In July 2004, ABC newsman San Donaldson found himself on the other side of the story when he came home to his New Mexico ranch and found his caretaker's residence littered with blood spatter and broken glass.

An investigation quickly led authorities to a manure pile on Donaldson's land, where the bodies of ranch foreman Delbert Paul Posey, his wife Tryone, and stepdaughter Marilea Schmid were buried, dead from apparent gunshot injuries.

The veteran news anchor will reprise his role as a crime witness this week in an Otero County courtroom, where he will testify in the trial of 16-year-old Cody Posey, the boy who has admitted to fatally shooting his father, stepmother and stepsister on July 5, 2004.

A jury was selected Friday in Alamogordo, a town about 70 miles away from the jurisdiction of the crime, after prosecutors sought a venue change based on pretrial publicity in the small farming community of Hondo.

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Although Cody's lawyer concedes his client's involvement in the deaths, he claims it was precipitated by years of physical and mental abuse at the hands of Paul Posey and his third wife.

"This child was at his wit's end. To me, he's a victim. He was in imminent danger and fear for his life all the time," defense lawyer Gary Mitchell told Courttv.com

Cody Posey has spent two birthdays in jail.

Mitchell cited an alleged altercation from the night before the shootings as the "breaking point" that led Cody to realize that "life was going to get real bad real fast" unless he did something about it.

In a videotaped statement that Cody gave on July 7, the day after Donaldson went to Lincoln County authorities, he told police that the night before the shootings, his parents tried to force him to have sex with his stepmother.

When he refused, he claimed his father burned him with a welding rod, pointing out burn marks to corroborate his claims.

Mitchell says that pornography on Paul Posey's personal computer marked "incest" also supports Cody's claims.

"If he were a female, we wouldn't be thinking twice about what he did. We would say that he had to escape and unfortunately, he killed someone in the process," said Mitchell, referring to a seemingly bleak history of tragedy and death tracing back to Cody's early childhood, when his paternal grandmother killed her abusive husband before allegedly turning the gun on herself.

A few years after Cody's parents divorced, Paul Posey gave up his parental rights when his son left his home to live with his mother, a recovering drug addict, in 2000, according to Mitchell.

Paul Posey was the ranch manager on Donaldson's property.

Just a few months after their reunion, the mother and son were in a car accident which took her life and left Cody with few other options except to return to his allegedly abusive father.

Things did not improve over time, according to the defense.

In fact, most of what prosecutors learned about the events leading up to the shootings came from the videotaped statement that the defense unsuccessfully sought to suppress.

In the videotaped statement, the 14-year-old orphan described his daily battles with his father over the work the family shared on Donaldson's sprawling ranch.

At first, as Cody maintained his innocence in the deaths, he described a hostile relationship with a hard-working and demanding father he loved, but could never please.

He said the last time he saw his family was when he left the Donaldson property on the morning of July 5, after a fight with his dad over cleaning the horse stables in which he said his father slapped him across the face.

When pressed further, however, Cody broke down and admitted that after the argument, he decided he had grown tired of the persistent arguments and beatings and "couldn't take it anymore."

Sam Donaldson reported the disturbance to authorities.

Cody said he got a gun from his stepsister's saddlebag, went to the house and waited for his dad to return so he could "get him off this planet, 'cause I'd be better here without him," he said, according to a court transcript of the statement.

When asked about his stepmother, Tryone, Cody admitted to shooting her twice in the head as she sat reading a book on the couch, because "she was mean, she hit me and stuff," the transcript states.

As for his 13-year-old stepsister, with whom he said he generally got along, Cody admitted he shot her also, "so she wouldn't go tell or nothing," according to the transcript.

Covering up the crime

Given Cody's admissions of guilt, the issues for the jury to consider will be his state of mind at the time of the shootings and whether his actions were justified or if they fall short of first-degree murder.

In addition to three counts of first-degree murder, Cody also faces four charges of tampering with evidence for dumping the bodies in the manure pile and disposing of the .38-caliber murder weapon in a nearby river.

Cody admitted that before he took off in his father's pickup, he left behind a note for police that said, "Sorry coppers I needed the kid to do the dirty work, trying to just throw you off."

Even so, in his attempts to cover his tracks, the young ranch hand could not resist leaving the property without turning off the water pump, to avoid wasting "all Sam's electricity and water," Cody told police.

In the aftermath of the shootings, residents in the isolated rural community came forward with their own accounts of the Posey family dynamic, some corroborating Cody's claims.

Prosecutors in the Otero County Children's Court have dismissed the claims as hearsay, and suggest that Cody's claims of abuse are also exaggerated.

Because Cody is being tried as a "youthful offender," a judge will have ultimate discretion in deciding if adult or juvenile penalties will apply if he is convicted. He faces anywhere from life in prison for first-degree murder or as little as five years in a juvenile facility for manslaughter.

The trial is expected to start Tuesday. The proceedings will be broadcast live on Court TV and streamed on the Web on Court TV Extra.