Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders (53 page)

Jail officials were among the first to pick up signs of Robert’s new fatalism. In early January, they detected that Robert was again having what Glenn Libby called “jailbreak fantasies.” Jailhouse sources told authorities that Robert was seeking to enlist others to create an emergency inside the cellblock. Once the corrections officers responded, Robert and his allies would overwhelm them and take their keys. The intelligence grew sketchy after that. Concern heightened after an actual medical emergency in Robert’s cellblock when a new inmate had a breakdown. Libby noticed Robert coolly studying the officers’ response, searching for weaknesses.

Libby ordered an immediate crackdown. Robert’s cellblock was searched and a “quasi-rope,” made from strips of socks and wire from a spiral notebook, was found in the cell next to Robert’s. “He was too smart to keep it in his own cell,” Libby said. Robert was moved immediately to a different cellblock. He was back to wearing handcuffs and leg irons—just as in the spring—and was put on suicide watch, not because Libby considered him a suicide risk, but rather because he was a security risk. It meant a corrections officer would check on him at least every ten minutes and his cell would be searched every three days. As long as Robert was inside his walls, Libby wouldn’t relax those rules.

Robert’s restlessness didn’t surprise Libby. He took it as part of the teen’s growing disenchantment with the idea of an insanity defense. From the very beginning Libby had been puzzled by Robert’s willingness to consider insanity at all. To Libby, insanity and Robert Tulloch didn’t fit. Robert was calculating, stoic, and more self-possessed than most inmates. He was never on any medication in jail. Most of all, the insanity gambit didn’t jibe with the teen’s oversized ego. Robert claiming insanity cut against what Libby saw as “his arrogance and his wanting to be perceived as really smart.”

In Libby’s view, Robert realized “you can’t be superior and crazy.” Given the choice, Robert would choose superior.

J
udge Smith watched Robert sit down after finishing the required Q&A. From the bench, the judge could look out over the prosecutors

and see Veronika and Mariana Zantop, seated in the front row of the right side of the gallery. The sisters held hands, surrounded by a cocoon of friends and supporters.

The Tulloch family occupied seats in the front row of the opposite side of the gallery. Mike Tulloch was sitting farthest away, against the wall. He wore darkened glasses that made it impossible to see his eyes. His graying hair was swept back, looking almost unkempt. Diane sat next to him. Her gray-streaked hair hung straight to her shoulders. She wore a red-checkered woolen shirt and black slacks. Their older daughter, Becky Tulloch Johnson, was next, wearing a blue blazer. Kienan was there, too, slouching in his seat. His short brown hair was mussed and peach fuzz covered his chin. He had Robert’s nose now and there was no mistaking the two were brothers. The family alternated between staring straight ahead and looking down at the floor. The Tullochs barely said a word to one another during the proceeding, and Robert rarely looked their way.

At 10:05
A
.
M
. Kelly Ayotte made her way to the lectern from the table where she’d been sitting with Mike Delaney. Key state and local investigators were seated in a ring of chairs directly behind them in a show of force and solidarity. The prosecutor was dressed in a periwinkle-colored pantsuit, a black blouse, and black boots. She opened a black notebook, grasped the sides of the lectern, and began reading the state’s offer of proof. “If this case had gone to trial,” she said, “the state would

have called James Parker to the witness stand. And he would have testified to all the facts and circumstances leading up to and surrounding the murder of Half and Susanne Zantop.”

For the next thirty-seven minutes, Ayotte gave the most detailed public account of the murders to date. Though her voice cracked at times, Ayotte’s performance was low-key, straightforward, and non-theatrical. She let the content speak for itself, with Jim Parker as the government’s guide.

“They were bored,” Ayotte said to start her story about Robert and Jim—and that’s exactly how Robert looked in court throughout her narrative. He leaned back into his chair and glared sullenly at the prosecutor as she spoke. He showed little expression, but the smirk returned when Ayotte told the court how the boys nurtured a fantasy of running off to Australia to start new lives as “badasses.”

The delivery of the facts took a dramatic turn when Ayotte reached the day of the killings. “On January 27 they were driving to Hanover in the Parkers’ green Subaru,” she said. “Jim Parker was driving.” Her voice dropped the better part of an octave and she moved away from the lectern to mark the transition. She clasped her hands and described how Robert and Jim first tried the house next door. “They knocked on the door several times. But no one was home. No one to let them in. So they left. And they immediately turned their sights to the house owned by Half and Susanne Zantop.” Hearing their parents’ names, Mariana lowered her head and cast her eyes downward, while Veronika stared straight at Ayotte.

The prosecutor led everyone in the courtroom to the Zantops’ front door, with Half answering it and then making up his mind that he had time for the two students. Robert and Jim, she said, planned to put into play the same fake survey they’d tried the week before in Rochester. “To use an environmental survey to gain access to the residence. To tie up the Zantops. To steal their credit cards, ATM numbers. To threaten the Zantops for their PIN numbers. And then, finally, to kill them.”

The prosecutor described how Robert discarded the plan when he lunged at Half and started the massacre. “Half was screaming, screaming terribly,” Ayotte said. She stressed robbery as the motive for the killings, saying Robert attacked Half after he had pulled out and opened his wallet. She emphasized the cash for legal reasons; one of the charges against Robert was committing a murder “while engaged in the commission of, or while attempting to commit, robbery or burglary while armed with a deadly weapon, the death being caused by the use of such weapon.” The government needed to establish robbery as a requisite element of the crime. But that overlooked a key chronolog-ical fact—Robert had already moved to take the knife out of Jim’s backpack
before
Half reached for his wallet.

Veronika was crying the moment Kelly Ayotte began describing the bloodbath. She raised a tissue to wipe the tears. Mariana kept her head lowered. Robert, meanwhile, was unmoved. Occasionally he leaned over and whispered to Guerriero. He never spoke to Barbara Keshen. Blankly, he listened to the prosecutor finish telling about how investigators broke open the case, and how he and Jim fled and were captured.

Finally came the moment he was waiting for.

“Guilty,” Robert said, his voice firm, when court clerk Robert Muh asked how he pleaded to the charge of first-degree murder in the death of Half Zantop.

“Guilty,” he repeated when Muh asked about the first-degree mur-der of Susanne Zantop.

“Guilty,” he said to the charge of conspiracy to commit murder.

B
efore the sentence could be pronounced, Robert had to hear the pain of two of the Zantops’ close friends, Dartmouth professor Irene

Kacandes and their summer getaway pal Jim Zien. He also had to hear their orphaned daughters.

Veronika and Mariana stood up at 10:48
A
.
M
. and walked together to the lectern. Veronika, thirty, wore a blue blazer, dark skirt, and a white blouse open at the collar. She tucked her shoulder-length blond hair behind her ears. Veronika had her father’s height and bearing.

Mariana, twenty-eight, stood by her side. She wore a dark pantsuit, a light-colored blouse, and had a short, simple haircut that resembled her mother’s.

Mariana put her right arm around her sister’s waist. Veronika held onto the lectern and began by turning to face the prosecutors and investigators. She thanked them for their “absolutely tireless and tenacious work.” Her voice sounded fragile. “I can’t tell you how important that was for both of us.”

Then, for the first time, the sisters stood facing one of their parents’ killers, separated by twenty feet and too many qualities to count. Veronika looked across at Robert and then down to read her remarks. “There is 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 my parents were murdered.”

Mariana lifted her right hand and began rubbing Veronika’s back. “My father’s name was Half, which in German means ‘to help.’

According to family legend, at the time of my father’s birth my grand-father, a religious man, closed his eyes, opened the Bible and let fate guide his index finger. From the page on which his finger landed came my father’s name.”

Veronika began to cry, but she kept going. “My father lived up to his name. . . . That their desire to help, to teach, and to open their home to perfect strangers was abused in such a horrific way makes their deaths seem like the greatest violation.

“Rather than focus on the inhumanity and monstrosity and the sheer stupidity of their brutal and senseless deaths, I’ve tried to console myself by trying to perpetuate the essence of my parents—two people with true open-heartedness and generosity, who fought for positive change. And my sister and I will continue that fight.”

Veronika folded the piece of paper. “Thank you.” “Thank you,” Judge Smith said, his voice barely audible.

The sisters returned to their seats where friends reached to touch and embrace them. Mariana wiped her eyes with a tissue. More than

a few observers in the gallery, including some hard-bitten reporters, also dabbed tears from their eyes. The courtroom was silent except for the sound of deep sighs.

The only person who appeared unmoved and unimpressed was Robert. During the remarks, he looked straight at Veronika. Robert had looked sad-eyed in many of the photographs taken of him immediately after his arrest; now in court his eyes alternated between cold and empty.

At Judge Smith’s command, Robert stood between his lawyers. Judge Smith asked him if he had anything to say, but Robert declined. He didn’t dispute any of the facts outlined by prosecutors. He didn’t address Veronika and Mariana. He didn’t take one final look at his family or at anyone else. He looked straight ahead, waiting for the hearing to end. Court clerk Robert Muh obliged him by pronouncing the sentence Robert knew he’d receive: life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Flanked by two deputy sheriffs, he turned and shuffled out of the courtroom. Just like that, Robert Tulloch was gone.

K
elly Ayotte said afterward that throughout her presentation she was fully aware of Robert’s eyes upon her. It didn’t unnerve her, because

she was so focused on the task at hand. Besides, she said, “I’ve prosecuted some really awful killers.” But, she said, she would always remember the contempt she saw in Robert’s eyes.

The morning hearing over, the courtroom emptied in silence. Outside, the Tullochs piled into the two cars parked in a rear lot and drove off. Like Robert, they made no comment. DeRoss Kellogg hung back at the courthouse’s front entrance. The teacher had become the self-appointed standard bearer of what he termed Robert’s “soft side.” “Robert wants it to be known that it is untrue that he had no remorse,” he said. Reporters, hungry for quotes and comments, surrounded him, some thrusting microphones at him and the rest jotting notes. Kellogg wanted to dispute what the reporters had just witnessed. The longtime teacher insisted that Robert had “a moral center.” Robert, he said,

accepted his guilt and was truly sorry for what happened inside the Zantops’ study.

Few believed him. Robert’s final act to plead guilty, one close Tulloch supporter said later, didn’t involve a moral epiphany. “Robert still doesn’t get it,” the insider said. “He will say ‘Killing is wrong,’ but mainly he’ll say it’s wrong because everyone else says it’s wrong.” It was Robert the psychopath. The most Robert would acknowledge, the insider said, was that he “messed up—his family, and Jim.” But overall, Robert acted as if he’d been caught for marijuana possession, not cold-blooded murder.

“He’s scary. Fascinating the way a car accident is fascinating.”

W
hile Robert was in court, Jim was waiting his turn in, of all places, Robert’s old haunt, the Grafton County Jail. He’d been driven up first

thing in the morning from the Belknap County Jail. His last day in Belknap County began like any other. He woke up around six o’clock to a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, juice, toast, and Cheerios. The difference on this day was that his cell was already cleaned out; his parents had taken his personal belongings during a visit a few days earlier.

The Belknap corrections officer who had seen Jim most mornings for almost a year found him quieter than usual. Jan Hale was used to inmates saying “bye,” or “see you around” when they were led away. But Jim left without any parting words for his jailers. He was escorted to the booking area where he peeled out of his orange jumpsuit and put on the blue jeans, white T-shirt, and dark polo shirt his parents had left for him. His hair was freshly cut, but unlike Robert’s rough cellblock look, Jim’s had been trimmed neatly by a barber who came monthly to the Belknap jail. Two deputy sheriffs were there to take him away. Jim recognized them. They were the same two deputies who in December and January had escorted him from the jail to the confessional sessions with prosecutors.

Once inside the Grafton County Jail, Jim waited out the morning in the same cell that Robert had occupied before being transported to the courthouse. Jim would have had no way of knowing this, unless he

possessed a sixth sense for Robert’s presence. But Jim couldn’t help but notice that the overall conditions at the jail where Robert had been held were far more severe than he had endured.

T
hough Jim’s afternoon hearing took place in the same courtroom, before the same judge, with the same prosecutors, and many of the