Suspects in slayings wait Year later, New Hampshire town moves on after murders

CHELSEA, Vt. – A year after the murders of two Dartmouth College professors, the teen-age Vermont suspects who once did everything together spend their days in separate New Hampshire jails awaiting a courtroom reunion this spring.

But they’ll be on opposite sides when they meet again: Robert Tulloch, 18, as defendant in the stabbing deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop in their Hanover, N.H., home, and James Parker, 17, as witness for the prosecution.

Parker, who pleaded guilty to reduced charges in exchange for his testimony, was 16 at the time of the Jan. 27, 2001, murders. Tulloch, whose trial on first-degree murder charges is set to begin April 22, was a senior and a member of the school debate team.

Their lives in the jails where they’ve spent most of the past year are tightly controlled, but they still have many of the comforts of home – access to a television set, a phone, a basketball court, an exercise room, a ping-pong table and school books.

Neither one has had any behavior problems, jail officials say.

Parker spends his days playing cards and Monopoly with the handful of other inmates in the maximum security unit at the Belknap County Jail in Laconia, N.H., said Jan Hale, a corrections officer. He also meets with a counselor every week, does homework faxed to the facility from his Chelsea school and practices yoga with books provided by the jail.

“He does meditation and stretching,” Hale said. “He’s actually getting kind of good at it.”

Parker also likes to draw, Hale said.

“He mostly does watercolors and charcoal drawings,” she said. “He has a wooden model that he can twist and then draw. A lot of his stuff is abstract stuff, colors.”

Inside Parker’s cell, a calendar hangs on the wall with Jan. 26, Saturday’s date, circled.

Also on the wall in his cell is a watercolor drawing of a young man that resembles him and a note regarding art supplies. There is also a note that says, “letters to gram.”

Tulloch is being held at the Grafton County Jail in Haverhill, N.H., about 60 miles northwest of Laconia and home to the superior court where the trial will be held. He spends his day writing letters and reading ones sent from his family and friends, said jail superintendent Glenn Libby.

Tulloch, also housed in the maximum security unit, is allowed out of his cell during the day to play basketball, foosball and roam around in a narrow walkway. Like Parker, Tulloch, an honors student, was given the opportunity to continue his education, but has declined, Libby said.

“Nothing really stands out about him,” Libby said. “He fits in. He’s not out of place.”

Some days Tulloch is in a cell by himself. On other days he has a cellmate. It depends on how many people are on pre-trial detention in the 108-bed facility, Libby said.

“At times he can be very talkative,” Libby said. “At other times he’s been known to keep to himself.”

People in the teen-agers’ hometown of Chelsea, Vt., seem to have reached a largely private settlement with the shocking events of a year ago.

“Nobody thought that the boys could have been charged with something like this,” said Karen Campbell, owner of Dixie’s II, a restaurant across the street from Tulloch’s home where the family often eats. “But the more that comes out, I don’t think there’s much denying it now.”

Prosecutors say the married German-born professors were killed during a robbery. The teens were arrested three weeks after the murders at an Indiana truck stop.

At Chelsea Public School, the faces have changed in the last year, as many of the suspects’ classmates have gone on to college. Those that remain at the school of 300 pupils still keep tabs on the court hearings, but have less to say publicly.

“They haven’t forgotten about it, but they just don’t talk about it as much,” said Josh Larkham, 12, as he played in the snow outside the school on a recent afternoon.

School officials and the teens’ families, for their part, continue their collective silence, refusing repeated requests for interviews.

“I think the town’s moving on,” said Orange County Sheriff Dennis McClure. “I think the people are just the same as they were before this. That hasn’t changed. Everybody still relies on each other.”

The television satellite trucks that once lined Main Street are gone, but the impact the intense media scrutiny had on the town of 1,200 still lingers, officials say.

“We don’t usually deal with a national media here in Chelsea,” McClure said. “When they came in to town, these were the sharks of the news media. I think it’s probably affected the way anybody is going to talk to a reporter in Chelsea from now on.”