Christiana Usenza, girlfriend of one of the two Chelsea teenagers charged for the brutal stabbing of Dartmouth professors Half and Susanne Zantop, told the press yesterday that the last two months have left her with nightmares.
Although the 18-year-old said she knew of no connection between her boyfriend Robert Tulloch, his alleged accomplice Jimmy Parker and the Zantops, Usenza said that the investigation has had a profound effect on her own life.
"This is a very emotional, shattering thing," Usenza, who has been reluctant to speak with the media since her April 20 appearance before the special investigative grand jury, said in a press conference yesterday. "It's like living in a horror movie."
She calmly refused to answer any questions about her conversations with either of the suspects or about her testimony before the New Hampshire grand jury last week.
She did say, however, that she remembers returning her boyfriend's phone call the night he was questioned by the police and being completely surprised when he told her that he was being considered as a murder suspect.
"He told me the police had questioned him about the Zantop murders and I was shocked and said, 'why you?'" she explained about her conversation with Tulloch on Thursday, February 15 -- the day before Tulloch and Parker fled Chelsea for the second time.
Although, upon the advice of her attorney, Usenza has had no contact with the boys since their arrest, when asked what she would say to them if she could, she paused for a moment.
"I'd say hi," she said finally. "I'm thinking about you and I'm there for you."
Usenza also said that, even in light of the growing evidence against the boys, she hoped that the pair could demonstrate their innocence in court.
"I'm trying to be non-judgmental and wait and see what happens. I'm hoping the trial will vindicate them."
Despite the fact that the press has regularly referred to the Tulloch-Usenza romance as hot-and-cold, Usenza dispelled the rumor yesterday. According to her, at the time of the murder, she had been friends with both of the boys for over six years, but she had just started dating Tulloch a month or two beforehand.
When asked if either of the boys had a "knife fetish," Usenza laughed, emphatically denying that this was the case.
Usenza's friend and unofficial spokesman, Montpelier lobbyist Robert Sherman, said the girl was speaking out now so that the media would leave her alone in the future. According to Sherman, reporters had hounded the girl both at work and at home upon her return from a previously scheduled mid-March vacation to Mexico with her mother.
Both Sherman and Usenza denied that the girl knew anything of the murders, and, according to The Boston Herald, police have already concluded that Usenza herself was not involved in the murder.
"Christiana is a bit of a mystery woman," Sherman said. "She knows nothing about this crime."
At the end of the press conference, one reporter asked Usenza if she would be willing to speak with them again in the near future.
Usenza answer was simple: "No."
