Dartmouth couple’s anti-Nazi beliefs possible link to slayings, report says

HANOVER, N.H. – The two Dartmouth College professors stabbed to death in their home last month strongly believed their native Germany should face up to its Nazi past. A teen-ager accused in the slayings reportedly had neo-Nazi literature in his bedroom.

But whether Half and Susanne Zantop’s views played a role in their deaths remained an open question Friday.

The Zantops were not so outspoken that they would have attracted the attention of hate groups, a friend said. And friends of the two teen-agers charged with first-degree murder said they saw no signs the boys were anti-Semites.

The Holocaust emerged as a possible link between the Zantops and the suspects when ABC News reported Thursday that investigators found literature related to neo-Nazism, white supremacy and Holocaust revisionism in the bedroom of Robert Tulloch, 17.

Prosecutors on Friday refused to comment on the report.

Tulloch and James Parker, 16, are accused of stabbing the couple to death in their Hanover home on Jan. 27, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Germany.

Parker’s attorney, Douglas Brown, denied that the teen was involved with white supremacy activity.

“I can tell you that Jimmy Parker has nothing to do with any of that stuff, and I’ve known him all his life,” Brown said.

Parker waived further extradition proceedings at a hearing in Indiana on Friday and was expected to return to New Hampshire by the weekend. His attorney said Parker would plead innocent and seek to be tried as a juvenile.

“He’s a 16-year-old. He a boy,” Brown said.

Authorities have refused to discuss a motive or any connection between the Chelsea, Vt., boys and the victims, who lived 22 miles away. Half Zantop, 62, taught earth sciences at Dartmouth, and his wife, Susanne Zantop, 55, was chairwoman of the German studies department.

Audrey McCollum, a close friend of the couple, said she didn’t remember the Zantops ever talking about neo-Nazism or Holocaust revisionism, the belief that the Holocaust never happened.

“I think her activism was directed toward many different social, political and environmental causes,” McCollum said. “I think it was wide-ranging and I personally don’t recall any conversations with either of them about that.

“They did have a sort of e-mail network of people to whom they would send notices of impending legislation, elections and so on,” she said. “[But] I personally have no knowledge of any communications about that.”

The Zantops were both born in Germany around the time of World War II. According to friends, Susanne learned nothing of the Holocaust until she was a teen-ager, and was appalled. They said that awakening shaped her notion of justice and drove her to make the world a better place.

But McCollum said the Holocaust was not a focus of the couple’s activism.

Another friend, Eric Posmentier, said the Zantops’ strong belief that Germany should face up to its past came in part from learning that relatives may have been involved in World War II activities on behalf of their country.