A Vermont man who butchered two Dartmouth professors in their own home when he was 17 is asking a New Hampshire court to cut his life sentence to as little as 30 years — and under current law, he might get it.

Robert Tulloch, now 43, was automatically sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty to the 2001 stabbing deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop. But a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling declared mandatory life without parole for juveniles unconstitutional, and that decision was later applied retroactively, cracking open hundreds of cases nationwide. Tulloch's resentencing hearing — the last of five such cases in New Hampshire — begins Monday in Grafton County Superior Court.

Tulloch's attorneys, Richard Guerriero and Oliver Bloom, filed court papers last week arguing for a minimum sentence of 30 to 40 years, citing comparisons with other juvenile murder cases in New Hampshire and across the country. They pointed to his prison record, noting no major infractions since 2012 and no minor ones since 2017. "The vast majority of his write-ups are for possessing too many books," they wrote. His therapy records, they claimed, show "significant remorse" and "good capacity for empathy."

Here is what that empathy was worth: According to accomplice James Parker, who was 16 at the time, the two teenagers were simply bored with their lives in Chelsea, Vermont, when they decided to kill strangers, steal their money, and move to Australia. For months they knocked on doors across New Hampshire and Vermont, pretending to conduct an environmental survey, until the Zantops let them in. Susanne Zantop, 55, chaired Dartmouth's German studies department. Her husband Half Zantop, 62, taught Earth sciences. Tulloch stabbed Half Zantop, then directed Parker to attack Susanne. Tulloch stabbed her too.

Fingerprints on a knife sheath and a bloody boot print tied the pair to the crime. When police came asking questions, they fled — hitchhiking west before being nabbed at an Indiana truck stop.

Parker cooperated with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to being an accomplice to second-degree murder. He got 25 years to life and walked out of prison on parole in 2024 at age 40. "I think it's unimaginably horrible," Parker told his parole board. "I know there's not an amount of time or things that I can do to change it, or alleviate any pain that I've caused." Unimaginably horrible — but not so horrible that he shouldn't be freed.

New Hampshire lawmakers have repeatedly rejected attempts to end life sentences for juveniles, according to both the Boston Herald and NBC10 Boston, which reported identical details on the case. But the Supreme Court's rulings have forced the issue anyway. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have banned the practice outright; five more allow it but have no one serving such a sentence. The state has not said what sentence it will seek for Tulloch.

The question before the court is whether a man who slaughtered two innocent people because he was bored deserves to walk free before he's even 60. The Zantops never got a second chance. Tulloch thinks he deserves one.