Boy Denies Murder Accusation in Death of Drug Suspect

The Ventura County District Attorney’s office filed a juvenile court petition Thursday accusing a 14-year-old Newbury Park boy of the murder of a suspected drug dealer earlier this week.

The murder suspect, Charles Kenneth Craig, described by his mother as emotionally troubled since the divorce of his parents nearly three years ago, denied the petition at a court hearing.

The district attorney’s petition is similar to a criminal charge filed in Superior Court. Craig’s denial of the petition is in effect a plea of innocence.

Craig is accused of stabbing Jeffery Anderson, 21, in the home of Anderson’s parents Monday in what authorities said was the first murder in the City of Thousand Oaks in seven years.

Although Craig is a juvenile, Judge Marvin H. Lewis opened Thursday’s hearing to the press and the public, citing a new state law that allows open hearings for juveniles in murder cases.

A pretrial hearing is set for Feb. 19 and the trial is scheduled for Feb. 27 in Ventura County Juvenile Court. If convicted, the maximum time Craig could spend in a California Youth Authority facility is 11 years, until his 25th birthday, said Deputy Dist. Atty. James S. Irving. Craig is being held in the county’s Juvenile Hall.

Sheriff’s detectives said the stabbing took place during a dispute over an alleged marijuana transaction between Anderson and Craig. According to Sgt. Tom Odle, Anderson “was a known marijuana dealer.”

Craig, a pudgy 5-foot-6 youngster with almost shoulder-length hair, sat quietly during the short hearing Thursday, answering only two questions from Juvenile Court Judge Marvin H. Lewis. Earlier, when asked by the judge if his family was in attendance, Craig said he had asked his mother not to come.

According to prosecutors, Craig was charged with crimes three times last year.

He was sentenced to 30 days in a county juvenile facility in June for petty theft stemming from a purse-snatching at a Newbury Park market, Irving said.

In October, he was sentenced to 90 days for breaking into a vending machine at a local doughnut shop, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Donna Clontz.

In a third incident, Craig was charged with disturbing the peace after he and friends harassed an unidentified woman and jumped on her car outside a market, “scaring the woman inside the car to death,” Clontz said. The charge was later dropped when Craig was sentenced on the other two charges, Clontz said.

Odle said Anderson, Craig’s alleged victim, had also been in trouble with the law.

During the last two years, the home where Anderson lived with his parents in the Newbury Park section of Thousand Oaks has been raided three times by sheriff’s deputies in search of evidence of marijuana sales, Odle said. Odle said Anderson was arrested at each raid; prosecutors said they did not know the disposition of the cases. Anderson’s parents would not comment on the allegations of their son’s narcotics dealing.

Craig’s mother, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that her name not be used, said her divorce three years ago had upset her son. “He’s a very unhappy person,” the mother said. “I knew he was real depressed.”

Craig attended Conejo Valley High School, where students who have had trouble at regular high schools go to receive special attention.

The mother said she found out recently that her son had been smoking marijuana, but added that he had not used hard drugs. However, another 14-year-old boy, described by Craig’s mother as her son’s best friend, said in an interview that Craig had used drugs more potent than marijuana in the past, buying them with allowance money.

According to Odle, Craig told detectives that he went to Anderson’s home Monday to buy marijuana. However, no drugs were found by police after the stabbing, Odle said.

He said Anderson’s brother and the brother’s girlfriend saw Craig and Anderson in the room where the stabbing took place, although they did not actually witness the stabbing.

Later, Craig came out of the room and told the two that someone had just run out of the house, Odle said. While Anderson’s brother and his girlfriend went outside, Craig left the house unnoticed, Odle said.

Anderson was later found stabbed. He died an hour later in a hospital, police said. The knife that police believe was the murder weapon was found on the roof of the house by detectives.

The mother said in an interview that her son told her he stabbed Anderson in self-defense. She said that her son had bruises on his face from where Anderson hit him before the stabbing took place.

Roland Short, the suspect’s deputy public defender, would not comment on the case.

Odle said that later that Monday at school, Craig told his school principal he had witnessed an unspecified illegal act. Police, summoned by the principal, briefly interviewed Craig at school.

Craig was taken to the East Valley sheriff’s station, interrogated further and arrested.