Although the Dartmouth community is maintaining its status as a safe-haven in the wake of the double homicide of Half and Susanne Zantop over the weekend, the College has not been immune to fatal tragedies in the past.
The most recent murder that affected Dartmouth was in 1991, when two Dartmouth graduate students were murdered outside their apartment located at 8 Summer Street. Haileselassi Girmay, 32, was found guilty of using an axe to hack to death fellow Ethiopians -- Selamawit Tsehaye and Trhas Berhe.
Girmay, who was enrolled in a Swedish graduate program at the time of the murders, traveled to Hanover to seek Tsehaye's hand in marriage. Girmay was motivated to commit the killings after Tsehaye refused his offer.
Though Girmay pleaded insanity, he was convicted and sentenced to mandatory life in prison without parole in March 1993. A subsequent appeal was denied by the New Hampshire Supreme Court less than two years later.
Forty-three years preceding the deaths of Tsehaye and Berhe, New Jersey native Raymond J. Cirrotta was beaten to death in his Mid-Massachusetts Hall dormitory.
According to The Dartmouth's archives, a group of eight intoxicated varsity football players stormed Cirrotta's dorm and proceeded to ransack his study room. Cirrotta, a member of the freshman football squad, emerged from his bedroom wearing a varsity sweater, even though freshman players were only permitted to wear their class numbers.
Varsity football player Thomas A. Doxee '50, angered by the sweater, attacked Cirrotta, according to eyewitness reports. Cirrotta was taken to Dick's House after sustaining severe head injuries. Hours later he was pronounced dead.
As a result of what would eventually be labeled a flawed investigation into the murder, Doxee received a $500 fine and a suspended sentence of one year and one day after pleading no contest. The seven other students involved in the incident were acquitted by the police and received suspensions from the College.
A campus shooting perpetrated by a suspected bootlegger earned national attention in 1920. The New York Times reported that College Junior Henry Maroney was shot and killed in the Theta Delta Chi fraternity house by bootlegger Robert Meads. Maroney, who purchased a quart of whiskey from Meads the night of the shooting, returned to buy another bottle.
Unable to come up with the $20 that Meads requested for the liquor, Maroney stole the bottle and fled the scene, prompting the bootlegger to grab his pistol. After three unsuccessful attempts to shoot Maroney, Meads eventually found and shot the College junior to death in his Theta Delt room, according to the Times.
Meads was eventually convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years of hard labor in prison.
Not all Dartmouth tragedies have been murders. In 1993 Dan Boyer '94 fatally shot himself inside Welch's Gun Store in Lebanon. Before this incident, there had not been a student suicide for over a decade.
In 1995, three students -- Philip Deloria '96, Sarah Devens '96 and Marcus Rice '94 -- committed suicide within the span of four months.
In 1997, founder and former director of Dartmouth's Native American Studies program Michael Anthony Dorris committed suicide in a Concord hotel room by suffocating himself with a plastic bag. Dorris, who joined the College faculty in 1972, had just been released from the a psychiatric ward after a failed suicide attempt.
In a note left at the scene of the tragedy, Dorris wrote, "I love my family and my friends and will be peaceful at last."
Later that year, Chemistry Professor Karen Wetterhahn fell victim to acute mercury poisioning. In August 1996, while working at Burke Laboratory, Wetterhahn was exposed to the lethal compound dimethylmercury, the cause of the poisoning, according to The Dartmouth.
Wetterhahn, a noted research scientist, was the first female to be named dean-of-the faculty, receiving the appointment in 1994. She previously broke the gender barrier in 1976, when she became the first female Chemistry professor at Dartmouth.
