DEDHAM -- Before he was arrested for allegedly clubbing a friend's great-aunt to death with a frying pan and making the crime look like an accidental fall, Thomas Lally boasted about how easy it was to murder the 84-year-old woman, a former friend testified Tuesday.

`` He said it was the perfect crime,'' Jeffrey Santsaber, 23, of Norton, said during testimony in Dedham Superior Court on the third day of Lally's murder trial.

`` He said it was easy. He said it was no sweat,'' Santsaber said.

Santsaber testified that he overheard the remarks in his truck while hanging out with Lally and Anthony Calabro in the Norton Grove section of Norton.

Lally, 24, and Calabro, 22, both of Norton, are accused of murdering Calabro's great-aunt, Marina Calabro, at her Quincy apartment house so Calabro could collect a $260,000 inheritance and her three-decker home. The December 2001 murder was initially ruled an accident until a friend of a third defendant, Jason Weir, 20, went to police after talking with Weir about the crime.

Santsaber said Anthony Calabro `` snickered'' and would laugh whenever Calabro and Lally mentioned the woman's death.

`` He said `We took care of it. We did it','' Santsaber quoted Lally as saying.

Anthony Calabro faces a separate trial at a later date.

Lally denies killing Calabro and his lawyer, Robert Griffin, argued at the opening of the trial that Weir was the real culprit.

Griffin questioned Weir's credibility because he reached an agreement to testify against his two friends in return for a conviction on a lesser charge and a 10-year jail term.

Santsaber was one in a parade of friends of the defendants whose testimony has been damaging to the defense in the last two days.

During testimony Tuesday, Elizabeth Ford, 19, of Norton, a former girlfriend of Calabro, said Lally had often talked about killing Marina Calabro before she died.

`` He said he would hit her over the head with a blunt object and put her at the bottom of the stairs to make it look like an accident,'' Ford testified.

During cross-examination of the former friends, Griffin has questioned them about testimony before the grand jury and earlier statements to police in which they said they believed at the time the men were joking. Neighbors in Marina Calabro's Quincy neighborhood and Anthony Calabro's father, David, also were called to testify about how the apartment house fell into disrepair after she died and Anthony Calabro and Lally moved in.

One neighbor testified he saw the pair throwing Marina Calabro's furniture off the second-floor porch.

Anthony Calabro's grandmother, Ann Marie Calabro, 78, testified that she felt so uncomfortable living in her first-floor apartment in the three-decker that she often visited friends before going to work at night, rather than stay home.

She testified Lally parked his truck behind her car in the driveway, and `` told me to go (expletive) myself'' when she asked him to move it, forcing her to cancel an appointment.

Afterward, she parked her car on the street, she testified.

`` I was very uncomfortable around my own house,'' Ann Marie Calabro said.

In other testimony, a state trooper explained how the murder of Marina Calabro was uncovered after James Morel wore a hidden microphone so police could tape him talking with Weir about details of the murder.

Trooper Brian Brooks, a homicide investigator, testified he and other officers followed Morel and Weir for three hours as they drove around, even as they stopped at Meadow Brook Pond where the alleged murder weapon and other evidence was found.

Under cross-examination, Brooks said police would only listen in and tape when the men were talking about the crime, so police did not hear or tape the entire conversation.

Brooks also testified police confronted Weir afterward and got him to wear a hidden microphone to tape conversations with Lally before all three men were arrested in October 2002.

Brooks was not allowed to testify about the content of the conversations, but the prosecution has the tapes as evidence.

Assistant District Attorney Susan Corcoran displayed to the jury, over the objections of the defense, the bent frying pan recovered from the pond.

Prosecutors allege Lally hit Marina Calabro so hard with the frying pan that the handle broke off.

The trial resumes today, and is expected to last until the middle of next week.

DAVID LINTON can be reached at 508-236-0338 or at dlinton@thesunchronicle.com.