Man who killed Dartmouth professors when he was 17 could be free in 20 years

By Holly Ramer and Kathy McCormack

ASSOCIATED PRESS CONCORD, N.H. | A Vermont man who was 17 when he and a friend killed a pair of married Dartmouth College professors 25 years ago will have a chance at parole in about 20 years, when he reaches the age of one of his victims, a judge ruled Monday.

Lawyers for Robert Tulloch, now 43, and prosecutors reached an agreement, avoiding a threeday planned resentencing hearing.

In court Monday, a shackled Tulloch held his head down and appeared to breathe heavily as the horrific details of the stabbings were recounted.

Tulloch was automatically sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in the 2001 stabbing deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop.

But the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that mandatory sentences of life without parole are unconstitutional for juveniles, and later applied that decision retroactively.

The rulings gave hundreds of juvenile lifers a shot at freedom, including five men serving life sentences in New Hampshire for murders they committed as teenagers. Tulloch’s resentencing hearing, the last of the five, was to have begun Monday in Grafton County Superior Court.

A daughter of the victims requests the longest possible sentence Tulloch apologized to one of the professors’ two daughters, Veronika Zantop, who joined the hearing remotely, and talked about how she and her family were affected by the death of her parents.

A psychiatrist with two sons, one of them the same age Tulloch was when he committed his crimes, Ms. Zantop said she can appreciate that brain functioning can change over time.

But she does not believe it’s true for Tulloch, saying he meticulously planned the killings and followed through in a cold, predatory manner.

“This wasn’t a crime of passion or retribution,” she said. “He wasn’t using substances, he wasn’t psychotic. There was just sheer depravity.”

She urged that he stay in prison “for the longest possible sentence.”

Tulloch abandoned his prepared statement.

“After listening to that, I feel disgusted by even thinking I could say anything that would mean anything,” he said.

In a court filing last week, Tulloch’s lawyers argue that a minimum sentence in the range of 30 to 40 years is appropriate, based on a review of other murders committed by juveniles in New Hampshire and cases nationwide that were affected by the Supreme Court rulings.

Judge Lawrence MacLeod resentenced Tulloch to a minimum of 45 years to life. He could be considered for parole in 2046 when he’s 62 years old, the same age Half Zantop was when he was killed.

“The agreed upon sentence provides certainty that Tulloch will remain incarcerated for a substantial period of time, allows Tulloch to pursue some measure of rehabilitation, and it secures important protections for the community,” New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said in a statement.

Attorneys Richard Guerriero and Oliver Bloom also said Tulloch’s prison records show he has matured, and that after some initial misconduct early on, he’s had no major infractions since 2012 and no minor infractions since 2017. “The vast majority of his write-ups are for possessing too many books,” they wrote.

Quoting from Tulloch’s therapy records, they said he has expressed “significant remorse” for what he sees as a heinous and unforgivable crime, his “warped youthful thinking,” and his “good capacity for empathy.”

According to Tulloch’s friend, James Parker, the teens were bored with their lives in Chelsea, Vermont, when they concocted a plan to kill strangers, steal their money and move to Australia.

For several months, they knocked on doors in New Hampshire and Vermont pretending to be conducting a survey on the environment before being let in by the Zantops. Susanne Zantop, 55, was head of Dartmouth’s German studies department and her husband, Half Zantop, 62, taught Earth sciences.

Robert Tulloch was 17 when he and a friend killed a married couple 25 years ago. He now has a chance at parole in about 20 years.

ASSOCIATED PRESS