Man seeks reduced sentence for killing Dartmouth professors at 17

A Vermont man who was 17 when he and a friend killed a pair of married Dartmouth College professors 25 years ago is seeking to have his life sentence reduced to a minimum of 30 to 40 years. Robert Tulloch, now 43, was automatically sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in the 2001 stabbing deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that mandatory sentences of life without parole are unconstitutional for juveniles, and later applied that decision retroactively. The rulings gave hundreds of juvenile lifers a shot at freedom, including five men serving life sentences in New Hampshire for murders they committed as teenagers. Tulloch’s resentencing hearing, the last of the five, begins Monday in Grafton County Superior Court. The state hasn’t said what sentence it will seek. But in a court filing last week, Tulloch’s lawyers argue that a minimum sentence in the range of 30 to 40 years is appropriate, based on a review of other murders committed by juveniles in New Hampshire and cases nationwide that were affected by the Supreme Court rulings. Attorneys Richard Guerriero and Oliver Bloom also said Tulloch’s prison records show he has matured, and that after some initial misconduct early on, he’s had no major infractions since 2012 and no minor infractions since 2017. “The vast majority of his write-ups are for possessing too many books,” they wrote. Quoting from Tulloch’s therapy records, they said he has expressed “significant remorse” for what he sees as a heinous and unforgivable crime, his “warped youthful thinking,” and his “good capacity for empathy.” According to Tulloch’s friend, James Parker, the teens were bored with their lives in Chelsea, Vermont, when they concocted a plan to kill strangers, steal their money and move to Australia. For several months, they knocked on doors in New Hampshire and Vermont pretending to be conducting a survey.