Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders (9 page)

girls left home as young women, Veronika to become a doctor doing a residency in family medicine at the University of Washington in

Seattle, and Mariana to attend the Columbia School of Public Health in New York and to receive training as a nurse midwife.

“They tended to know when the next exam was coming up, they tended to know when things were going well with the boyfriends and when things weren’t,” said their friend and colleague Irene Kacandes. “Sometimes the girls, like many young people, would not be very happy about what was going on in their life at that moment, and that would be a real sadness” to Half and Susanne.

In addition to Veronika and Mariana, the Zantops had unofficially adopted a “third daughter.” Sujee Fonseca was a Dartmouth student from Sri Lanka who wanted desperately to go to medical school. In 1992, she found her way to Susanne’s office. “Go ahead, Sujee,” Susanne told her, “I’ll stand beside you.” That simple commitment created an enduring bond. Problems with immigration prevented Fonseca from attending an American medical school, so the Zantops, unknown to all but their closest friends, helped to arrange and pay for her to attend medical school in Canada. Fonseca spent Christmas 2000 with the Zantops, and she watched as Susanne came to Half with a broken ornament and a pouting face.

Half looked at Susanne with a gentle smile, and Susanne understood his message. She knew he was a fatalist—“What I have is what I have; if something’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen,” Half would say. Reading his mind, Susanne told Half: “Yes, I know. Nothing is permanent, my dear—except my love for you.”

W
hen Christmas was over, the approach of 2001 marked a return to their hectic lives. But they were considering a dramatic change.

Susanne and Half had begun to mull retirement and had discussed whether Susanne, at fifty-five, seven years younger than her husband, should retire early. They were looking forward to more time for favored pursuits, like sailing in Maine and visits to their Berlin apartment. Mostly, friends said, they wanted more time together, knowing that Half’s heart ailment might separate them too soon. “The love that

[Susanne] shared with her husband was so young and so beautiful and so free,” said Saleeda Salahuddin, a Dartmouth student who, like Sujee Fonseca, considered the Zantops surrogate parents. “People would look at them and think that love like that didn’t exist. But it did.” Susanne had taken a first step toward scaling back her work by stepping down as chairwoman of the German studies department, a job that required her to attend numerous meetings every week. Kacandes recalled how Susanne was once so busy and stressed out she developed stomach cramps so painful she couldn’t straighten up. “The way she pushed herself all the time was very hard on a lot of us, including Half,”

Kacandes said. “She was tired, and she was aware she needed a better quality of life.”

As for Half, there was only one dream he had yet to fulfill: becoming a pilot. But perhaps retirement—along with what he described as his renewed “zest for life”—would allow him to achieve that, too. Until then, the present was defined by their demanding careers and their circle of family and friends. All those threads came together in the first weeks of January 2001.

T
o celebrate the New Year, the Zantops hosted a party at their home that included their two closest friends, Dr. Eric Manheimer and his

wife, Diana Taylor. The couple spent the night at the home on Trescott Road, and then pulled out of the driveway the next morning with Mariana Zantop in their car, to drive her back home to New York City. In the weeks that followed, there were papers to write, speeches to prepare, classes to teach, and conferences to organize. All the while Susanne was talking regularly on the phone to her brother in Germany, planning a party to celebrate their father’s eighty-fifth birthday in April. She even made a quick trip to Berlin, to speak at a conference. She also had been in Berlin a month earlier, to haunt film archives for a

new project she was undertaking on German colonialism.

On Wednesday, January 24, Susanne received an e-mail from her friend Susannah Heschel, who was struggling with an article she was writing on American Jewish political thought. Heschel was nine

months pregnant, which added to her discomfort. Though Jewish politics wasn’t Susanne’s area of expertise, she urged Heschel to drop by so they could talk about the paper over a pot of coffee. Heschel knew that Susanne wouldn’t sugarcoat her thoughts—she always told Heschel when a lecture was good and when it wasn’t, and Heschel loved that about her. They talked for more than an hour about the paper, and Susanne suggested a few books that might help. Then Susanne told Heschel about giving birth to Veronika and Mariana. In the midst of their conversation, Half phoned from his Dartmouth office, asking whether he should come home to share a cheese sand-wich. Heschel was warmed by Half’s desire to grab lunch with his wife of thirty years. Feeling better than she had in days, she went home and phoned her husband, James Aronson, a colleague of Half’s in the earth sciences department. “I’m so happy,” she told him. “I just can’t believe how lucky I am to have her as a friend and colleague. I’ve known smart people, but never anyone who is so smart and so helpful.” She went to the computer and dove into work, energized by her visit with Susanne. But the talk proved almost too invigorating: Heschel went into labor, giving birth to a girl the next day.

After Susanne’s talk with Heschel, she, Half, and Roxana Verona went to Hanover’s Nugget Theater to see the martial-arts love story,
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Afterward, Half and Susanne walked from the theater hand in hand.

On Friday, January 26, the Zantops went as usual to their Dartmouth offices. Susanne’s was in stately Dartmouth Hall, built as a replacement for the oldest building on campus, which burned in 1904. Her office was filled with books, but its most striking feature was a giant umbrella plant, a species that can grow up to forty feet tall in the wild and seemed intent on doing the same under Susanne’s care. A short walk up College Street, Half’s office in the modern Sherman Fairchild Physical Sciences Center was, like him, more sedate, filled with rocks and microscopes.

Susanne spent the morning handling some administrative tasks and talking on the phone with Gerald Kleinfeld, executive director of the
German Studies Review
and a professor at Arizona State University.

She was chipper when she chatted with fellow German studies professor Bruce Duncan in the morning, but grumpy in the afternoon when she saw Margaret Robinson, the German department’s academic assistant. Susanne groused to Robinson that she was en route to her second committee meeting of the day, and she knew she would have to spend much of the upcoming weekend catching up on work. Susanne also hoped to squeeze in a visit to the River Valley Club—she had scheduled her once-a-year facial.

That same day, Half taught his introductory metals course with his usual verve. A student’s notes reveal a professor working hard to fill young minds with complex information about the formation of mineral deposits, malleable metals, and oxidation/reduction reactions. As always, Half stressed the need to be aware of the effect of mining on the environment.

After work, their friends Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer dropped by the Zantops’ home to borrow snowshoes. They were going to see Susannah Heschel’s new baby, and Susanne decided to join them. On her way out the door, she went to her greenhouse and grabbed an impromptu present: a pot of spring daffodils. At Heschel’s house, they took turns holding the baby. Then Heschel’s three-year-old daughter Gittel came into the room to seek some of the limelight. “I wanna use a potty,” she announced to the guests’ delight. It was the first time she had made such a request, and it made Susanne reminisce about the long-ago days of toilet-training her own girls.

Hirsch and Spitzer drove Susanne home, and she urged them to stay for dinner. Soon the dining table was filled with sautéed shrimp and garlic, broiled trout, roasted potatoes, asparagus, and salad, served on colorful Mexican dishes Half and Susanne had brought back from one of their many trips. The foursome ate, laughed, and talked—no one faster than Susanne—about everything from Dartmouth to national politics to March vacations to a conference on German colonialism Susanne was planning for June. Half made some of his famously strong espresso, and afterward the group went to Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center—“The Hop”—to see the movie
Best in Show,
a comedy about the strange world of canine competitions.

Before heading home, they made plans for a cross-country skiing and snowshoeing party on Sunday. The Zantops’ other big plan for the weekend was to attend a ninetieth birthday celebration for Dick Stoiber, the now-retired geology professor who had met them at the Montreal dock and brought them to Hanover.

Half and Susanne woke early on Saturday, January 27, and threw themselves into their day. It wasn’t uncommon for both to be up before dawn, though Half usually got out of bed first, around five o’clock, so he could bring Susanne tea in bed. Susanne often eased into her day by ironing clothes and listening to National Public Radio. By eight-thirty, they were sending the McCollums and other friends e-mail messages encouraging them to oppose conservative John Ashcroft’s confirmation as attorney general. The McCollums wouldn’t get the e-mail until much later; it was Bob McCollum’s seventy-sixth birthday, and he and Audrey were getting ready to go skiing with their daughter and son-in-law. Around ten-thirty that morning, Susanne invited Roxana Verona to dinner.

It was a quiet day in town. The Hanover Police Department dealt with routine traffic stops, in most cases issuing warnings and sending the offending drivers on their way. Someone called in a report about a stray animal in the neighborhood, and a stranded motorist needed a hand. Police received two calls about found property and two others about permits to burn leaves. There was a report of a missing person— with no foul play suspected—and a report of a stolen car. The usual stuff in an Ivy League community where serious crime was a faraway problem.

Later that morning, there was a knock at the door of 115 Trescott Road. Susanne was chopping vegetables, so Half went to answer it. Before him stood two clean-cut young men, both tall and slim, not unlike Half in his youth. They said they were students from the Mountain School over the border in Vershire, Vermont, and they were doing an environmental survey for a class project.

“Hold on a second,” Half said. “My wife is making lunch. I don’t think I can do this.”

He left them standing outside while he went to talk with Susanne.

How could he turn them away? He and Susanne were teachers and these boys were students. He and Susanne were environmentalists, and these boys wanted to talk about the environment.

“You know, I like what the Mountain School does,” Half said, ushering them inside.

6
‌

“Susanne? Susanne?”

L
ater that day, an hour past twilight, as a sliver of a crescent moon teetered in the sky, Roxana Verona turned the ignition on her blue-gray

Saab. Alone in the car, she drove the familiar five-mile route from her home—the one she had bought nearly a decade earlier from Half and Susanne—to the Zantops’ house on Trescott Road. Verona pulled down the gravel driveway, then did a three-point turn at the bottom so the car’s nose would be pointed toward the street, to make it easier for her to navigate when she left in the dark.

Verona grabbed her purse and a bag with the salad she had prepared, got out of her car, and walked to the house. Her zippered black boots left small, perfectly formed impressions in an inch of freshly fallen snow. When she arrived at the front door, Verona rang the bell— she knew the Zantops always locked their home, whether they were inside or out, and even when they threw parties, Susanne or Half

would unbolt and rebolt the door with each arrival. Sometimes their friends kidded the Zantops about that habit—around Hanover and Etna, many homeowners hadn’t seen their house keys in years.

As she rang the bell, Verona placed her hand on the doorknob and was surprised to feel it turn. Susanne must have left it unlocked for me, Verona thought. Susanne usually showered before dinner, and she must have worried about leaving me stuck outside in the cold. How thoughtful of her, Verona thought. So like Susanne.

“I’m in,” Verona called out. It was 6:35
P
.
M
.

T
he dinner invitation had come that morning in a phone call from Susanne. They had missed each other the night before—Susanne had

left a voice-mail urging Verona to meet them at The Hop to see
Best in Show,
but Verona hadn’t heard the message in time. When they connected by phone, they chatted a few minutes about work and the movie—Susanne thought Verona would enjoy it—then Susanne suggested a quiet dinner for three.

“Why don’t you come here?” Verona asked. No, Susanne said, I’ve already been to the food co-op and bought all we need. You come to our place. Verona agreed, promising to make a salad and arrive at their usual dinner hour, 6:30
P
.
M
. Oh, Susanne added, I’ll be alone when you get here. Half is going to a birthday party for Dick Stoiber. Susanne told Verona she was too busy to attend—her dining-room table was piled high with unfinished work. Susanne said Half would join them to eat—he didn’t plan to stay at the party long.