Teen-ager charged in slayings of two Dartmouth professors to change plea

Tuesday, April 2nd 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) _ A Vermont teen-ager who surprised his community when he went from top student and class clown to a suspect in the stabbing deaths of two Dartmouth College professors may be about to spring another surprise.

The Superior Court in Haverhill announced that Robert Tulloch, whose current plea is innocent by reason of insanity, would change his plea at a hearing on Thursday, a few hours before Tulloch's alleged accomplice is to be sentenced.

The court did not say Monday how Tulloch planned to plead. Neither prosecutors nor Tulloch's lawyer would say.

John Kissinger, a former assistant attorney general, said Tulloch's only options under New Hampshire law are guilty or no contest. First-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence.

John Kacavas, another former prosecutor, said a judge was unlikely to accept a no-contest plea.

``It just doesn't accept responsibility the same way a guilty plea does,'' Kacavas said.

Tulloch's alleged co-conspirator, James Parker, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge and is to be sentenced in the same court Thursday.

Prosecutors say Tulloch, 18, and Parker, 17, both of Chelsea, Vt., killed Half and Susanne Zantop in the couple's Hanover home last year while posing as students conducting an environmental survey.

Authorities say the two went to four other homes in the months before the murders, planning to kill people and steal their ATM cards, but were turned away or found no one home.

Tulloch and Parker were caught three weeks after the deaths in New Castle, Ind., while hitchhiking to California.

Tulloch's lawyer, Richard Guerriero, declined to comment on the plea. Attorney General Philip McLaughlin said only that the state had made no deal with Tulloch.

Last week, the Boston Herald reported that Tulloch had asked the state for a plea bargain to spare his family the pain of a trial. The newspaper quoted an anonymous source as saying prosecutors rejected the request, offering only a life sentence without possibility of parole.

Kacavas said it is extraordinary for a person to plead guilty to first-degree murder except as part of a negotiated agreement.

Kacavas said Tulloch's change of heart speaks volumes about the state's case.

``You can infer from this that Jim Parker and the (evidence) that the state probably disclosed probably did tremendous damage to Robert Tulloch's insanity defense,'' he said.

Audrey and Robert McCollum, the Zantops' neighbors, welcomed Monday's news.

``It doesn't take away the ghastliness of it, or the tragedy of losing these wonderful people, but what it does offer is an ending of this nightmare,'' Audrey McCollum said.