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Pastimes : Murder Mystery: Who Killed Yale Student Suzanne Jovin? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (1040)	1/10/2002 12:34:02 PM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1397

The New Haven police have repeatedly maintained that Suzanne Jovin most likely knew her killer. They, however, have never explained why. We could speculate that perhaps the NHPD knew the vast majority of murders are committed by people known to the victim. We could speculate that perhaps they thought a knife was an "intimate" weapon and that the number of stab wounds indicated a crime of passion. We could speculate that in the period immediately following the crime -- before evidence was analyzed and witnesses interviewed -- that the NHPD was right to play it by the book so to speak. However, the speculation stops there. Fairly or not, in life we are often judged by how well we perform under pressure or in a crisis. Can we get that big base hit in the playoffs? Can we close that really big business deal? Can we turn things up a notch when we know all eyes are upon us? Chief Wearing of the NHPD failed his test miserably. He can talk all he wants to about how well he did when no one was really paying attention. The fact is, when the spotlight was on him, he wilted-- badly. He botched the Cusick investigation, he tried his best to discredit hero cop Keith Wortz, and he did everything he could to cover-up how badly he screwed up the Jovin investigation. As we've seen, the timeline and available evidence squarely points toward a random act of violence, perhaps as a result of a robbery gone bad. Anyone who thinks such a scenario is far-fetched need only look at the Zantop murders. Two kids used knives to viciously stab and slit the throats of two people they apparently didn't know and were, according to prosecutors, trying to rob. Not very common, yes, far-fetched, no. Like the Jovin investigation, the police in the Zantop case first focused on people whom the couple knew. They even questioned a Dartmouth student and confiscated some of his clothing and a kitchen knife. The difference is they carried out their investigation professionally, being as candid as they could at press conferences-- not leaking someone's name to the press while at the same time keeping the public in the dark about the investigation itself. Worse, the NHPD has emotionally abused the Jovin family by apparently alleging they had their man and it was only a matter of time before they could prove it. Not to mention the devastation they wreaked on an innocent person in Yale professor James Van de Velde. There are plenty of good cops in New Haven. These cops could have chosen "safer" communities but instead have chosen to serve in a city with one of the higher crime rates in Connecticut. One can't help but admire that. It's those at the top, like Wearing, who need to go-- the sooner the better. - Jeff

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (1040)	1/28/2002 11:47:37 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1397

Re: 1/25/02 - The Dartmouth: Reports allege Tulloch went on a 'thrill kill' Friday, January 25, 2002 Reports allege Tulloch went on a 'thrill kill' by Tara Kyle, The Dartmouth Staff In a conversation with a fellow inmate, Robert Tulloch allegedly described the slayings of Half and Susanne Zantop as a "thrill kill," according to a report in yesterday's Boston Herald. An anonymous source inside Grafton County Jail in Haverhill, N.H., reportedly revealed that Tulloch and James Parker gained entry to the Zantop home by posing as Dartmouth students working on an environmental studies research project. After Half Zantop invited the teenagers in, the source claims that Tulloch turned and slit his throat after an unspecified amount of time. The crime, initially intended as a robbery, "kind of turned into a thrill kill," the source said in the Herald report. The source went on to explain that Susanne Zantop left the kitchen, where she had been making sandwiches, after the first murder. Tulloch and Parker then turned on her, with Parker delivering the fatal wound. State prosecutors failed to present a motive in the Zantop murders until last December, when attempted robbery was offered as the principal cause. No connection has yet been established to explain why Tulloch and Parker would drive to the Zantops' home -- nearly 50 miles from Tulloch and Parker's own residences in Chelsea, Vt. Senior assistant New Hampshire attorney general Kelly Ayotte and the superintendent of Grafton County Jail could not be reached for comment. "I'm not going to comment on any of the facts outside the courtroom," Richard Guerriero, Tulloch's attorney, told The Herald. Some friends of the Zantops' have questioned the robbery explanation, pointing to the details of the crime. "It's not a robbery because nothing was taken," Dr. Eric Manheimer, a medical director at New York's Bellevue Hospital, told The Boston Herald. "Why would you take these kinds of knives on a robbery?" he added, in reference to the weapons Tulloch and Parker had ordered online weeks before the murders. The report follows Tulloch's arraignment on a second set of first degree murder charges last Wednesday. The new charges carry the same punishment of mandatory life imprisonment without parole as the original set -- which categorized the crimes as premeditated and deliberate -- but are distinguished in their description of the act as committed in the course of an armed robbery. Tulloch is expected to plead innocent by means of insanity on both sets of charges. When Tulloch's case goes to trial on April 22, Parker will be expected to testify against him as part of a plea bargain agreement, before receiving his own sentence as an accomplice in the second degree murder of Susanne Zantop. thedartmouth.com