NORTH HAVERHILL — A man convicted of murdering two Dartmouth professors as a teenager more than 25 years ago will get a new sentence in a three-day hearing that begins Monday in the same courthouse where he was convicted.
After years of delays, Robert Tulloch, 43, will seek an alternative to two concurrent sentences of life without possibility of parole that he is serving for his crimes.
Defense attorneys intend to argue that 30 to 40 years would be an “appropriate” minimum sentence for Tulloch, according to court records.
Tulloch pleaded guilty to two counts of first degree murder for the deaths of Dartmouth professors Half and Susanne Zantop, receiving a statutorily mandatory sentence in New Hampshire of life without possibility of parole.
In the winter of 2001, Tulloch and a friend, James Parker, tricked their way into the Zantop’s Etna home, then murdered the couple and fled with $340 in cash.
Tulloch has been seeking a resentencing hearing since 2013, after the Supreme Court held in a landmark 2012 case that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles are unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court then found in 2014 that the ruling also applies retroactively.
Tulloch went through multiple rounds of legal wrangling between Grafton County Superior Court and the New Hampshire Supreme Court before Grafton County Judge Lawrence MacLeod ultimately found last year that a state law requiring lifetime sentences without parole for defendants convicted of capital crimes was “cruel and unusual” when imposed on a juvenile.
The decision cleared the way for a new sentencing hearing, now set to begin at 9 a.m. Monday and continue through Wednesday in Grafton County Superior Court in North Haverhill.
A shocking crime
In January 2001, Tulloch, then 17, and his friend Parker, then 16, concocted a plan to secure $10,000 and use the money to travel to Australia. The pair stole an ATV and mail and attempted to rob other homes “where they had considered killing the occupants,” according to court records.
The pair ultimately targeted the Etna home of Half and Susanne Zantop to rob at random because they knew that many Hanover homeowners are wealthy, according to reporting from the 2002 trial.
Tulloch and Parker entered the home under the ruse that they were conducting an environmental survey for school. After speaking with Half Zantop for ten minutes, Tulloch attacked and killed the Dartmouth professor of earth sciences with a knife. When Susanne Zantop, a professor of German studies, interrupted the attack, Parker killed her with a knife and Tulloch then “stabbed her further.”
The teenagers fled with money from Half Zantop’s wallet and traveled nearly halfway across the country to St. Louis before returning to Vermont. They fled again after being interviewed by police and hitchhiked to Indiana where they were ultimately arrested in February 2001.
In the 2002 court case, then-Assistant Attorney General Kelly Ayotte who served as prosecutor had presented Tulloch as the brains behind the operation, coming up with the initial idea to raise money illegally and the subsequent plots. Her account largely came from interviews with Parker, according to Valley News reporting from the time.
Parker ultimately agreed to testify against Tulloch in exchange for pleading guilty to the lesser sentence of accomplice to second degree murder for the death of Susanne Zantop.
Parker was sentenced to 25-years-to-life in prison. He was granted parole and released from prison in 2024.
The legal arguments
This week, Tulloch’s defense attorneys plan to argue that a 30 to 40 year minimum sentence is “appropriate” based on comparable sentences for juveniles and adults convicted of murder in New Hampshire and nationwide, according to a sentencing memo filed with the court.
Attorneys Richard Guerriero and Oliver Bloom, both of Keene-based firm Lothstein Guerriero, PLLC, outlined a review of other cases including convicted killers who were resentenced following the 2012 Supreme Court decision.
Tulloch is the last of five New Hampshire defendants who were serving mandatory life without parole sentences for crimes committed as juveniles to be resentenced, according to court records. The others were resentenced to terms between 25 and 45 years, except for one man who refused to attend a hearing and was resentenced to life without parole.
The defense will also argue that a life sentence is “proportionally harsher” for juveniles than adults because it will make up a greater portion of that person’s life and juveniles have had less opportunities to live outside of prison than adult offenders. The attorneys argue that this same logic should apply to any lengthy non-life sentences, according to the record.
The defense will also encourage MacLeod not to base his decision on general life expectancy tables from agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Protection for several reasons. The documents don’t account for shortened life expectancies often seen in prison, they represent only an average and factors like race, gender and socioeconomic class all change a person’s life expectancy.
Also on the table for argument is Tulloch’s record in prison.
According to the defense, Tulloch has had no major disciplinary infractions in prison since 2012 and no minor infractions since 2017. Over 25 years, Tulloch has had four major disciplinary infractions and most were between 2002 and 2005.
“Regarding Robert Tulloch’s conduct in prison, it is clear that he has matured,” defense attorneys wrote.
During therapy sessions in prison, Tulloch also “continues to accept responsibility for the murders and express remorse for the tremendous pain he has caused.”
Tulloch started seeking therapy in prison in 2017. He has been diagnosed with Major Depressive disorder and cyclothymic disorder, a rare mood disorder that causes mood swings but is not as severe as bipolar disorders, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Tulloch “has great remorse around his crime, and has interesting perspective now on how mental illness shaped his perceptions back then,” Dr. Paul Brown, Tulloch’s therapist in prison wrote in notes from a 2020 therapy session included in the court record.
Lastly, the defense noted that Parker has been released from prison and that he has accepted responsibility for his part in the crime.
In a 2018 forensic evaluation referenced in the record, Parker noted that he was not “coerced” or “otherwise simply the pawn” of Tulloch, despite the “toxic nature of their intense and exclusive relationship.”
