CONCORD, N.H. (AP) \u2014 A Vermont man who was 17 when he and a friend killed a pair of married Dartmouth College professors 25 years ago will have a chance at parole in about 20 years, when he reaches the age of one of his victims, a judge ruled Monday.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for Robert Tulloch, now 43, and prosecutors reached an agreement, avoiding a three-day planned resentencing hearing. In court Monday, a shackled Tulloch held his head down and appeared to breathe heavily as the horrific details of the stabbings were recounted.<\/p>\n
Tulloch was automatically sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in the 2001 stabbing deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that mandatory sentences of life without parole are unconstitutional for juveniles, and later applied that decision retroactively.<\/p>\n
The rulings gave hundreds of juvenile lifers a shot at freedom, including five men serving life sentences in New Hampshire<\/a> for murders they committed as teenagers. Tulloch\u2019s resentencing hearing, the last of the five, would have begun Monday in Grafton County Superior Court in North Haverhill, New Hampshire.<\/p>\n A daughter of the victims requests the longest possible sentence<\/p>\n Tulloch apologized to one of the professors\u2019 two daughters, Veronika Zantop, who joined the hearing remotely, and talked about how she and her family were affected by the death of her parents.<\/p>\n A psychiatrist with two sons, one of them the same age Tulloch was when he committed his crimes, she said she can appreciate that brain functioning can change over time. But she does not believe it\u2019s true for Tulloch, saying he meticulously planned the killings and followed through in a cold, predatory manner.<\/p>\n \u201cThis wasn\u2019t a crime of passion or retribution,\u201d she said. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t using substances, he wasn\u2019t psychotic. There was just sheer depravity.\u201d She urged that he stay in prison \u201cfor the longest possible sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n Tulloch abandoned his prepared statement.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter listening to that, I feel disgusted by even thinking I could say anything that would mean anything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Tulloch\u2019s lawyers asked for a 30-to-40-year minimum sentence<\/p>\n In a court filing last week, Tulloch\u2019s lawyers argued that a minimum sentence in the range of 30 to 40 years is appropriate, based on a review of other murders committed by juveniles in New Hampshire and cases nationwide that were affected by the Supreme Court rulings.<\/p>\n Judge Lawrence MacLeod resentenced Tulloch to a minimum of 45 years to life. He could be considered for parole in 2046 when he\u2019s 62 years old, the same age Half Zantop was when he was killed.<\/p>\n MacLeod said he reviewed the applicable law, the circumstances of Tulloch\u2019s offenses, his conduct while in prison, the outcomes of the other New Hampshire cases and Veronika Zantop\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n \u201cThe agreed upon sentence provides certainty that Tulloch will remain incarcerated for a substantial period of time, allows Tulloch to pursue some measure of rehabilitation, and it secures important protections for the community,\u201d New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said in a statement.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n Sign up for Morning Wire: Attorneys Richard Guerriero and Oliver Bloom said Tulloch\u2019s prison records show he has matured, and that after some initial misconduct early on, he\u2019s had no major infractions since 2012 and no minor infractions since 2017. <\/p>\n Quoting from Tulloch\u2019s therapy records, they said he has expressed \u201csignificant remorse\u201d for what he sees as a heinous and unforgivable crime, his \u201cwarped youthful thinking,\u201d and his \u201cgood capacity for empathy.\u201d<\/p>\n The teens came up with a plan to kill, steal money and live overseas<\/p>\n According to Tulloch\u2019s friend, James Parker, the teens were bored with their lives in Chelsea, Vermont, when they concocted a plan to kill strangers, steal their money and move to Australia. For several months, they knocked on doors in New Hampshire and Vermont pretending to be conducting a survey on the environment before being let in by the Zantops. Susanne Zantop, 55, was head of Dartmouth\u2019s German studies department and her husband, Half Zantop taught Earth sciences.<\/p>\n Parker, who was 16 at the time, told prosecutors Tulloch stabbed Half Zantop and then directed Parker to attack Susanne Zantop. Tulloch also stabbed her. Fingerprints on a knife sheath and a bloody boot print linked the teens to the crime, but after being questioned by police, they fled Vermont and hitchhiked west. They were arrested at an Indiana truck stop weeks later.<\/p>\n Parker, who cooperated with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to being an accomplice to second-degree murder, was released from prison on parole in 2024 at age 40, having served nearly the minimum term of his 25-years-to-life sentence.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s unimaginably horrible,\u201d Parker said during his parole hearing<\/a> when asked by a board member what he thought of what he did. \u201cI know there\u2019s not an amount of time or things that I can do to change it, or alleviate any pain that I\u2019ve caused.\u201d<\/p>\n Many states have banned life sentences for juveniles<\/p>\n The Supreme Court rulings addressed only mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles, leaving the U.S. the only country that allows discretionary life sentences for minors. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have banned the practice, while another five states allow it but have no one serving such a sentence, according to the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.<\/p>\n New Hampshire lawmakers have rejected attempts to end life sentences for juveniles, but Tulloch\u2019s case could bolster future attempts. After Tulloch argued in 2018 that sentencing juveniles to life without parole violated the state constitution, the judge asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in, but it declined. Last July, MacLeod agreed with Tulloch, finding that the constitution categorically prohibits such sentences as \u201ccruel or unusual\u201d punishment.<\/p>\n Among the juvenile lifers nationwide who have been resentenced after the U.S. Supreme Court rulings, more than 75% have received sentences of less than 40 years, according to a study published in 2024 in the Journal of Criminal Justice.<\/p>\n In New Hampshire, one man was resentenced to life<\/a> without parole after refusing to attend his hearing or authorize his attorneys to argue for a lesser sentence. Others received sentences<\/a> of 25-, 40-<\/a> and 45-years-to-life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CONCORD, N.H. (AP) \u2014 A Vermont man who was 17 when he and a friend killed a pair…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[56,50,8,224,28487,28489,28486,2635,4021,9,4022,28490,28488,28484,60,28483,7,54,2345,28485,917,11096],"class_list":["post-52185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-courts","tag-general-news","tag-headlines","tag-homicide","tag-james-parker","tag-john-formella","tag-lawrence-macleod","tag-legal-proceedings","tag-new-hampshire","tag-news","tag-nh-state-wire","tag-oliver-bloom","tag-richard-guerriero","tag-robert-tulloch","tag-supreme-court-of-the-united-states","tag-susanne-zantop","tag-top-stories","tag-u-s-news","tag-vermont","tag-veronika-zantop","tag-violence","tag-vt-state-wire"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116913875599547241","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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