Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders - Hardcover

Lehr, Dick; Zuckoff, Mitchell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006000844X ISBN 13: 9780060008444

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2003

Synopsis

A riveting investigation of the brutal murders of two Dartmouth professors –– a book that, like In Cold Blood, reveals the chilling reality behind a murder that captivated the nation.

On a cold night in January 2001, the idyllic community of Dartmouth College was shattered by the discovery that two of its most beloved professors had been hacked to death in their own home. Investigators searched helplessly for clues linking the victims, Half and Susanne Zantop, to their murderer or murderers. A few weeks later, across the river, in the town of Chelsea, Vermont, police cars were spotted in front of the house of high school senior Robert Tulloch. The police had come to question Tulloch and his best friend, Jim Parker. Soon, the town discovered the incomprehensible reality that Tulloch and Parker, two of Chelsea's brightest and most popular sons, were now fugitives, wanted for the murders of Half and Susanne Zantop.

Authors Mitchell Zuckoff and Dick Lehr provide a vivid explication of a murder that captivated the nation, as well as dramatic revelations about the forces that turned two popular teenagers into killers. Judgement Ridge conveys a deep appreciation for the lives (and the devastating loss) of Half and Susanne Zantop, while also providing a clear portrait of the killers, their families, and their community—and, perhaps, a warning to any parent about what evil may lurk in the hearts of boys.

About this title

About the Authors

Dick Lehr is a professor of journalism at Boston University. He is the author of eight previous works of nonfiction and a novel for young adults. Lehr coauthored the New York Times bestseller and Edgar Award Winning Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI and a Devil’s Deal, which became the basis of a Warner Bros. film of the same name. His book The Birth of a Movement: How Birth of a Nation Ignited the Battle for Civil Rights became the basis for a PBS/Independent Lens documentary. Two other books were Edgar Award finalists: The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide and Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders. Lehr previously wrote for the Boston Globe, where he was a member of the Spotlight Team, a special projects reporter, and a magazine writer. While at the Globe, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in investigative reporting and won numerous national and local journalism awards. Lehr lives near Boston.

Mitchell Zuckoff is the Sumner M. Redstone Professor of Narrative Studies at Boston University. He covered 9/11 for the Boston Globe and wrote the lead news story on the day of the attacks. Zuckoff is the author of seven previous works of nonfiction, including the number one New York Times bestseller 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi, which became the basis of the Paramount Pictures movie of the same name. His earlier books also include the New York Times bestsellers Lost in Shangri-La and Frozen in Time. As a member of the Boston Globe Spotlight Team, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting and the winner of numerous national awards. He lives outside Boston.

From the Back Cover

On a cold night in January 2001, the idyllic community of Dartmouth College was shattered by the discovery that two professors had been hacked to death in their own home. Investigators searched helplessly for clues linking the victims, Half and Susanne Zantop, to their murderer or murderers. The residents of Hanover, New Hampshire, speculated endlessly -- could the killer be a disgruntled student? a spurned lover? -- while the grisly nature of the crimes themselves destroyed, perhaps forever, the sanctity and invulnerability of their academic arcadia.

By contrast, the hardscrabble community of nearby Chelsea, Vermont, was relatively unaffected. The big news in Chelsea came when the school's basketball star scored his 1,000th point on a Friday, three weeks after the murders. As parents and teenagers streamed into the night to celebrate after the game, a stunning scene stopped them in their tracks. Outside the house of high school senior Robert Tulloch were the flashing lights of a swarm of police cars. His neighbors couldn't imagine what the trouble could be -- a prank gone overboard, perhaps -- but they were confident it was all a misunderstanding that would be sorted out in due course.

But they were wrong. The town discovered the incomprehensible reality that Tulloch and best friend Jim Parker, two of Chelsea's brightest and most popular sons, were now fugitives, wanted for the murders of Half and Susanne Zantop.

Afterward, their classmates and teachers would admit to noticing subtle changes in Robert and Jim over the previous year. Robert, a former Student Council president, and Jim, a member of the school band and drama club, had been popular kids, benign mischief-makers -- their escapades included breaking into an empty home and raiding the refrigerator. But as their friends thought about college and futures beyond Chelsea, Robert and Jim began plotting a very different life. Split off from their peers, with too much free time and too little structure, normal teenage ambition took, in these two boys, an unthinkably dark and sinister turn.

Authors Dick Lehr and Mitchell Zuckoff provide a vivid explanation of murders that captivated the nation, as well as dramatic revelations about the forces that turned two popular teenagers into killers: Could poor parenting, psychological abnormalities, or a community that fails to challenge and engage its young people be blamed? Or was it more complex? Judgment Ridge conveys a deep appreciation for the lives and the devastating loss of Half and Susanne Zantop, while also providing a clear portrait of the killers, their families, and their community -- and, perhaps, a warning to all parents about what evil may lurk in the hearts of boys.

Reviews

In this meandering yet irresistibly absorbing book, Lehr (co-author of the bestselling Black Mass, about a turncoat FBI agent) and Zuckoff (Choosing Naia, about a Down syndrome child) recount the harrowing story of the murders of Half and Susanne Zantop, two beloved Dartmouth College professors who were savagely butchered in their home on January 27, 2001. The messy crime scene soon led investigators to James Parker and Robert Tulloch, a couple of popular teenagers from nearby Chelsea, Vt. But after being interviewed by detectives, the two promptly fled, leading authorities on a three-day manhunt that ended abruptly at a truck stop in Illinois. While the stunned and bewildered residents of Chelsea muscled their way through choking crowds of reporters (the already sensational story was made all the more lurid by the suspects' youth and the sleepy, idyllic setting) and came to terms with the unimaginable (two of their own townspeople were murderers), Parker and Tulloch were remanded to New Hampshire and arraigned on murder charges that were supported by an arsenal of incriminating evidence. Although the authors (Lehr supplies the grit and Zuckoff the sympathetic touch) assiduously reconstruct the events surrounding the pointless double homicide (Parker and Tulloch made off with a whopping $340), the authors appear to have been reluctant to omit any mundane detail or passing commentary, bogging down their energetic narrative in its own research. But the authors nicely expose the strange relationship between these two boys, their muddleheaded motivations for the crime, and Tulloch's arrogant and volatile personality, disregarded by his family and teachers as youthful exuberance when in fact it was the self-absorbed posturing of a burgeoning psychopath. 16 illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In January, 2001, Half and Susanne Zantop, popular professors at Dartmouth College, were murdered in their home in New Hampshire. Clever detective work linked knife sheaths found at the scene to a pair of teen-agers, Robert Tulloch and Jim Parker, who lived in an isolated Vermont town thirty miles away. Confronted by police, the boys fled; eventually, they were tracked down in Indiana. Parker, the sidekick, struck a plea bargain that may free him in sixteen years, but Tulloch pleaded guilty and received a sentence of life without parole. Zuckoff and Lehr, who covered the case for the Boston Globe, examine in fascinating detail the ordinariness of the boys' grudges—typical high-school controversies about the student council and the debate team—and how, in Tulloch's twisted mind, the idea of random killing became an obsession.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

In January 2001, two teenage boys with inflated egos and juvenile notions of living as self-declared "badasses" in Australia shattered the peaceful community of Dartmouth College in Vermont by murdering two professors. Zuckoff and Lehr follow the mini-crime spree of the two youths--Robert Tulloch and Jim Parker--as they worked themselves into cold-blooded killers, hoping to finance their move to the land down under through robbery and other crimes. Tulloch was the leader, with a psychopathic obsession with manipulating Jim and proving to others that he was a superior being. Zuckoff and Lehr trace the backgrounds of the victims and the killers, detailing their relationships with friends, family, and community, raising questions about how two bright adolescents could turn to such brutality--slaughtering their victims with hunting knives. The authors build tension through the brutal knifing and the flight and capture of the killers. In the tradition of In Cold Blood, this is a chilling and revealing look at a crime that fueled concerns about adolescents and violence in a post-Columbine environment. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 006000844X
• ISBN 13: 9780060008444
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432