Sunday February 18 12:59 PM ET
Car Found in Professor Deaths
STURBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - A car that was driven by two teen-agers wanted in connection with the slayings of two Dartmouth College professors was found Sunday at a truck stop.
The silver 1987 Audi with Vermont license plates was spotted by a state trooper making a routine patrol through a rear parking lot at the Sturbridge Isles truck stop along Interstate 84, about two
miles from the Connecticut state line.
It was covered with snow and authorities did not know how long it had been there, State Police Sgt. Ronald Sieberg said.
Robert Tulloch, 17, and James Parker, 16, both of Chelsea, Vt., were charged as adults with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop, whose bodies were found in
their home near the Dartmouth campus in Hanover, N.H., on Jan. 27.
The pair should be considered dangerous, authorities said at a news conference Saturday in Hanover.
The two teens stabbed the popular professors ``multiple times in the head and chest,'' Senior Assistant Attorney General Kelly Ayotte said at the news conference.
She said they were last seen in or near Chelsea on Thursday. Authorities refused to discuss how they identified the suspects, a motive or any connection between the boys and the victims.
A woman who answered the phone at the truck stop said she didn't know anything about the car and refused to comment.
A friend of Tulloch's, Casey Purcell, said Saturday in Chelsea that Tulloch and Parker left town in the days after the killings, then returned two or three days later. A few days after that, they disappeared again, said Purcell, a senior at Chelsea High School.
Purcell said Tulloch told him the pair were trying to go rock climbing in Colorado, but had to return because Tulloch had a cut on his leg that became infected. Tulloch said he cut his leg on a maple tree sap bucket while walking in the woods, Purcell said.
Half Zantop, 62, taught earth sciences at the 6,500-student school. Susanne Zantop, 55, was chairwoman of the German Studies Department. Both were naturalized citizens who were natives of Germany and traveled abroad frequently.
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