Transcript of The Dartmouth College Murders

Hey, weirdos. I'm Elaina. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.

It's morbid in the afternoon.

It's like the middle of the day, smack dab. If you listen to the last episode, I mentioned that I have COVID, so that's why I It sounds like this in case you're like, Why do you sound so annoying?

Why do you sound like Lindsay Lohan? I don't think it's annoying.

I'm like a little stuffed up.

I always prefer my sick voice.

I don't mind it, but I always feel like it must sound annoying to other people. Nah. Like, I don't like to hear someone sick. I don't care. Because it makes me feel sick a little bit. So I feel that's why I'm apologizing ahead of time.

I think that's your tism.

Sorry if it makes you feel sick.

You're funny.

But yeah, I got COVID from the shows this weekend. Worth it.

Worth it. We had so much fun.

And to be honest, I'm okay. Like, it's just been a yucky cold. That's really it. But so that's a good thing. Because sometimes COVID will kick my ass.

I know. When you first tested positive, I was like, oh, one, I was like, oh, fuck, I probably have COVID. And then I tested negative. And I was like, my immune system is a baddie.

That's right. And Mikey, too. I know. It's so weird. Everybody's fine.

My immune system is focused on other things in my body.

It's like, I got to pay attention to this. But yeah, I managed to keep everyone in the house not COVID free. So I've been wearing my mask. I've been staying my distance.

Yeah, she's staying the distance.

It's true. I'm going for speed because I would like to be negative.

She's not alone in her time of need. Because I made her pastina, bitch. I think we talked about that last episode.

It's true. And I ate so much of it last night.

I'll make you more.

Oh, so good.

Pastina is the cure.

But yeah, I apologize if I sound annoying to you. But this is a We have a crazy case. We'll talk about business if we have some. But usually we only focus on like, spooky episodes during October.

You said that's so valley girl-like. Speaky?

Speaky episodes.

You sounded like me.

We really sit in the during October, but we got a true crime case for you.

Yeah, we're going to this October, I think we're going to spooke, we're going to true crime, we're going to true crime. We're going to alien abduct. We're just going to try to hit everything for We're in such a new place of revitalization that we just want to provide.

We just want to do all the cool things for you guys.

Yeah, we feel good. We want you to feel good. Everything is good. Yeah. E-w-d, bitch.

I am not running off of spite anymore. No. That's great.

You know how many days it's been since I cried in this office? A lot. If it wasn't for... Well, never mind. But you know? I didn't The last time I cried, it wasn't work-related. No.

And that's really great.

And before, we used to have a countdown in this room of how many days it had been since I cried.

That's not even a joke. No. We literally made a sign that said, It has been this many days since Ash cried in the office.

Because work was so horrible. For about three years. Yeah, because it was so toxic. And everybody was always mad at us. Yeah.

So we're not there anymore. And I'm glad it seems like you guys are feeling it along with us, which is just giving us even more happiness and more like just motivation to give you what we can give you. Yeah.

Life just feels good.

Yeah. I'm actually going to post. I want to start posting. I've been saying I wanted to post some like recipes and some recommendations for like books and movies and stuff. And that's going to start now, too. So get ready for that on the Instagram and stuff. It'll be fun. We're going to have a lot of fun, guys. And I'm excited. I like it. This case is not fun. No. The fun ends here. Okay. Just so everybody knows. I don't think I know this case. This one I remember very vividly happening.

It's obviously moderately recent, or moderately recent then.

It's from 2001, which still feels like it was 10 years ago. 25. Almost years ago. It feels like it was literally 10 years ago. Like, 2001 does not feel that long ago.

2001 feels like a very long time ago in my life.

Not for me. I remember so vividly. Well, you were like, I was 16.

Yes, I was six.

I was very... Jesus. I was very sentient and very aware of everything. So I think it just hits a little harder.

2001 is the first date that I remember writing on a paper in school. Wow. Whenever I hear 2001, I literally have a vivid memory of being in my first grade classroom and writing the year in the little date space. Look at that. Yeah. Isn't it weird?

That is weird. I have a weird mind.

I can see pictures in my mind. Sometimes of times of times and of numbers.

Yeah, I know. That's fun. Yeah. You have a weird brain.

You do, too.

I love that for us. Cheers. Cheers to weird brains. So, yeah, before we get into... That was our ice machine.

You really said before we get into it, it said...

Hold on, we're shutting off the ice machine. I feel like we should just leave this in. I think this is what the people want. I think you want the behind scenes like we used to, where I just wouldn't edit out all the shit.

Mikey, leave it in.

Mikey's way better editor than I was. I would just leave everything in. You were great.

Don't say that.

But yeah, leave it in. Some more vintage morbid of ice machines turning on and shit.

Yeah, maybe I'll fall off the couch later. Just for old time's sake. If you weren't an early listener, I once fell off a recliner mid-recording and went, Ho, ho. According to Elaina.

I'll never forget that sound, that ho, ho, sound. I survived.

We were just sitting, too. I don't know how I fell. It was mid-story.

You were leaning back too far in the whole recliner.

That recliner was awesome. You still have that. Yeah, yeah, we do. Let's go. Bring it back in.

Bring it back.

No, that's when you banned me from sitting on the recliner. And that's when we sat back on the floor.

Because you would either fall off of it or make too much noise.

Or make too much noise.

Or you would rock it too much and hit things. People would be like, so I did hear this thing.

Early days of morbid, I was always fucking with something, whether it be a recliner, a bobby pin, a battery.

She would start playing with something and I would just hold my hand out like a parent, like putting it in my hand. I was like, that's going to make noise throughout the entire episode.

I'll always be me. At the live show the other night, I almost went out with gum in my mouth. Like, I was like, oh, fuck, I have gum in my mouth.

She also immediately spilled broth.

I forgot about that. Okay, Wilbert, time to be real with you guys. We cleaned it up, but I was so worried about my tummy. I couldn't really eat that much. So I was like, oh, I'll get ramen. Like that. Like good, genuine ramen. That will like, soothe my belly.

Good, genuine ramen Yeah.

Not like, I was like, I just said I was going to soothe my tummy. And then people heard ramen and they were like, Are you okay? But I mean, from a yummy place. Authentic. I went to pour in the broth and I literally just knocked it all over the table in the green room of the Wilbur. And I said, I'm here.

It was immediate. It was on impact. She spilled broth all over the thing.

And it was not a little bit of broth. No. It was so much broth.

And we said, Yeah.

I said, Sorry. I mean, the room smelled really good. Smilled like broth. But then we needed to move the posters to somewhere else. It was a big thing.

It was pretty great.

I am who I am. That's all that I am. Bye bye.

You know? All right. But yeah. So we'll share some Fun seasonal stuff when we can on the socials, like some recipes and some recommendations. I'm excited to start doing that.

Yeah, I am too, actually.

Because I just watched Clown in a Cornfield. As one does. It's based off of a book called Clown in the Cornfield by Adam Caesar, I believe his name is. Caesar. I have the book. I watched the movie now, and now I can't wait to read the book. Did you finish the movie? Shout out to him. I did. I finally finished it because I have COVID. While the girls were at after-school activities, I had like 45 minutes of just quiet.

And you didn't do what I suggested?

Well, I have to choose because Ash suggested I watch Halloween Wars. Baking Championship. Baking Championship, which I will. But I can watch. I watch that with the girls. Yeah.

So you want to watch something you can't watch.

If they're not here, I got to watch a horror movie. I got that. I got to watch something I can't have on when they're in the neighborhood even. I never throw on a horror movie when they're They're in town. Yeah. Even if they're at a friend's house near us, I'm like, They could come back in anytime. It's true. I can't traumatize them like this.

They just walk in and you're like,.

I'm like, Oh, God. I immediately put Unclown in a cornfield and was like, Finish him. They can do it. Finish him. It's a fun fucking movie.

Should we cover it on screen?

We should because it is fun as hell. I feel like it's...

Oh, Scream listeners, we're back.

We are. We're back. We didn't die.

We did not die. We took some time off.

We're so back.

It's the one show that we can take time off. So we We took advantage. We took advantage. And Caleb is the most understanding human on the planet of Earth. Yeah. And I think it helped everybody. Everybody needed a little time off.

We all had stuff going on.

It was impromptu, but we're back.

But yeah, I highly recommend Clown and Cornfield. That'll be part of my recommendations, probably that I post. It's really fun.

I feel like your recommendations are going to be like horror and like books and stuff. And mine are going to be like, cute boots for wide calf girly.

Which these are all things people need. Valid. Well-rounded I just got so many cute boots for wide calf girlies.

I love that for you. I got called out by the lady.

Mikaela is a wide calf girly. I know.

She always talks about it. She actually took some of her recommendations. She made so many boots. She did. I was getting a pedicure the other day and the woman said, Oh, your calves are so strong.

And I said, what a lovely way of saying that.

I said, did you just say that I have the thickest calves in the United Nations?

She said, no. So strong.

She said, so strong.

So strong. And I was like, I I love that, personally.

I didn't know how to feel about it.

They're so strong. She's saying, you can kick some ass with these thighs. With these thighs. I mean, sure. Why not?

Exactly. And apparently strong calves. I like it. There you go. Yeah. But I was like, you're like, well, look at that. Okay. So then I was like, maybe I'm a wide calf girly because whenever I got boots in the past, I was like, why aren't these working all of a sudden? See? My calves got too strong.

I mean, everybody's got something. I have like my feet are super wide. You do have very wide feet. So I can't fit like narrow shoes. I have to get wide shoes. So it's all we all got something that's like we just have to be a little more mindful of when we buy things.

Exactly. Well, I have recommendations for my strong calf girls. Hell, yeah. I don't like wide calf. How about strong calf?

Strong calf. That's what we need to call it.

I'm reclaiming it.

Mikaela, you hear that? Strong calf. Strong calf.

Yeah. Mikaela, do you hear us? I know. I love you.

I love you. I think she's so funny.

I love her a lot. I do, too. A fellow Boston gal.

I just wish good things for her.

I do, too. I think she has good things.

I send good vibes.

I do, too. And by the power of Christ, I compel those who don't send her good vibes to go away. Yeah, that's not cool. Compelling somebody means you want them, too, right? Yeah. By the power of Christ, I compel you. Yeah.

Because the whole thing is the power of Christ compels you to get out of that person. Yeah.

So I can tell you to get.

To get. To exercise out of this situation.

By the power of cross.

By the power of cross.

All right. We should get into it because I could talk for hours about nothing. It's true. And We have a bonus episode soon. So that's where we can do that.

That's where we should do that. So we need to remember that we have that bonus episode where we can just shit talk. Shoot the shit. You know, just like, and I mean it in a good way.

Maybe we can just do like a life catch up. Would you guys like that?

Just let us know. If you guys have any ideas.

We've had to be so structured for so many years.

That's the thing. So we don't now that we have one episode. We don't know what to do. Every month that we can be like, loosey-goosy and make it whatever we want. We We almost don't know how to be unstructured. It's true. You know? So please, if you guys have ideas, we have some ideas, but we also want to make it something that you guys really dig and have fun with. So if there are ideas that you have that you're like, I really wish you would do this for your bonus episode, throw them our way. We'll at least consider all of them for sure. You're the people who are listening, so we want to make you happy. Definitely.

All right. So let's go back 24 years ago, I think, on that 25, to 2001.

Let's go. So We're going to be doing the Dartmouth College murders. Okay. I don't know. This is a really... It's a sad one. It really is. It's a rough one. It's a sad one. I remember this happening. I remember watching the news reports. I remember thinking this couple, that the two victims were just the most adorable people, and I was just so sad for them. It's a very crazy case. Okay. It was already dark when Roxanne Verona arrived at Hoff and Susanna Tops house in Etna, New Hampshire, at 6: 30 PM on January 27th, 2001. The trio had been friends forever. They'd been friends for a lot of years. They met as coworkers at Dartmouth College, which was pretty nearby. They got together pretty regularly for dinners, dinner parties. They were just like fun friends.

Yeah, they were what Amy Poehler would call a good hang. Exactly. Great fucking show, by the way.

There you go. So when Roxanne got to the door, she rang the bell and she waited. She was just so excited to see her friends. They always answered all enthusiastically. It was just like, a good hang.

Excited to see each other.

Yeah. But a few moments passed and no one came to the door. She was like, We have plans. What do we What are we doing here?

I'm sure that was unusual.

She rang the bell a second time and waited. When a few more moments passed with no sign of Susanne and Hoff, Verona tried the door handle, and it turned opened, and she was like, Wait a second. Now, To the residents of Etna, which has a population of about 900. Oh, shit. Locking your doors was like, foreign and unnecessary at this point. It really was. It was that town.

We have to remember. 2001, too, it was still a nicer time to be alive.

It still was. This is the beginning of the year. It's January. We're still in that innocent time before everything exploded in life. It's at Of course, there were things happening, but you know what I mean. Yeah, no, exactly. A little more of an innocent time. But after being in Aetna for more than three decades at this point, Hoff and Susanna definitely were vigilant, and they did lock their doors. They would keep the door locked. They would unlock it to let people in, and they would lock it again. They just were. That's just who they were. As soon as a guest arrived, locked the door. Same. Smart. They were just vigilant. Roxanne remembered all time she'd arrived at the house before, and Susanna was always ready to meet her guests. She was never somebody that you had to sit outside and wait for her to come.

She was a good host.

Yeah. She thought, okay, because she's trying to... Obviously, the last thing she wants to think is something bad happened here. So her thought was, okay, it's cold outside. Maybe she just was really busy cooking or something, and she knew she wouldn't be able to run to the door. So she didn't want her friend to wait in the cold because that's who Susanna is. Wow. She's like, maybe that's what is. She just wanted me to walk in. So she was like, okay, she just left the door unlocked for me. That's what it is. So she also remembered, too, something about Hoff going to visit a friend that afternoon with plans for him to join a little later in the evening. So she was like, so there you go. Hoff can't answer the door because he's not here, and Suzanne is busy and doesn't want me to be cold. Bingo. That's what it is. She goes in, she drapes her coat and purse over the chair just inside the doorway, and she makes her way to the dining room. She sees that set down. There's dinner plates ready, and she sets down the salad that she had brought.

And Hoff and Susanna were definitely not neat freaks. They weren't like, they didn't have a museum house thing, but they always definitely kept their house in order. Yeah, like tidy. So Roxanne was very surprised to find that there was clearly, they had started to get things ready for the evening, but the actual dining room table was still covered in papers as well and other evidence that someone had been working there earlier in the day. Yeah. Which they would have cleaned that up before setting the table. So she pokes her head in the kitchen and she's expecting to see Susanna there, but the kitchen's empty. And she was like, okay. And she looks, though, and she's like, clearly she started prepping dinner. There was evidence of that. So Roxanne calls out Susanna's name a few times, expecting her to reply or just hearing some movement at all. Anything. But the house is completely still in silence.

Oh, that's so chilling.

She was like, trying to think of other things. Maybe she ran out to get something because she forgot it. But she wouldn't have left the door unlocked when she did that. All these things are going through her head. She's confused. She's getting very panicky, very uncomfortable. Roxanne makes her way down the hall to hop study. It's there that Things really shifted into terror instead of just discomfort. Discomfort, excuse me. Instead of just the orderly rows of books and neat stacks of paper on the desk that she was always used to seeing in there, the study was in a total state of disarray, like it had been ransacked. The first thing her eyes settled onto was Susanna's body, lying just a few feet from the door. Oh, no. She was faced down with a pool of blood surrounding her head like a halo, Roxanne It was all. But that wasn't all. Blood had also soaked through the sweatshirt that she was wearing and through her pants. She was covered. Oh, wow. Now, a few feet away, Hoff was there as well, lying on his side, his head resting on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. He landed so hard that it knocked aside several heavy textbooks.

Clearly, he had been like, he had thrown. Like Susanna, he was covered in blood. It had soaked through his wool sweater and down the legs of his pants. One leg of his pants had a huge tear in the fabric. And Roxanne looked at Hoff's face and she said it was just waxed in and lifeless, like completely drained of blood. Oh, that's awful. It was a very brutal scene.

Just the detail of his wool sweater. I don't know what that that just did something to me.

When you look them up, they're just the cuteest couple. Yeah, they just seem like, oh.

Like good people.

Yeah. The room had been completely ransacked. A card table had flipped on its side. A chair was turned over. Books and papers were everywhere, all splattered with blood, and they were scattered everywhere. Then Roxanne saw something that at first was so unexpected in the Zantop house that it was almost unrecognizable to her. On the floor by Hoff's left foot was a hard plastic knife sheath, the one used as a hunting knife. She was like, Yeah, that would not be in their house. She spotted a second sheath on the floor a few feet away near Susanna's sandal. Strange. Each was about a foot long and three inches wide, suggesting that whatever type of knife they were designed to hold was fucking big. It was gigantic. Like a big hunting knife.

Yeah, that's massive. A split long.

Yeah. And three inches wide was how big the sheath was. Yeah, no. So once she was finally able to get some clarity on what she was looking at, she started to panic, obviously. She needed to call someone. It occurred to her that, oh, shit, the killer or killers might still be in this fucking house.

I was just going to say that. That terror washing over you that somebody could still be in there.

You're seeing your two dead friends brutally murdered in front of you. You're having to comprehend that and then Also having that added fuck. Like, I got to get out of here. I don't even know how to get out of here. She did remember, even through the terror, that Hoff and Susanna's neighbor, Bob McCollum, who she met several times at previous parties. She was like, Okay, I remember him. I have to get to the neighbor. She ran out of the study and down the hall, grabbing her purse and coat before ripping the door open and frantically hunting for her car keys. Oh, God. At the McCollum house, Bob, his wife, Audrey, their daughter Cindy, and Cindy's husband, John, were just sitting down to dinner to celebrate Bob's 76th birthday. Oh, no. When they heard a frantic knocking at the front door, and then they heard a woman just screaming. Oh. So Bob opens the door, finds Roxanne, and he's like, okay, I vaguely remember this woman from Hoff and Susanna's party.

You're like, I know who this is.

But she's in this panicked state. And so they usher her inside and they're trying like, okay, what happened? And she's like, crying. She's trying to explain it. And she tells them what she discovered at the Santop house. So Audrey calls 911, and Bob and Cindy, both doctors, drove over to their neighbor's house to see if there was anything they could do until the paramedics arrived. They ran right into there. Wow. That's so brief. No thought for their own safety, just like, Let's go try to help our friends. So as soon as they entered the study, Bob and Cindy knew they'd arrived far too late to be of any help to their friends. Audrey later told a reporter it was obvious that they had been dead for some time. After After she hung up with the 911 dispatcher, Audrey called her friend Steve Gordon, who was the editor of the local newspaper, the Valley News, and asked him to please monitor the police scanner for any news or updates. Officer Brad Sargent of the Hanover Police Department was the first to arrive on the scene. Cindy met him in the driveway and brought him into the house.

Then Bob walked the officer down the hall to the study. They briefly took in the chaos of the room and the state of the victims. Then the officer radioed the dispatcher and canceled the ambulance. And then asked for the coroner to be sent. Now, within 10 minutes, Brad Sargent was joined by Hanover Police Chief nick Giacone, who quickly was followed by a string of investigators from Hanover. Several detectives from New Hampshire State Police and the Grafton County Sheriff's Department. So aside from a pretty brutal ax murder of two students a decade earlier, there hadn't been a murder in the area in nearly half a century, and everyone seemed loss for what they were supposed to do here.

Did you say ax murder? Yes. Oh, okay.

So they didn't have a lot of it. When they did, they were big. Yeah. Giacone cleared the scene of any non-essential members of law enforcement just to deserve the maximum amount of evidence they could, and the McCollums and Roxanne Verona returned to the McCollum house to answer some questions. Now, while the neighbors attempted to provide law enforcement with any information that they could to help aid the investigation, and The investigators started processing the scene. In the kitchen, there was food out on the counters, and as Roxanne had said, it looked like someone had been preparing dinner when they were interrupted. There was also an opened bottle of Merlot wine on the counter with only one glass. She was like having a glass of wine while cooking. Yeah. The weirdest thing about the scene was that while the study had been ransacked as though the killers were looking for valuables, the rest of the house was in pretty normal order.

So they were looking for something in that study. Yeah.

In fact, it was as though someone had hit a pause button on a remote control and left their evening, like what the Xantops evening was, just frozen in that moment before the murder. It was very chilling. Because nothing else seemed to be missing from the house, robbery seemed like an unlikely motive for the murder. But if it was a robbery, what the fuck else was the motive for killing these two people?

So brutally, too.

Yeah. Over the course of three days, investigators from multiple state and local agencies were in and out of that house. They were processing the scene, collecting they could. Unfortunately, after days scouring the house, there was very little evidence that pointed them in the direction of a killer, like who it was. In total, state crime scene technicians removed 105 items from the entire house. Including door knobs, key rings, a calendar, Hoff's laptop, blood stained books from the office where the bodies were found. On top of that, a team of five forensic officers spent nearly a day combing the rugs in the for any hair or fiber evidence that could identify the killer. Wow. I think they just took whatever they could because there was so little evidence that I think they just were like, take everything, whatever we can. A total of 19 different finger and palm prints were collected from the scene. At least two belong to the victims, and three more were quickly identified as Bob and Cindy McCollum and Roxanne. Several others were soon identified as those of various investigators, which left a small number unidentified and potentially belonging to a killer. Outside the study, investigators discovered five drops of blood, as well as five, quote, partial or near-complete bloody boot prints that didn't match any footwear in the house.

Okay. So that was something. Yeah. The day after, Hoff and Susanna's bodies were discovered, an autopsy was conducted, but it also didn't prove a whole lot, at least from an investigative standpoint, I would say. According to the ME, Dr. Thomas Gilson, Hoff had suffered multiple stab wounds with injuries of the airway, heart, and lung, while Susanna's death resulted from multiple stab wounds with injuries of the skull, brain, major vessel, thyroid, cartilage, airway, intestine, and spleen. Wow. Yeah.

I mean, that knife would do some damage.

They had been brutally stabbed to death, both of them. Hoff in the chest and Susanna in the head, chest, and stomach. Oh, God. The time of death was estimated to be a few hours before Roxanne Verona discovered their bodies. Gibson noted that given the extent and severity of the wounds, their deaths would have occurred within seconds to minutes.

Which is the only- At least there's that. You just hope closer to seconds. Yeah.

Aside from the boot prints and the five droplets of blood, the most promising lead was the plastic knife sheaths left at the scene. That's a big deal. We saw that in the Idaho murders. That knife sheath can really prove a lot. Yeah.

Can make you right to fucking Amazon in that idiot's case. That's right.

Yeah, for real. The fact that there were two sheaths suggested to investigators that there were likely two killers.

I mean, two knives.

Yeah. I mean, unless he uses one and then just takes out another, but that's very unlikely. In fact, that belief was supported by the fact that each sheath had a different set fingerprints on it, which detectives assumed belonged to the killers. Unfortunately, when the prints were run through various databases, state and federal level, they never got a match, which is even scarier because I'm like, Oh, so this is like one of your first crimes? Yeah, at least. What the fuck? Right. So the sheaths were also significant in that they didn't appear to belong to an ordinary hunting knife. In almost every rural state like New Hampshire, it wouldn't have been unusual for a person to own one or more hunting knives. It's just part of the culture. But these sheaths weren't familiar to any of the investigators. And upon further investigation, detectives learned that the sheaths were likely designed to contain what's colocally known as a SOG knife, a particular style of blade that's designed for and issued to members of the Studies and Observations Group. Among other things, members of the SOG were typically assigned to special covert missions during the Vietnam War era.

What?

The blade was designed to be untraceable in the event that the carrier was captured.

What?

Yeah.

It almost feels like that was left to mock in that scenario? Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Like, here's the sheaths, but it's untraceable. Right. Yeah.

That is.

Isn't that fucked up?

Really fucked up. And Vietnam war era. It's like, who did this? That's the thing.

Now, according to the analyst, the sheaths were relatively new and designed to hold an SOG knife known as a SOG seal 2000, which was a 12-inch knife with a seven-inch blade and a five-inch handle. Wow. The knives themselves had only been on the market for roughly five years. Okay. But the sheaths were new this year and had only been on the market for about 10 months. So it was that. Okay. Unfortunately for investigators, the SOG SEAL 2000 was a very popular knife with weapons collectors. So tracking down the seller of that particular knife would not be easy. But it was at least a start. Something.

Yeah, you got to go on something.

And before closing out the report, the analyst did note one other thing. Although it might have resembled a hunting knife to an untrained eye, the SEAL 2000, quote, Could only be considered a hunting knife if the intended prey were human, which is the most chilling statement I've ever- I'm sorry, say that again. It could only be considered hunting knife if the intended prey were human.

Says who?

The analyst. What?

Yeah. So what is it used for otherwise?

That's what he said. It looks like a hunting knife. You would hunt deer and whatever the fuck else people hunt. Yeah. Not used for that. No. He was like, The only way that this is a hunting knife is if you're trying to hunt humans.

What the fuck? Yeah.

Which is the most chilling statement.

I hate that so much. Yeah.

While one set of investigators began the slow and very tedious work of tracking the knife to some origin point, another group started looking into the backgrounds of the victims. Since it didn't look like this was a robbery as a motive, and the murders had been so up-close and so fucking brutal, it was fair to assume the Xantops had been killed for some personal reason. It didn't make sense otherwise. In fact, on the night of the murders, Audrey McCollum remembered a recent conversation with Hoff in which he had mentioned something about a bad interaction with a student, and she wondered if that might be related to their deaths. Okay.

Good for her to remember that in all her to think that clearly. Exactly.

Now, according to McCollum, the Xan Tops had a reputation for reaching out to their students if they thought they were struggling academically or emotionally.

Which is kind.

Which is so fucking kind. A few weeks later, Hoff had described a student in one of his classes that Audrey, who is a A former mental health professional, to her, it sounded like the young man was struggling with bipolar or some other psychiatric disorder. Okay. He needed help. Okay. She said, I think there may have been a troubled student, and Hoff may have underestimated how troubled he was. Oh. Mccollum's suspicion took an additional significance when later that evening, Hanover police learned that Dartmouth campus police had received reports from residents of one of the dorms regarding a strange young who showed up at their door asking to use the phone just a few hours after the Xantop's estimated time of death.

Oh, that feels connected.

During one interaction, the man reportedly asked residents if they had heard any police sirens before wandering off into the dark woods behind the dorma territory.

I'm sorry, what?

Yeah.

The fuck?

Now, aside from the vague reports of this strange fuck on campus.

Sorry, imagine having that experience in college. No. Somebody knocks on your door and is like, Hey, can I use your phone? Did you hear any police sirens?

And then it's just like, peace. I'm going to go to the woods now.

Like, the fuck? Like, what the? I would cry. I'd huddle in the corner and cry and not stop.

I'd be like, police, you need to surround the building. Fbi, everybody.

Aliens come defend us. How do you go to sleep that night? Everybody.

Now, aside from these crazy, vague reports of this weirdo on campus, there were no other unusual reports made that day or night, and no one close to the couple, including their two adult children, could think of any reason why someone would want to hurt them, let alone kill them.

Oh, that breaks your heart. But you get to have your parents for that long, and that's how they- This is how it happens.

Leave. That's terrible. In their own home. Yeah, that's so fucked. As far as their colleagues at Dartmouth were concerned, Hoff and Susanna Zantop were among the most respected and beloved faculty on the entire campus.

That makes sense because, again, you look at pictures of them and you're like, they have such a welcoming energy. They do. Even via photo.

Yeah, their vibes are correct.

I can't imagine. I feel like walking into their classroom, you'd be like, Oh, this is going to be a really good class. Yeah.

Co-worker Susanna Hatchell told reporters, The first reason I wouldn't want to leave Dartmouth is that I wouldn't want to leave Susanna Zantop. Oh. Like, come on. Wow.

Yeah, that's huge.

Now, the murder of two well-loved professors wasn't the only thing on everyone's mind. That was also the matter of their killer. But this is a horrible situation. Who the fuck did this? Yeah.

And is this random? Is this pointed? What is this?

Now, situated along the border of Vermont in an area of New Hampshire known as the Upper Valley, Hanover is a small town populated mostly by Dartmouth faculty, staff, and students.

And like you said, it's a small town. You said like, 900 people.

Yeah. Now, this is... So Hanover is the... So that was Etna. That was- Oh, I see. This is Hanover. Okay. Where like, Dartmouth faculty staff and students are.

You said, Honey, I have another small town.

I said, I have another small town. It has a little over It's not small by definition, I would say it has a small town feel. Vibe. Because it has a little over 10,000 residents. It's one of the biggest towns in the region, in fact, but it does have that like- Homey. All encompassing Dartmouth people live here. Yeah.

Like college town vibes.

Yeah. And because of the small town nature of the area, it seemed like the Xantops knew their killers. And if that were the case, it seemed equally likely the killers were still in the area. One student told the press the fact that it's two professors suggested someone closer to home.

Yeah.

So the prospect of a killer just walking around made everyone in and around Dartmouth pretty fucking uneasy.

I'd imagine.

Yeah. So Dartmouth's President James Wright told reporters, At the bottom line, we've lost two people whom we love and respect. A community such as ours has to find a way to grieve, and I think it's hard for us to do this under the circumstances because they can't. They can't properly grieve because they're also fucking terrified.

Terrified. That's such a mix of emotions. Yeah.

And the fears and frustrations of this whole thing weren't just felt by people who worked with Hoff and Susanna. They also extended to the thousands of students who lived in or around the campus. Yeah. One Dartmouth junior said, People are just scared. There's a lot of confusion about who, why, what. The confusion and frustration felt by everyone in Hanover and Aetna were due, at least in part, to the silence and very slow flow of information coming from the state and local police working the case as well. From the moment the news of the murders broke, officials on the case seemed pretty fucking hesitant to share much of anything with the local and regional press, and especially not residents of the town.

Which is frustrating, but also likely a good thing. Yeah.

State attorney general, Philip McGloughlin, told reporters in the early days of the investigation, What you're going to find from me is a real reticence to discuss the details of this case.

I mean, sometimes Sometimes you have to respect that. Sometimes it works. I remember thinking, you touched on it earlier, the Addohoe murders. I remember thinking, they're not saying anything. Why are they not giving any information? I remember being frustrated. It worked out. But it does have a way of working out. It's hard, but you just have to believe in the local law enforcement that they're going to do what they need to do.

Sometimes it's for the best, and sometimes it gets them where they need to go. Because especially in the age of the Internet and social media, it can fuck up an investigation like that. Stat. So easy. I mean, look at how it all shaken out. With the Idaho investigation, those poor roommates got- Oh, they got villainized immediately. And retraumatized in a hundred different ways by people on social media saying that they were the killers. Right.

Exactly. Or that they knew something.

Social media has really... It can do great things.

But it's a detriment at the same time.

But it's more of a detriment at this point. So they, Especially now, investigators have to be careful what they share because it will get fucked up on the interwebs. It's just the way it is. Back here in the early days of everything, they were still doing that just to make sure that town gossip didn't fuck up because it's like a real life social media.

It's just gossip.

Now, according to McAfflin, the silence from investigators in the AG's office was exclusively for the purpose of maintaining the integrity of the investigation.

We were just saying.

But obviously, That didn't make it reporters or anyone else feel any safer. No.

I mean, you're a reporter. You want to report all the goings-ons.

Now, while the State Attorney General's office did its best to dodge questions about the investigation, and trooper Chuck West worked to track down the seller of the murder weapons, the remaining detectives started digging deeper into Hoff and Susanna's backgrounds. As far as they could tell, both were teachers of the utmost integrity, and it seemed that whatever had motivated someone to kill them, it didn't have anything to do with work at Dartmouth. Okay. With professional problems ruled out, that left only their personal lives. Yeah. After all, when it comes to murder, there really aren't that many reasons that someone's going to go so far to kill someone, especially that brutally. Right. And detectives had already ruled out the biggest. Now, Hoff and Susanne Zantop were born in Germany at the end of World War II, and their early lives were pretty ordinary, actually. Hoff's brother, Wolf, recalled his brother as, A normal young man, not the fastest, not the smartest, but he would work harder. In 1960, Hoff earned a degree in geology in Germany, then traveled to the US, where he earned a PhD in Geology from Stanford University. Okay, Hof. In 1965. Work harder, he said.

I got that. Seriously.

It was during that period of his life that he met Susanna, who was also studying at Stanford. Susanna graduated with her master's degree in political science in Okay, girl. And that's when Hoff took a job with a mining company, and the couple relocated to South America, actually. Oh, wow. Five years later, they were married, very much to the delight of their respective families who thought they, quote, made a beautiful couple.

They did. They did. Can confirm.

They really did. A few years after their marriage, they had their first child, a daughter they named Veronica. It's Veronica with a K.

I love that. I think Veronica is such a cool girl name. Yeah.

A second daughter, Mariana, followed two years later.

Two days later.

It was crazy. By the mid 1970s, Hoff had grown tired of working in the corporate world and hoped that a career in academia would not only allow him to pursue his passion for research. He loved research, but also he wanted to spend more time with his wife and daughters. He was hoping that that would allow him to do that.

We fucking love a girl dad. We love a girl dad. Girl dad. Like, all dads are special. For sure. Most of them.

But girl dads. I'm married to a girl dad, so I just have a special place for girl dad.

I hope Drew becomes a girl dad, but I'll take any kid.

Yeah, a good dad.

Yeah, just a good dad.

Now, in 1976, Hoff accepted a position in the Earth sciences Department at Dartmouth College, where he would spend the next 25 years. Throughout this period, Susanna focused most of her attention on raising her two daughters. Eventually, once the girls required a little less of her time, they got a little older. Susanna began taking graduate courses in comparative literature at Harvard. Oh, okay. Earning her PhD in 1984.

So she has her master's from Stanford University, and she has her fucking PhD from Harvard University.

All while being a mama.

Wow. Yeah. Women. Yeah. Women.

Susanna.

Susanna.

It kills me how fucking awesome these people were. Like, it kills me.

It's It's truly the case.

Yeah. It's just like, why.

It's just like, why? Why? Fuckwad takes them out. Oh, yeah. I just have a feeling. Yeah.

So the degree opened a lot of new professional doors for Susanna. Definitely. And a short time later, she joined the faculty at Dartmouth as a professor of German and comparative literature. Cool. She quickly became one of the most invaluable members of Darmoth's faculty. And like her husband, she was among the most popular professors on campus by students. That's so cool. A fellow lit professor, Bruce Duncan, said she was an important mentor to many students, particularly women.

Yeah, she just has that vibe.

More than just mentors, the Xantops became known around campus as some of the most supportive faculty at the school as well. Audrey McCollum recalled later, they would offer shelter for troubled people for various different kinds of reasons on a temporary basis. Wow. Welcome them into their fucking home.

Oh, This makes me so nervous.

But their kindness and compassion wasn't just limited to students. Hoff and Susanna seemed to collect friends literally everywhere they went. Everyone wanted to be a part of them. They were just those people. Within a few years, their home became a regular gathering place for dinner parties, celebrations, social gatherings. That house was fucking lively, happy, and full of love.

It translates through the You could feel it.

It kills me that these demons turned it into something so different. It's like, how fucking dare you infiltrate these people in their lives?

Jealousy.

To nearly Everyone who knew them, Hoff and Susanna were an ideal couple, a genuine partnership that literally operated on mutual respect and shared responsibility and love. That's it. But of course, they were just a natural fit, it seemed to everybody. But there were some times when people were like, they didn't seem like a natural fit just because they could be a little different. But I think that makes them more of a natural fit, to be honest.

I think, we've said it before, opposites attract. Even if they're not fully opposite, they have their differences.

There's things that complement each other. Like, Hoff was methodical, detail-oriented, a little rigid in his personality sometimes. Susanna, on the other hand, was more energetic, outgoing, very in her work and her home life. One friend said, What they had in common was their endless generosity, the openness of their home, their commitment to social justice, and the high standards they set for themselves. Hell, yeah. The couple's close friend, Maryanne Hirsch, viewed their differences as, like we just said, more complementary than anything else. She said, Their mutual devotion was based on the respect they held for each other's way of being. Nice. That part I love, the respect they had for each other's way of being. They didn't try to change each other. No. They just respected who the other person was, and it worked.

That's love. Yeah, that's top-tier relationship shit.

That's real love. So despite the seemingly endless string of absolutely glowing reviews and character profiles of the couple, detectives on the case couldn't help but notice that everyone seemed to point out, like we just said, how different they were from each other.

Okay.

I think that's the only thing anybody could point out. After two weeks of very little progress and no new leads, they began to wonder, were those differences a strength in the relationship, like so many were suggesting, or maybe were they a source of tension? They just had to consider all these things. Okay. Captain nick Giacone said, They had so many contacts here in Hanover and literally around the world. He said, In a thorough investigation, we have to look basically at their entire lives. Yeah. With all their contacts and new friends being made all the time, investigators had to wonder, had one of those new friends managed to penetrate the unbreakable bond between them, perhaps? I see where they're headed. They're trying to go down some path.

When there's no path, you got to go down some. You got to forge one.

Now, given the brutality of the crimes and the fact that little, if anything had been taken from the house, investigators started to think, Okay, so we're thinking this might be personal. Maybe it's a crime of passion. Also, they further theorized that because the weapon that was used was heavy and they didn't think a woman would have used it, the killer was likely a man. Okay.

They're starting to think she's having some affair, basically.

Which also I'm like, a woman can carry heavy things. But like, okay.

Sure. Very 2001 of you.

I guess we have to go somewhere here. Now, whether or not investigators intended to imply anything about the way the case was taking shape. Their comments to the press about looking into the Xantop's personal lives and about the murders being a crime of passion.

People are going to run with that.

They were interpreted by at least some journalists exactly how you did, meaning related to infidelity.

I mean, that's pretty heavy-handed.

Yeah, it definitely is. A reporter for the Boston Globe wrote, Hey, maybe. Detectives declined to describe or identify in any way the woman they believe had an affair with Hoff on top or the relationship between the woman and the presumed killer. I think they're basically saying like, yeah.

They think at this point, at least, they thought Hoff was having an affair and that some woman hired somebody to do this?

I think maybe I don't think they know what they're doing here, to be honest. It sounds very messy and it sounds very counterintuitive, to be quite honest. Yeah. Vague language, nonwithstanding here. It's clear that certain members of the press were under the impression that the working theory, like you said, was that Hoff was having an affair with a woman, and the murders were retribution for that affair.

Okay. That's really shitty. Yeah.

To put that out there.

To put that out there. And remember, there's two grieving daughters. There's tons and tons of grieving friends. And you're just making shit up. And it's like, you don't know them.

And that's the thing. And these people do. I understand that they need to work with some theories and see how they pan out.

Keep that close to the chest.

I was going to say, you're keeping everything else quiet. Shut the fuck up about that? What are you doing putting that out there? Because once it's out there, it's out there.

You can't take that back. And you're not going to change certain people's minds either. Yeah.

And you have these two daughters, and they're sitting there having to probably defend against this. And it's like, that's the last thing they need to do.

With everything else they have going on.

Now, in the months and years that followed, the question of an extramarital affair would become a subject of considerable controversy with regard to the murder of the Xantops. The day the article was published, the editors of the paper received multiple calls from investigators and the New Hampshire attorney general, all questioning the source of the information and the reliability of the anonymous source quoted in the paper. In fact, just one week later, the globe would publish a follow-up editorial justifying the original article. Yeah. Editor Matthew Storin wrote, Last Friday, the globe published a front-page story that said investigators were focusing on an extramarital affair involving Hoff-Santop as a likely motive. It continued, It was and still is our intent to provide readers with the most complete and accurate account possible of the ongoing Zantop murder investigation. To do so, we put our trust in three law enforcement officials who we have every reason to believe had intimate, up-to-date knowledge of the investigation. It was certainly never our intent to increase the suffering of the Zantop family. You did, though. Yeah. They're friends or the Dartmouth College community, and we express regret for the pain our story undoubtedly caused them.

I'm glad they did that. I'm glad and surprised. I don't know. Maybe think.

Yeah.

Maybe think. We've all made mistakes. We've all done shit like that. For sure. And I'm very glad that they did that. Because a lot of- That they came out and said, We should not have said that. A lot of papers No, they wouldn't.

Wouldn't do that. They'd be like, Well, it's our journalistic integrity, so we're not going to go against it.

Yeah, exactly. Now, setting aside the fact that Storin's note never explicitly apologizes for publishing what was ultimately determined to be false and potentially slanderous information. I had a feeling. It was false. I had a feeling. Of course it was, which I know you knew that whole time because I made it pretty clear. Yeah. But it's pretty problematic because just one day after the article was published, law enforcement officials announced the identity of their primary suspect.

Oh.

And he was far from the enraged, jealous husband the press had described. Okay. So it's like, not only did you publish something without verifying that information, because it's like, yeah, I know you said that you feel like you could trust this person and that they had intimate knowledge. That's a pretty big thing to throw out there. Yeah.

You got to be sure. And especially when obviously they had a completely different suspect.

That's the thing it's like and now you have it on your face. Yeah. It's like now it looks real Now you don't look great.

Yeah. Maybe don't use that source again. Yeah.

Don't be using that source. And it's not good. So a lot of people thought that maybe the confusion over the investigation on the part of the press came from the silence from the investigator. Writers. But in defense of that silence, attorney general Philip McGloughlin told a reporter, We've chosen to take this route in response to mistakes other agencies have made that became a detriment. They were seeing what was happening in other cases, and they were trying to make adjustments to make sure they did not make the same mistakes, which is good. Ironically, the silence they had hoped would protect the integrity of the case led to more confusion. That wasn't on them. In the generation of countless false leads and useless tips from the public, all of Which we're just wasting a significant amount of time. Right. Well, a certain amount of transparency would have gone a long way with the public at this point, just a little bit. But the thing is, there really wasn't a lot to tell. At this point, within a week or two of the murders, the hunt for the owner of the SOG knives had produced a suspect. So they were, again, a week or two since the murders have happened, they already have a suspect.

Those two weeks, they couldn't give anything because it's like they're in the thick of Clearly, they were gathering a lot and really working. If they had released any of that, it could have shot that right off track. It's like they worked quick and they worked hard.

They were doing the day. It panned out.

So investigators clearly did spend considerable time digging into the victim's backgrounds, hoping to find the killer's name there. But in the end, it was the evidence that led them to solve this case. It wasn't the background. Okay. On the afternoon of February 15th, roughly two weeks into the search for the seller of SoG Knives, Detective's Chuck West finally got the break he was looking. He found a seller in Vermont who identified the knives as coming from his store.

I had a feeling that was where it was going to come from, just because there were so few sold at this point. They were very recently starting to sell. Yeah.

A few hours after West got confirmation, he received a call from the Sheriff's office in Chelsea, Vermont, a small town just across the border from Hanover, and the information he had was a fucking bombshell. According to Captain Arnold Covey, the suspect New Hampshire investigators had been hunting for nearly a month, was an irate husband or a murderous home invader, but a teenage boy.

A teenager?

A teenage boy.

So a student?

A teenage boy. Covey added that as far as he knew, 16-year-old. What? Jim Parker. Yeah, 16 years old.

They're college professors, aren't they? Yeah. So what?

Hello? He wasn't one of the local troublemakers, and in fact, had never been in trouble with the law or at school. He was never in trouble. So he seemed an unlikely suspect at first. Yeah. But the knife belonged to Parker. Okay. So Chuck West got in his car and headed out to Chelsea to speak with the boy and his parents because he's a fucking child. When Sheriff State Troopers, Robert Bruno and Russ Hubbard showed up at the Parker house that afternoon, John Parker was surprised, to say the least. He said, Jim had never been in any trouble before. So it came as a shock to his parents when they heard the troopers were there to talk about a double homicide in New Hampshire.

That would be shocking.

Parker invited them into his kitchen, John, who is obviously his father, and Jim was sitting at the table, but he hadn't yet been introduced. And Robert Bruno immediately suspected the boy at the table was their suspect without even being introduced.

Just like with the body language or something, like the vibe in the room.

Well, he said not only did he seem particularly interested in their presence, but he also could barely contain his anxiety as soon as he saw the trooper.

Huh.

Later, Bruno would remember the way the veins in Jim's neck pulsed violently. What? Reminding him of the movie Alien, he said. It was that pronounced. Wow. According to Jim, he and his best friend, Robert Tullock, had purchased the knives online and had intended to use them for camping and to build a fort, but they were too large and too uncomfortable to carry. Jim claimed that one day in early January, the two drove out to Burlington, where they planned to sell the knives at the Army Navy store. But a customer outside the store offered them more money than the store would, so they sold them to an anonymous buyer. Doubt it. As for the Zantop murder in Etna, Jim told the troopers he hadn't heard about it. Which I'm like, no. Which it's also like, I was there for that, man. You heard about it.

I live in Massachusetts, and I knew about it.

So the more Bruno and Hubbard went over the story with Jim and his father, they began to notice small inconsistencies and changes in the details. Still, both men found it nearly impossible to believe that a fucking teenager could have caused the amount There was absolute fucking chaos and havoc in the Zantop house. At most, they thought Jim could have been responsible for supplying the murder weapon. But that was about where it began and ended. Before leaving, the troopers asked if Jim would consent to being fingerprinted to compare his prints with the ones found at the scene, and he agreed he would go to the station, and they all drove to the Sheriff Department. Okay. At the Sheriff's Department, Jim made his formal statement in writing, adding more details about the supposed buyer than he'd given the troopers earlier. Buyer now. So all of a sudden that anonymous buyer is becoming more and more detailed. Yeah. He also appeared to minimize his relationship with Robert Tullick, implying he was more of a casual acquaintance. Oh, okay. In the interview room- Casual acquaintance that you're going to go fucking fort making with. Yeah, no big deal. For sure.

In the interview room, Chuck West didn't waste any time confronting him about what he felt was a false statement about the knife. The thing was, like Bruno and Hubbert, West couldn't imagine that a 16-year-old was the killer. So he focused in on the supposed buyer of the knife, thinking that maybe Jim was covering for someone else. Eventually, West got around to asking Jim if he had an alibi for the day of the murder, and he claimed that he worked until the afternoon. Then Robert Tullet went to the movies. That was his alibi.

You got your ticket stubs?

While West questioned Jim Parker at the Sheriff's office, Bruno and Hubbard went to the Tullet house, where they were invited inside by Robert's mother and father, Diane and Mike. Like John Parker, Diane and Mike Tullet were very surprised to find their son was somehow connected to a murder investigation. But the story about the knife sounded to Diane like, Another one of Jim and Robert's stupid things.

Okay.

A few months earlier, Robert had asked his mother to use her credit card to buy a pair of shoes, and she was furious to find that instead of shoes, he'd purchased two Stuntmasters' stun guns from an online store.

What?

I'm sorry. Why is your child buying weapons?

What?

Why is your child buying stun guns? And that's not concerning.

She wasn't concerned?

I'd be pretty concerned.

Yeah.

When the troopers sat down with Robert, they were surprised by how different he was from his His friend. Counterpart. Or casual acquaintance, as Jim was saying. Sure. Only one year older than Jim Parker, Robert Tullet was far more articulate, considerate, and showed none of the signs of anxiety that Bruno had noticed in Jim Parker.

Okay.

Robert recounted the story about buying the knives online, finding them cumbersome, but he was much hazier when it came to the details. According to Robert, Jim was the one who handled that knife sale to the guy outside of the Army Navy store, so he couldn't really remember about him because he was like, I didn't really handle that part. Convenient. He was also uncertain about the dates and times of the sale. Also convenient. While they were talking, Bruno noticed that Robert had a bandage on his leg and asked the boy about it.

My jaw just opened, by the way.

Robert told the troopers he and Jim were rock climbers, and he cut his leg a few weeks earlier on a maple tree.

Rock climbing acquaintances, that is.

Yeah, just casual. This was the story he'd told just about anyone else who'd asked about it, so he figured it would be easily corroborated If the troopers wanted to check his story, obviously. Robert's story more or less matched what they had been told by Jim Parker, so the troopers saw no reason to disbelief him. Okay. Before leaving, they asked if he would be willing to go to the Sheriff's office to have his fingerprints taken, and he said, Sure. Okay. They also wanted to take a look at Robert's footwear he had in the house because remember. Boots. Yeah. Boots. The boy went upstairs to his bedroom and came back with a pair of Nike sneakers and a pair of Vask hiking boots. The same style, brand and size as the bloody footprint discovered at the crime scene.

I'm like, Meanwhile, why aren't you shitting yourself right now? Yeah.

The troopers asked whether they could take the boots with them, and Robert agreed with the stipulation that he would eventually get them back. Maybe the confidence here.

Yeah.

Despite the evidence pointing towards Jim and Robert as the most likely suspects, investigators still could not get themselves to believe that two fucking teenagers had savagely murdered the Xantops. Not only that, and for why?

Well, that's the biggest question in my mind. The other question is, how the fuck are they even connected? Yeah.

At most, they thought the boys could lead them to the real killer. Like, maybe they were covering for someone. After getting their fingerprints and taking their formal statements, they were both allowed to leave with their parents. That night, after their parents went to bed, Robert and Jim each grabbed a backpack and began filling it with whatever they thought would be useful. Stop. Fishing gear, pens and pencils, a compass, and clothing. They had already talked about what they would do if the police started focusing in on them and the time had come for them to go on the run. Stop. What? Before leaving the house to meet Robert, Jim tore a piece of paper from a notebook and scrawled a note to his parents that said, I just had to talk to Robert alone. I will be back in the morning. Doubt it. Don't call cops. If the evidence had already pointed towards Robert Tullock and Jim Parker before, the fact that they had gone on the motherfucking run, they'd gone on the yam. The yam. Would certainly make investigators think twice about their innocence now.

And their parents, too.

But that wasn't the only problem. In his hast to pack a bag and get out of the house, Robert had forgotten to get the knives from their fucking hiding place in the house. If detectives found those- So we have the knives?

Yeah.

If detectives found those, it would completely destroy their alibi and conclusively link them to the murders of Hoff and Susanna Handoff. Now, when John Parker Jim Parker's father, woke to find his son gone, he immediately went to the phone and called the police. Good. And by 11: 00 AM, a manhunt was underway. In their initial statement to the press, investigators were very careful about how they frame the story, conscious of how things had been misinterpreted in the past. Yet they were clear that Robert Tullet was being sought on two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the killings. By the next day, investigators had matched both of their fingerprints to those found in the Zantop house, and had also matched Robert Tullet's hiking boots to the footprint left behind at the scene. As far as the detectives were concerned, there was no question about it. Hoff and Susanna hit Zantop were murdered by two teenagers. What the hell? To everyone who knew them, the news was fucking shocking, if not impossible to believe. One friend told a reporter, Dartmouth to Chelsea doesn't seem like a long ways. Jimmy Parker was the class clown of the school.

Another person said everyone loved him. Wow. Like investigators just days earlier said, everyone in Chelsea found it impossible to believe that these two smart, likable young men would have been capable of a brutal murder, much less two brutal muters and a savage home invasion. When it came to public belief and acceptance, investigators didn't do themselves any favors because they were silent on critical elements of the case, and it hindered the public's ability to help locate the suspects because they weren't really giving anything. Regardless of the silence, Robert and Jim's attempt to avoid responsibility for what they did finally came to an end three days later.

I'm surprised they made it that far.

Yeah, at an Indiana truck stop. Wow. Yeah, they got far. They did. When a call from the pair was intercepted on a CB radio channel looking for a ride. Shut the fuck up. According to the press, when they were picked up by police in Indiana, the boys were, quote, so weary and rattled that one gave his birth date as May 40th. What? He was so tired.

What?

To Robert Tullock, the game seemed to have reached its end. After being arrested, he waived his extradition rights and was immediately transported back to New Hampshire, where he was arrained on two counts of first-degree murder. Jim Parker, though, attempted to stall his extradition. John Parker said of his son, he's scared to death of the legal system. He's scared to death of things most 16-year-olds in their wildest imaginations can't even fathom. But despite his efforts to stall, he was extradited Dried it back to New Hampshire a few days later.

It doesn't sound like he was scared to stab the life out of somebody. No, he certainly wasn't. He really don't care about scared.

And he was arraigned on first-degree murder charges as well. Although it might be difficult to imagine it now, in 2001, a Again, like I was saying, it was a different time. The American public still struggled with accepting the belief that teenagers could be capable of something so fucking cruel and brutal like this murder. However, after a thorough search of the Tullick home turned up a wealth of new information, a clearer picture of Robert Tullick was emerging, and what it suggested was that he had a personality that was a lot darker than anyone knew.

Okay.

In an interview with the prosecutor's office, Jim Parker described he and his friend as, quote, explorers, but they decided on a life of crime after concluding that every place had been explored. I want you to really let that marinate. What? Really let that one sit.

You're not an explorer if you think every place has been explored.

Everything's been explored, so I think we should just murder people. That's the thought process. There is nothing more to that thought process.

You know what? It is that to that.

A straight line from we should explore places to we should brutally murder people.

The frontal lobe is so important. The frontal lobe is so important.

Vital, one might say.

We got to figure out how to make it grow faster. We got to figure it out.

Or we got to keep people in boxes until it fucking develops.

Yeah.

Because what the fuck is that?

I mean, I think that's the whole idea of living with your parents for as long as you do.

Yeah. Stay in that box.

Damn.

In his statement, Parker explained how Robert had developed a hatred for the United States, among other things. And the pair concocted a convoluted and very childish plan to rob enough people to get however much money they needed to leave the country and travel to Australia.

This is so juvenile.

It also reminds me of what's his name's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I'm moving to Australia.

Alexander.

Alexander's no good, very bad day. It's like, I'm mad at everything, so I'm going to Australia. What?

Yeah, that's They say it's such a juvenile thought process. It is. But also absolutely diabolical at the same time.

Because it's like, Australia is going to eat your ass alive.

Are you kidding me? Yeah, that's where they send convicts because they couldn't send them anywhere else.

Have you met Australia? Have you met Australians? They're not going to put up with your bullshit. No way.

No way.

I know my Australian listeners. You said, fuck that.

They would have given it in the boot.

You don't want your dumbasses.

Right out of there.

Idiots.

I can't believe I don't like it here anymore. So we're going to rob my way to Australia. Yeah. And the fact that two people were like, Yep, sounds good.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's shake on it.

So Parker said, We assumed it would be a couple, and somebody might have to go somewhere else and grab the other person and bring them into the same room. And if there were kids, we would have to do the same thing.

That's nice.

So they were just going to terrorize a whole family. Just terrorize an entire family. Cool. Awesome. That's what they figured. That's what they were figuring. Good. According to the indictment, Robert and Jim had spent nearly six months talking about killing, and on at least four occasions prior to January, 2001, they stopped at random houses, quote, intending to steal bank cards and leave the occupants dead. So they were planning this for a long time. Wow. According to the indictment as well, one of those houses was that of Bob and Audrey McCollum. Oh, wow. The next door neighbors. It was the last of those attempts on January 27th, 2001, that they found the Zantop house where they murdered the two beloved professors. In the previous attempts, the boys were always denied entry when they knocked on the door. It was only because Hoff and Susanne Zantop were so fucking generous and so kind and compassionate That they were willing to allow the two into the house in the first place. They allowed them into their home.

Just because of who they were and who their hearts were. Wow.

When Jim Parker was informed that the attorney general intended to try him as a motherfucking adult for what he had done because that's some adult shit that you did.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Which also would make him eligible for the death penalty, which, oh, your dad said you were so scared of the legal system. Are you scared of being murdered by the legal system.

Like I said, you're not scared to take the life of two people.

Play stupid games. Yeah, exactly. Win stupid prizes, my friend. So, of course, he made a deal in which he pled guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for his testifying against his friend, Robert Tolleck.

Wow. It always happens in the end.

Tough guy.

Always happens in the end.

According to Parker, the murders and thefts were Robert's idea. On the day of the Xantop murders, the boys knocked on their door, pretending to be student researchers working on a project. Oh, wow.

So they even played on their- Prayed on their-up on what they would help.

As a professor, the roos definitely appealed to Hoff Xantop, and he invited them into his home. However, when Xantop criticized the two, according to them, quote, unquote, for being unprepared for research, Tullik became irrationally angry. So I'm like, wait a second. So did you knock on door to murder them and rob them? Or did you knock on their door to be actual researchers? Because why would you get irrationally angry- Make that make sense. At that when you intended to murder them anyway?

Because he clearly has some problem.

When Hoff turned his back to retrieve something from his desk, Tullik pulled out his SOG knife and began brutally stabbing Hoff in the chest, stomach, and face. Wow. During the attack, the knife slipped, and Robert ended up cutting his own leg as well.

I hope it hurts so fucking badly.

Leaving blood on the carpet outside the study. And when she heard the commotion, Susanna ran to see what was happening, which was when Tullet shouted to Parker to, quote, slit her throat.

Oh, my God.

After killing the Xantops, Robert and Jim ransacked the office, ultimately stealing a few hundred dollars from Hoff's it before leaving.

And then they just went home.

It was only later when they were miles away from the scene that Robert realized that they had left the fucking knife sheaths behind at the house. You fucking idiot. They're so fucking stupid. They then drove back to retrieve them. But by the time they arrived at the house, the police were already at the scene. Are you kidding me? So they showed back up. Are you fucking kidding me? So they just went home. Yeah. Along the way, they stopped by a river to wash the blood off their bodies and burn some of their clothes.

It is maddening how just like, trivial that their entire plan is. Yeah.

Yeah. It It really is. It's infuriating.

Yeah, I'm so angry right now that these two beloved professors who gave their hearts to their students, sheltered people in their home, traveled the world together, had two beautiful... These fucking incredible people were taken off of this Earth by two nimwits.

Two bumbling fuckheads.

Road bums.

Road bums.

Because that actually genuinely, that makes me... And I I can't imagine.

They just knocked on their door.

I can't imagine how their daughters and their friends felt when they found out that it was... No matter who it was. The anger. But these two fucking 16-year-old peons.

The anger that I can't imagine. I'm angry right now. I'm angry. And these aren't my parents or my friends.

Because you want to go to Australia because this world, this fucking nation is not enough for you.

Because you had a no good, very bad day. You fucking loser.

You've seen nothing yet. You're 16, babe. No, you're You don't even pay bills, shithead.

What an asshole. Like, true assholes.

I need to know what happens to them. I'm so pissed right now.

Now, along with irrefutable evidence, Parker's confession all but ruled out the possibility of an acquittal for Robert Tullick. Good. In March 2002, he pled guilty to first-degree murder. The next month, both of them appeared in Grafton County Superior Court for sentencing, where Tullick was sentenced to a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. Good. Parker was sentenced to 25 years to life with a minimum of 16 years before becoming eligible for parole.

Steepid.

Robert Tullick sat completely emotionless when the sentences were read by the judge, but Parker cried. Well, well, well. Openly wept.

You literally murdered a woman. I don't want to hear it. If I was the judge, I'd be like, bang, bang. Get it together. Yeah. Shut up.

No one wants to see your tears. You made this choice. When he was asked if there was anything he wanted to say on his behalf, Parker said, There's not much I can say. I'm just really sorry.

There's not much you can say? Good. Spend the next 25 years to life figuring out what to say.

When they asked Robert Tullick the same thing, he said nothing.

What a piece of shit.

Now, despite Being held in the same prison, Jim and Robert rarely interacted with one another in the prison. I bet. On April 18th, 2024, after serving 22 years of his sentence in the New Hampshire State Prison for Men, Jim Parker was granted parole and was released in June of that year.

Wow.

But he is required to have regular meetings with a representative from the parole office until 2098.

Good.

In 2012, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Miller versus Alabama that mandatory life sentences for crimes committed by juvenile offenders were unconstitutional, requiring states to review all rulings of juvenile sentence to life in prison. A few years later, in 2014, the New Hampshire Attorney General's office announced that Tullock's case would be among those under review for potential resentencing.

I don't think this one applies.

This did not necessarily require all offenders to be resentenced. It just required states to consider the evidence and make a convincing argument if they wanted to uphold the life sentence without parole. Tullock's case was argued back and forth for several years until April of 2025, this year, when the state's supreme court unanimously declined to hear the case. Chin-chin. Effectively upholding the sentence of life without parole. Yeah.

This murder was fully planned out. Fully. Like, executed. These two people lost their lives because this motherfucker had a very terrible, no good day and wanted to go to Australia. Good. I hope you're having a very terrible, no good day and you long for Australia every day that you open your eyes in prison. Yeah, truly.

You piece of shit. Because as of now, there's little to no chance Robert Tollec will ever be released from prison.

He doesn't deserve to be.

No, he doesn't.

And honestly, I don't think the other kid did either. No. That's bullshit.

It is such a brutal case.

The only thing I can say is that I hope where what's his name? Jim Parker, where he wasn't the ring leader. And obviously he's a fucking follower. You hope that he figured out his shit in prison and plans to do better now that he's on parole.

He's there for 22 years, I think. I hope he got it together.

With the front the lobe development, he learned how to lead and lead to do something good in life. Yeah.

But fuck.

Wow. I had no idea how that was going to end. No matter what, it would have been absolutely horrible. But the fact that it's two 16-year-olds who were just fucking whiny, grumpy little bitches and couldn't handle life here because it's so fucking terrible. I'm like, it wasn't terrible then. It's pretty shitty now.

What do you think now?

But it's also like, you're pretty fucking privileged. You both live at home with your parents. Yeah.

It killed me.

That's infuriating. I feel so hard for Susanna and for Hoff and for their kids. I can't imagine having to come to terms with your parents ever being murdered, but to be murdered by two 16-year-olds who prey on their kindness. And their love of knowledge and academia.

Just willingly welcoming these two into their home.

I am genuinely actually so pissed off right now. But that's the way that ended. I never expected that.

I was, too. I was really pissed. Wow. Yeah. And there's videos from the trial where one of them is describing the whole series of events, and it's just like, you can't believe that this is a fucking teenager.

And they're just so disconnected from it.

It's wild. And Jim Parker clearly was just immature. Yeah. And not just immature, but you know what I mean? I know what you're saying. He has a very immature vibe about him, and he at least has emotions about it, which...

Showed some remorse. …

By no means makes any of it okay. And Where a Tullet, I think, just needs to be in jail forever. Wow. It's just so it's so upsetting. I remember watching it unfold and being horrified by it.

You also feel for their parents, too, because it's like, they were shocked.

They were shocked. Totally side.

Talk about the rug being ripped out from underneath you.

Totally side swiped by it. I mean, they didn't get in trouble in school. They were in trouble with the law. It's not like that's why their fingerprints didn't come up. Right.

And they were So beloved in the community, it sounds like.

He was a class clown.

Yeah, Jim Parker.

Jim Parker was a class clown. The fuck? That's crazy. It shows you, though.

It's like- Anybody.

It's so easy for someone to become a very dangerous follower of a very dangerous person.

You just can't trust people.

You got to really keep hold of your own convictions and not let other people sway it.

Wow.

Because it's so sad.

It really is. That is a moving case. All cases are so moving, but that is a particularly moving case. Yeah. Wow. I'm so angry right now.

Yeah, same.

But with all that being said, we hope you keep listening, and we hope you keep it weird. You know not to keep it this weird. Yeah. And if you don't, then just go away. Yeah, truly. Not to Australia. They don't want you. They don't want you.