Court Hears Dying Man Accuse Teen in Police Tape

A dramatic, tape-recorded deathbed accusation of murder was introduced into evidence Tuesday at the Ventura Juvenile Court trial of a 15-year-old Thousand Oaks boy charged with the stabbing death of a suspected drug dealer.

Over the background sounds of emergency room personnel fighting to save him, a hoarse, panicky Jeffery Anderson, 21, was twice heard shouting, “Charley Craig,” after a detective asked who had stabbed him.

While the tape was played, Charles Kenneth Craig, who police said rode his bicycle to Anderson’s house in Thousand Oaks on the day of the killing, stared at the floor and played with the chains shackling his ankles.

Deputy Dist. Atty. James S. Irving said the deathbed accusation is the “sort of thing you read about in law books but just never happens.”

California law permits a deathbed accusation to be repeated in court, either by a witness who heard the accusation or by playing a recording of the accusation, provided the accuser eventually dies and provided he exhibits a “sense of impending death.”

‘I’m Gonna Die!’

The “impending death” requirement was fulfilled, Irving said, by Anderson’s repeated pleas to doctors and nurses at Los Robles Medical Center in Thousand Oaks to “Hurry up! . . . I’m gonna die! Hurry up!”

Police said Anderson, suffering massive loss of blood from a stab wound in his back, died minutes after Sheriff’s Detective Edward Wyand questioned him.

Deputy Public Defender Roland Short, who is representing Craig, did not object to introduction of the tape as evidence.

The case is being tried without a jury before Judge Lawrence Storch.

Craig, a 5-foot, 6-inch teen-ager who is stocky and overweight, was 14 when Anderson died on Feb. 4. Under state law, he must be tried as a juvenile. A juvenile murder defendant must have been 16 at the time of the crime to be tried as an adult.

The curly haired, brunet youth, who had been convicted of three crimes in the 12 months before Anderson’s death, has been held without bail since the killing.

If convicted, Craig could be kept in the custody of the California Youth Authority until his 25th birthday, Irving said.

Police said the Anderson household, where the murder took place, was a “known source of marijuana” for neighborhood youths.

Although Irving declined to say Tuesday what motive he would seek to establish for the slaying, police in February theorized that Craig and Anderson had a dispute over a drug deal.

Told of Encounter

In testimony Tuesday, Steven Anderson, the 20-year-old brother of the victim, and Steven Anderson’s girlfriend, Mary Martz, also 20, both said they encountered Craig inside the victim’s bedroom at the Anderson house about 8 a.m. the day of the murder.

Both said they rushed to the room after hearing Jeffery Anderson shout, “Enough, take it out!”

Steven Anderson recalled that they then saw his brother on the bed and “he seemed to be sleeping or something.

He testified that Craig told them that, as he had entered the house, a man running out “socked him” and drove off in a green Pinto.

Anderson said that, not yet realizing that his brother had been stabbed, he followed Craig out the front door to look for the man Craig had described.

The victim’s brother said that, after he and Craig looked up and down the street for the intruder, Craig bicycled off, saying he had to go to school.

Steven Anderson said that, upon returning to the house, he noticed that his brother “was turning white fast.”

Upon turning him over, Anderson said, “I saw his back was soaked with blood.”

Both witnesses said they had seen no evidence of a weapon or blood on Craig.

Police testified that they found a blood-stained kitchen knife with a seven-inch blade on the roof of the Anderson house.

Craig was arrested later that morning at Conejo Valley High School, a school for students who have had trouble at regular schools.

In the deathbed interview, Wyand asked the dying Jeffery Anderson whether the knife was Craig’s and about other details of the stabbing.

Answering only “yes” or “no,” at the detective’s direction, the weakening Jeffery Anderson indicated that Craig brought the knife into the room with him and took it with him when he left.

He also indicated that there was no one else present at the time of the stabbing.

When Wyand asked why he had been stabbed, the dying man shouted in a hoarse voice ringing with exasperation, “I don’t know! I don’t know!”

The victim’s mother and several family friends wept throughout the playing of the 10-minute tape.