Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- Tapes obtained by CNN of interrogations of a group of U.S. servicemen charged with unprovoked killings of Afghan civilians describe gruesome scenes of cold-blooded murder. 
 
 "So we met this guy by his compound, so Gibbs walked him out, set him in place, was like standing here," says Cpl. Jeremy Morlock, detailing how, on patrol earlier this year and under the command of his sergeant, Calvin R. Gibbs, he and others took an Afghan man from his home and killed him. 
 
 "So, he was fully cooperating?" the military investigator asks on the tapes in a May 2010 interview. 
 
 "Yeah," Morlock responds. 
 
 Investigator: "Was he armed?" 
 
 Morlock: "No, not that we were aware of." 
 
 Investigator: "So, you pulled him out of his place?" 
 
 Morlock: "I don't think he was inside. He was by his little hut area ... and Gibbs sent in a couple of people." 
 
 Investigator: "Where did they stand him, next to a wall?" 
 
 Morlock: "Yeah, he was kinda next to a wall ... where Gibbs could get behind a wall when the grenade went off. And then he kind of placed me and [Spc. Adam] Winfield off over here so we had a clean line of sight for this guy and, you know, he pulled out one of his grenades, an American grenade, popped it, throws the grenade and tells me and Winfield, 'Alright, wax this guy. Kill this guy, kill this guy.'" 
 
 Investigator: "Did you see him present any weapons? Was he aggressive toward you at all?" 
 
 Morlock: "No, not at all. Nothing, he wasn't a threat." 
 
 Morlock is accused of killing three Afghan civilian men -- two by shooting -- between January and May of this year. The third was the killing he described above. 
 
 The charging papers from the U.S. military paint a picture of a band of rogue soldiers, smoking hash, bored and plotting and carrying out murders of Afghan civilians for sport. 
 
 Gibbs is also accused of having kept fingers and leg bones as souvenirs, according to the documents. A soldier who tried to blow the whistle was beaten and threatened, some soldiers said. 
 
 Some of the soldiers took photographs of each other next to the Afghans after they had been shot, CNN has learned. 
 
 According to the military documents, some of the soldiers were involved in throwing grenades at civilians. 
 
 Morlock's civilian attorney, Michael Waddington, did not deny that his client killed for sport. "That's what it sounds like," he told CNN. 
 
 Waddington said his 22-year-old client was brain-damaged from prior IED attacks, was using prescription drugs and smoking hashish and was under the influence of and in fear of his commanding officer, who is also charged. He called Gibbs "the ringleader behind this." 
 
 Authorities allege Gibbs kept finger bones, leg bones and a tooth from Afghan corpses. Another soldier allegedly kept a skull from a corpse, according to charging documents. 
 
 Gibbs' attorney did not return CNN's calls. 
 
 Several soldiers are charged with taking pictures of the corpses, and one soldier is charged with with stabbing a corpse. 
 
 Other soldiers charged said they were afraid of Gibbs and admitted smoking hashish laced with opium nearly every day. 
 
 Cpl. Emmitt Quintal, who is charged with trying to interfere with a military investigation and drug abuse, told the Army investigator the whole deployment was using drugs on "bad days, stressful days, days when we needed to escape." 
 
 Quintal told investigators in May that the platoon -- under Gibbs' direction -- went to the barracks of a man who they believed was a snitch and beat him up. 
 
 After the beating, Quintal said on the tape, "Gibbs sat down casually and told [him] if he snitched again he would kill him and that he had killed people before and that he had no problem killing again. At that time, Sgt. Gibbs had a cloth. He opened it and dropped it and three human body fingers fell on the ground. At that point, I really lost my head." 
 
 Quintal's attorney did not return a call from CNN. 
 
 In all, Morlock is charged with three counts of murder. He is accused of killing Afghan civilian Gul Mudin in January with a grenade and rifle; killing civilian Mullah Adahdad in May in a similar manner; and shooting to death Marach Agha in February. 
 
 On Monday, Morlock and his attorney attended an Article 32 hearing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington. 
 
 At the hearing, to determine whether the military has enough evidence against Morlock to proceed with a court-martial, Army Special Agent Anderson D. Wagner testified that Morlock admitted in interrogations last May to being involved in the murders. 
 
 In his client's defense, Waddington suggested that Morlock was under the influence of drugs when he spoke with Wagner and that he should not have been interviewed until a later time. Morlock was being transferred through Kandahar for assessment of traumatic brain injury when the interview took place, Waddington said. 
 
 But Wagner testified that Morlock appeared lucid and articulate during the interview. 
 
 Still, Wagner acknowledged that there was no direct evidence Morlock was responsible for the killings, since no autopsies were performed. 
 
 Adam Kelly, another soldier under Gibbs, told investigators that the staff sergeant had a stash of guns and other items that could be planted on murder victims and that the other soldiers feared him. 
 
 "If Gibbs knew I was sitting here in front of this camera right now, there is no doubt in my mind that he would [expletive], that he would take me out," he said. 
 
 Kelly himself is not charged with murder. His attorney did not return a call from CNN. 
 
 The Pentagon has not commented on any of the cases. Instead, it sent CNN a statement about the videos: 
 
 "Disclosure of the video recordings to the public at this juncture is troubling because it could adversely affect the fair and just administration of the military justice process," the statement says. 
 
 Pretrial investigation hearings for five of the soldiers are scheduled over the next several weeks. Seven other soldiers are facing lesser charges, ranging from covering up the killings and mutilating corpses to drug use. 
 
 All of the men were members of a 2nd Infantry Division brigade operating near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010. 
 
 The five facing murder charges are Morlock of Wasilla, Alaska; Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, of Billings, Montana; Pfc. Andrew Holmes of Boise, Idaho; Spc. Adam Winfield, of Cape Coral, Florida; and Spc. Michael Wagnon, of Las Vegas, Nevada. They are all from the 5th Stryker Brigade. 
 
 Winfield's attorney, Eric Montalvo, told CNN in an e-mail that his client "is not guilty of premeditated murder, and that's as clear as I can be." 
 
 He said the videotape "doesn't tell the whole story. ... It is sort of what they molded him into." 
 
 CNN's Kathleen Johnston, Courtney Yager, Scott Zamost and Todd Schwarzschild contributed to this story. ||||| A soldier's videotaped statements describing how he and his colleagues randomly killed three Afghan civilians came under scrutiny Monday at a hearing into one of the most serious war-crimes cases from the war in Afghanistan. 
 
 Cpl. Jeremy Morlock of Wasilla, Alaska, is among five Stryker soldiers charged with premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit premeditated murder. In interviews with Army investigators, he described a plot led by Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs to randomly kill civilians for sport while on patrol in Kandahar Province. 
 
 Prosecutors have also alleged that members of the platoon mutilated Afghan corpses and even collected fingers and other body parts, and that some posed for photos with Afghan corpses. Morlock talked about how they threw a grenade at a civilian to "wax him." 
 
 Morlock's attorneys are seeking to suppress the statements, saying they were made under the influence of muscle relaxants, sleeping pills and anti-nausea medicine prescribed for repeat concussions suffered during war. Morlock was being evacuated from Afghanistan for apparent traumatic brain injury when he was questioned in May. 
 
 They also blasted Army doctors and U.S. policy in a news conference, saying they didn't understand how a cornucopia of drugs could possibly render a brain-damaged soldier battle-ready. Morlock sustained his first concussion from a roadside bomb last November, and that's when the first drugs were prescribed, they said. 
 
 "This lad was all juiced up and it was by Army doctors," said attorney Geoffrey Nathan. "Why didn't they just recall him?" 
 
 Army Special Agent Anderson D. Wagner testified that Morlock was articulate during the interviews and that his account was corroborated by others in the unit. The hearing will determine whether the case proceeds to a court martial; Morlock and the others could face the death penalty if convicted. 
 
 "He made good eye contact. He was able to recount events that happened several months ago," Wagner said by audio feed from Kandahar. 
 
 Prosecutors listed 18 witnesses for Monday's hearing. Fourteen of them asserted their right to remain silent, including other defendants and 1st Lt. Roman G. Ligsay, who has been removed as leader of the platoon but is not charged. 
 
 Morlock's lawyers conceded they don't know specifically what drugs Morlock was taking at the time of the killings. Hashish smoking was rampant in the unit, and in some cases it may have been laced with opium, they said. The silence of other witnesses makes it hard for them to verify what drugs, prescribed or not, Morlock might have been on at the time of the killings, they said. 
 
 Portions of Morlock's interviews were aired by ABC News, and The Associated Press has reviewed statements he made under oath in which he claimed Gibbs _ the highest ranking soldier accused _ planned "scenarios" during which they could kill civilians. For example, Morlock said, if they came across someone in a village that had previously been flagged as having Taliban influence, they could toss a grenade at the civilian and claim they had been responding to a threat. 
 
 Gibbs also illicitly collected "drop weapons" that could be placed by the bodies to make them appear to be combatants, Morlock and others said. 
 
 "Gibbs had pure hatred for all Afghanis and constantly referred to them as savages," Morlock said in the statement reviewed by the AP. "Sometime after Christmas 2009, Gibbs gave me a (fragmentation) grenade and told me that if the situation presented itself that we should go ahead and run with the grenade scenario that he had briefed to us." 
 
 A few weeks later, in January, the first of the killings was carried out, followed by one in February and one in early May. In each, prosecutors say, Morlock and Gibbs enlisted one other soldier to be involved. Lawyers for those three say they either deny involvement or that their participation was unwitting. 
 
 Gibbs' attorney says all three killings were "appropriate engagements." 
 
 The case raised serious questions about the Army's handling of it. Spc. Adam Winfield, who is charged in the final killing, sent troubling Facebook messages home to his parents in Florida after the first killing. He wrote that he was being threatened to keep his mouth shut about it and that he didn't know what to do. 
 
 His father made nearly half a dozen calls to military officials that day, and he said he warned them about the ongoing plot and the threats against his son. 
 
 But no suspects were arrested until May, when a witness in a drug case in the unit alerted investigators to what he considered unjustified killings. 
 
 In cross-examination of Wagner and another investigator, Morlock's attorney, Michael Waddington, questioned the lack of forensic investigation into the killings. He pressed them on whether they really knew who killed which civilian, and why they had not exhumed the bodies or seized the weapons of the accused. 
 
 Wagner responded that investigators likely would have had trouble locating the bodies, and even if they did, it would be difficult to exhume them without upsetting local citizens. 
 
 "If it was on U.S. soil we would have done it, no question," he said. "It's not the United States. Everything we do has repercussions." 
 
 ____ 
 
 Associated Press writer Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this report. ||||| The allegations are reminiscent of the military's darkest days in Vietnam. 
 
 Again, young GI's caught up in a difficult war are accused of widespread drug use and the random killing of innocent civilians, apparently for sport or thrills. 
 
 But the parents of one of the five soldiers charged with the premeditated murder of unarmed Afghans say that before one of the murders they tried to warn the Army and a U.S. Senator – and no one helped. 
 
 Now their son, 20-year-old specialist Adam Winfield, is charged with taking part in a killing three months after the Winfield family tried to blow the whistle. 
 
 The soldiers were serving at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in southern Afghanistan. On a videotaped confession obtained by ABC News, one of the soldiers, Corporal Jeremy Morlock, described how his Sergeant, Calvin Gibbs, had the men in his unit pick out civilians at random and then kill them with grenades and rifle fire. 
 
 "Gibbs called it like, 'Hey you guys wanna, you guys wanna wax this guy or what?' And you know, he set it up, like, he grabbed the dude." 
 
 Morlock told how Gibbs allegedly threw a grenade at the civilian, and then told Morlock and the others, 'Wax this guy. You know, kill this guy, kill this guy.' " 
 
 Morlock said that killing people came "too easy" to Gibbs. ""He just really doesn't have any problems with f___ing killing these, these people, to be honest." 
 
 Morlock also told investigators he believed that Gibbs was crazy and wouldn't hesitate to silence witnesses. 
 
 "If Gibbs knew that I was sitting in front of this camera right now," said Morlock, "there's no doubt in my mind that he'd f------ take me out if he had to." 
 
 CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE INTERVIEW WITH MORLOCK 
 
 'The Threats Are Already Coming My Way' 
 
 In February, Adam Winfield told his parents back home in Florida about the grenade incident via Facebook. 
 
 "Did you not understand what I just told you what people did in my platoon?" wrote Adam. 
 
 "Murder," responded his mother, Emma. 
 
 "Yeah, an innocent dude," answered Adam. "I want to do something about it. The only problem is I don't feel safe here telling anyone." 
 
 Adam said that there was a rumor that he was going to talk and "the threats are already coming my way." His mother then told him she would "do the right thing" and get him some help. Adam suggested she contact the Army, and she said "ok." 
 
 As Chris Winfield, Adam's father, told ABC News in an interview, "The guy that was doing this was his superior. This was his staff sergeant." 
 
 "[Adam] said that if he told anybody over there," said Chris Winfield, " that this particular individual was keeping an eye on him. And he would never make it past that night. He would never make it home. 
 
 The Winfields say they called six different Army offices and Senator Bill Nelson, D.-Fla., to get help. 
 
 Chris Winfield said he left at least four messages. "I said my son is in Afghanistan. . . . He's in the front lines. There's a rogue sergeant out there apparently killing innocent victims. And my son found out about this. And they're threatening him because he might say something. And I said you gotta get him out of there. You need to call me back, please." 
 
 At the command center at Fort Lewis, Washington, the headquarters for his son's division, Winfield says he finally got a sergeant on the line, with a disappointing response. 
 
 Recalls Winfield, "The sergeant came back to me and said, 'You know, it's a terrible situation, but from our end, it's a he-said, she said conversation. And there's nothing we can do about it. 
 
 "I was floored," said Winfield. 
 
 Sen. Nelson's office told ABC News they had no record of a call from the Winfields. 
 
 Gibbs Becomes Suspicious of Winfield 
 
 Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Gibbs was becoming suspicious of Winfield, according to other soldiers. 
 
 An Army investigator asked Cpl. Morlock during his taped confession if he thought Gibbs was serious about maybe having to "take out" Winfield. 
 
 "Oh, f___ yeah, for sure, definitely," answered Morlock. 
 
 "So you didn't take that as a joke," said the investigator, "or like maybe it was just bull____." 
 
 "[Gibbs] doesn't bulls____," said Morlock. "He doesn't need to." 
 
 Chris Winfield told ABC News he gave his son a message from the Army. " I told him, this is what they told us to do, you know, duck. Keep your head down. Stay away from this guy. Do the best you can. You know? And it's tough. As a parent, you know? I didn't expect him to come home." 
 
 Adam Winfield did come home, but he is now charged with pre-meditated murder. Three months after trying to blow the whistle, he says Sergeant Gibbs forced him to take part in another murder. 
 
 He claims he aimed his rifle over the body of the Afghan victim. 
 
 Said Emma Winfield, "It's heartbreaking. You know, again, I'm so thankful that he made it out of there alive. But he doesn't deserve to be treated the way he's been treated. When in February, he reached out. And as parents we did what we could do. And we will probably always regret that we didn't do more." 
 
 "But we were working from the place that he was afraid for his life," said Emma. "And we weren't going to do anything to risk his life. And now, in essence, we're just fighting for his life. And fighting for justice to be done." 
 
 'A Serial Killer' 
 
 At Fort Lewis Monday, the military held its first hearing on the case, as lawyers for Corporal Morlock sought to have the videotaped confession kept out of evidence, maintaining he only played along during the murders, and that he was heavily medicated with prescription drugs during the interview. 
 
 "My client did not kill anyone," said Waddington. "He did not use any bullets or grenades to kill any of those individuals." 
 
 Waddington said his client had little choice but to go along with Gibbs. "If your sergeant says, 'Let's go to this village, we're going to sweep this village and he throws a grenade at someone, and threatens you that if you're not on his team and you're a possible snitch and you're going to get beaten or killed by him, then you're going to role play along with it." 
 
 A lawyer for Sergeant Gibbs declined to comment on the case, but it is clear the other soldiers will seek to blame him for forcing them to participate. Eric Montalvo, the lawyer for Adam Winfield, told ABC News that he believes Gibbs is "essentially a serial killer," calling him "Mansonesque." 
 
 The military says the investigation of the murders also led to the discovery of widespread drug use at Forward Operating Base Ramrod. 
 
 Corporal Emmitt Quintal, one of the men charged, blamed the drug use on "Bad days, stressful days, days that we just needed to escape" in a taped interview with Army investigators. 
 
 Asked how frequently the men used drugs to escape, Quintal responded, "I'd say probably anywhere from three to four, every three to four days." 
 
 The Winfields say they believe their son Adam was a good soldier. 
 
 "You know, he's a good kid," said Chris Winfield. 
 
 CLICK HERE to follow the ABC News Investigative Team's coverage on Twitter. 
 
 "That was put in a horrific situation," added his wife, "with you know, a lack of command out in the field. And a failure of the military to be responsive to a cry for help." 
 
 The military now confirms it is investigating the allegations that the parents of Adam Winfield tried back in February to warn the Army that both innocent Afghan civilians, and U.S. soldiers, were being put at risk. 
 
 Click Here for the Blotter Homepage.
– Soldiers charged with murdering Afghan civilians for kicks are blaming a "crazy" sergeant that the parents of one said they warned the Army about. In a chilling videotaped interrogation, Corporal Jeremy Morlock recounts being ordered to kill civilians during heroin-, opium-, and hash-fueled raids. At one point, Sergeant Calvin Gibbs tossed a grenade at an unarmed civilian and ordered: "Wax this guy," Morlock recalled. "Gibbs had pure hatred for all Afghans and constantly referred to them as savages," he added in a statement. Another witness said that "if Gibbs knew that I was sitting in front of this camera right now, there's no doubt in my mind that he'd f***king take me out," reports CNN. The family of another of the five soldiers charged with murder, specialist Adam Winfield, said he told his parents to report Gibbs because Winfield feared he'd be killed if he did, reports ABC News. The Winfields say they contacted six Army offices and their US senator, but nothing was apparently done about Gibbs." I said my son is in Afghanistan. There's a rogue sergeant out there apparently killing innocent victims," recounted Winfield's father, Christopher. He said one sergeant told him it's a "he said" situation and that nothing could be done. "I was floored," said Winfield. Army officials say they are investigating the Winfield's information.