Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders (34 page)

The officers left the Flying J to begin their patrols, but later in the shift Ward circled back to the truck stop. He was patrolling the semi-trailer parking area when he heard Hicks’s CB call for a hitchhiker handoff. After pretending to be a trucker and responding with his casual, “Sure, I can,” Ward called two of the officers he had met with earlier, deputies Landon Dean and Chris Newkirk. It was Newkirk’s night off, but he couldn’t sleep, so he came to work. When Newkirk arrived on duty, he hadn’t even heard about the Dartmouth murders.

Ward told the deputies to join him back at the Flying J. Ward doubted his planned rendezvous would involve the two teens who were the focus of an all-points “wanted” bulletin. That would be too easy, he thought. Still, here were two male teenage hitchhikers heading toward California. It was worth checking out, and he wanted backup just in case.

Ward picked up his cell phone and called a dispatcher to get descriptions of the Vermont teens sent out by the Justice Department’s

National Crime Information Center. The dispatcher had earlier received a call from a trucker who heard Hicks’s CB message and alerted authorities to the possibility that the hitchhikers were the boys on the news. The dispatcher connected Ward and the tipster trucker, who said he thought he saw the two teens at the truck stop’s west fuel pump island, trying to hitch another ride.

Head over there, Ward told Dean and Newkirk. Dean drove his cruiser to the fuel pumps and hit the brakes in front of a parked semi. Newkirk pulled in from behind, blocking it in. Standing near the gas pumps in the early morning darkness were two tired-looking young men with backpacks on the ground at their feet. When Ward drove up, he immediately saw a strong resemblance to the photos he had seen on CNN and the descriptions he’d gotten from the dispatcher. He approached cautiously.

The officers separated the pair. Ward asked the one with dark spiky hair for identification. The teen said he didn’t have any. Ward asked his name, and Jim answered, “Tyler J. Jones.” Ward asked what the “J” stood for. The young man paused. “Jeffrey,” he said after a beat. Asked his date of birth, the young man paused a second time. Then he said April 3, 1982, pausing between month, date, and year. In response to more questions, the young man told Ward he had been born in Encino, but he didn’t know how to spell that city’s name. He said he had set out from California and had hitchhiked to Salem, Massachusetts, in search of a job. That hadn’t worked out, so now he was heading back west. He said his traveling companion was named Tom, but he didn’t know a last name.

The other hitchhiker, Robert, swaddled in several layers of clothing, was doing an even worse job of lying, despite years of practice. He couldn’t remember his Social Security number, so Dean asked his date of birth. The young man said he was born on “March 40, 1982” then corrected himself to March 30, 1982. His lousy act fell apart completely when he heard the name Robert W. Tulloch over the dispatch radio. “It’s me you are looking for,” he told Dean calmly. “You’ve got us.”

It was 4:07 in the morning on February 19, twenty-four days after the murders, three days after Robert and Jim took flight, two days since the commando knives were discovered in Robert’s room, a thousand miles from their homes. After all the talk about killing cops to avoid capture, neither Robert nor Jim resisted arrest. It was their last moment as a team, and their symbiotic bravado deserted them both.

Hicks was still at the Flying J when the deputies arrived, and he stood nearby as his former riders were questioned. Just before they were taken away, one of the two, he wasn’t sure which, looked at him and said: “I’m sorry.” One of the deputies retrieved Hicks’s $10. They wouldn’t need it for breakfast. “There is free food in jail,” Hicks said.

Hicks had his money back, but he was soon out of a job. When his bosses at Martin Transport of Mondovi, Wisconsin, found out what happened, Hicks was fired for violating the company’s strict no-riders policy.

“I have no regrets,” Hicks said that day. “Everything seemed so set up for them to be captured here. Maybe it was supposed to happen. I actually feel lucky.”

The same fate awaited Rowdy Kyle Tucker: he, too, was fired for breaking company policy on hitchhikers. He and Nancy shrugged it off.

Back in New Hampshire, Attorney General Philip McLaughlin called Mariana Zantop to inform her of the arrests. “For the daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Zantop, time stopped on January 27,” McLaughlin told reporters afterward. “I think that they approve of what happened today, but I am sure it’s cold comfort.”

B
y the morning of Robert and Jim’s arrests, modern crisis manage-ment had arrived in Chelsea.

In 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the response was to get schoolchildren out of school and home to their families. But the playbook had long since changed; it now called for elders to ground and reassure kids by maintaining their everyday routines, which meant getting them back into school for collective coping and counseling and the comfort that can come from the repetition of the mundane.

Ever since she’d been awakened by a reporter’s telephone call, principal Pat Davenport had been working nonstop to come up with a plan for Monday’s return to school. “Mrs. D.,” as she was often called, was a veteran educator, a soft-spoken, fiftyish woman with reddish-brown hair who projected a firm but gentle image. She became principal in Chelsea in 1993 after working for eight years at a New Hampshire school and, before that, for fourteen years as an English teacher and administrator at Hanover’s Richmond Middle School. Near the end of her tenure there, one of the young students at Richmond was a bright girl named Veronika Zantop.

Davenport huddled with teachers, school board members, and parents, and decided to open the day with an assembly, a gathering in the gym of grades seven through twelve. She talked to Andy Pomerantz and asked for his help. Pomerantz told her his expertise was in geri-atrics, not pediatrics. But Davenport said that didn’t matter. He was a Chelsean, a parent, and a psychiatrist. He understood the murder case had changed Chelsea forever, making the world seem a dangerous place. His help was vital. Pomerantz agreed to participate.

During the weekend planning, Davenport ignored the telephone messages piling up from reporters. But she did meet with investigators, who were trying quickly to learn as much as possible about the fugitive boys. Davenport told them Robert was “bright and inquisitive.” She said Jim was also a good student, though not on Robert’s level. Jim was the artistic one, a gifted actor and musician. Davenport went over the boys’ recent school history, the fact that Jim had tried Spaulding High School in Barre in the fall and Robert had not been in school at all. She mentioned that Jim seemed “subdued” in school the previous week or so. She also mentioned that Robert, in addition to being bright, could come off as “arrogant.” Davenport told investigators he’d acted up with a couple of teachers and generally thought “he was too smart for Chelsea.”

But even with that, the first impression given of the boys was

largely positive. Davenport’s words were repeated, in essence, by other teachers who sat down with investigators. Time and again, teachers talked about the boys’ talents and sociability and intelligence, qualities tempered, perhaps, by their acting full of themselves, a touch of grandiosity. But all in all, they were two well-liked Chelsea boys. Only math teacher Paul Callens seemed to offer a glimpse of another side. Callens liked the boys, but he gave investigators a coarser view. He recalled the trouble they’d gotten into the previous spring for going into the Purcells’ house when no one was home; he was struck by how unaffected and “carefree” their response was. Jim Parker, he said, returned in January from Spaulding saying, “Spaulding sucked.” That’s how he’d put it to Callens, and Jim seemed upset he’d even gone there at all. Callens said anger seemed brewing in Robert the past year, and that he would display resentment toward people with money. Recently, Robert had seemed down, he said.

The darker notes, however, were not the prevailing ones filling the notebooks of investigators. Nor were those the qualities that came up during the school assembly that began first thing Monday morning. Right after attendance, kids filed out of the school’s side doorway and walked across a parking area to the gym. Standing at center court at a microphone were Pomerantz and Davenport. They were set up right next to the school insignia, the face of a fiery-red devil, painted on the floor.

The principal began the assembly with a declaration: “We love them.” She then explained that Robert and Jim had been accused of a horrific crime. She discussed generally how the judicial system works. She mentioned Half and Susanne, and the suffering of the Zantop family and Dartmouth community. Mainly Davenport wanted everyone to know that teachers and parents were available to help Chelsea’s kids cope and continue with their schoolwork and activities. She encouraged the students to talk about their feelings, but she also stressed that saying nothing—silence—was all right, too.

Pomerantz was glad she’d made the point about silence—there was plenty of it during the gathering that lasted nearly ninety minutes. Pomerantz understood that after trauma people first needed reassurance about essentials—safety, food, housing—and he tried to maintain focus on these fundamentals. Only occasionally did a question come up. Would Chelsea’s kids be ostracized or worse when they traveled to Hanover? What about safety in the Chelsea school? The most provocative comment centered on the boys’ flight. Why’d they run? “Because they’re guilty!” someone yelled, and others testily rose to Robert and Jim’s defense.

The most poignant moment came when basketball coach Mark Vermette, Tyler’s father, stood at the microphone and talked about the Saturday night game. He described the locker room scene and how affected his players had been by the murder case and the manhunt for Robert and Jim. Seeing strong boys cry made him realize the depth of the hurt.

In the back, unable to sit in the bleachers, stood Zack Courts. His heart was pounding harder than it had ever before. Waves of heat rushed through his body, and his chest felt as though it would explode. Seated in another part of the gym was Coltere Savidge. He listened to his coach talking about players who meant a lot to him and who were having a hard time, and Coltere knew the coach was talking about him. Then, as he was finishing up, the coach’s voice cracked and his shoulders shook as he asked for the town to turn out for the next game, to support the boys. He began to cry quietly.

Coltere began crying, too. The senior stood up and met Mark Vermette as the coach walked away from the microphone, and the two stood side by side at the door. Needing to get out, Coltere then left hurriedly. Zack soon followed. He could take no more.

When the assembly ended, many students filed back into the main building. It was close to eleven, and an effort was made to resume classes, but little work got done. Coltere, his brother Cabot, Zack, Tyler, and other boys left school grounds and gathered at Matt Butryman’s house to hang out, shoot pool, and watch CNN’s nonstop coverage of their friends’ arrests in Indiana.

To get to Matt’s house, the boys had to make their way through the phalanx of news reporters lined up just off school property on South Common. This was the media’s main staging area, and reporters

chased after just about any Chelsea teenager they spotted, trying to get an interview about Robert and Jim. The media circus alarmed everyone in town; Chelseans always viewed the nation’s Big Story on television, not live and in person.

Kids traded stories about dodging reporters or granting brief interviews. In one newscast, Brad Johnson spotted his red GMC pickup in the background of a panning shot of the pocket-sized village. Tyler Vermette gave a comment to NBC News and then saw it broadcast. It all seemed so unreal, he thought. “It’s like you look on TV at one of these shootings in some high school and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, that’s
huge
national news.’ But now you look at the news and all my friends are on TV.” Christiana Usenza, pursued more than most as Robert’s girlfriend, went so far as to issue a press release the day before the school assembly. “I strongly believe that they are innocent and inca-pable of committing such a horrible crime,” she said. “It is unbearable to hear their names mixed up in this mess! I have no idea where they are or why they took off. I’m sure they are scared and just want to come home and be safe with their family and friends.”

Reporters weren’t the only ones pursuing Robert and Jim’s friends; investigators were, too. Coltere Savidge was apparently the first who was buttonholed and interviewed, but in the weeks to come Zack Courts, Casey Purcell, Sada Dumont, Clyde Haggerty, Julia Purcell, Anna Mulligan, Ivy Mix, Tess Mix, and others sat down for police interviews.

Gaelen McKee told investigators: “These are two kids who really like attention. . . . When they find an opportunity, they take it.” He said he doubted they were guilty, but added: “This is either a bad coincidence or they actually did it.” Asked about Robert and Jim’s connections to Dartmouth, Gaelen said: “They hated Hanover. . . . They were just not into the whole college-prep atmosphere.”

Some kids were evasive with investigators, and one girl made a wild accusation that a third Chelsea teen should be considered a possible suspect: Zack Courts. The girl said Zack, Robert, and Jim were like “the three musketeers,” but under questioning, her story fell apart. She admitted she didn’t like going to school in Chelsea and thought she

might be able to transfer by suggesting that a third killer was still on the loose, attending classes at the Chelsea Public School. But most of the kids were helpful, providing details about the boys’ lives, while most still conveyed disbelief Robert and Jim could ever be involved in a murder.

It didn’t take long for townsfolk to get fed up with the media onslaught. Editorial cartoonist Jeff Danziger captured Chelsea’s disdain. He drew a cartoon showing a car with two reporters stuck in the snow on the side of the road. Five Chelseans, armed with shovels, throw more snow on the car rather than digging it out. The caption read: “Freedom of the Press. Newspaper reporters covering the mur-der case slide off the road in Chelsea. Local residents grab shovels and come running.” The cartoon was clipped, copied, and pinned to bulletin boards all around town.