Professor’s blood found on knife in suspect’s room

CONCORD, N.H. – Authorities investigating the murders of two Dartmouth College professors found one victim’s blood on knives discovered in the bedroom of one of the teen suspects, according to court documents released Monday.

After weeks of fighting the release of the documents, state prosecutors agreed to make public several search warrants and other information supporting the arrests of Robert Tulloch, 17, and James Parker, 16, both of Chelsea, Vt.

Tulloch and Parker each face two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop. The couple was found stabbed in their Hanover home on Jan. 27.

“On one knife, DNA consistent with Susanne Zantop was detected,” the documents said of two knives found in Tulloch’s bedroom. “On the second knife, DNA consistent with Susanne Zantop was detected, with a mixture of another source of DNA.”

The documents do not identify the source of the additional DNA.

The papers also said in addition to the knives, violent video games and materials about Nazi Germany and Ku Klux Klan activities were found in the elder boy’s room. Two other knives were found in a car they abandoned in Massachusetts a few weeks after the murders, police said.

Bloody footprints inside and outside the victims’ home also linked Tulloch to the crime, the papers said.

Earlier this month, a judge released some heavily censored documents describing what led police to Tulloch and Parker. The documents released by Concord District Court and Merrimack County Superior Court on Monday outline searches of the teen-agers’ homes and detail the crime scene.

Lawyers for Parker and Tulloch did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment. In one affidavit, Vermont detectives who searched Tulloch’s bedroom said they found a box containing two knives that matched the sort believed to have been used to kill the Zantops.

The knives were missing their distinctive sheaths, and in previous documents authorities said two matching sheaths were found at the murder scene. Fingerprints matching Parker’s were found on one of them, according to earlier documents.

The documents also said Parker had bought the 12.5-inch knives over the Internet several weeks before the murders.

In an interview with police about two weeks after the murder, Parker told authorities he bought the knives over the Internet, but did not tell his parents about them because they would be angry.

He said they used the knives for cutting branches and building a fort in the woods, but found the knives too big. Tulloch said he and Parker sold the knives to an unknown man at a military surplus store sometime the week before the murders.

When asked by authorities where his son was the day of the murders, Parker’s father said he was with Tulloch, according to the records. Parker said he could not remember, and his father later said he could not, either.

In another affidavit, police describe bloody footprints in and outside the Zantops’ home, one of which matched one of Tulloch’s boots.

And in Tulloch’s room, police found a notebook that appeared to contain notes regarding the surveillance of a building, along with the Nazi literature, Ku Klux Klan information and the computer games.

Investigators saw “several documents including literature, school essays, and books, including ‘Der Fuhrer,’ which addressed the topics of Germany, Hitler and the inactivity of America during the Holocaust.”

The day the German-born professors were murdered is Holocaust Remembrance Day in Germany. Friends have said the Zantops were politically active and believed strongly that Germany should face up to its past.

Prosecutors would not say if the Nazi information was related to a motive in the killings. Assistant Attorney General William Delker said authorities do not consider the materials they found in Tulloch’s home to be neo-Nazi materials, saying they were more akin to historical documents than racist advocacy. He would not comment on which building was described in the notebook.

The documents also detailed the scene of the murders. The Zantops’ bodies were found in pools of blood in the study of their home. Much of the room’s furniture had been overturned and papers were strewn about one part of the room.

On a desk in the office was an open telephone directory that included Chelsea listings. A computer on the desk displayed an online address search program; no names had been typed on the screen.

The documents said computers were seized from both boys’ homes. They do not indicate what, if anything, was found on them.

“Based on the foregoing, there is probable cause to believe that the computer equipment seized from the residences of James Parker and Robert Tulloch contains evidence of the crime of homicide,” New Hampshire state Trooper Robert Estabrook wrote in one of the affidavits.

Additional documents also were expected to be released Monday from the Vermont Supreme Court.