Murders of Half and Susanne Zantop

Also known as: Dartmouth College murders, Dartmouth murders

Active: 2001–2001
Region: Etna (Hanover), New Hampshire, USA
States: IN, NH, VT
Kind: Single
Status: Pleaded guilty
Victims: 2

On January 27, 2001, Dartmouth College professors Half and Susanne Zantop were stabbed to death in their home in Etna, New Hampshire, by two teenagers from Chelsea, Vermont, Robert Tulloch, 17, and James Parker, 16, who had posed as students doing a survey and planned to rob people to fund a move to Australia. Knife sheaths left at the scene were traced to Chelsea; the pair fled after giving fingerprints and were caught weeks later at a truck stop in Indiana. Parker pleaded guilty to accomplice to second-degree murder and testified against Tulloch, who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in 2002. Parker was paroled in 2024; Tulloch, first sentenced to life without parole, was resentenced in 2026 to 45 years to life.

Ask the Atlas about this case →

Victims

We remember the people whose lives were taken.

Half Zantop, 62 · January 27, 2001
German-born geologist who taught earth sciences at Dartmouth from 1976.
Susanne Zantop, 55 · January 27, 2001
German-born scholar who chaired Dartmouth's German Studies Department.

Timeline of locations

2001
Tulloch and Parker's hometown, Chelsea, Vermont (Killer's residence, approximate area)
Both teenagers lived in Chelsea. About three weeks after the murders, police traced the knife sheaths, bought online, to Chelsea; the pair gave fingerprints and then fled, last seen at home on February 15.
January 27, 2001
Zantop home, Etna (Crime scene, approximate area)
Tulloch and Parker got into the Zantops' home a few miles from the Dartmouth campus by posing as students doing an environmental survey, killed the couple, and left with about $340.
February 2001
Truck stop arrest, Spiceland, Indiana (Arrest, approximate area)
Hitchhiking west, the pair were lured by a police officer posing as a trucker on CB radio and arrested without incident at a truck stop in Spiceland, near New Castle.
July 13, 2026
Grafton Superior Court, North Haverhill (Court / trial, approximate area)
On July 13, 2026, Judge Lawrence MacLeod accepted a joint recommendation and resentenced Tulloch to two concurrent terms of 45 years to life, with a first parole hearing due in 2046.

Watch, listen, read

Read

Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders (2003, Dick Lehr and Mitchell Zuckoff (HarperCollins))
The Dartmouth Murders (2002, Eric Francis (St. Martin's True Crime))

Sources

Each location also lists its own sources in the data file.