The Book of the Week is “Judgment Ridge” by Dick Lehr and Mitchell Zuckoff, published in 2003. This is the shocking, true, suspenseful story of the murder of two Dartmouth professors in early 2001.
The perpetrators had a history of petty criminal behaviors but there were no serious consequences for them. One of the killers was a controlling psychopath, and his unnaturally close friend’s blind obedience engendered a dangerous combination. The reason the murders were hard to foresee was that the killers revealed only small pieces of themselves to different people in their lives. No one knew them well, not even their parents. Thus, no one individual saw the big picture– that the sons were going to commit the gruesome act that they did.
The killers’ parents– the would-be authority figures in their lives, had no knowledge of their whereabouts, and neither checked up on their activities, nor took an interest in them. Arguably, the parents allowed their sons too much freedom, and not enough supervision. The killers’ families lived in an unconventional surburban community. The school system accommodated their bids for attention, rather than punishing them for their disruptiveness.
Read the book to learn of other factors that allowed the deaths to occur and the details of the aftermath.