Resolved: That the United States government should significantly increase protection of privacy in one or more of the following areas: employment, medical records, consumer information, search and seizure.” It was a complex and challenging subject, exploring the privacy rights of citizens balanced against government interests.

After winning their first round, Robert and Jesse faced a team arguing that electronic surveillance of Internet traffic by government agencies had gotten out of hand and constituted a threat to personal privacy. In presenting their affirmative plan, Robert and Jesse’s opponents claimed that the FBI was violating constitutional protections with the aid of an Internet tapping system known as “Carnivore,” electronic snoopware capable of scanning millions of e-mails a second.

Regardless of the fact that Robert and Jim had just completed some Internet retail business they surely wanted to keep hidden, Robert and his debate partner were obliged to stake out the position that Carnivore was a necessary tool of law enforcement to prevent wrongdoing. Jesse Fjeld had hard research on Carnivore; not surprising, given that the FBI program was just the sort of topic any well-prepared debate team could expect to confront. Relying on specific

points, Jesse attacked the plan. Robert hadn’t lifted a research finger, so he had to wing it.

He was all swagger. What’s the big deal, he asked his opponents when his turn came. Who cares if the government is looking at a few e-mails? If you’re doing something wrong on the Internet, well, you
should
get caught, he said, betraying no trace of the conflict between his words and his behavior. Robert moved around, walking from the front of the classroom over to the other debaters. He moved like a hunter, jutting his chin toward his opponents’ faces—So, tell me again,
why
you object to this Carni-Carni-what? Is that what you’re saying? Carnivore?

The judge for the round was Hanover High coach Donna Strange. During more than a decade of involvement in debate, she’d never seen anything like this. He was argumentative, dismissive, completely lacking in evidence, rude, insulting, and flamboyant—everything a student debater shouldn’t be. An image flashed through her mind: Robert reminded her of Eddie Haskell on steroids. Strange stopped Robert several times in mid-sentence to remind the Chelsea debater to maintain decorum. But Robert only grew more agitated, more provocative. Strange judged the other team the winner by a large margin. But she wasn’t finished. Strange was shaking her head with disappointment, and in a post-debate critique she mostly targeted Robert. It wasn’t that Robert had been a bad debater—that would have been OK. Students learn from mistakes. But his complete lack of preparation, combined with his lousy attitude, was an insult. “There’s a difference between being a bad debater and making a mockery of it,” she told him. The Hanover coach knew she was being harsh, but she cared deeply about the integrity of debate and she could see that under the arrogance and anger, Robert possessed talent. “You’re clearly a bright guy who could be very persuasive, with the power to have people follow you,” she told him. Don’t abuse that power, she warned him.

As Strange spoke, Robert struck a nonchalant pose. Most other debaters would have withered under such a public dressing-down, but Robert wouldn’t blink. “He was just laughing about it,” she said afterward. The only physical betrayal of his feelings came from his feet.

Robert was pacing. Brimming with pent-up anger, he couldn’t wait to get out of there.

Meanwhile, John O’Brien already had his hands full—as coach of the Chelsea debaters, as a judge, and as organizer of the event. As the third round was about to begin, O’Brien noticed Robert duck into the school’s science room. Heading in the same direction were two well-dressed girls from Hanover High School. The girls, both juniors, bright and blond, had already made a strong impression. They’d won their first two rounds handily, a start that didn’t surprise their coach; Donna Strange had recognized their potential in practice during the fall.

As he watched Robert walk into the science room, O’Brien knew this was what he’d been waiting for—a chance to judge other debaters. Then O’Brien spotted Jim Parker in the hallway, also heading toward the science room, and that gave the coach pause. Jim hadn’t been part of the deal. O’Brien calmed himself with the thought that he had already spelled out his expectations for Robert, and Robert had promised he would do a good job.

But now, unknown to O’Brien, Robert had something else in mind entirely. By the luck of the draw, he had a chance for revenge. With Strange’s criticisms still ringing in his ears, Robert was judging the Hanover High School novice team.

The girls from Hanover were poised for victory. But when they began their presentation, Robert took over the debate, taunting them, flirting with them, interrupting them with sexual innuendos, all to the howling pleasure and snide reactions of his sidekick, Jim. At one point the Hanover girls protested Robert’s bizarre conduct, but Robert and Jim made faces and laughed at them. Robert threatened to reduce their score.

John O’Brien had barely finished judging another debate when the two Hanover girls were at his side, flustered and near tears. O’Brien listened in shock and embarrassment to their story. As he comforted the girls, O’Brien thought of Robert and Jim: “The two of them were like two good dogs put together who became one bad dog. They were mocking the whole thing. They know I’ll be upset, they know the peo-ple involved in the debate will be upset. But they don’t seem to care.”

O’Brien felt helpless. The recently revamped Chelsea Public School Student/Parent Handbook addressed harassment explicitly: “Current law makes sexual harassment or any assault a crime. Students have a right to attend Chelsea High School without fear of being bothered by others because of gender, race, ethnicity or disabling condition.” The handbook stipulated that “harassment . . . will result in a referral to the principal.” But O’Brien didn’t know that both Robert and Jim had re-enrolled at the Chelsea school. And Robert’s participation in the tournament was a one-time deal. “What am I going to do, kick Robert off the team he’s not really on anyway?” O’Brien felt the boys were beyond his reach.

When the Hanover debaters found their coach, they wondered what they had done to deserve such abuse. A thought raced through Donna Strange’s mind: payback. “He knew they were my students,” the coach said. “It was his way of getting back, a slap in my face. He couldn’t respond to me, so he took it out on the girls.” Hanover’s novice team had won the tournament, but they wouldn’t celebrate. “They just talked about how they felt dirty,” Strange said, “and how they didn’t want to win, and how it didn’t matter.”

Before she left the Chelsea Public School, Strange searched for Robert, determined to have more words with him, even harsher than her earlier criticism. She looked in the hallway as the tournament wrapped up and she continued to hunt for him at the awards ceremony in the cafeteria. She scanned the room but saw no sign of Robert. He was gone.

T
he next day, January 7, eager to jumpstart their lives of crime, Robert and Jim sent another e-mail to Fox Firearms: “could you notify

me when you receive the money order and when you send out the knives? thank you. Jim.”

That same week, Jim again brought Robert to Spaulding for a final Shadow Day before Jim’s return to school in Chelsea, and Robert made an even worse impression than on his earlier visit. Music teacher Arthur Zorn saw the pair in the school office and took an immediate dislike to

Robert. The young guest was disparaging the school and exhibiting what Zorn called a domineering personality. Zorn casually called him “Bob,” and Robert was quick to correct him; later, other students would tell Zorn that Robert had said he would kill someone for calling him Bob. Zorn noticed that Robert and Jim seemed anxious to leave—as though they had pressing business elsewhere. In passing, Zorn overheard Robert mention their destination: Hanover, New Hampshire.

On January 11, their impatience growing, Robert and Jim sent their final e-mail to Fox Firearms: “i would like to know if you have received the money order yet, and if you have sent the knives. i sent the money order last week thursday. thanks. Jim.”

The next day, the two SOG SEAL 2000 knives arrived at Jim’s house—they had Fox send them there because they didn’t want Diane Tulloch to intercept another weapons shipment. Together they rushed to Jim’s father’s wood shop and tore open the white SOG boxes like excited kids at Christmas. From there they went to Robert’s house and spent the night testing the knives, throwing them against doors and cutting whatever was at hand to see how sharp they were. Robert carved a design on his sheath—it looked like a stylized dagger blade— so they could tell them apart. When it was time to sleep, they stashed the knives under a pile of socks in Robert’s dresser drawer.

B
ack at school in Chelsea, Robert exhibited signs of a young man who had cast off the bonds of civilized behavior. In an environmental

science class he needed to graduate, Robert was rude and disruptive, at first with Jim at his side, and later on his own when Jim was quietly moved to a chemistry class. As Jim put it, “We’re pretty, kind of, take the show, like just fooling about and saying the wrong things. Not like swearing or telling the teacher he’s an idiot. You know, just kind of making jokes . . . that everyone thinks is funny except for the teacher.” On his own, Robert displayed a mix of profanity and hopelessness that marked a dark departure from the high-spirited, if grandiose, writings during his junior year. The worst of it came in a paper about a famous 1980 wager between ecologist Paul Erlich and economist

Julian Simon. Erlich maintained that the prices of natural resources would rise during the next decade as they became more scarce. Simon had bet Erlich that prices would fall, because resources wouldn’t be depleted or alternatives would be found.

“Simon is a fucking idiot,” Robert wrote on the assignment. “He believes man is the most important thing on earth, and therefore anything he does is a great achievement. . . . Simon will be dead in 32 years, and his grandchildren will have skin cancer. . . . It is quite obvious we are the only problem the earth has.”

Robert’s environmental studies teacher was Richard Steckler, one of his favorites in the school. Steckler liked Robert as well, but he had no choice but to respond with force. He returned fire in a note copied to the principal, Pat Davenport.

“Robert,” Steckler wrote, “Parking lot language [is] totally uncalled for. Passion OK. So, just why exactly are you taking this class? If you wish to stay, you’ll have to turn off the sarcasm and the rude comments directed toward others in the class. (I know you well enough to know that this will be very difficult.)”