Theodore Bland Plea Deal Avoids Death Penalty in VT Double Murder

The woods outside Eden, Vermont don’t give up much. Remote, quiet, the kind of place where two young men from Massachusetts could go missing for nearly two weeks before anyone found them. On Oct. 25, 2023, police discovered the bodies of Jahim Solomon, 21, of Pittsfield, and Eric White, 21, of Chicopee, in those woods. Both had been shot in the head.

Now, more than two years later, the federal case against Theodore Bland, 30, is heading toward a close without a death penalty trial.

Bland, a former Stowe resident, has agreed to plead guilty later this month in federal court in Burlington to multiple charges, including ones that accuse him of firing the shots that killed Solomon and White in a drug-related dispute roughly ten days before their bodies were found. Prosecutors, in exchange, will seek two life sentences rather than pursue capital punishment. A hearing before Judge William K. Sessions III is set for April 27, where Sessions must still approve the deal.

“There was a deal made where Theo agreed to essentially a life without parole sentence if the attorney general withdrew the recommendation for the death penalty, and that’s where we find ourselves,” said David Sleigh, one of Bland’s attorneys.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Turner signed off on the agreement Thursday. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Vermont declined to comment Friday.

The death penalty angle here is not incidental. Vermont abolished its state death penalty statute in the 1970s, but Bland’s charges were brought under federal law, which allows capital punishment for certain crimes. That distinction became sharper after President Donald Trump lifted a moratorium on federal executions shortly after taking office in January. Vermont’s last execution took place in 1954.

The stakes, then, were real.

Beyond admitting to the killings, Bland will plead guilty to drug and firearms offenses including conspiring to distribute cocaine and fentanyl, according to the plea agreement.

Solomon and White had been reported missing by their families days before their bodies turned up. The medical examiner determined both died from gunshot wounds to the head, according to charging documents, which also said Bland shot the men roughly ten days before their discovery, in a dispute over illegal drugs. Bland was arraigned in December 2023 after federal prosecutors filed charges carrying possible death sentences.

Sessions, who presides over the case, has been here before. He also presided over the last death penalty case to go to trial in federal court in Vermont, when Donald Fell was sentenced to death in 2006 on carjacking and murder charges. That conviction was later overturned because of juror misconduct. Fell’s case resolved in 2018 with a plea deal resulting in life in prison without the possibility of release. No execution, in the end.

Bland’s case traces a similar arc. Not a vindication, not an acquittal. Life in prison, doors closed.

The families of Solomon and White have waited through all of it. Two years of federal proceedings, shifting legal landscapes, a reinstated federal execution policy that briefly raised the temperature of the case. Solomon’s family reported him missing from Pittsfield. White’s family from Chicopee. Both young men were 21.

VTDigger first reported the details of the plea agreement this week.

The April 27 hearing will determine whether Sessions accepts the deal. If he does, the Burlington federal courthouse will close one of the more grim chapters in recent Northeast Kingdom history without putting a man to death, a sentence Vermont itself stopped carrying out more than 70 years ago, even as federal law kept that option alive.

Bland was 27 when the killings allegedly occurred. He’s 30 now. Solomon and White never got older.