MEDICINE Hat, Alta. -

A 13-year-old girl charged with murdering her family threatened to leave her boyfriend if he didn't kill her parents, a witness testified at her trial Tuesday.

The southern Alberta jury also heard from another friend who said co-accused Jeremy Steinke told friends that if they didn't want him to kill, it was his young girlfriend that they needed to talk out of it. Grant Bolt testified Tuesday that his longtime friend Steinke believed the accused would dump him if he didn't go through with the crime.

"He told me that '(she) is pretty much going to break up with me unless I do it soon,' " Bolt testified.

When asked by prosecutor Stephanie Cleary what Steinke thought he had to do, Bolt replied: "Kill her parents, basically."

Bolt, 23, looked frightened throughout his testimony at the girl's triple murder trial. She was charged after the stabbed and slashed bodies of her parents and eight-year-old brother were found in their Medicine Hat home in April 2006.

Bolt told the jury that Steinke tried to enlist him to help with the killings, but Bolt told him bluntly he wouldn't do it. He was the second friend to testify that Steinke had tried to solicit such help.

"He asked me how much, how far would I go for love and stuff like that," Bolt said of a conversation the two had about two weeks before the grisly killings.

The accused, who was 12 at the time of the deaths, can't be identified under provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Steinke, now 24, faces the same three first-degree murder charges but has not yet entered a plea. Nor has a trial date been set.

Under cross-examination, Bolt admitted that anti-depressants he is taking made it difficult for him to remember details of events before and after the family was killed. He also admitted that, at the time, he was smoking at least four to five marijuana joints daily to help with his depression.

Bolt related how he again met Steinke at a friend's house just hours before the family's bodies were discovered by a neighbour boy looking through a window. Steinke lifted his sunglasses to show off a badly bruised and bleeding left eye and said he had committed the murders, Bolt testified.

Before he left the house, Bolt saw the accused and Steinke sitting on the lawn eating take-out burgers. They then went inside where they cuddled, giggled and kissed on the couch.

"It was kind of strange - she just sat there calmly and ate her burger like nothing was going on," he told the jury.

The Crown has said it is attempting to prove that the girl played an active role in planning the elimination of her entire family.

Now into its third week, the trial has heard from the accused's friends and teachers, who said she underwent a marked transformation around the time she started seeing Steinke.

And she made it known she hated her parents for grounding her and trying to discipline her for dating a man nearly twice her age.

In Tuesday afternoon testimony, a young friend of both accused testified that she was at Steinke's house the night of the killings.

She said Steinke was "angry and frustrated" and said he planned to kill his girlfriend's parents.

"We tried to talk him out of it," the 15-year-old testified in a barely audible voice.

"He said if we could talk (his girlfriend) out of it, he wouldn't do it."

But so far, all of Steinke's friends who have testified have told the jury that while he often talked about violent, dark things, nobody actually thought he would go through with it.

Over the last two days, the Crown has called a procession of witnesses who recall seeing the accused and Steinke both before and after the killings at drinking parties and other gatherings.

One witness even claimed to have snorted several lines of cocaine with Steinke in the hours before the alleged crime.

But under cross-examination, defence lawyer Tim Foster pointed out the various quantities of alcohol and other drugs that each had consumed.

Outside of court, Foster said credibility was a big issue.

"I think the amount of alcohol and drugs consumed on the dates in question are certainly going to have an impact on their ability to recall events," he said.

"So my view is they're not very credible, but that's up to the jury to decide."