Murder Trial of Thousand Oaks Youth : Playmate Says Boy Threatened to Kill

A playmate of a 15-year-old Thousand Oaks boy on trial on a murder charge testified Wednesday that the defendant had threatened to kill the victim several days before the slaying.

Eric Hemerson said in Ventura Juvenile Court that Charles Kenneth Craig told him he was angry at Jeffery Anderson, 21, and was going to “stab him, or words to that effect.”

Anderson was found Feb. 4 in a bedroom of his parents’ Thousand Oaks home dying from a deep knife wound in the back.

Although no motive has yet been suggested in the trial, police in February theorized that Craig was angry over a drug deal.

Anderson, who was unemployed and on probation for marijuana selling at the time of his death, had $1,700 in cash in his pockets and was a “known drug dealer,” police said.

Craig, a stocky and overweight youth who has remained composed throughout the trial, was convicted of three crimes in the 12 months before his arrest in the killing.

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

On Tuesday, Deputy Dist. Atty. James Irving played a tape recording he said was of Anderson on his deathbed accusing Craig of stabbing him.

In the dramatic recording, which includes the background sounds of doctors and nurses at Los Robles Medical Center in Thousand Oaks fighting to save Anderson’s life, the voice was twice heard to reply “Charley Craig,” when a detective asked the victim who had stabbed him.