By Daily Mail Reporter PUBLISHED: 16:37 EST, 17 January 2013 | UPDATED: 19:30 EST, 17 January 2013 A 12-year-old boy described today how he watched his twin brother slowly die of dehydration, but was too scared of his step-mother to give him water. Joseph James said he knew something was wrong with his fraternal twin brother Johnathan James in August 2011, but he was terrified of doing anything. Joseph's step-mother Tina Alberson and his father Michael James, of both Dallas, Texas, face life in prison over charges that they caused 10-year-old Jonathan's death by depriving him of water. Devastated: Joseph James, 12, (left) testified about watching his fraternal twin brother Jonathan slowly die of dehydration after he was deprived of water
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Joseph James, 12, testified that he watched his brother Jonathan's organs fail at his father's house and then saw him declared dead at the hospital
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Step-mother Tina Alberson confessed in police interview that she was responsible for her step-son's death from dehydration
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In jail, Alberson befriended Elizabeth Escalona - the woman convicted of gluing her daughter's hands to a wall and then torturing her to death
'I started panicking because he didn’t have a heartbeat, he didn’t have a pulse and I was scared,' little @placeholder testified.