It was the kind of Saturday that makes you love living in New Hampshire. Quiet. Crisp. The sort of day where the only thing on your schedule is a dinner party with friends you’ve known for years. That’s exactly what was supposed to happen on January 27, 2001, at 115 Trescott Road in Etna. Roxana Verona, a colleague from Dartmouth College, pulled into the driveway around 6:00 PM, likely thinking about the German hospitality she was about to enjoy.
She found the door unlocked. Inside, the house was eerily silent.
What she discovered in the study—the bodies of Half and Susanne Zantop—didn't just end two lives; it shattered the sense of safety in an entire region. For weeks, people were terrified. Was it a professional hit? A jilted lover? People started locking doors for the first time in decades. Honestly, the truth turned out to be much weirder, and in many ways, much more depressing than any of the wild rumors flying around Hanover.
The Motive That Made No Sense
When news of the murders broke, the media went into a frenzy. You had papers like the Boston Globe actually printing (and later retracting) theories about extramarital affairs. It was a mess. People couldn't wrap their heads around why two beloved professors would be targeted. Half was a 62-year-old earth sciences professor who loved economic geology. Susanne, 55, chaired the German studies department. They were essentially the heart of the Dartmouth academic community.
The reality? They were picked because their house "looked expensive."
The killers were two high school kids from Chelsea, Vermont: Robert Tulloch and James Parker. They weren't master criminals. They were bored teenagers with a plan so absurdly naive it's hard to believe it led to such violence. They wanted to move to Australia to start a "life of adventure." They figured they needed about $10,000 to do it.
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Their plan was basically:
- Knock on doors.
- Pretend to conduct an environmental survey.
- Get inside.
- Threaten the homeowners to get their ATM PINs.
- Kill them.
The Zantops weren't even the first house they tried. They’d struck out at four other homes before landing at the Zantops’ door. Half, being the kind of guy who genuinely enjoyed talking to students about his work, let them right in. He even offered to help them find more resources for their "study."
He was reaching into his wallet to give them a business card when Tulloch attacked him with a SOG Seal 2000 knife. When Susanne ran in from the kitchen to help her husband, she was murdered too. For all that bloodshed, the "masterminds" walked away with exactly $340.
The Clue That Ended the Manhunt
They almost got away with it—sort of. For three weeks, police had nothing. No witnesses, no obvious motive. But the kids were sloppy. They left behind two knife sheaths at the scene.
Investigators tracked those sheaths back to James Parker through shipping records. When the police finally showed up at Tulloch's house to ask a few questions, the boys panicked. They took off in a silver Audi, ditching it at a truck stop in Massachusetts and eventually hitchhiking as far as Indiana.
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They were caught at a Flying J truck stop because a truck driver heard about two "hitchhikers" over the CB radio and called it in. It’s crazy how mundane the end was. No shootout, no grand standoff. Just two kids in a parking lot in the middle of the country.
Where the Case Stands in 2026
The legal fallout from the murders of Half and Susanne Zantop has stretched on for a quarter-century. Since it’s now 2026, the landscape of the justice system has shifted significantly regarding juvenile offenders.
Robert Tulloch, who was 17 at the time, originally received a mandatory sentence of life without parole. However, following the 2012 Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama, which deemed mandatory life sentences for juveniles unconstitutional, his case was reopened. By late 2025, New Hampshire judges had been grappling with his resentencing. In October 2025, Judge Leonard MacLeod ruled that life sentences for juveniles violate the state constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. As of right now, Tulloch is still in the system, awaiting a specific new sentence that will likely include the possibility of parole after several more decades.
James Parker’s story has already reached a turning point. Because he cooperated and testified against Tulloch, he got a sentence of 25 years to life. In April 2024, at nearly 40 years old, Parker was granted parole.
It was a polarizing decision. At the hearing, he expressed deep remorse, calling his actions "unimaginably horrible." Some community members were outraged, but Veronika Zantop, one of the couple's daughters, showed a level of grace that’s honestly hard to fathom. She didn't oppose his parole, stating that she’s become a psychiatrist and a mother, and she realizes that the world—and teenagers—are complex.
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The Legacy Beyond the Crime
It’s easy to let the crime overshadow who these people actually were. Susanne wasn't just a professor; she was an internationally recognized scholar in colonial theory. Her book Colonial Fantasies won major awards and is still cited in German studies today. Half was the kind of teacher who took students out into the field to look at rocks and ended up teaching them about life.
There is a memorial called the Zantop Garden tucked between Rollins Chapel and Wheeler Hall at Dartmouth. It’s a quiet spot with rocks taken from the Dartmouth Grant—a nod to Half’s geology background—and plantings that honor Susanne’s love for gardening.
If you’re looking to understand the full weight of this case, here are the things to remember:
- The Randomness: There was no deep conspiracy. It was a tragic intersection of kindness meeting aimless, adolescent cruelty.
- The Legal Shift: This case is a primary example of how the U.S. has moved away from "throw away the key" sentencing for minors.
- The Human Element: The Zantops' daughters, Veronika and Mariana, have spent two decades turning their grief into something other than just a demand for revenge.
You can visit the memorial garden at Dartmouth if you're ever in Hanover. It's a better way to remember them than focusing on the truck stop in Indiana or the $340.
If you want to look deeper into the academic contributions of the couple, searching for Susanne Zantop’s work on Project MUSE or JSTOR gives a much better picture of why her loss was such a blow to the humanities. Similarly, looking into "Economic Geology" papers from the late 90s shows the kind of practical, field-based science Half was passionate about.