Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2003/11/17/judgment_ridge.php
Monday, November 17, 2003
In Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders, former Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Mitchell Zuckoff attempt to illustrate the events prior to the January, 2001 murders of professors Susanne and Half Zantop. Judgment Ridge presents a study of the adolescent minds of Robert Tulloch and Jim Parker, relying on a realistic account of the events preceding and following the tragedy. The tale at times seems disjointed by its movement through time and its general lack of constancy, but nevertheless remains emotionally rending.
Chelsea, Vermont, the home base for the events leading up to the murders, is described in great detail as a sleepy town of 1,200.The forests that surround Chelsea act as a buffer, allowing for not only the peace and quiet of a close-knit community, but also boredom and monotony for the town's young people. It is in this setting that Tulloch and Parker are introduced as children. Lehr and Zuckoff sketch a background revealing a duo that is at once humanizing and revealing, introducing two players that aren't the hard-cracked subjects one is accustomed to seeing labeled as murderers.Robert Tulloch, self-assured student council president, is not the prototypical murderer, at least not to the citizens of Chelsea.
The boys met and were introduced into "The Crew," the social group to which both belonged. As their friendship deepened, the two became increasingly estranged from their boyhood friends, until eventually the bonds were stretched to their limit. The book juxtaposes references from Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, playing with the idea that Tulloch's and Parker's friendship consumed their lives. Tulloch exerted control in the relationship, dominating the younger boy, freely manipulating him, feeding his need for attention.Warning signs were present, but not on the surface.The boys always had ready excuses that did not betray their sinister motives. On the accelerated track at school, Tulloch had uneventful junior and senior years, and, like many other Chelsea teens, he found himself with an abundance of unoccupied time.He turned to the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, feeding what he called his "divine intellect." The Parkers noticed that the two were spending all their time together and expressed concern over the friendship. But in spite of this, the teens became closer yet, staying together, muddling through their thoughts and ideas, even once concluding that Hitler was "very cunning" and should be admired.
With an increasingly warped Weltanschauung, the two began blurring the lines of right and wrong, taking to car theft and "joy-riding" in the surrounding areas. Pushing the lines further, Parker and Tulloch loaded an ATV into the back of Tulloch's vehicle and kept it hidden in the woods, attempting to sell the vehicle on eBay. The events of January 26, 2001, were not the boys' first brush with criminal life. Theft and murder were things that had fascinated them for a long time, and they viewed them as their key to getting out of Chelsea and into the broader world. They dreamt of running to Australia, where they would become mired in petty crime to stay afloat between payoffs. They spent hours planning their goals, and thought increasingly of more violent ends, ordering first a pair of stun-guns from the internet. Later that winter, Tulloch procured two SOG SEAL 2000 knives that would later serve as the murder weapons.
The description of the Dartmouth graduation exercises juxtaposed with those of Chelsea High School may offer revelations into the tensions between the communities. "Cell phones" and "well-groomed purebred dogs" contrasted with "tie-dyed shirts outnumbering ties" and "minivans held together with duct tape. "Parker and Tulloch chose to drive to Hanover on that January day because they could find easy targets and well-to-do residents. The boys had felt a general animosity toward the Hanover residents since Robert's days on the debate team and his run-in with Hanover High School's coach.
The stories of former Dartmouth Professors Half and Susanne Zantop are not neglected, nor are they told in great detail. The authors seem committed to exposing the minds and hearts of the teenage murderers, treating their environment and surroundings as the driving forces of the tale while still not attenuating the pain and heartbreak that the friends, family and students of the Zantops had to undergo. Consistent with the fanfare the book received and a feature on it in a recent issue of Reader's Digest, it provides what it is billed to: an eerie glimpse into the lives and minds of two young killers that may cause one to take a closer look at today's youth.