2001 Dartmouth College murders
| Date | January 27, 2001 |
|---|---|
| Location | Etna, New Hampshire |
| Coordinates | 43°41′51″N 72°13′35″W / 43.6975°N 72.2264°WCoordinates: 43°41′51″N 72°13′35″W / 43.6975°N 72.2264°W |
| Type | Double Homicide |
| Deaths |
2
|
| Arrest(s) | 2 |
| Convicted | James J. Parker Robert W. Tulloch |
| Verdict | Guilty |
| Convictions |
Parker: second-degree murder Tulloch: first-degree murder |
The Dartmouth College murders were the double homicides on January 27, 2001 of Half Zantop (born April 24, 1938) and his wife Susanne Zantop (née Korsukewitz, born August 12, 1945), Dartmouth College professors who were killed at their home in Etna, New Hampshire (a village near the town of Hanover). Originally from Germany, each had been teaching at the Ivy League college since the 1970s. High school classmates James J. Parker, age 16, and Robert W. Tulloch, age 17, were charged in March 2001 with first-degree murder. Investigators traced to Parker the sheaths of two SEAL 2000 knives found at the crime scene, and later gathered more forensic evidence. The knives had been purchased online.
Parker made a plea bargain, pleading guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for testifying as an accomplice against Tulloch. He was sentenced to 25 years, with possibility of parole after 16. Tulloch pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and received the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole (LWOP).
In 2014 the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that Tulloch was one of four persons whose sentence was vacated and a new sentence would be reviewed by the court as part of implementing the 2012 US Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama, which ruled that persons convicted of a crime committed when they were minors could not be sentenced as adults. Tulloch had been a minor when he committed the crime for which he received a mandatory sentence of LWOP.
Half Zantop met Susanne while they were both studying at Stanford University in the mid-1960s. They were both from Germany Fascinated with geology, Half had earned a bachelor's degree from Freiburg University, while Susanne was working on her master's degree in political science. After Half earned a geology Ph.D. in 1969 at Stanford and worked as a field geologist, he and Susanne were married in 1970. They had two daughters, Veronika and Mariana.
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