His mother was afraid her teen-age son might sneak out after he walked away from the family watching TV. So when she saw the phone's "in use" light blink on, she picked up the extension.

She heard her 15-year-old son and his 14-year-old friend talk about sewing someone's mouth shut.

Upset and afraid, she thought of her son's history. In the second grade, he had offered to kill a classmate's terminally ill father. At age 7 or 8, he attempted suicide. Last year, he threatened to shoot another classmate.

"I couldn't take the chance that they would go through with something like this," she testified in a hearing Friday in 3rd District Juvenile Court. The boys were arrested on March 7, and are scheduled to go on trial Thursday on charges of conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping.

So she listened for almost an hour as they talked about clearing out a shed to draw up their plans for kidnapping two girls and a school resource police officer. Then she called the police.

"Why?" she said, choking back tears. "Because I love him."

The Tribune is not naming the boys because of their ages, and is not identifying the mother who testified to protect their identities.

The hearing involved a defense motion to suppress the mother's testimony, citing a federal wiretapping law. Judge Christine Decker did not rule on that motion, but did say the boys' videotaped interviews with police could be introduced at trial.

In those interviews, shown in Friday's hearing, the 15-year-old said the conversation was just bravado, that they soon would have forgotten about it.

"Even if I could have the capability to do that, the ability to put someone in a furnace knowing they were likely going to die, I couldn't really do it," he said. "I know there's no good in hurting people."

The younger boy's testimony was found on a backup system after police initially thought the DVD had run out of space.

That boy's lawyers also say there was no real plot.

"This has started a runaway train that has gone far afield and caused a lot of people a lot of grief unnecessarily," said the younger boy's attorney, Thomas Burton.

The two boys met when they were neighbors, and had been friends for about five years. The older boy told police his friend would do anything he asked. His mother twice warned the younger boy's family, who she called warm and loving, that her son was a bad influence, once after trouble over drugs.

It wasn't the first time the teen was in trouble, the mother said. He started struggling at age 5 and two years later he was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The subsequent years brought therapy and residential treatment, she said.

About two years ago, he tried to run away from home and his mother called police. The officer who responded was the same one who investigated the kidnapping plot allegations.

In the eighth grade, the older boy jokingly threatening to shoot a teacher and seriously threatened to shoot to a fellow student, the mother said.

But he never actually hurt anyone, his lawyers pointed out. And he was also an intelligent, articulate teen who could also earn straight A's when he wanted to and was close to his grandparents, with whom he moved in before school started last year, his mother said.

He was home for a visit when he called his friend to talk about the plan they had been tossing around for about a week. Following the use of torture situations as a morality lesson in the horror movie "Saw," they planned to show two girls and a school resource officer what they saw as the error of their ways, the boys told police.

The younger teen, a Midvale Middle School student, first told the officer that he "didn't think we'd really do it, but later said, "I think we were pretty serious. We just wanted to do something that could never be forgotten."