Sixteen-year-old murder suspect James Parker returned to New Hampshire Saturday, stopping at the Hanover Police Station for booking before being taken to a youth detention facility outside of the Upper Valley to await a juvenile court hearing today.
The arraignment process for Parker will start today, potentially a much more complicated procedure than the arraignment of Robert Tulloch, 17, who is also being charged with two counts of first-degree murder, because of Parker's juvenile status.
Under New Hampshire law, Tulloch is considered an adult while Parker requires a court certification because he is under 17.
The state will seek to try Parker as an adult, while his attorneys have said they will attempt to block certification.
"We'll be urging the New Hampshire court to treat him as a juvenile. He's a 16-year-old. He's a boy," attorney and friend of the Parker family Douglas Brown said Friday in New Castle, Indiana, where the boys were apprehended by police.
Though Parker was certified as an adult for purposes of an arrest warrant, the state Attorney General's office must once again treat Parker as a juvenile with respect to releasing information about the case.
The courts will likely side with prosecutors in certifying Parker. In the past 15 years in New Hampshire, every juvenile charged with first-degree murder has been tried as an adult.
Both Tulloch and Parker are charged with the stabbing deaths of professors Half and Susanne Zantop. Tulloch was arraigned last Thursday and will face a probable cause hearing Wednesday.
Hanover Police Chief Nick Giaccone would not say where the police took Parker for holding after being booked in Hanover, but juveniles charged with violent offenses are usually held at the New Hampshire Youth Services Center in Concord.
Tulloch was remanded to the Grafton County Jail in North Haverhill after his arraignment.
Meanwhile, a new account sheds some light on the suspects' actions in the days after the Zantops were killed, the Boston Globe reported.
Four days after the slayings, Parker and Tulloch disappeared, telling friends they were going rock climbing. According to Brenda Johnson, an employee of Vermont Transit in White River Junction, Vt., the two teenagers came in and examined a map to select "somewhere warm" and bought one-way bus tickets as far west as their money would take them.
Their goal was California, but a ticket to San Diego cost $159, so they purchased affordable ones -- $139 tickets to Amarillo, Texas, Johnson told the Globe.
One of them paid to store his car in a city lot from Jan. 31 until Feb. 13, and said that family members would be coming to pick it up later, Johnson said.
"They didn't seem to know just where they wanted to go," Johnson said. "That's what stood out in my mind. Two young boys who didn't know where they were going."
The suspects' trip west ended in St. Louis, where the bus had a stopover. When they returned to Vermont, they told their friends that Tulloch was in pain from a cut on his leg, which he said he had received while walking in the woods and cutting himself on a maple syrup spigot.
But when they returned to the bus station to retrieve their car, they told Johnson that their trip had been canceled because of bad weather.
Also, reports have surfaced that investigators lifted fingerprints from a knife sheath found at the crime scene. And, authorities learned that one of the boys purchased a military style knife on the Internet, according to Orange County, Vt., Sheriff Dennis McClure.
SOG Specialty Knives & Tools, a Lynnwood, Wash. Based company, issued a statement Friday acknowledging that the company was contacted several weeks ago by New Hampshire Investigators and the FBI.
"We were served with a New Hampshire subpoena as well as a federal subpoena to turn over our sales records for one of our products," the statement said.
However, the company sells its merchandise through independent dealers and does not keep records on the identity of buyers.
"It is alleged that the product which may have relevance to the Zantop investigation was purchased through an Internet sporting goods source which carries our line ... We are not in a position to verify this," the statement said.
Prosecutors would not comment on the knife or on reports that anti-Semitic, white supremacist and other hate literature was found in the bedroom of one of the boys.
Friends of the boys denied knowing of any connection between the boys and such literature. "I can tell you that Jimmy Parker has nothing to do with any of that stuff, and I've known him all his life," Brown, Parker's attorney, said Friday.
The Zantops were not Jewish but were staunch believers that their native Germany should face up to its Nazi past.
