SAN DIEGO -- After hours of videotaped questioning by a detective, a teenager said he acted as a lookout while Stephanie Crowe's older brother and a friend sneaked into her room and stabbed her to death, a jury heard Tuesday.

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The Feb. 10, 1998, footage showed Joshua Treadway, then 15, speaking to Oceanside police Detective Chris McDonough. The teen said he helped Michael Crowe and Aaron Houser in the murder because Houser threatened to kill him if he didn't.

Houser told Treadway his job was to get rid of the knife used to kill Stephanie, the youth told the detective.

Defense attorneys for Richard Tuite, who is now charged with the 12-year-old Escondido girl's killing, told jurors the Treadway interrogation and one with Michael Crowe prove the boys and Houser were involved in the crime.

Prosecutors said statements Treadway and Michael Crowe gave "were illegally coerced."

After hours in an interrogation room, Treadway told McDonough he agreed to participate in the plan to kill Stephanie Crowe after Houser told him he wouldn't be a friend if he didn't.

Treadway said Houser told him that if he was not his friend, then he would be his enemy, "and he kills his enemies."

Treadway told the detective he walked to Houser's house, then the two proceeded to the Crowe residence, arriving sometime around 12:30 a.m.

Once there, Michael Crowe let Houser in and the two went down the hall toward Stephanie's room while Treadway kept watch, he said.

Houser looked "normal" when he emerged from the house, then the two started walking back home, Treadway told the detective.

Houser said, "'Well, I guess our work here is finished then,'" Treadway told McDonough. "He said, 'Don't mention any of this to anyone, or I'll kill you.'"

The lead investigator, Escondido police Detective Ralph Claytor, replaced McDonough in the interrogation room and told Treadway he wasn't fully convinced he was afraid of Houser.

Claytor told Treadway he was at "95 percent" of the truth, and "we just need to get to the bottom of it."

Tuite, a transient, was detained after the murder but dismissed as a suspect because Escondido police thought he was too clumsy to commit the crime.

Authorities also determined there was no forced entry into the Crowe residence the night of Jan. 20, 1998, meaning the murder was certainly "an inside job."

Michael Crowe, Treadway and Houser were charged with murder in 1998, but those charges were dropped a year later when the victim's blood was discovered on a filthy red sweatshirt Tuite was wearing the night of the killing.

The girl's blood was also found later on a white T-shirt Tuite had on underneath the sweatshirt.

The defense suggested the blood evidence was accidentally transferred on to Tuite's shirts.

Tuite, 34, was charged after the case was handed over to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department and the state Attorney's General Office.

Prosecutors said Tuite -- a diagnosed schizophrenic -- was in the area of the Crowe residence the night of the murder, asking for a friend named "Tracy."

Evidence also has been presented that the defendant liked to carry a knife.