On January 27, 2001, Dartmouth College professors Half and Susanne Zantop, aged 62 and 55 respectively, were stabbed to death at their home in Etna, New Hampshire.
[1][2] Parker pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for testifying against Tulloch, and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison; he was granted parole in April 2024.
[3] Tulloch pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and received the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole.
Half was hired by Dartmouth College in 1976 where he taught geology and earth science, and was popular among many of his students.
Posing as students doing research for a school survey, they intended to take the occupants by surprise, threaten them into revealing their PINs, and rob and kill them.
Half allowed them inside, while Susanne was preparing a dish for a dinner she was hosting that evening at home.
Tulloch allegedly became angered when Zantop, a professor of earth science, told him that he had to come more prepared, for questions for the purported research.
Tulloch took his SOG Knife and repeatedly stabbed Half in the chest and face, accidentally cutting his own leg in the process.
The Zantops' bodies were found that evening by family friend Roxana Verona, who had arrived as an invited guest for dinner.
The Associated Press reported at least three persons of interest were interviewed by police and that "A task force set up after the murders also received hundreds of phone calls, letters and e-mails from people with wild theories about the killings".
After finding a bloody footprint and the two distinctive knife sheaths at the scene, the police traced the knives to Parker three weeks after the murders.
Believing that police would be looking for their car, the pair abandoned Parker's silver Audi at a truck stop in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, intending to hitchhike to California.
The indictment said that they had made four previous tries over six months, to gain entry to houses in the area in Vermont and New Hampshire, with the intent of robbing their victims, getting their ATM cards and passwords, and then killing them.
In 2012, the US Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama, that mandatory sentencing to life imprisonment without parole (LWOP) of persons who committed a crime as juveniles was unconstitutional.
It ruled that this decision needed to be applied retroactively, with cases to be reviewed of persons sentenced to LWOP for crimes committed as juveniles.
The high court based their decision on the basis that juvenile offenders have “diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform” and judges should be able to consider the “mitigating qualities of youth” in sentencing.
[16] After review of different factors in the case, the court could again re-sentence Tulloch to life imprisonment without parole, or could impose a different sentence.
[18][19][20] A resentencing hearing was held on September 25, 2024, with the judge taking the arguments of the prosecutor and defense under advisement.