Police try to link suspect to killing of two in Eden

Police found a 12-gauge Mossburg shotgun loaded with five shells when police stopped his car later that evening in Lamoille County.

Initially charged in state court for aggravated assault and reckless endangerment, police say Bland is a person of interest in the killings of a pair of 21-year-old men, Jahim Solomon of Pittsfield, Mass., and Eric White of Chicopee, Mass. in October in Eden.

The body of one of the men was found just off Albany-Eden Road and the second body was located about a mile north, state police said.

The two men were reported missing by their families on Oct. 15 and phone records showed they had been to Burlington, Lowell, Morristown and Stowe after arriving in the state.

Solomon died from multiple gunshot wounds to the head, while White died from a single shot to the head, a medical examiner ruled.

The day the bodies were found, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives got an arrest warrant in federal court against Bland concerning the South Burlington incident from March.

Bland, who was ordered by a Vermont judge to observe a 24-hour curfew at his home after denying the two state charges in the March gun case, could not be found by police. He was arrested a week later in Tennessee.

Authorities said Tuesday the double homicide case remains under investigation.

Gun case

Defense lawyer David Sleigh wants the federal gun case against Bland dismissed for lack of speedy trial, but if he loses that request, he wants an immediate trial.

“I think I can try the case today,” Sleigh said. While the federal government has not turned over its investigative documents, Sleigh said in court he has the records from the pending state prosecution for aggravated assault.

“Theo is ready to go,” he said.

Initial 911 calls to South Burlington Police on March 17 at about 6:25 p.m. revealed that Bland ordered two women out of a car at gunpoint at the Simon’s Convenience Store at 974 Shelburne Road.

One of the women had gone into the store to call Bland to ask him to rescue them from a man, Walter Biggs, 58, of Colchester, who reportedly was soliciting them for sex in exchange for crack cocaine, according to federal and state court records.

However, that story did not become known to police until Bland and the two women were stopped about 10:40 p.m. on Vermont 100 and Gold Brook Road in Stowe. When Vermont state troopers stopped the trio in a gray Volkswagen Jetta, police found the loaded shotgun in the backseat, South Burlington police said.

Bland admitted he and the two women had been smoking crack cocaine before they were stopped in Stowe by police, South Burlington Det. Martin Maloney said in a court affidavit.

Bland, who also is known as Theodore Sterling Bland, was later brought back to South Burlington where police found suspected fentanyl in his wallet, Maloney said.

South Burlington Police arrested Bland on charges of aggravated assault on Biggs, reckless endangerment for pointing the shotgun at three people, fentanyl trafficking, possession of a firearm during a felony and for having a loaded long gun inside a motor vehicle.

State’s Attorney Sarah George charged Bland with assault and reckless endangerment, records show.

Bland was released from state court on conditions that included a 24-hour curfew at his then Burlington apartment on Myrtle Street. He was arrested Oct. 30 on four criminal charges, including possession of more drugs and paraphernalia near Knoxville, Tenn., officials said.

The police learned a federal criminal complaint was issued in Vermont on Oct. 24 and there was a sealed arrest warrant, officials said.

As the double homicide case unfolded, law enforcement agencies decided to try to file the South Burlington gun case as a federal prosecution.

Sleigh, a veteran defense lawyer based in St. Johnsbury, asked Magistrate Judge Kevin J. Doyle last week to dismiss the criminal complaint for violation of the Federal Speedy Trial Act.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Barbara Masterson said the motion to dismiss should be heard by Vermont’s Chief Federal Judge, Geoffrey W. Crawford, and asked for time to file a written response to Sleigh’s requests to dismiss.

Masterson noted that Bland was in violation of his conditions of release in the state gun case from Simon’s, and he was expected to be under a 24-hour curfew at his residence, she said.

“Bland willfully disregards conditions of release and presents a serious risk of flight,” she wrote in her detention motion.

Sleigh said his client, a lifelong Vermonter, should be released pending trial to live with his sister, a social worker, in Chittenden County.

“He went to their rescue,” Sleigh said about helping the two women at the Simon’s store. “It’s not Bonnie and Clyde,” he said.