A Vermont man who was just 17 years old when he helped kill two married Dartmouth College professors a quarter century ago is now asking a court to shorten his life prison sentence.
Robert Tulloch, currently 43 years old, received an automatic life sentence without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in the 2001 stabbing deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop. However, a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision declared that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders are unconstitutional — a ruling that was later extended to apply retroactively to existing cases.
Those decisions opened the door for hundreds of people who had been sentenced to life in prison as teenagers to seek new sentences, including five men in New Hampshire who committed murders while minors. Tulloch’s resentencing hearing, the final one among those five cases, got underway Monday at Grafton County Superior Court.
Prosecutors have not yet disclosed what sentence they plan to request. However, in a filing submitted to the court last week, Tulloch’s attorneys — Richard Guerriero and Oliver Bloom — argued that a minimum sentence of 30 to 40 years is appropriate. They based their argument on comparisons with other juvenile murder cases in New Hampshire and similar cases across the country affected by the Supreme Court rulings.
The defense attorneys also pointed to Tulloch’s prison record, saying it shows significant personal growth over the years. After some early disciplinary issues, he has had no major infractions since 2012 and no minor ones since 2017. As his lawyers noted, “The vast majority of his write-ups are for possessing too many books.”
Drawing from his therapy records, the attorneys said Tulloch has shown “significant remorse” for what he himself describes as a terrible and unforgivable act. The records also reflect his acknowledgment of his “warped youthful thinking” and his “good capacity for empathy.”
According to Tulloch’s accomplice, James Parker, the two teenagers were deeply dissatisfied with their lives in Chelsea, Vermont, and hatched a scheme to kill strangers, steal their money, and relocate to Australia. For several months leading up to the murders, the pair went door-to-door in New Hampshire and Vermont posing as environmental survey takers. That ruse eventually got them inside the home of the Zantops. Susanne Zantop, 55, led Dartmouth’s German studies department, while her husband, Half Zantop, 62, was a professor of Earth sciences.
Parker, who was 16 at the time, told prosecutors that Tulloch stabbed Half Zantop and then instructed Parker to attack Susanne Zantop, whom Tulloch also stabbed. Physical evidence — including fingerprints found on a knife sheath and a bloody boot print — connected the two teens to the killings. After being interviewed by police, they fled Vermont and hitchhiked westward before being taken into custody at a truck stop in Indiana several weeks later.
Parker cooperated with investigators and pleaded guilty to being an accomplice to second-degree murder. He was released on parole in 2024 at age 40, having served close to the minimum term of his 25-years-to-life sentence. During his parole hearing, Parker was asked by a board member what he thought about what he had done. “I think it’s unimaginably horrible,” he replied. “I know there’s not an amount of time or things that I can do to change it, or alleviate any pain that I’ve caused.”
The Supreme Court rulings addressed only mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders, yet the United States remains the only nation in the world that still allows judges to impose discretionary life sentences on minors. According to the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, 28 states and the District of Columbia have outlawed the practice entirely, while five additional states permit it but currently have no one serving such a sentence.
New Hampshire legislators have repeatedly turned down efforts to eliminate life sentences for juvenile offenders, though Tulloch’s case could strengthen future reform efforts. After Tulloch argued in 2018 that sentencing minors to life without parole violated the state constitution, the presiding judge asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in — but that court declined. Then, last July, Superior Court Judge Lawrence MacLeod sided with Tulloch, ruling that the state constitution categorically forbids such sentences as “cruel or unusual” punishment.
Nationwide, among juvenile lifers who have been resentenced following the U.S. Supreme Court decisions, more than 75% received sentences of less than 40 years, according to a study published in 2024 in the Journal of Criminal Justice. In New Hampshire specifically, one man was resentenced to life without parole after refusing to attend his own hearing or allow his attorneys to argue for a lesser sentence. Others in the state received new minimum sentences of 25, 40, and 45 years to life.
