Michael Fitzgerald told a Jefferson County jury Friday that he ground up his anti-psychotic drugs and told his parents he planned to put it in their drinks to kill them and his sister.

Fitzgerald said his parents confronted him during a counseling session after they found a baggie of the ground-up drugs in his room. He said he told them he planned to kill them, but "the truth is, I was gonna kill myself."

Fitzgerald said he told his parents that because he was angry about being in a social services residential facility.

Fitzgerald concluded his testimony Friday in the first-degree murder trial of his friend, Michael Tate, who is accused in the bludgeoning death of Fitzgerald's father, Steven Fitzgerald, 41.

Tate, then 16, and Michael Fitzgerald, 17, were runaways from social services when they broke into the Fitzgerald family's Westminster home on Nov. 8, 2004. Michael Fitzgerald is serving a 62-year prison sentence as a result of a plea bargain in which he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and agreed to testify against Tate.

Tate's defense attorney, Guss Guarino, tried to show during cross-examination that Michael Fitzgerald hated his father and had threatened to kill him previously. Guarino also tried to show that Fitzgerald had made conflicting statements and lied to police so his version of events the day his father was killed can't be trusted.

Fitzgerald testified that Tate was the instigator of the murder, not him.

Tate's defense team contends he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Although both boys have a history of mental illness, court-appointed doctors found them sane at the time of the killing.