Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders by Mitchell Zuckoff, Dick Lehr
Authors: Mitchell Zuckoff, Dick Lehr
Ads: Link
1991, when an Ethiopian man, Haileselassi Girmay, hacked to death two twenty-four-year-old Ethiopian graduate students, Selamawit Tsehaye and Trhas Berhe. Girmay, a geology teacher who had been working in Sweden, had been visiting the women and became enraged by Tsehaye’s refusal to marry him. Girmay used an insanity defense at his 1993 trial, but jurors rejected it and found him guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Juror Richard Ryerson said the jury found Girmay sane “right off the bat.” “Crazy?” scoffed Ryerson. “That could be a defense for anyone. You have to look at the evidence and ask yourself if he knew right from wrong.” Girmay’s insanity plea was fatally undermined by his purchase of an ax several days before the murders and his decision to hide it in the apartment beforehand.
Before the Girmay case, Hanover had gone four decades without a
homicide. In 1950, a freshman football team member named Raymond J. Cirrotta was attacked by a group of upperclassmen for the offense of wearing a varsity sweater. He sustained head injuries and died several hours later. One senior, Thomas Doxsee, pleaded no contest in the beating. Amid reports that the investigation had been bungled, Doxsee was fined $500 and received a one-year suspended sentence.
Hanover’s only other murder of the twentieth century also involved Dartmouth. In 1920, Theta Delta Chi fraternity brother Henry Maroney thought he had found a way around Prohibition—stealing a quart of whisky from a bootlegger named Robert Meads. Meads reacted according to the bootlegger handbook, pulling out a pistol and trying repeatedly to shoot Maroney. He succeeded on his fourth try, in Maroney’s fraternity bedroom. The killing was ruled manslaughter and Meads received a twenty-year prison term.
Unrequited love could explain Girmay’s actions. A lethal mix of alcohol and testosterone could explain Cirrotta’s death. Maroney’s murder could be attributed to rotgut revenge and Roaring Twenties gangsterism. There was no real mystery to any of them. On top of that, none of the victims was widely known on campus, and no one feared that urban ills had begun invading Dartmouth’s snow-and pine-insulated world. After the Girmay ax murders, for instance, then-police chief Kurt F. Schimke said the shockwaves the crime sent around town were proof that “Hanover is the idyllic, Ivy League community that it is said to be.”
A s news spread of Half and Susanne’s deaths, so did a veil of sor-row. The killers had chosen a couple who had spent a quarter-century
cementing deep friendships around the campus and the world. “I could say Susanne was my best friend, but I know twelve other people would say the same thing,” said Susannah Heschel, the Jewish studies professor whom Susanne had comforted three days before the murders. Phil Pochoda, associate director of the University Press of New England and a good friend of the Zantops, wondered: “How can they
be the only two people that fate would obliterate? The thought that we would go on without them is now inconceivable.”
A week after the murders, grief found an outlet and a salve at a memorial service inside the pink granite walls of Dartmouth’s Rollins Chapel. Its Romanesque design, with a landmark peak-roofed tower, distinguished it from the stolid brick of most other historic Dartmouth buildings. It was built in 1885 with a $30,000 gift from a wealthy Dartmouth alum, Edward Ashton Rollins, a Philadelphia banker who had known his share of loss: He dedicated the chapel to the memory of his father, his mother, and his wife.
As more than seven hundred celebrants filed into the chapel to the soothing notes of a Bach organ chorale, each received a program with a blissful photo of the couple on its cover. In it, Half and Susanne stand together before a rock monolith, both of them wearing wide-brimmed sun hats and short-sleeved, loose-fitting shirts. Half’s hat is set back
Before the Girmay case, Hanover had gone four decades without a
homicide. In 1950, a freshman football team member named Raymond J. Cirrotta was attacked by a group of upperclassmen for the offense of wearing a varsity sweater. He sustained head injuries and died several hours later. One senior, Thomas Doxsee, pleaded no contest in the beating. Amid reports that the investigation had been bungled, Doxsee was fined $500 and received a one-year suspended sentence.
Hanover’s only other murder of the twentieth century also involved Dartmouth. In 1920, Theta Delta Chi fraternity brother Henry Maroney thought he had found a way around Prohibition—stealing a quart of whisky from a bootlegger named Robert Meads. Meads reacted according to the bootlegger handbook, pulling out a pistol and trying repeatedly to shoot Maroney. He succeeded on his fourth try, in Maroney’s fraternity bedroom. The killing was ruled manslaughter and Meads received a twenty-year prison term.
Unrequited love could explain Girmay’s actions. A lethal mix of alcohol and testosterone could explain Cirrotta’s death. Maroney’s murder could be attributed to rotgut revenge and Roaring Twenties gangsterism. There was no real mystery to any of them. On top of that, none of the victims was widely known on campus, and no one feared that urban ills had begun invading Dartmouth’s snow-and pine-insulated world. After the Girmay ax murders, for instance, then-police chief Kurt F. Schimke said the shockwaves the crime sent around town were proof that “Hanover is the idyllic, Ivy League community that it is said to be.”
A s news spread of Half and Susanne’s deaths, so did a veil of sor-row. The killers had chosen a couple who had spent a quarter-century
cementing deep friendships around the campus and the world. “I could say Susanne was my best friend, but I know twelve other people would say the same thing,” said Susannah Heschel, the Jewish studies professor whom Susanne had comforted three days before the murders. Phil Pochoda, associate director of the University Press of New England and a good friend of the Zantops, wondered: “How can they
be the only two people that fate would obliterate? The thought that we would go on without them is now inconceivable.”
A week after the murders, grief found an outlet and a salve at a memorial service inside the pink granite walls of Dartmouth’s Rollins Chapel. Its Romanesque design, with a landmark peak-roofed tower, distinguished it from the stolid brick of most other historic Dartmouth buildings. It was built in 1885 with a $30,000 gift from a wealthy Dartmouth alum, Edward Ashton Rollins, a Philadelphia banker who had known his share of loss: He dedicated the chapel to the memory of his father, his mother, and his wife.
As more than seven hundred celebrants filed into the chapel to the soothing notes of a Bach organ chorale, each received a program with a blissful photo of the couple on its cover. In it, Half and Susanne stand together before a rock monolith, both of them wearing wide-brimmed sun hats and short-sleeved, loose-fitting shirts. Half’s hat is set back
Similar Books
