A riveting investigation of the brutal murders of two Dartmouth professors a book that, like In Cold Blood, reveals the chilling reality behind a murder that captivated the nation. On a cold night in January 2001, the idyllic community of Dartmouth College was shattered by the discovery that two of its most beloved professors had been hacked to death in their own home. Investigators searched helplessly for clues linking the victims, Half and Susanne Zantop, to their murderer or murderers. A few weeks later, across the river, in the town of Chelsea, Vermont, police cars were spotted in front of the house of high school senior Robert Tulloch. The police had come to question Tulloch and his best friend, Jim Parker. Soon , the town discovered the incomprehensible reality that Tulloch and Parker, two of Chelsea's brightest and most popular sons, were now fugitives, wanted for the murders of Half and Susanne Zantop. Authors Mitchell Zuckoff and Dick Lehr provide a vivid explication of a murder that captivated the nation, as well as dramatic revelations about the forces that turned two popular teenagers into killers. Judgement Ridge conveys a deep appreciation for the lives (and the devastating loss) of Half and Susanne Zantop, while also providing a clear portrait of the killers, their families, and their community and, perhaps, a warning to any parent about what evil may lurk in the hearts of boys.

Dick Lehr and Mitchell Zuckoff are veteran reporters and were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize at the Boston Globe. Both are on the journalism faculty at Boston University

Part I

1. A Stranger at the Door

3

(8)

2. Chelsea

11

(11)

3. An American Dream

22

(15)

4. Why Didn't You Jump Him?

37

(8)

5. Trescott Road

45

(14)

6. "Susanne? Susanne?"

59

(24)

7. Snow and Blood

83

(10)

Part II

8. The Crew

93

(25)

9. The Sheaths

118

(11)

10. Smarter Than Everybody

129

(23)

11. Dead Ends and College Dumpsters

152

(7)

12. You're Just a German

159

(21)

13. Vasque Boots

180

(18)

14. Two SOG SEAL 2000 Knives

198

(29)

15. On the Run

227

(19)

16. A Chelsea Embrace

246

(26)

17. Two Graduations

272

(13)

Part III

18. Jailhouse Snitch

285

(20)

19. Something Wicked This Way Comes

305

(36)

20. "Slit Her Throat!"

341

(16)

21. Hope and Hopelessness

357

(22)

Epilogue

379

(12)

Notes on Sources

391

(20)

Selected Bibliography

411

(4)

Acknowledgments

415

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Judgment Ridge
The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders

Chapter One

A Stranger at the Door

At just past ten on a cool summer night, Andrew Patti nestled with his eleven-year-old son on a worn blue sofa in the living room of their Vermont vacation home. Burning logs hissed and popped in the red-brick fireplace as Patti read aloud to Andy Jr. from an adventure story about a hunter pursuing a wise and elusive buck.

Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam. A staccato burst of pounding on the front door interrupted him in mid-sentence.

Startled, Patti rose to his feet, silently motioning to Andy to stay put. It was too late for visitors, and the knocks were too sharp, too insistent to come from the hand of a friend. Someone must be in trouble or looking for trouble.

As Patti stood, he reached under the untucked hem of his work shirt for the nine-millimeter Glock pistol he always wore on his right hip. With a quick flip of his thumb, he unsnapped the safety latch and slid the matte black gun from its leather holster. Patti walked slowly to the door, holding the Glock out of sight, tucked close against the right rear pocket of his faded jeans.

With his empty left hand he pushed aside the blind covering the nine small windows on the upper half of the door. On his front porch stood a young man Patti had never seen before. He was about six feet tall, lanky, dressed in a white T-shirt, black cargo pants, and black military boots. The young man -- maybe in his late teens, Patti thought -- leaned in close, his hot breath leaving vapor clouds on the glass. His hands were half-clenched like bear claws, his eyes wide and intense. The weak rays of a bug-yellow porch light cast a sickly glare on his pale skin.

"What's up?" Patti asked roughly.

"I have car trouble. Can you help me out?" the stranger answered just as roughly.

They stood for a moment face to face, inches apart, separated by only a pane of glass, each waiting to see what the other would do.

Andrew Patti was forty-seven, a trim, good-looking man of medium height, with thick, dark hair flecked with gray. He was a lifelong New Yorker with the accent and toothpick-chewing habit to prove it. Though raised in a cookie-cutter suburb of tract houses and strip malls, as a teenager Patti had grown enchanted by the mountains and forests of Vermont. As his only child and namesake approached manhood, Patti wanted Andy to know the embrace of untamed woods, the snap of a fish latching onto a hook, the smell of fresh-cut trees, the ping of a tin can pierced by a well-aimed bullet.

Patti and his wife, Diane, also forty-seven and a native New Yorker, lived and worked on Long Island, running an agency that provided services for infants and toddlers with special needs. It was successful enough to allow them to purchase their getaway home in the town of Vershire, on the eastern side of Vermont, halfway between Massachusetts and Canada. Vershire's name was an amalgam of Vermont and New Hampshire, owing to the abundance of hills offering views from the former to the latter, some fifteen miles away across the Connecticut River.

One of the hills was called Judgment Ridge, named for a defunct ski area once located there. Judgment Ridge was less than a mile from the Pattis' house, just off the main road that connected the neighboring town of Chelsea to Interstate 91. Once on the interstate, it was a short drive south to Hanover, New Hampshire, home of Dartmouth College, and from there to the world beyond.

Vershire was best known to outsiders as home to The Mountain School, a private school that doubled as a working farm, allowing high school students to combine traditional studies with lessons on sustainable rural living. Vershire also was a magnet for second-home owners like the Pattis, many of them New Yorkers searching for solitude, serenity, and bargain property. Locals called them "flatlanders" during civil, if occasionally dismissive, conversations. Some natives called the outsiders much worse in private.

The Pattis first saw the cedar-shingled house next to a postcard-perfect pond in September 1999, and then spent eight months struggling to get clear title and overcome a maddening series of obstacles to their purchase. It finally became theirs two months before the stranger came to the door. Locals knew the place as The Sugar House, and indeed, the home on Goose Green Road was a symbol of the changing community. It was built in 1993, replacing a landmark wooden shack where generations of Vershire residents had marked each spring by boiling maple sap into sugary syrup.

During their first weeks in the house, Andrew and Diane tried to make it homey without Long Island-izing it. Their signature decorative touch was a mounted head of a six-point buck Diane's father had shot years earlier, hung high on a living-room wall next to the fireplace. The deer's limpid eyes stared down at anyone who entered the front door, above which a plaque read: home is where the heart is.

Soon after they moved in, the Pattis got a taste of life in a house built close to a country road: twice, just weeks apart, two strangers came to the door late at night seeking help with broken-down cars. The first was a young man who tentatively tapped on the door, then stepped briskly, submissively backward when Andrew Patti answered. The stranger's solicitous air convinced Patti there was no danger, and in a display of new-neighbor helpfulness he hitched the stalled car to Diane's SUV and towed it to the man's home. The second uninvited guest was a young woman who politely asked to use the phone to call Ward's Garage, a half-mile up the road ...

Judgment Ridge
The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders. Copyright © by Dick Lehr. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Excerpted from Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders by Dick Lehr, Mitchell Zuckoff
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.