Knives In The Study Of The House example essay topic

494 words
January 27th, 2001 -It was a cold", normal" Monday morning, 4 a.m. in Chelsea Vermont, little did this small town know that a homicide was being commited right under their noses. A friend and dinner guest of the couple had found the bodies and then notified the police shortly after leaving the scene. Suzanne and Half Zantop were both professors at Dartmouth University and were found stabbed to death in their off-campus home. Susan zantop, 55 and Half Zantop, 62 were knives in the head, and torso, as well as having their throats slit. The police systematic ly searched the house with a forensic team. Police found a 12- inch plastic's health for "SOG" knives in the study of the house.

The police recording the following from the scene; Trash can was overturned and papers were near the bodies. A desk chair was tipped over on it's side and the rug was pushed up. Half zantop was found lying on his right side with his head resting on the bottom of a book case. The left leg of his blue jeans were stained from blood that had sealed from under his torso. Susan Zantop was close to the office door and her head was in a pool of blood. The New Hampshire State Police Crime Lab found 2 fingerprints on the sheaths but could not match them to anything in the data base.

The research and cross-referencing of the knife sheaths led the police to a James Parker, a 16-year old who had ordered 2 of the exact same knives. A handwriting sample from James Parker's best friend, Robert Tullouch gave the police grounds to charge the two teens with first degree murder on Jan 27, 2001. The police didn't find the actual weapons until Febuary 17th. Apparently the two boys had made their way into the house by telling the Zantop that they were doing an eviornmental study. It was later found out that the boys had been planning to rob and kill the two professors, in an aspiration to raise money to finance a trip to Australia, for 2 years prior. As the evidence was processed by the forensics labs several things were discovered.

A crimologist matched one of Tullouch's boots to a blood stain in the zantop's home. The boys had stopped a few miles away from the house to clean the blood off themselves with snow and toss the knives. When the knives were found the forensic scientists found Susan Zantop's DNA on one of the knives and the other also had her DNA along with someone else's DNA who they had not identified yet (Although they knew it was not Half Zantop). The bloody footprints at the scene were also helpful in the identification, the bloody footprints matches the trend pattern from the bottom of Robert Tullouch's shoes.