Re: 12/1-4/01 - Boston Globe: State's willingness to bargain with Parker may indicate strength of case; In quiet Chelsea, news about Tulloch and Parker stirs little surprise; Zantop deal lets Parker off in 1 death (Part 2 of 2)
State's willingness to bargain with Parker may indicate strength of case
By J.M. Hirsch, Associated Press, 12/3/2001 17:14
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) Two former state prosecutors say a plea bargain offered to one of the Vermont teen-agers charged with killing two Dartmouth College professors may indicate the state has concerns about the strength of its case.
''If they didn't need him, they wouldn't plead him,'' said John Kacavas, a former assistant attorney general.
Mike Ramsdell, a former chief of the attorney general's homicide bureau, agreed and said even if they have strong evidence, prosecutors may fear some of it could be tossed out on technicalities.
''It may be that in what appears to be a very strong case, the state has concerns about admissibility of their evidence,'' Ramsdell said Monday.
Earlier in the day, Attorney General Philip McLaughlin announced that the state has reached a plea agreement with James Parker, the younger of the two Chelsea, Vt., teens charged in the Jan. 27 deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop.
McLaughlin said the 17-year-old will plead guilty to accomplice to second-degree murder in the death of Susanne Zantop. If a judge accepts the deal, two earlier charges of first-degree murder will be dropped.
The deal also means Parker likely will testify against Robert Tulloch, 18, the other teen charged in the case. Lawyers for Tulloch on Friday said their client will plead insanity at trial, scheduled for the spring.
And that makes Parker's testimony even more important for prosecutors, Kacavas said. He said Parker will be used to show Tulloch was rational before, during and after the murders.
''They are going to use Parker to laser focus on Tulloch's rational conduct,'' Kacavas said. ''That's what they're trying to do. They're looking to find a rational wellspring for Tulloch's behavior.''
But offering a deal to get one defendant to testify against another isn't necessarily a sign of desperation, said Charles Putnam, the former head of the attorney general's criminal bureau.
He said it is normal for prosecutors to seek as much evidence as possible, especially anything that can provide a clearer picture of what happened. The testimony of a participant in the crime would be valuable, he said.
''Regardless of the quality of other eyewitness testimony or other forensic evidence or other expert evidence in the case, the opportunity to give members of a jury essentially an inside look into the activities and thought processes of persons charged with a crime is often quite helpful to prosecutors.''
Kacavas agreed, saying that especially in this case the prosecution is looking for ways to give the jury a motive.
''In light of the fact there was so much attention drawn to the lack of motive here, this will allow them to tell the jury not only whether Tulloch did, but also if he did it, why he did it,'' Kacavas said.
Putnam said that the decision to offer a plea bargain never is easy, and prosecutors need to balance their desire for additional evidence with the need to avoid treating a suspect too lightly.
''It is a complicated balancing act,'' he said. ''Prosecutors work hard to carry their burdens (of proving their case), but also to make sure that there are fair and just results to the case when it is considered as a whole.''
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In quiet Chelsea, news about Tulloch and Parker stirs little surprise
By Anne Wallace Allen, Associated Press, 12/3/2001 19:46
CHELSEA, Vt. (AP) The news that local teen-ager James Parker will plead guilty to a brutal murder last year didn't seem to surprise many in the small, close-knit town Monday.
But it left them with the same question that has been nagging since the boys were arrested at an Indiana truck stop in February: Why would two young people from a quiet Vermont town kill a pair of well-liked college professors at nearby Dartmouth College?
''It would be kind of nice, in one sense, when it's all said and done, if they come out and say why,'' said Nick Gilman, a farmer who lives just outside the village of Chelsea.
James Parker, 17, and Robert Tulloch, 18, were charged with first-degree murder in the Jan. 27 deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop at their home near Hanover, N.H. The couple, both professors at Dartmouth, were found stabbed in their home by a family friend.
Prosecutors said they found physical evidence in the boys' homes that linked them to the murders.
On Monday, the New Hampshire attorney general's office announced that Parker had agreed to plead guilty to an adult charge of accomplice to second-degree murder in the death of Susanne Zantop. The agreement must be approved by a judge.
The New Hampshire prosecutors didn't mention the charges involving Half Zantop in their statement.
Tulloch remains charged in both deaths.
The Zantops' murder was a mystery that rocked Hanover and the surrounding area. The arrest of the boys sparked intense self-examination in small, close-knit Chelsea, where many people stated that they didn't believe the boys could have been involved. The affair attracted dozens of reporters to the small town with its traditional square, friendly stores and clapboard courthouse, and residents quickly grew tired of being questioned by media as they went about their business.
That weariness hasn't worn off. On Monday, a few reporters milled around in front of the general store, and the townspeople they approached usually asked to be left alone.
''The people in this town have had enough,'' said one woman as she passed.
Only those who weren't around much during the media frenzy last winter were willing to stop and talk to strangers who had questions.
One was Gilman, who has lived on his farm, a few miles out of the town center, all his life. Gilman, 60, had heard the news about Parker's plea on the radio when he came in for lunch at noon.
''It couldn't help but be a sadder town,'' he said of Chelsea, reflecting on the events of the past year. ''You'd like not to believe it. You'd like to think that it didn't happen, but the real world is that it obviously did.''
Many people in town hadn't heard the news about Parker's guilty plea Monday evening. One was Melissa Capron, who was at the Chelsea laundramat when she heard the news.
''That's so sad,'' she said when she heard.
Like Gilman, she had a larger question remaining: Why?
Capron's daughter, Jasmine Parker, 13, goes to the school that Parker and Tulloch attended. She said school officials told students not to talk to reporters.
''They told us that there are reporters back in town and if they started asking us questions to say 'no comment,''' she said.
The mother and daughter described Chelsea as a close-knit town, but added that they hadn't heard much about the case recently.
''I still hear kids talking about Robert and Jimmy when I'm walking through the halls and stuff, but people have sort of moved on,'' Jasmine Parker said. ''A lot of kids think they are innocent. A lot of kids say they can see Robert actually doing it but not Jimmy.''
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Zantop deal lets Parker off in 1 death
By Mitchell Zuckoff and Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff, 12/4/2001
ONCORD, N.H. - Vermont teenager James J. Parker will plead guilty to a reduced charge in the murder of Susanne Zantop in a plea deal that spares him from culpability in the slaying of her husband, Half, prosecutors and defense lawyers said yesterday.
No alleged motive was revealed with news of the deal, but the bargain itself reflected an apparent belief among prosecutors that they have learned enough about the Zantops' deaths to focus the weight of the legal system on Parker's alleged collaborator, Robert W. Tulloch, who is seeking to use an insanity defense.
Legal observers said the arrangement also represented a calculated risk by the New Hampshire attorney general's office that, despite significant blood and other evidence tying both defendants to the Jan. 27 stabbings, Parker's involvement was secondary and that his eyewitness account would enable them to convict Tulloch on two counts of first-degree murder.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers in the case declined to discuss what motivated them to seek the deal, and they refused to say what will be expected of Parker or what he will receive in return. Those details are scheduled to be revealed at a court hearing Friday at which Parker will enter the guilty plea to a single charge of accomplice to second-degree murder and prosecutors are expected to give a fuller accounting of the slayings of the Dartmouth College professors.
In brief, similar statements yesterday, prosecutors and defense lawyers limited themselves largely to confirming the existence of a deal, which had been rumored for several days.
''Jimmy has made the decision to accept responsibility for his actions, and is hopeful that his plea will enable his family and that of the Zantops to begin the healing process,'' Parker's lawyers said in their written statement. ''He is now 17, and will pay a heavy price for his role in this tragedy.''
Tulloch's lawyer, New Hampshire public defender Richard Guerriero, declined to characterize the plea deal's effect on his client, who was 17 at the time of the murders and has since turned 18. Tulloch's trial is scheduled to begin April 8.
''We welcome any testimony that helps explain the tragedy,'' Guerriero said. ''These are serious matters. They should not be addressed simply in short stories in newspapers and on television. We should resolve the case in court.''
Though physical evidence revealed in court documents filed earlier this year implicated both Parker and Tulloch, significant pieces focused on Parker alone. For instance, prosecutors alleged that he purchased the two SOG Seal 2000 knives used in the murders, doggedly pursuing a mail-order knife dealer from Scituate, Mass., several weeks before the killings to make sure the weapons had been sent. Two knives of that make and model were found hidden under magazines in a box in Tulloch's bedroom, one of which contained DNA matching Susanne Zantop's blood.
The killers also allegedly used a green 1996 Subaru Legacy station wagon belonging to Parker's mother to drive to and from the Zantops' home in Etna, N.H., near the Dartmouth campus. Blood from one of the victims was found on a floor mat in the car, prosecutors said in court papers.
Yesterday, in the defendants' hometown of Chelsea, Vt., Parker's mother, Joan, leaned out of a second-story window in the family's house to answer a reporter's knock. ''Please don't bother us, OK? Thank you,'' she said. Then she pulled the window shut.
No one answered the door at the Tullochs' home, where freshly chopped wood lay stacked in the yard and a cat mewed at the back door.
News of Parker's plea deal was widely viewed as the biggest break in the case since the best friends were arrested in February at an Indiana truck stop, during what authorities called a cross-country flight from justice.
''An accomplice's testimony has the potential of being explosive for the prosecution,'' said Michael Iacopino, president of the New Hampshire Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. On the other hand, he warned, such testimony ''also can be devastating'' for the very prosecutors presenting it.
Tulloch's lawyers will be able to focus their defense on picking apart Parker's testimony in an attempt to get him to change his account, or to cast enough doubt on claims that he played a lesser role in the crime, Iacopino said.
Either approach could lead a jury to believe that Tulloch was receiving unfair treatment in being charged with first-degree murder, or it could create reasonable doubt about the underpinnings of the state's case against him.
Tom Rath, a former New Hampshire attorney general and now an attorney in Concord, said he believes one reason Attorney General Philip T. McLaughlin made a deal with Parker was to gain a plausible explanation for the crime.
''I think McLaughlin senses that the public would like some closure here, and that's only going to happen when we get beyond the physical evidence and are given an explanation,'' Rath said.
By charging Parker with being an accomplice to the murder, prosecutors are saying they believe that he aided Tulloch in committing the murder of Susanne Zantop, but played a lesser role in the crime. Defense lawyers said that alleged lesser role could range from providing the knives and driving Tulloch to the house knowing that harm would come to the Zantops, to restraining Mrs. Zantop so Tulloch could kill her.
As part of the deal, Parker was expected to earn a prosecution recommendation that he spend no more than 25 years in prison. Under New Hampshire truth-in-sentencing laws, Parker would have to serve the entire term unless a judge at some later point granted a motion for a reduced sentence; such motions can reduce prison terms by no more than one-third, meaning a 25-year sentence could be cut to 16 years, eight months.
News of a plea deal for Parker and an insanity defense for Tulloch settled like a dark cloud for some people in Chelsea.
''I had a hope hidden in the back of my head and heart that because nothing had been said in so long that, somehow, no news is good news,'' said Wanda Jackson, who lives across the street from the Tullochs.
Some residents said they were pained to realize that two best friends might be pitted against each other in court.
''It's going to get down and dirty,'' said farmer Rory Allen. ''I guess each has to find the way to spend the least amount of time in prison.''
But many Chelsea residents also saw good in the latest developments. ''From the point of view of the town, whatever gets the answers out in public is what we want. There's a belief that that's part of the job of the legal system,'' said Andrew Pomerantz, a psychiatrist and Chelsea resident.
Bob Button, whose family owns a Chelsea feed store, said Parker's anticipated sentence might be too lenient, especially if he could be freed in 15 or 20 years.
''It doesn't seem right, does it?'' Button asked. ''They just ruined a lot of other lives, parents and all. It's really sad.''
Under New Hampshire law, the key difference between first- and second-degree murder involves premeditation. To win a conviction on first-degree murder, prosecutors must prove that the defendant sought out contact with murderous intentions.
With second-degree, prosecutors must show that a defendant's actions were intentional, but were not planned in advance. Second-degree murder can also be charged when a death results from a person's recklessness where the circumstances showed an ''extreme indifference'' to the value of human life. Motive is not necessary to win a conviction on either first- or second-degree murder.
Half Zantop, 62, taught earth science at Dartmouth, and Susanne, 55, was chairwoman of the German studies department.
Stephen Kurkjian of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 12/4/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
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