Police find car driven by suspects in killings of Dartmouth professors

by Adam Gorlick
The Associated Press

STURBRIDGE, Mass. - Two teen-agers wanted in the slayings of two Dartmouth College professors were seen by workers at a truck stop where the car they were driving was found yesterday.

The silver 1987 Audi with Vermont license plates was spotted by a state trooper making a routine patrol through a rear parking lot at the Sturbridge Isle truck stop along Interstate 84, about two miles from the Connecticut state line.

Authorities did not know how long the snow-dusted car had been there, State Police Sgt. Ronald Sieberg said. Sturbridge got 1 to 2 inches of snow Friday, the National Weather Service said.

Robert Tulloch, 17, and James Parker, 16, both of Chelsea, Vt., were charged as adults with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop, whose bodies were found in their home near the Dartmouth campus in Hanover, N.H., Jan. 27. Chelsea is about 180 miles from Sturbridge.

Two truck stop employees said yesterday that they saw two teen-age boys matching the suspects' descriptions Friday evening. They also saw the Audi, which belongs to Parker's mother, in the employee parking lot.

Zack Mathieu, 15, said he remembered two teens sitting in a booth of the truck stop diner at about 5 p.m. Friday. One was drinking coffee and the other was smoking a cigarette, he said. "I didn't take too much notice - they were just hanging out," he said.

Later, "a friend showed me the pictures in the paper and I recognized them," he said.

Carrie Morris, 16, a waitress, saw the suspects inside the truck stop at 7 p.m. Friday. She said Tulloch was pacing near a window and seemed confused.

"They didn't look suspicious," she said. "They looked like normal 17-year-olds who come in here all the time."

Investigators believe the boys are together, still armed and have left the area, New Hampshire State Police Maj. Barry Hunter said yesterday at a press conference.

Hunter would not comment on where the boys are believed to be headed, or how they left the truck stop. Nor would he comment on what authorities might have found in the car.

"I'm confident we will find them soon," FBI special agent Bruce Ellavsky said yesterday.

The popular professors were stabbed "multiple times in the head and chest," Senior Assistant Attorney General Kelly Ayotte said at a news conference Saturday in Hanover.

She said the suspects were last seen in or near Chelsea on Thursday. Authorities refused to discuss how they identified the suspects, a motive or any connection between the boys and the victims.

A friend of Tulloch's, Casey Purcell, said Saturday in Chelsea that Tulloch and Parker left town in the days after the killings, then returned two or three days later. A few days after that, they disappeared again, said Purcell.

Purcell said Tulloch told him the pair were trying to go rock climbing in Colorado, but had to return because Tulloch had a cut on his leg that became infected.

Half Zantop, 62, taught earth sciences at the 6,500-student school. Susanne Zantop, 55, was chairwoman of the German Studies Department. Both were naturalized citizens who were natives of Germany.