NEWPORT, Vt. -- The trial of a 16-year-old boy charged with beating a girl to death with a baseball bat and shovel because she was pregnant with his child was to resume Monday.
Wade Willis, of Morgan, Vt., is charged with first-degree murder in the death last May of Terri Weed, 15, his girlfriend and neighbor.
Defense lawyer Duncan Kilmartin has told the Vermont Superior Court jury he does not dispute that Willis killed the girl but portrayed his client as an emotionally disturbed youth who did not understand what he was doing.
Before the trial recessed Saturday, Richard Devost, 17, of Island Pond, Vt., said Willis told him last spring he would kill Miss Weed, described by her father as a normal teenager who kept pictures of movie stars on her bedroom wall.
But Devost, testifying in the sixth day of the trial, also said he did not believe Willis because he and his schoolmates used the word 'kill' frequently, not meaning it to be taken literally.
He was the second witness to testify that Willis threatened to kill Miss Weed.
Earlier in the week, Willis' cousin, Roy Bullis, told the jury of nine women and three men Willis also told him he would kill the girl.
But Bullis said he didn't believe Willis because his cousin smiled when he made the threat.
