After overhearing their 15-year-old son talking with a 14-year-old friend on the phone about torturing and killing two girls and a school resource police officer, the boy's parents never considered anything short of calling police.

"It was conversation you take seriously and take to the police department," the boy's step-father testified in 3rd District Juvenile Court on Thursday.

When a defense attorney suggested the parents had over-reacted, the man insisted there was no other option. "I'm not qualified to deal with a kidnap and murder plot," he said.

The boys later told police they were talking about re-enacting the "Saw" movies, where a brilliant psychopath named Jigsaw forces wrong-doers to undergo tortuous tests that can prove fatal.

It will be up to Judge Christine Decker to decide if the boys were serious, or engaging in harmless fantasy.

The two boys are charged with three counts each of conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping, a second-degree felony. If convicted, they could be held in a secure facility until the age of 21. The trial is scheduled to conclude today.

No potential weapons were seized by police, except for a 5-foot-long wooden stick that was used to support tomato vines, according to the younger boy's parents.

Defense attorneys Thomas Burton and Sam Pappas suggested during cross-examination of Murray police Detective Cameron Jarvis that the boys' plans were unformed, haphazard and that they had no means to carry them out.

But prosecutors need not provide evidence of any overt act if the alleged conspiracy involves crimes against a person and if there is agreement between the alleged conspirators.

The only testimony of any potential action came from a 14-year-old girl -- one of the alleged intended victims -- who said the older boy called her March 7 and asked her to sluff school on the following Monday and go with him to Alpine, in Utah County.

Alpine, as well an abandoned elementary school, a home under construction and The Old Mill near the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon, were locations the boys had discussed for staging their "Saw"-type torture tests, according to their interviews with police.

But the defense attorneys attacked those interviews, claiming Jarvis asked leading questions and ignored the boys' claims that they were not serious about harming anyone.

The older boy repeatedly said things like, "we weren't serious," "it was a dumb idea," it was "an imaginary evil," and "I knew we weren't going to do it."

The boy also said they were "talking highly," which Burton said he interpreted to mean they were talking "hypothetically."

But the older boy at one point said they were "not joking," and also said "I think we were pretty serious."

The younger boy told police the girls were picked as victims because they both have emotional problems and are drains on society. He said the school resource officer was rumored to be a "dirty cop" who keeps guns that he seizes for himself.