Re: 2/1/01 - Re Dartmouth Murders: Student is Potential Suspect
STUDENT IS POTENTIAL SUSPECT
Police confiscate knife, clothes from student's dorm room
by Mark Bubriski, The Dartmouth Senior Staff
A Dartmouth junior says that the police consider him a "prime suspect" but that he is completely innocent of all allegations and was not in any way involved in the Saturday afternoon murders of Susanne and Half Zantop.
The student, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, told The Dartmouth in an interview early this morning that the police's investigation into his involvement is "a bunch of baloney."
The student said that two police officers came to his dormitory room Monday evening and questioned him for approximately an hour. They then requested that he come with them to the Hanover police station and record his statement officially.
The police also confiscated several items of clothing and footwear and a kitchen knife that the student said he used for "cutting cheese and ham."
The police declined to comment on possible suspects, but the student said he does not believe he is the only suspect.
The student said he was interrogated for about four hours Tuesday night and has been in constant contact with the police via email and phone since then. He said he is extremely frustrated with the lack of professionalism of the police and the way they conducted the interrogation.
"I don't think the way they handled it was very professional;" the interrogation "felt like a 21st Century Salem witch trials."
He said the police attempted to use "entrapment techniques" by saying that they had reason to believe he was at the Zantop home the day of the murders.
The student said adamantly that he had never been to the Zantop home and did not know where they lived until he read The Dartmouth's email message. He said the police never presented him with any evidence that would lead to the belief that he was ever at the Zantop home.
"First you ask questions. You don't start by making assumptions."
"They asked me if I had a vehicle, and I said, 'I don't even have a driver's license.'"
The student said the police asked him "questions that had nothing to do with the case," such as whether he had a girlfriend. The police also asked if he practiced "Santería," a religion that involves ritual sacrifice.
The student said he believes he is being investigated because he may have been one of the last people to see Half Zantop alive.
Last Friday, the day before the murders, the student ran into Zantop in the office of another professor around 3 p.m.
The student asked The Dartmouth not to release the professor's name or other details of his interrogation in order to protect the integrity of the investigation.
The student said he was in that professor's office to turn in a paper for his earth sciences class, which was not being taught by Zantop.
The student said he knew Zantop from his Earth Sciences 1 class, which he took last Spring term. He said he had talked with Zantop many times during that term but had not seen him recently until Friday.
When he walked into the office of the unidentified professor, he saw Zantop sitting in the room and said, "Como está Señorito Half?" 'Señorito' is a "joking" term that he had used with Zantop before, the student said. Zantop was fluent in Spanish.
Zantop replied by saying "Did you go to all the lectures?" which the student said was a joke referring to when he took Zantop's class. The student said he rarely missed Zantop's class and often sat in the front row.
The student said he answered Zantop, "Yeah, I went to 99 percent of them."
The other professor asked the student if he knew anything about "Hydro-thermo, something like that," also jokingly.
They both laughed and then the student departed, leaving the two professors in the office.
The student said the brief conversation lasted no longer than a few minutes and that Zantop knew they were just joking.
"He knew it was joking," the student said of the other professor present.
The student said he never saw Zantop again after he left the office.
After that, he went about his regular daily business, which included going to the Collis Center, attending a massage class and playing ping-pong with friends.
The next day he said he woke up around 9:30 a.m. and went his dorm's kitchen (which was not the same kitchen as was investigated by police Monday) where the dorm cluster was holding a "Breakfast for a Buck" get-together. They said they didn't need his help then, but asked him to help clean up later on, so he returned to his room.
The student said he watched television for a couple hours and then went back to the lounge around noon but everyone had left. For another hour or so he was in his room, only leaving to use the sink across the hall where he said some other dorm residents saw him.
Around 1 p.m. he tried to call a friend, but the friend's phone was not working at the time. At 1:21 p.m. he sent a BlitzMail message to that friend. Then, from 1:30 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. the two spoke by telephone. They decided to meet at 2 p.m. to go ice skating.
When they arrived to rent skates at Occum Pond, there were none left that would fit either of them so they went to meet other friends to hang out.
The group of four friends decided to go sledding but were without a sled, so the suspected student emailed a different friend at 3:02 p.m. and then the residents on his floor at 3:09 asking if anyone had a sled to borrow.
They soon acquired a sled and went to the College golf course. During what the student described as a daredevil stunt on a snow tube, he landed on his face.
"I fell a bunch of times," he said. The fall in which he landed on his face "took a few seconds" to recover from and resulted in a "rash" that he covered with a small circular bandage shortly after.
Later the student and his friends went back to the Silver Fox skate rental center by Occum Pond to see if they still had coffee and apple cider.
They returned to his room around 5 p.m. that night. The friends left, and the student rode his bike to the Co-op grocery store to buy food with which to make dinner.
On his way home, he said he saw an ambulance going in the direction of Etna, but did not think much of it.
When he got home, he watched the television show "Behind Closed Doors," and then took a shower.
At 8 p.m. he went to the dorm kitchen to cook his dinner of chicken and rice. He said there were other people having dinner there as well.
At 9 p.m. he watched "America's Most Wanted." At 9:30 he checked on his rice, and at 9:55 he turned off the rice cooker.
At 10 p.m., back in his room, he ate his dinner while watching the Discovery Channel. While waiting for a friend to contact him, he said he fell asleep.
He woke at about 2 a.m. Sunday and read the email message from The Dartmouth notifying student of the Zantops' deaths. He said he talked to other residents on his floor for a short while before returning to bed.
Sunday went relatively normally for the student, and it wasn't until Monday evening that the police came to his door.
He was not home at the time, but another resident informed him that two men had asked about his whereabouts without identifying themselves.
The student said he believes the police's "unprofessionalism" stems from their "lack of experience with murders" and "the pressure from the College [and] from the parents [of students]" to solve the murders.
When asked about the exactness of his recollection, the student told The Dartmouth, "I'm very good with numbers," while pointing out multiple clocks in his room.
The police asked the student if he was angry about the "B" grade he received in Zantop's class, in an attempt at finding a motive.
The student told The Dartmouth that he was "happy" about the "B" because he got it without having done most of the required reading for the class.
When The Dartmouth asked the student whether he was worried about the investigation he said, "I have nothing to worry about."
He said he "fully cooperated" with the police and that he is not in any way involved in the murders. "I'm sure when the truth comes out, we'll know that me and my friends had nothing to do with this."
A close friend of the student told The Dartmouth that he was also questioned by the police in order to verify the suspect's actions on the day of the crime, which he did.
Meanwhile, in yesterday's news conference, the state police still refused to release many details in the murders of Susanne and Half Zantop.
State Senior Assistant Attorney General Kelly Ayotte told reporters that "the very large investigation" had been increased with additional man power.
Ayotte said "approximately" five investigators had been added to the case, bringing the total number of investigators with a "broad range of specialities" working full time on the case to about 35.
She reiterated what state Attorney General Philip McLaughlin said the day before -- that there are "no arrests imminent."
The forensic review of the crime scene at 115 Trescott Road is complete, she said, but details will not be available and the home will not be open to the media for at least a "number of days" pursuant to a court order to protect the "integrity of the investigation."
Ayotte said the police have received tips from within the Hanover and Dartmouth communities and also from outside the community, including out of state. She would not specify from where the tips came.
Leads are developing daily, but no information about them can be released at this point, Ayotte said.
Ayotte described the investigation as one of the larger ones she has been involved with while she has been in the attorney general's office. She cited the example of a murder in Manchester in which a woman was dismembered as an investigation of similar magnitude.
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Most students return to daily routine, though some express security concerns
by Tara Kyle
Five days after the announcement of the deaths of Professors Half and Susanne Zantop, Dartmouth students are by and large continuing with their daily routines as usual.
"As terrible as the situation is, what I've noticed is that a lot of students are taking it in stride," said Sanjay Banerjee '04, noting that students have found distraction in their midterms and full schedules.
"It seems so crazy, and if you've never taken classes with these people, it can seem like it didn't really happen," Banerjee continued.
For the most part, students are not overly upset over the lack of details made public regarding the crimes. Yet some did express frustrations. "I think it's scary; they should be giving us more information. It's part of our lives here," said Sarah Blowe '03. "But maybe they just don't have any more info," she added.
Julia Martinez '03 expressed a bit of relief at the lack of immediately available details, "It's troubling, but then again, if you're given too much information at one time, you can't process it."
"Everything's kind of confusing, you hear rumors, and you wonder what's going on behind the scenes when you're left in the dark," Alexis Sheehan '04 said, citing the rumors which circulated about the crime-scene photographers in the Massachusetts Hall basement before an official explanation was later released in The Dartmouth.
None of the students who spoke with The Dartmouth had used the Safety and Security's escort service, though Blowe noted that the failure to use this service was "probably really stupid."
The students explained that in spite of recent events, they continue to feel fairly safe on campus.
However, several stated that friends and roommates, particularly those living in the River Cluster, had called for the service.
Safety and Security's escort program was extended to be available 24 hours a day as part of an effort to heighten campus safety in the wake of the murders.
"I'm not afraid on this campus. I don't think students need to worry too much about their safety -- not yet, anyway," Martinez said.
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Lack of info. frustrates media
Compiled by The Dartmouth Staff
Many of the estimated 60 reporters currently wandering the streets of Hanover attempting to dissect and analyze the recent tragedy to readers across the nation are frustrated at the lack of information released as the Zantop case enters its fifth day.
In typical murder investigations, much more information is released to the public, with the media's reports often utilized to help the police catch their suspect, according to professional media personnel that spoke with The Dartmouth.
Yet in news conference after news conference, the state police and attorney general have remained tight-lipped, releasing not even such basic information such as time of death or method of killing.
According to Carey Goldberg, New England bureau chief for the New York Times, she has "never covered an investigation in which less information [was] released."
"It is normal for police to be pretty close-mouthed at this point in the investigation, but not this close-mouthed," she added.
U.S. News and World Report's David Marcus agreed.
"It is incredibly, incredibly frustrating for reporters -- and probably for some students -- because there's been such a dearth of information," he told The Dartmouth.
Press conferences, according to Eric Francis of People Magazine, have consisted of "400 variations of 'no comment.'"
However, Francis added that there's no "typical" murder investigation proceedings with which to compare the case, as murder cases are by nature atypical. Thus, the police handling is unusual only "if there's such a thing as a standard case," he commented.
Another reporter, however, saw the proceedings as nothing out of the ordinary, noting that in a small state such as New Hampshire, news is bound to move slowly.
As members of the media face little concrete news and daily deadlines, many have struggled to make sense out of the 'no comment' strategy of the police, questioning what it means for the investigation's current status.
"It's so hard to tell whether they're totally faking it, and they're about to nab somebody, or whether they're truly baffled," Goldberg commented.
"The fact that they refused to say how the Zantops died keeps making me think that they're hoping for some Agatha Christie maneuver, in which some suspect says, 'I didn't stab them,'" and the investigators can then respond with 'How do you know they were stabbed?'" Goldberg said.
Other members of the press have interpreted the silence as part of a well-planned effort by an investigative team that knows where it's going.
"There's got to be a reason for the blanket of silence and the lack of news at the daily news conferences," Marcus speculated.
"I'm certainly not a detective, but my gut tells me that they have many, many more leads than we can imagine," he said.
"It's a poker game, to use an old analogy, and they don't want to show anything in their hand to alert the murderer to how far along they are in their investigation," he explained.
But Francis noted that, in trying to interpret the attorney general's silence, we're "all just reading tea leaves" at this point.
Yet Francis agrees that while the police might be stumped, most likely they are proceeding along methodically in their investigations.
Speculating on how the police might be narrowing their leads, Francis said, "Everyone's reading it as a targeted attack," and one not carried out with a gun.
Yet he quickly added, "We could all be completely wrong and often are."
Journalists are also trying to make sense of the mixed messages in the attorney general's statements. While the public is told there are "no arrests imminent," police also say the community need not worry.
These apparently conflicting comments disturbed Goldberg, who said she has "never seen this kind of mixed message go out to the public."
If there truly is a killer on the loose in the community, Goldberg questioned, why shouldn't residents worry.
Francis also interprets these reassurances of safety as evidence that the police do not believe it was an act of random violence and have some idea of who the perpetrator was.
Yet all the journalists who spoke with The Dartmouth ultimately respected the attorney general's decision to remain quiet and keep the stream of information under tight control.
"I guess part of me does understand that the police and the attorney general's office want to keep all their cards hidden for now," Marcus said.
Francis echoed similar sentiments, saying "if they're doing this for the right reasons, fine."
And "as much as reporters really want to know" what happened, Marcus recognizes there is "a fine balance between a duty to inform the public and a responsibility to keep details of an investigation secret."
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