In calm, matter-of-fact tones, two young brothers described for police how they planned an attack on their father and then beat him to death with a baseball bat. The audiotaped confessions were played in a Pensacola, Fla., courtroom Wednesday for jurors hearing the boys' murder trial.

Derek King, 14, and Alex King, 13, are being tried as adults and face life in prison if convicted of the Nov. 26, 2001, murder of their father, Terry King. The 40-year-old printer was attacked with an aluminum bat as he slept, legs crossed, in a recliner by someone who then set his Cantonment, Fla., house on fire.

Lawyers for the boys claim that the confessions, which they have since recanted, were designed to provide cover for 40-year-old Ricky Marvin Chavis. Defense lawyers claim that Chavis, a longtime friend of Terry King, killed King because he feared that his friend was learning about Chavis' sexual relationship with Alex.

Chavis was tried last week for the same murder, but the verdict will remain sealed until a second jury of three men and three women return a verdict in the case against the boys. The King boys' jury heard about Chavis' trial Wednesday when Alex's lawyer, James Stokes, concluded his cross-examination of lead homicide investigator John Sanderson by getting Sanderson to tell the jury that he had testified just last week at Chavis' own trial for the murder of Terry King.

Homicide investigator John Sanderson testifies Wednesday.

The audiotaped interviews, conducted by Sanderson the day after the murder, are the main evidence against Derek and Alex. Chavis, who had been hiding the boys from police in his home, drove them to the local sheriff's office and waited outside while first Derek, then Alex gave detailed accounts of the attack, accounts lacking any sign of emotion.

"I made sure he was asleep. I got the bat and I hit him over the head," Derek King can be heard telling Sanderson on the tape. "I hit him once and I heard him moan. I was afraid he might wake up and see us, so I kept hitting him. I hit around 10 times."

According to Derek's statement, he and Alex were concerned that their father was "staring" them down, was firm when it came to discipline and sometimes physically pushed the boys. Derek said he was concerned that Alex, who was 12 but could pass for an 8-year-old, could not defend himself.

"I told Alex, if it gets real serious that I would get physical with Dad," Derek said. "Alex told me that he was weak and he didn't have strength to fight my father off."

Derek described their father's actions as "mental abuse," a phrase defense lawyers say was planted in his head by Chavis.

"If we did something wrong, if we talked back to him, he'd be like, 'When I say something, my answer is final.' He'd be pushing us while he said that," said Derek, whose mother moved out of state years ago and had little contact with her sons.

Derek said the final straw came when Terry King pushed Alex down and made him cry.

"He was mad because we had run away. I said [to Alex], 'Don't worry about him. I'll deal with it,'" Derek told police.

According to Derek's statement, Alex followed his brother around the house during and after the attack. Derek said he put the bat on a mattress and lit the mattress on fire, hoping to destroy evidence.

Although both boys told police that they ran away and hid in the woods for two nights before calling Chavis to pick them up, police learned that they actually called Chavis a short time after the fire alarm went out over police radio and that he took them to his home.

In Alex's statement, he explained to Sanderson that he wanted his brother to kill "Terry," whom he insisted was not his biological father, because of "mental and physical abuse" that included "staring us down" and "extreme eye contact."

Terry King, 40, died after being struck nearly a dozen times with an aluminum baseball bat as he slept.

"I said I wished he was dead," said Alex, who showed police scratches on his arm that he claimed were made by his father.

He said he and Derek initially considered using a knife, but were concerned it would not penetrate. Then they thought about a hammer, but could not find one.

Alex told police that he watched his brother attack his sleeping father. "I'm just standing there watching," he said in a calm, even tone.

Listening to his own words as they filled the Pensacola courtroom, Alex continued doodling on a legal pad but shook his head gently from side to side.

"It was obvious that he was dead," Alex said on the tape. "A little of his brains was on the walls."

Asked how he felt at that point, Alex told police, "I have a mixture of feelings ... I feel a little sad about it now. A little said, a little bit. A little relieved that we don't have to go through the physical and mental abuse. I mainly feel kind of down about it because it was a death and I saw it."

Alex also claimed to have been the mastermind of the attack.

"I feel mainly responsible," Alex told police. "Derek took the hits but I was the one who gave him the idea."

On cross-examination of Sanderson, defense lawyer Stokes argued to the jury that the boys' "carefree" attitude during the police interviews stemmed from the fact that Chavis had them believing that as juveniles they had little to lose by confessing. Stokes noted that the boys used almost identical language to describe alleged abuse by their father.

Stokes suggested that the boys were trying to create the appearance of self-defense without laying it on too heavy with exaggerated abuse claims that could not be proved.

"We don't have much abuse in the story, do we?" Stokes asked.

"Not a lot," Sanderson agreed.

Stokes also highlighted the fact that Alex seemed to be going out of his way to protect Chavis but did not hesitate while confessing to first-degree murder, arson and destruction of evidence. The defense lawyer said police should have grilled the boys about inconsistencies in their statements and been more suspicious early on about Chavis, a convicted pedophile who told police from the beginning that he had washed the clothes they were wearing during the attack.

Sanderson testified that the boys' description of the crime scene was too accurate to have been concocted or planted in their young minds.

"To me, we didn't have inconsistencies," Sanderson replied.

Earlier Wednesday, Escambia County Deputy Sheriff Thomas Mohan testified that Derek King asked him the day before the killing how he could go about making an abuse claim against his father. At the time, Mohan was dispatched to return Derek, who had run away from home Dec. 16, to Terry King.

"He told me that he is never allowed to watch TV and that [his father] is very picky about his friends," Mohan said. "I said that in my eyes, that's being a good parent."

As he did during Chavis' trial, medical examiner Gary Cumberland testified that Terry King suffered a fractured skull, four distinct chest bruises, a torn nostril and a torn scalp that left exposed brain matter.

Asked if a transcript of Alex King's description of the attack matched what he gleaned about the attack while conducting an autopsy, Cumberland said the details provided to police by the then 12-year-old boy suggested he was there when the attack occurred.

"What he described would be consistent with being there at the time the injuries were inflicted," Cumberland said.

On cross-examination, however, a defense lawyer suggested that Alex could have been given those details by Chavis. The defense maintains that Derek and Alex were hiding in the trunk of Chavis' car while he attacked their father.

"He certainly could have been told those things by someone who had been there, isn't that right?" asked Dennis Codder, one of Derek's lawyers.

"Yes, sir," Cumberland agreed.

New witness surfaces

The jury was excused from the courtroom for about 30 minutes Wednesday afternoon so that attorneys and Judge Frank Bell could question a new witness about a statement Derek King allegedly made a week before the murder.

Jason Gaylard, a 13-year-old eighth-grader, testified that Derek King announced to a school bus full of children that he and Alex were going to kill their father.

"One day, Derek was getting in trouble because he was touching a girl," said Jason, a blond boy who wore a red-and-white-striped shortsleeved shirt and denim shorts to the stand. "As he was getting off he told us that [they] were going to be gone for awhile and that [we] were going to hear about us on the news because they were going to kill their dad and then they were going to kill us."

After listening to the testimony outside the jury's presence, Bell ruled that Jason's testimony is "cumulative" because other witnesses have already testified that Derek told them the boys intended to kill their father before the murder.

Prosecution rests

The prosecution rested its case Wednesday afternoon, setting off a series of defense motions to dismiss charges against both boys.

Codder, Derek's lawyer, said that prosecutor David Rimmer's office committed "prosecutorial misconduct" by trying the boys for murder after arguing last week that Chavis killed Terry King.

"They prosecuted one now they are prosecuting another," Codder said.

He argued that prosecutors have a duty to seek the truth and not just bring prosecution after prosecution with the hopes of convicting anyone.

"We think that violates due process," Codder said.

Stokes joined in the motion on Alex's behalf.

Rimmer countered that Chavis was only prosecuted for murder because a grand jury indicted him based on testimony from Derek and Alex that Chavis killed their father.

"The only reason Mr. Chavis ever got indicted was because of what the King boys did," Rimmer said.

Rimmer was forced to change strategies in the middle of Chavis' trial last week when the judge ruled there was no evidence to convict Chavis on the theory that he put the boys up to the murder. Rimmer was only allowed to argue that Chavis committed the murder himself.

Bell denied the defense motions to dismiss the charges.