SAN DIEGO — The preliminary hearing for Richard Tuite, the schizophrenic drifter accused of stabbing Stephanie Crowe to death, continued to focus Thursday on the controversial confession of another man.

Judge Gale Kaneshiro screened about six hours of a videotaped police interrogation in which Joshua Treadway admits he, Stephanie's brother Michael, and another teenager killed the 12-year-old. On Wednesday, the judge watched about two hours of the Feb. 10, 1998, interrogation.

Richard Tuite

Prosecutors contend detectives coerced Treadway into making false statements and that Tuite, a drug addict seen wandering in the neighborhood is the real killer, but Tuite's defense lawyers, who introduced the tape as evidence, claim the confession is true and proves their client's innocence.

In the portion Kaneshiro watched Thursday, Escondido police detectives prod Treadway, who initially denied involvement, to "come clean" about the murder, saying lie detector tests, later shown to be bogus, prove he is hiding something.

When Treadway hesitates, detective Chris McDonough chastises him, "The truth is not about thinking. The truth is the truth."

Gradually Treadway tells investigators that he stood guard in the Crowe family kitchen while Michael Crowe and their friend Aaron Houser crept into Stephanie's bedroom and stabbed her.

"How do you feel about it now?" McDonough asks Treadway after he acknowledges being present at the crime scene.

"Better for having told you," Treadway says.

Treadway, now a 20-year-old college student, sat at the prosecution table Thursday, taking frequent notes. On the tape, he provides detectives with a detailed account of the murder, an account he now says was entirely fictional. He recalls, for example, the angle Houser held the knife en route to the house, the way Crowe washed blood from the weapon in the kitchen sink and how he changed into his pajamas and crawled into bed after the killing was done.

Escondido police also got a confession out of Michael Crowe, but as with many portions of Treadway's interrogation, the statement was tossed by a judge who felt the police acted illegally. When DNA tests showed Stephanie's blood on Tuite's shirt, the charges against the teenagers were dropped entirely.

The techniques of the police detectives have been heavily criticized. The teenagers were separated from their parents, deprived food, sleep and bathroom breaks and grilled for up to 12 hours at a time.

The teenagers have filed a federal civil suit against the law enforcement agencies who handled the case. One expert who reviewed the videotapes for the teenagers' attorney called the police work "among the most improper, the most psychologically brutal and the most recklessly negligent interrogations I have ever seen."

Kaneshiro will finish watching the videotaped interview Friday and then rule on whether to review additional police tapes of prior interrogations.