Hanover Police contacted members of the Dartmouth Outing Club yesterday via email, pleading for help with the ongoing investigation of the murders of professors Half and Susanne Zantop.
Hanover Police Detective Eric Bates sent an email to unknown numbers of DOC members -- possibly over a thousand students -- yesterday at 2:46 p.m., requesting information about recent sales of equipment.
In the email, Bates identified himself as "one of numerous investigators who are working on the Half and Susanne Zantop homicides."
Though authorities have arrested two Chelsea, Vt., teenagers -- Robert Tulloch, 17, and James Parker, 16 -- for the stabbing deaths of the Zantops, they have released little information about what police believe the teens' motive may have been on Jan. 27 or even if the police know of a motive at all.
In the email, Bates wrote, "Our Task Force is looking for information from club members concerning sales of equipment to, or purchases from, local area residents from December 15th, 2000 to the current date."
He added, "The information about equipment sales may shed more light on the ongoing Zantop investigation."
The email did not specify what type of equipment the police may be looking for. However, the two suspects had become avid fans of rock climbing in recent months, according to friends of the teens. They were members of a climbing gym in Vermont, which police have also investigated but not talked about.
Also, in the days after the murders occurred, authorities contacted several Dartmouth students, including some DOC members, and faculty to ask if anyone had been missing rock climbing or geological equipment, but those leads appeared to have run dry.
Members of the DOC frequently trade, sell and buy amongst the group, usually on an informal basis through email lists. One member said that equipment exchange is especially common among people who climb.
Hanover Police Chief Nick Giaccone declined to comment on whether the investigators are focusing on the DOC as a possible direct connection to one or both of the murder suspects or if they are looking for a intermediary connection linking the boys to the Zantops through a DOC member or community member.
"Those scenarios are conceivable ... But I'm not going to say anything that would jeopardize the work we've done so far," Giaccone said.
Asked if the police had investigated other places where climbing or other outdoors equipment is sold, Giaccone said, "We've been to all the major outlets both within the area and outside."
Giaccone would not allow Bates to comment on the email, saying it was "self-explanatory." Giaccone declined to say exactly what information Bates was requesting, and whether the information could possibly be related to a murder weapon or motive.
And on campus yesterday, some DOC members who received the email said they were surprised by it, but many were reticent to elaborate. DOC President Eli Diament, who Bates said he contacted prior to sending the email, declined comment.
However, one member expressed a sentiment that appeared to pervade the campus yesterday afternoon.
"I imagine like many people who received this email, my mind is full of questions, wondering whether the DOC is the connection between the suspects and the Zantops, and how outdoor equipment purchased through the DOC might have played a role in the crime," DOC member Graham VerLee '01 said.
And another member who received the email told The Dartmouth that he was curious about it, but figured that outdoor equipment must have factored in the crime that the police were trying to trace and did not think much about it.
"Everyone I've talked to is from the Mountaineering Club [a division of the DOC], and I definitely can't speak for the DOC attitude in general, but no one I've spoken to has been particularly bent out of shape about it," Mike Breen '02 said.
Breen said it is not uncommon for members of the Mountaineering Club to email the group's list and offer gear to sell or request certain items, but most people on the list are members of the Dartmouth community.
"There aren't all that many people on the list who are not connected with the College, but people meet at rock gyms, cliffs, etc," Breen said. "There's usually a pretty fluid market in used gear in most outdoor sports. This is all unofficial, and has very little if anything to do with the DOC as an organization."
Breen said he believes most of the equipment exchange at Dartmouth happens among students, faculty and staff of the College, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center employees and, occasionally, students of the local Hanover High School.
Because of his involvement in the group, Breen said he thinks he would have heard of a connection if it involved someone active in the Mountaineering Club, but that it would be "tough to say" for sure because "people buy and sell gear all the time."
According to Diament, the DOC has between 1,200 and 1,400 student members, but he would not say how many received the email.
The Dartmouth contacted several members of the DOC, with varying ranges of involvement in the organization, and all said they had received the email, even those that described themselves as very inactive members.
Meanwhile, Parker was arraigned in juvenile court in North Haverhill yesterday in a closed hearing.
State prosecutors are seeking to try Parker as an adult, but his attorneys say he is still a boy and should be tried as one.
"I represent an overwhelmed adolescent who is now within the protection of the juvenile justice system of New Hampshire, which is where we think he should be," defense attorney Cathy Green said after the arraignment yesterday.
John and Joan Parker, the suspect's parents, avoided reporters as they walked hand in hand into the courthouse before the hearing. They addressed the media when their son was first arraigned in Indiana, where police arrested both him and Tulloch.
In other news, Chelsea Public School's principal, Patricia Davenport, requested yesterday that reporters and camera crews respect the privacy of the town's children.
"There are younger children who are afraid to cross the town green after school because the reporters out there scare them," Davenport said to the Associated Press. "I ask that the press stay away from the younger children completely and respect all who do not want to comment."
One Chelsea mother, who wished to remain anonymous said, "I think the media's making a lot more out of this than the town is."
She affirmed that the school children are "getting pissed off at the media."
Since hours after the local and national media arrived on the scene Saturday morning, Feb. 16, the residents of Chelsea have been complaining about the influx of cameras and reporters to their quiet town. And starting the first Monday following the arrests of James Parker and Robert Tulloch, a crew of four, including one police officer, turned reporters away from the entrance to the schoolhouse.
