MONTPELIER, Vt. -- Vermont was rocked Friday by its second teen murder in six days, the slaying of a teen-age girl allegedly by a 16-year-old neighbor who believed he had gotten her pregnant.
The arrest late Thursday night came less than 24 hours after Essex Junction police arrested two teen-agers for the rape, torture and murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl one week ago.
'What's going on around here? What's happening to Vermont?' one Montpelier resident exclaimed in bewilderment Friday.
The shock was shared by other Vermonters, as police revealed the arrest of Wade Willis, 16, of Morgan, for the first degree murder of Terry Weed, 16, who was beaten with a shovel and a baseball bat near her home in rural northeastern Vermont.
Willis, accompanied by his mother, father, uncle and Newport attorney Duncan Kilmartin, pleaded innocent Friday and was jailed without bail.
Dressed in a green-and-white sports shirt and slacks, the slightly-built, shaggy-haired, teen-ager showed little emotion during court proceedings.
He was described by a neighbor in Morgan as 'a little mischievious, but not really a bad kid.'
In an affidavit, police quoted a friend of Willis as saying the youth told him he had 'gotten the girl pregnant' and planned to kill her.
The friend told police Willis called him back a short time later to say he had killed Miss Weed and left her body in the woods.
According to the affidavit, the two boys then went to the slaying site together, where Willis saw Miss Weed was still moving -- his friend said -- and 'hit Terry Weed in the head with the shovel a number of times.'
Meanwhile, 60 miles to the southwest in Burlington, Louis Hamlin III, 16, pleaded innocent Friday to the murder of Melissa Walbridge, 12, and the rape of her best friend, Meghan O'Rourke, 12.
Hamlin was held for lack of $100,000 bail, and prosecutor Mark Keller said he planned to file additional rape charges against Hamlin.
James Savage, 15, of Essex Junction, was arrested with Hamlin early Thursday and accused of participating in the attack. Under Vermont law, because of his age he cannot be charged only with being a delinquent, not with any specific crime.
The two young girls were assaulted near a recreation area in the Burlingtion suburb as they walked home from school May 15.
Police said the two girls had been raped repeatedly and Keller described the murder as 'sadistic... calculated to cause as much pain and torture as possible.'
