A 14-year-old with a baby face told investigators he drowned his 4-year-old neighbor in a bathtub then hid the body in a dryer because the child was going to reveal the teen molested him, according to an affidavit released when he appeared in court Wednesday.

Raul Renato Castro, dressed in a purple T-shirt issued at the juvenile jail, appeared emotionless while staring at his hands in Fresno County Superior Court.

He was guarded by five bailiffs and two officers outfitted in paramilitary gear.

"He won't cry, he won't cry, he won't," said a woman who identified herself as his aunt but refused to give her name because she said the family had received death threats. Police could not confirm there had been threats.

Police said searchers found Alex Mercado on Saturday stuffed in the clothes dryer in the small farm town of Mendota.

The affidavit said Castro, a student at Mendota Junior High School, initially told police he knew nothing of the boy's disappearance. When investigators said the boy had been found in the dryer, the teen suggested someone had broken into the house and put him there.

Castro eventually told police he had enticed the dimpled, brown-eyed boy into his house across the street and sodomized him, the affidavit states. He said he killed Mercado after the child fell and hit his head, started crying, then threatened to tell his mother, the document states.

"Castro said he panicked and decided to kill the victim by drowning him in the bathtub," the affidavit says.

The teen, who is 5-feet tall and weighs 170 pounds, put Mercado's body over his shoulder and carried him to the dryer, hoping everything "would go away," the affidavit states.

Castro had been scheduled for arraignment as an adult on charges of first-degree murder, sodomy, child molestation, kidnapping and murder to silence a witness. Continued...