Dartmouth suspects captured Two teens arrested at Indiana truck stop

NEW CASTLE, Ind. – Two teen-agers wanted in the stabbing deaths of two Dartmouth College professors were arrested Monday after authorities acting on a hunch used a CB radio to lure the boys to an Indiana truck stop.

James Parker, 16, and Robert Tulloch, 17, both of Chelsea, Vt., were captured peacefully before dawn at an Interstate 70 truck stop more than 700 miles from the site of the slayings in Hanover, N.H.

Sgt. William Ward of the Henry County Sheriff’s Department said he heard a trucker say he was carrying two teens who were looking for a ride to California.

Ward, who had seen television reports that the Dartmouth suspects might be headed to California, got on the CB and suggested the teens might find a ride at the Flying J truck stop south of New Castle.

“I just said, ‘Why don’t you drop them off at the fuel desk and someone will pick them up in a few minutes?”‘ Ward said.

The teens were caught a short time later as they were asking another trucker for a ride. Said Ward: “It was a long shot, and I didn’t expect it would be them.”

Parker and Tulloch are charged as adults with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop, whose bodies were found in their home Jan. 27.

It was not known when the teens would be extradited from New Castle, which is 40 miles east of Indianapolis.

Attorney Robert Katims, who is representing Parker, said the boy’s parents were on their way to Indiana. He said no decision had been made on whether the boys would waive extradition.

Tulloch’s mother, Diane Tulloch, told The Dartmouth, a student newspaper: “We love our son and we want the press to know that he’s innocent until proven guilty.”

Half Zantop, 62, taught earth sciences. His wife, Susanne Zantop, 55, was chairwoman of the German studies department. Both were naturalized citizens who were natives of Germany and traveled abroad frequently.

Their slayings shocked the 6,500-student Dartmouth campus and the surrounding community of Hanover. Authorities have refused to discuss a motive or any connection between the boys and the victims, who were stabbed repeatedly.

Authorities said they believed the teens left their hometown of Chelsea, Vt., on Thursday and a nationwide manhunt began over the weekend.

Orange County, Vt., Sheriff Dennis McClure said the boys became suspects in the Dartmouth case after authorities learned one had bought a military-style knife over the Internet. The boys were asked last Thursday to come in and provide their fingerprints, which they did voluntarily.

Arrest warrants for both were issued late Friday and early Saturday.

“All I know is that the prints probably matched enough [from the crime scene] for an identification,” said McClure, who, along with prosecutors, declined further comment.

A car belonging to Parker’s parents was found Sunday at a Sturbridge, Mass., truck stop, where workers said they saw two teens matching the suspects’ description Friday night. They were seen at a New Jersey highway rest area Saturday morning asking for rides, police said.

The boys told a trucker who picked them up in New Jersey that they were from California and had hitchhiked to Massachusetts to look for work, Ward said.

They said they weren’t able to find jobs so they were returning to California. The trucker dropped them off at the Flying J.

“The truck driver had felt sorry for them. They were close in age to a child of his own,” Ward said. The 22-year veteran said listening to CB conversations had led to drunken driving arrests and the capture of an armed robbery suspect – but nothing this big.

Audrey McCollum, a friend and neighbor of the Zantops, said the arrests do not ease the pain for her and her husband, Bob.

“These two extraordinary people are still dead and, in a sense, the tragedy is extended because if these two kids did it, which hasn’t yet been proven, what it tells me is that our society has just gone off the rails,” said McCollum, a retired psychotherapist.