Monster: Under The Bed

0:00 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement, corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil, many feel they are unspeakable. Warning, unspeakable is intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listing discretion is advised. Hey y'all, Kelly Jennings here back for another episode of Unspeakable.

1:01 How's it going? I hope you've had a wonderful week so far. You're midway and you're getting to listen to this episode and I think I have a pretty good one for you today. Before I start though, let me give you some shout outs because I've got a whole bunch of new people that are joining in on my Patreon and I need to give them a shout out. And I'm going to start with some local people. We've got some people from denim springs and some walker and some Hammond. I've got Miss Kayla Mackie, Miss Michelle. Now, I don't want to mispronounce this. Is it Siampa? Siampa? I hope I haven't screwed that up, but you know, girl, I'm a little country bumping up here. You got to tell me message me on Facebook and tell me if I screwed that up. But I'm so glad to have y'all along with Miss Caitlin Williams.

1:42 And then this one I just got so tickled with her name is Miss Nina Button and I thought, oh my god, her name is just so cute. And then I saw her email and I'm not going to give you her full email, but I just want you to know it starts out with cute as a get it because her last name is Button. That's cute. Hey Miss Nina, thank you so much. And I got tickled by that one. Marvie Borer. Hi, Marvie. Thank you so much for joining in on my Patreon and Shari Dufrein. Hello, hello, hello. And then hot damn Roxanne. I've got Roxanne Richardson. I think Roxanne is the most legit name.

2:22 How you doing Roxanne? Thank you so much. Demi Smith and last but not least just for today is going to be Miss Jackie Williams. And I'm super proud to have you Miss Jackie. Thank you for joining. I actually taught Miss Jackie's daughter and she's about to graduate college now and is doing great things and she's in the band and at her college and just I'm watching her grow and prosper and I really appreciate that you would continue to support me in my endeavor here on my podcast. But thank you so much everyone. Hey, if you want to join Patreon, y'all it's on Facebook. I'm not going to sit here and explain it all to you, but you can go look, find me a unspeakable true crime podcast by Kelly Jennings and join in. Also big news. I am transferring over my merch website. So beyond the lookout, I have a brand new website coming out with a ton of new stuff on there. Way more options than I had before. So I'm in the process of transferring that over. So you might kind of see two ways to purchase for right now, but hopefully in the next week or so it'll be completely transferred over.

3:23 I have a link that I posted last week that you can go see on my Facebook, but just stay tuned, tons new stuff because y'all speak and I listen and I want y'all to be able to go see all the cool stuff that I got. But we're going to go and get started. We're going to start with this episode that I'm calling Monster Under the Bed. All right. So this episode today takes place back in 1999. So we're going back just a little bit, but while this is an older case, it's still one that caught me by a surprise when I first learned of it. I literally was okay, I don't go to the gym all the time. I'm not even going to pretend I do, but I did go like a few times, but I get really bored. So I have to find something to do. So I read or I'll watch stuff, you know, and it's usually true crime that I'm reading or baseball or football or something, but I read about this case in the gym and I literally stopped and like, huh, thought about it for a minute because I was so like tripped out by this one. So it interested me so much that I say, ooh, I got to tell my people about this one. So what's so surprising about this case is that it can everyone involved is children. There's no adults. And when I tell you about this crime, you'd be like, damn, kids, kids did this. And, you know, they're just rather young, considering the chain of events that take place and it's just kind of shocking. So this one's going to be out of Jacksonville, Florida. And I don't know why, but everything crazy seems to happen in Florida. But the Clifton family, they're your average middle class family living a normal life.

4:51 They live in a normal neighborhood. And mom's name is Sheila, dad's name is Steve. And they were the proud parents of two girls. One of their daughters was Maddie. She was eight years old. And then she had an older sister named Jesse. Now Maddie was best described as, and I know we always say this, a typical little girl. But in that, then that tell you what we're saying. This was not in a klektic child or one that was involved in risky behavior. She was your normal every day eight, eight year old little girl. She played the piano and she loved basketball. All right. And if you look at her picture, which you know me, and I'm going to post pictures of her, but she has her little face dotted with freckles and she has brown straight hair. And at the age she's at, and I mean, this with absolute love, you can tell that Maddie was still growing into her features. Okay. And I have a child, roughly this age, and it's kind of cute because they still have their little baby face, but she's got her big adult teeth in the front. And she's still just, she's starting to kind of come into her own. And you know, in her mouth, she still had some baby teeth, but those adult teeth were coming in. Her little ears kind of stick out a little bit in her little school pictures, but she is just a precious little thing. And according to her family, they said Maddie was a feisty girl.

6:06 All right. And her thing was that she always pulled for the underdog. And I feel that in my soul, sweet Maddie, I understand that it didn't matter if she was watching a movie or real life. She always wanted the underdog to get a fair, you know, a fair try things. And she was very attuned to people and hated for them to feel lonely or isolated. So she would go out of her way to speak to people that maybe everyone else might overlook. And I just, I so identify with that. I try to make a point that, you know, we have special needs kids where I teach and I'll go in in the mornings and say hello to those babies because sometimes they do get forgotten, you know, they don't run with a regular crowd.

6:48 And the kids that are just quiet in class and they don't speak a lot. And you can tell that they're not necessarily the big popular crowd kids. I always want to make sure that everyone feels seen and loved. And that was Maddie's thing. She loved to make sure people felt known and that they were noticed. So Maddie and Jesse, her sister were really close and they loved each other. They even called each other best friends according to some of the reports that are read. And I think that's pretty precious. So much like I remember my childhood being Maddie was raised at a time when parents allowed their children to roam free. Okay, remember, this is the 90s. And so when this case took place, I was a little older than Maddie. I was about 15. But I can remember those days vividly of riding bikes until the lights came on. And we were literally told to go outside and go play, right? Go outside and play. We had to leave our parents alone. And like, I mean, all day, like back kids catch you on the flip, you know, we had to be gone. And the only reason we ever went inside, I remember being young was that if we had to use the bathroom or we were allowed to grab popsicles so we could run inside and grab popsicles other than that, we knew our ass is better be outside playing and Maddie's life was no different. So, you know, back then times were just different. It was not like the 20, you know, 2020s that were in right now. They just were, we were coming to the end of that roam free and play hard era, if you know what I mean. And but it was still there. It was kind of the end of it. And things like kidnappings and trafficking and evil and all that, they were real.

8:24 But they just again, they were not promoted and advertised. And I don't know that parents really, you know, felt like we had to tell our kids those things because they were scary back then. I mean, hell today now we have to do lockdown drills for active shooters in schools. We are having to expose our kids to so much because so much keeps happening. Well, as it normally would be, Maddie was told to go play outside and this is going to be November 3rd, 1998 and she did just that. She went outside to play and she had friends in the neighborhood that she would go visit just like, we all did right go knock on doors and see who can come outside and play. And one of those friends that she had made was named Joshua Phillips. Now a little bit about Josh, Josh was born March 17th in 1984 and he was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Shout out Pennsylvania if if anyone there is listening to me. But in the early 90s, his family would move from Pennsylvania to Florida and as fate would have it, they would settle into a home across the street from Maddie Clifton and her family.

9:24 Josh was a few years older though. Josh was 14 and he was in ninth grade. He was a little awkward, all right? And he was kind of a loner most of the time. But Maddie didn't care, you know, Maddie liked the underdog and that underdogness if that's even a word didn't bother her. They had played before in the neighborhood and on this day, Maddie was hitting golf balls up and down the street. She had a little golf club and she was just kind of smacking them around. And after she had lost a bunch of them, right, from them going everywhere, she headed home to round up some more golf balls to hit. So as the day kind of progressed, Maddie eventually made her way across the street to see if Josh, her neighbor wanted to play with her. And so she went to his house and said, hey, how about we go, we go hit a baseball or something? You want to come outside and hit a baseball? So they did. They went outside to play. Well, later that afternoon, Maddie's mom returned home from running errands and had, you know, things that she had to do was actually election day and she came home from voting.

10:26 When Maddie popped in the house and she was told, Maddie, make sure you're home for supper. And she said, Mama, I promise I'll be right in for supper. Is this not sounding a little bit like, wait a minute, in that the exact thing you said last episode that we'd covered? Yep. Sounds familiar, huh? But as the day dwindled to a close, Maddie never returned to the house. So her family began looking for her like families would do. They called out to her. They went up and down the street, but Maddie never came home. So eventually, her mom would go out into the neighborhood. She looked around for her. She asked if neighbors had seen her. She even went knocking on the doors, but no one had seen Maddie. And when they questioned her little sister, Jessie, or excuse me, her bigger sister, Jessie, she said she hadn't seen her and she hadn't been with her for a while. So she didn't know where she was. They'd been doing their own things and separated shortly thereafter. Mom starts to panic and says, that's it. I'm calling 911. I got to make a report. Maddie's gone. We can't find her. So that night, the Clifton's and their neighbors, lots of people came out and they started searching with flashlights. And among those that were searching were Maddie's friends in the neighborhood. Josh, her friend across the street was looking for his parents were there. Maddie's parents, all the neighbors are out and they cannot find her. You know, it was almost like, hopefully she had fallen off her bike or something had gotten hurt, but she was nowhere, like nowhere. One day passed and Maddie never came home. Then three days

11:56 went by and still no Maddie. She's eight years old, y'all. Then five days goes by. Now it's getting, it's getting kind of stressful. You know what I mean? How long can a child survive if they're injured or if they're in a position that they can't call for help? I mean five days and I'm thinking no food or water. If they're injured or or something terrible has happened and there's still no sign of Maddie. She's literally nowhere. Over a total of seven days, thousands of volunteers, frantically looked for Maddie. People literally came together because as you can imagine, the more time that passed, the more grim this outlook was and people knew it. It's a little girl. Here's a stat for you too to kind of follow up on that. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Statistics, the number of children abducted by strangers every year is just below 5,000. So if this was an abduction, she would have fallen into that 5,000 kids. That's a lot of kids, though. You know, 5,000 kids. I mean, that's like double of 5A class high school, some of the high schools around here, all every kid at the school being abducted and of non-family abduction cases, usually around 20% are not found alive. That's scary because no one in Maddie's family had a vendetta or would have benefited by taking Maddie. So if she was taken, it must have been a stranger.

13:29 So typically the first contact between a perpetrator and a victim is usually within a quarter mile of a child's home. That's an important stat to know also just based on all the other stuff I've told you about like sex offenders. If most perpetrators that take children are within a quarter mile of the home, that means somebody's watching your kids if they abduct them. And this is apparent in 80% of stranger abductions, 80% of the time it's within a quarter mile of the home that the perpetrator takes the child. And the majority of abducted victims by strangers are female.

14:11 So these are just some red flags, right? If you know this about kids and going missing, the recovery rate for missing children in the United States, and I'm talking about like really, really difficult cases. Okay, not ones where the kid was taken by like, you know, their dad and he wouldn't return them or something. I'm talking about like just boom, a kid's missing and what happened. The recovery rate of those children in the 90s was 62%. Which you're like, okay, well great. That's better than half, but what if it's your kid? 62% sounds pretty scary to me. I don't like that stat. I'd rather like 98% of the kids be recovered. And recovery by the way doesn't mean alive, it just means they got them back. But hey, things haven't improved because I was looking at just, you know, some stats. And as of 2011, okay, and I know that's back a few ways, right? A few years.

15:05 It moved up to 97%. So we're moving in the right direction. And I think that's, hey, that's a good thing. Let's acknowledge that. But in the 90s, not the case. So I'm sure her family was just sick, right? They're frantic. They can't find her. Her dad was quoted as saying, it was like she shut the door and just poof vanished off of the face of the earth. And quote, that makes me just feel sick. You know, you don't know who has your baby where your baby is. And y'all, this wasn't 24 hours. This wasn't 48 or 72. I mean, this is seven days of no response from their child and no leads. Nothing. So when Maddie disappeared, the entire town decided they were going to come to her aid.

15:47 The case was literally so shocking to people that it even captivated the nation. This became huge national news and people were really just horrified that, oh, how can a kid just vanish without a trace? Like, how can people just vanish? This can't happen. And so hundreds, if not thousands of volunteers offered to help strangers, anybody, just people that were like, oh my god, they could empathize if this was my child. I guess that's sympathizing, but they were trying to put themself in these parents shoes. If this was my baby, I'd want someone to help me. So they created search parties and everyone in the town knew that she was missing. It was literally a parent's worst nightmare. And whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, camera crews started flocking to these suburbs. Camera crews were everywhere. And unlike the last case of Megan Canca, that was, you know, they got the answers really within about 24 hours of what happened to their daughter.

16:48 This case, as I just said, lingered a bit longer. And so a full week would pass without hearing from her. And that's going to be really important. I want you to remember that seven days, seven whole days, okay? So it's like a, you know, a three ring circus in their town. And the activity in the community was nonstop. The cops were actively looking. Reporters from every media outlet were showing up in droves. And friends and family of the Clifton's went out of their way to stop what they were doing to go look for this sweet little girl because people don't vanish. Okay, this is not a magic show. Something happened, but they could not figure out what it was. Y'all, it got so big. I even found where the National Guard sent troops. Okay, people wanted to find this child.

17:37 So where were the, the troops? This is kind of a sickening feeling, but they sent these National Guard troops walking through the sewer systems, trying to see if they could find any sign of her there, but it would all be in vain because they just didn't find her. And Maddie's parents were, were trying not to despair, okay? They were trying to keep hope, but they were facing some pretty grim facts. This was becoming so grim that even the FBI became involved because the local police had failed to yield anything, not even a suspect, not even someone to go after to even try to figure something out. They even put up a $100,000 reward for anyone that could lead to Maddie Clifton's safe return. That's pretty good. I mean, we have cases around here where people are murdered or missing or whatever and they can't even drum up a $10,000 reward. And I think it's sick that we have to offer money to get someone to speak up, but it is what it is. Money will talk in a lot of ways.

18:36 So I thought I would tell you, you know, what are the steps taken by police when a child goes missing? Well, I want you to know every case is different, but here are a few things you could bet on in the event that a child goes missing. The first thing is they're going to do a crime scene search of the area where the child was last seen. That just makes sense, right? How far could a child have possibly gone if they're on foot? Maddie was on foot. They're also going to do a door to door search. So they're going to go see all the neighbors and and see, hey, did you see the kid when the last time you saw the kid who were they with? Then they might even open it up and get a little bit bigger and do a grid search, right? And, you know, depending on the landscape and what type of area you live in, grid searches are a good thing because they can break out their groups of volunteers or people come into help and kind of give them areas to search. And they're literally going to go land, see, or air. I mean, wherever you are, they'll put helicopters up in the air. They have these flair in helicopters that they can do heat seeking to see like at night, is she laying down in the woods or something like that? And commonly done also is what's called a roadblock search, which is going to be where they're stopping a lot of the cars at the same time of day and the location where the child was last seen because, look, people are creatures of habit and they tend to take the same route home or they tend to take the same route every day wherever they're going. So roadblock searches will sometimes produce witnesses who saw your child or observed them hanging out with somebody and they might remember an out of place vehicle. So think about how you drive to work every day or

20:06 to daycare or whatever. There are certain things I expect to see on my way to work and if something is out of place, I might notice it even if in the moment, I don't realize it. So in this case, they were doing all of those things. I mean, they can even bring in bloodhounds to look and search out tracks or other types of dogs to see if they can get a scent on her, but y'all, they got nothing. I mean, nothing. That door to door canvassing, I mentioned though, where that search going door to door, would actually become part of an interesting chain of events though in just a little while. So see, the police did this. They went and did the door to door check with neighbors. They searched people's houses with their permission. You know, Josh Phillips mom and family allowed them to come in and police searched their home, not once, not twice, but actually three times. They went into that house because people knew that Maddie played with him and some other children too.

21:03 So let me tell you more about Josh though, because I know you're like, well, tell me about this kid. Who is he? Well, y'all he's 14. He was described as quiet, but friendly. He had zero arrest history. He was not a problematic child. He had no history of violence, nothing like that. He was just a normal kid that lived at home. Even his teachers, when they were asked about him, they said, look, he's a popular kid. He wasn't one that would stand out or try to make a scene in school. He sat quietly in his desk. He did his work. They described him as an average kid, but they added he is fun and he's silly. So when he's in his element, kids liked him. He was funny. He was, he was, he was a goofy little kid. So naturally, you know, the police wanted to talk to him specifically because they were friends, and the police went to search the house. They found nothing out of the ordinary. And Josh even went and helped to look for Maddie because I was his friend and he was really sad that she was gone. And while they're searching, police got a huge bit of information. Guess what? There was another neighbor that they realized, oh my god, we need to go take a look at this fella. He's an adult though. He's not a child. And he would quickly jump to become the prime suspect in Maddie's disappearance. Why you ask?

22:19 Because during their research, police found that this neighbor had been arrested and charged earlier, years earlier, in two sexual battery cases. Kinda echoes those sentiments I left in the Megan Kankakase, doesn't it? Because guess what? Both of those sexual battery charges against that neighbor were dropped. Both of them, he wasn't charged with one. He was charged with two. And neither one of them were followed up or went after. They were dropped. Bingo. The police shifted their suspicion to his direction because this guy now has a motive.

23:03 We know that he likes to be sexually abusive to people. So in the meantime, Maddie's parents were like, okay, we can't do this. We have got to up the Annie. And so they decided they wanted to do media interviews because they were like, this is just necessary. Now we need the whole world to know or anybody that will listen to know, hey, our baby's gone. Our community knows. But what if she's traveling? Right? What if she's in a car with somebody and they've taken her and she's in another state, which happens, right? They want everyone to be on the lookout for their daughter and they wanted them to know her name. All right? It's been seven days. Their hope now has faded. Okay? And it's quickly turning into absolute despair. But amazingly, about that time, the police would quickly rule out that neighbor with the sexual battery charges history. But guess what? They're about to find out that they aren't very far off because it was a neighbor that was involved in her disappearance.

24:00 I could not make this. I mean, fact is stranger than fiction. You know, or truth is stranger than fiction. Maddie's parents are doing that media recording, right? Doing that interview. They're literally wrapping up the interview. When Josh Phillips' mother is seen running as fast as she can across the street to a police officer. And what she would have to say is literally jaw dropping. Y'all, she found Maddie. She found Maddie, the mom of her of his of her friend found her. And you know, the cops like, oh my god, where is she? Where is she? And she says, I found her. But she's dead. And the cop is like, what? She's dead. Yeah, I found her. She's dead. How did you find her? We've been searching the air. We've been searching everywhere. How did you just find her? And are you ready for one of the sickest things ever? Listen to this.

25:05 It's been seven days since a Maddie went missing, right? Seven days. Well, Josh's mom was cleaning their house and was livid at Josh because of the state of his bedroom. He was being a gross teen boy. And we all know what I'm talking about. Don't don't say me any hate, male. You know, I'm talking about teenage boys are gross. And he wasn't cleaning up his room. I mean, hell, he even had these pet birds and their cage was disgusting. It's stonk. And his room smelled. And she's like, you've got to clean this mess up. This is ridiculous. So she was pissed and she was fusing at Josh to clean his room. As she walked out of the room, she's walking out of the room. She felt something wet on her feet in the carpet. What the hell had this boy spilled on his carpet now? So not only is your room nasty, but now you got frickin wet carpet. Well, it wasn't that out of the ordinary because he had a water bed. Remember the old school water beds? Who came up with that idea? Anyway, he had a water bed.

26:07 So she's like, great, the damn thing's leaking. Now we got to leak in water bed on top of your nasty ass room. So she gets down on her hands and knees and she pulls back a piece of the bed frame to find that that's where the this liquid was coming from. And when she pulled back the bed frame, there staring back at her from under the bed was a dead Maddie Clifton under her son's bed. That smell that was getting worse and worse and worse over the days in her home was the rotting corpse of eight-year-old Maddie Clifton stuffed under her son's bed. She had been there the whole time.

26:57 When the police came in to talk to Josh, they went in his room. They acknowledged there was a little smell when they first went in there, but his room was disgusting and he just sat on his bed and the police questioned him. He even had a flier of Maddie, missing Maddie when they went back another time to question him on his nightstand. As you can imagine, the police were horrified as well as humiliated as their search failed to find Maddie who literally laid at their feet. Now I'm not going to give them complete hate because dogs didn't find anything. I don't know if they brought dogs in the house.

27:43 They wouldn't have had a reason to at that point. And who expects to have a dead child under their son's bed? I mean, we might have to take a minute. Ladies, do you all want to go run and check under your son's bed? Because I hope you don't find anything but some nasty socks. This is just unbelievable. Like unspeakable. How in the world did you have a dead neighbor under your bed the whole time, Josh? So the police went back to the Phillips home and just as she claimed, they found Maddie's body entombed inside the frame of 14-year-old Josh's water bed. Right then, they taped it off and they have their crime scene across the street. So at the risk of being borderline morbid and I have to tell you this, I'm not trying to be gross. I need you to understand what they were dealing with, okay?

28:35 I have to tell you the stages of decomp. So you can fully understand what this 14-year-old boy was readily going to bed every night and sleeping on top of. Like nothing had happened. All right, 24 to 72 hours after death, your internal organs start to decompose. Three to five days after death, that's when the body starts to bloat. And the blood containing like foam and the liquid and the juices from the body start leaking from the nose and the mouth, hence the liquid pouring out from under his bed and soaking his carpet. And then six to ten days after death, that's when the body turns from like a green color to a red as that blood decomposes and the organs and the abdomen start to accumulate gases that are released. The smell.

29:28 And the, oh my god, y'all, he slept on top of her body for seven days. The only thing I guess in that home that may have been helping this situation was that that poor woman, her mother was smelling someone rot in her home, but they had air condition. So maybe it slowed the decomp a little bit, but obviously not enough because the liquids were pouring out of her. I mean, I know teenage boys are nasty y'all. I know they can smell. I remember vividly living in my parents' home and my room smelling like a freaking three dollar hooker live there because I had bath and body work spray like everywhere, okay? But you walk a few feet to my brother's room and it smelled like ball sweat, you know, and cheese or something, but I don't ever recall it smelling like a dead body and it's really weird to me that a dead body didn't ring more bells. But whatever, shout out to my brother's act though, I take it back that I said your room smelled like death when I was a teenager, two-shay, it in fact did not, but Josh's room did literally like holy shit. I'm gonna clap that one out holy shit like your room stink bad enough that your mama looked under the bed and found a whole dead person. No freaking sir. No sir. But in all seriousness, I can't imagine the horrors probably that that woman now has lived and I bet you that replays in her mind all the time, you know, you look under a bed and find a dead person and not only was Josh's life now ruined, but Maddie's life ruined, obviously she's the real victim here, but both mamas, Maddie lost her daughter, Josh's mom lost her son.

31:04 And now police had to go and break the news to Maddie's mom that she was found and the whole time she was across the street stuffed under a teen boy's water bed. Now let's talk about the condition of Maddie's body and I don't mean as far as Decomp, I mean like evidence about her clothing and whatnot. You know like what could lead up to this and I'm really glad you want to know because here are the facts. Maddie's body was partially clothed and this really bothered me and you'll see what I mean when you listen to what what Josh claims happened, but she's partially clothed. The condition of her body showed that she had been beaten with a baseball bat and stabbed multiple times. So this wasn't a kid that passed out, this wasn't a kid that ate, you know, eight poison on accident or something. No, this is murder, this is animalistic attacking of this eight year old girl by a 14 year old and he beats her with a baseball bat and stabs her over and over and over again. So police were immediately in route to the middle school where Josh was sitting in class and they arrested him on campus. I mean imagine you're sitting in class next to a kid, you know, your ninth grade and one minute y'all are taking your English test and the next minute the police swoop in and grab him and arrest him for the murder of this missing girl that the whole community's been looking for. I'm imagining that those kids were pretty affected too by this,

32:39 you know, that they were sitting next to the guy that did this. And he's charged with first degree murder at 14 years old. So soon he became the focal point of that national news broadcast instead of Maddie as the media normally does, but the people who knew Josh were literally in shock and having lived long enough to have friends that it turns out are absolute horrible people and family members that have done terrible things. I know that feeling when you are just dumbfounded. How could this have been not them, not this person? There's no way. Josh's own principal, his name was Jerome Wheeler.

33:20 They interviewed him and he agreed that all that they could, everybody that was being asked about it, they just could not believe the news. They were having a really hard time believing this and that principal was even quoted as saying they're like Josh, Josh. Wait, Josh, Josh, because they, he says they'll say his name two or three times because they can't believe it. That kid? No way, no freaking way. But likewise, as that was happening, news started to spread fast to the friends of Maddie and they were finding out at her school. She went to San Jose Catholic school and so the media immediately runs to her school to see, you know, set up cameras like they do and there's reports that said that they were seeing parents flock to the school and children were just sobbing as their parent, you know, they're like hanging on their parents as their parents are taking them home for the day because they're having a process now, what happened to their friend and their horrific details are scary. Scary for a little kid, you know, your friend was found under a water bed murdered by another kid. Wow, so many young lives are affected in this case. So the police go and they interview Josh after they arrest him and this is the story that that Josh gives. He says that Maddie came over to play baseball and he knew his parents weren't home and so he hesitantly said yes. He didn't think that he should be playing baseball with her, but then according to his account,

34:53 he accidentally hit her in the face with the baseball. Well, that's a lie because it was a baseball bat that she was hit with. A baseball does not bash your brains in, you know, but he says he hit her in the face with a ball and so she cried out and started screaming and he said when she wouldn't stop crying, that's when he made the decision to drag her into his house. His claim was that he was afraid, okay. He was really scared, but it wasn't because necessarily that he hurt Maddie. He was afraid of his father. See, he argued that his father was an alcoholic and that he was extremely violent and he had a very violent temper and he was death, deathly afraid of what his dad was going to do. He found out that Josh had been playing with someone while he wasn't home. So according to Josh, his father, his name was Steve Phillips. He was a computer specialist. He says that he was incredibly strict and violent, not only towards Josh, but also towards his mother and his mother's name was Melissa.

36:02 And he said that Steve would become his dad would become extremely furious and I rate if other children were in the house without him there and he said it was even worse if he, you know, the dad had been drinking and he said my dad drinks a lot. So he said basically I just freaked out. So he then says, I pushed her, she was unconscious, I pushed her underneath my water bed until my parents you know got home or before my parents got home, I just shoved her under the bed. But here's the kicker. Okay. If he's this poor 14 year old kid who accidentally hurt this little girl, first of all, why is she now unconscious? Because remember I told you about the baseball bat. He's that he didn't.

36:51 Why is she unconscious? Number one. And then number two, if he was just afraid because she was hurt, then why before nightfall did he remove his mattress and slit Matty's throat? with his parents home? That doesn't make sense. It just doesn't make any sense. So what did he use to stab or into cut or throat? He used his leatherman multi-tool knife and I don't know if that's kind of bringing up vibes to you like it is to me, but remember Aiden Fucci, the team killer who killed Tristan Bailey and his love of his leatherman tool his knife. He called it picker. Well, he stabbed Matty in the chest seven times and then put her underneath the bed frame.

37:42 I just look, I know he's 14, but none of that makes sense to me and it's not to me it doesn't follow logical 14 year old response. Even if your father is abusive, I can't understand the overkillden. Right? If you're if you're if you're want to just hide her body, why then the overkill and going back and doing more? I don't know, I don't like that. So Josh then slept on top of that water bed for the next seven nights as her body began to decompose, never batting an eye, acting like everything was fine, went to school. Hmm, where could she be? Now, listen, I have a 14 year old, okay? And I know that they panic. I know that they do stupid things. If you have kids, you know that you know that they do dumb shit and they'll try to talk their way out of it. However, this goes beyond screwing up and and if no one was home, number one, then how would his father even know what happened?

38:40 How would his father even know what happened? So send her home, Josh. Like, why would you make yourself more tied to what you're trying to distance yourself from? I don't get that. Secondly, why drag her inside of your home? I mean, that's bringing more trouble and more problems inside the home, which you argue is abusive. So why would you bring her into the war zone? I would think and y'all, I'm not saying this is okay, but I mean, I'm thinking if I was panicking, I'd want her as far away from my house as possible, drag her a few streets over and drop her in a ditch or something. Like, I don't understand why you would bring her in the home. Even a 14 year old would know to make distance between you and your problem. That's why kids minimize and act like they don't tell you the whole story. So why bring as he stated a crying screaming kid into your house?

39:29 I just don't buy that. Like, what are you accomplishing if nobody's home and she's crying, why are you bringing her inside the house? Also, she's hit with a baseball bat, not a baseball as Josh is claiming. So he's lying about what really happened, which makes me wonder about motive. The motive is weird here. You're saying you hit her with a ball. Okay, well, that would mean you hit her with a ball one time. She's got three or more blows to the head with a baseball bat. I looked at what I could find on the autopsy and something that was glaringly missing to me, unless I missed it, but I did not see where they, the autopsy said that it looked like she had an injury to her eye from a baseball and then the other injuries from the baseball bat. So all I'm saying is I just think it's weird. I know maybe you felt cornered and like you were, you were stuck with her because she was crying and so you had to bring her inside and then you felt like you needed to beat her with a baseball bat, I guess, but I don't know. I just think there's, it's weird to me. I would have want to create distance, not drag her into the house where my supposedly just massively abusive father was, because then she's in the house and he's gonna find her. So I'm also curious as to why in his haste to hide her body that he found time to pull off her underwear and pull up her shirt. It kind of reminds me of that scene in Titanic, you know, when Jack is saving Rose in the beginning from jumping

41:00 to her death and then that pompous man comes up after everybody walks off and says to the hero and they're like, funny, you jumped it so quickly to save her yet you had time to remove your shoes. You remember that scene? So I know, look, there's gonna be some people right now that know this case and they're like, no, no, no, it's because he drug her under the bed. Okay, let's think about a water bed and you're dragging a body, you're dragging a body under the water bed. Okay, cool. I guess you can make the argument that her panties and her pants came down as you drug her. But also when she was found her shirt was pulled up over and her chest was exposed. I just, that doesn't match up either, either the shirt would be down and then the pants would come down as you drug or not. I don't know.

41:49 I just, I find that odd and if you're willing to beat someone's brains in and kill them because they're crying, I don't think it's unreasonable to think maybe there was another motive behind that. All right, but hey, it's America. We can all have our own opinions. I like to be a free thinker and establish my own thoughts on cases. I just don't, I'm not big on that whole, oh, her panties just happened to come down because he was dragging her. I kind of feel like there was some sexual intrigue there and I'm not saying he maybe he wanted to rape her but I think that there might have been some sexual intrigue. She's younger, he's older, he's bigger, she's smaller. You know, I also pulled his appeal paperwork because it's always interesting to me that some facts are left out by the perpetrator in their explanation, but then years later whenever they go to their appeal or to a hearing, there's always more that kind of comes out. All right, and this is how it reads in the appeal, the facts in the appeal in the courts. That evening several of the neighborhood children, including Joshua took part in a search. Witnesses to that event described Joshua as quote, unquote, acting normal, but looking as if he had just taken a shower. The next day, a Jacksonville Sheriff's office detective spoke with Joshua about Maddie who stated that he had seen Maddie that day but had not played with her. He was not supposed to play with her because of their age difference. That's different. What's the deal with the age difference? That strikes me. So even if you want to say that

43:23 there's an argument that the panties came down, I too find it odd that a 14 year old boy wants to play with an eight year old girl. The age difference is huge. I have a 14 year old and an eight year old. They have nothing in common. They don't, they don't, I mean, I know they're siblings, but I don't know. And I would never let my eight year old go play with a 14 year old boy. Why the age difference? So he says that they weren't supposed to play together and he was scared because his father was a raging alcoholic, but when you get into the nitty gritty of the appeal, he says it's not because of that. It's because of their age difference and what would it matter? Their age difference except for he might take advantage of a younger child. So police searched the Phillips storage shed and car after Joshua's father arrived home, but they found nothing. A couple of days later, another homicide detective went to Phillips home when only Joshua was there and he did interview Joshua as they sat on the bed in his room like I mentioned. Maddie's body was not discovered until November 10th, 1998 when Joshua's mother was upset and crying and flagged down the uniform police officer who was doing an investigation in the neighborhood. The officers in Miss Phillips went to Joshua's room and opened the door. There they saw two small feet with white socks sticking out from under the bottom of Joshua's water bed, along with liquid coming from underneath the bed and tape on the floor.

44:44 A strong odor emanated from the room, which is immediately sealed as a crime scene, and one of the detectives then picked up Joshua's school and took him to the police station. When Joshua's room was searched, the police found several types of air fresheners, rolls of tape, a baseball bat hidden behind a dresser, and a leatherman knife tool. Maddie's body was under the water bed with her t-shirt pulled up and her panties beneath her. Joshua confessed to killing Maddie. He claimed that they were playing with a baseball in the backyard when it hit, when he hit the ball very hard and accidentally struck her near the left eye. But the autopsy report I looked at had no left eye mentioned damage from a baseball. She began to cry in hollar, so Joshua, fearful that his father would be angry him for playing with the younger girl, took her into his room. She was bleeding from the gash and crying loudly, and to keep his father from discovering her, he struck Maddie once or twice in the head. She whimpered and when she began to mow more loudly, he took his knife and cut her throat.

45:45 Please do not be lost on the fact that this is like a child's life we're talking about. This isn't, I don't want to get so caught up in the wording of what happened or didn't happen that you're missing the point that a 14 year old slit a child's throat and beat her head with a baseball bat. Then he concealed her body by prying off the side of his water bed and pushing Maddie underneath. Joshua's father had come home by this time and realizing that Maddie's labored breathing was loud enough for his father to hear in another room, Josh pulled the child out and stabbed her in the lungs so that she would stop breathing. He explained that her shorts and underwear came off when he dragged her into his room and that her shoes came off when he shoved her under the bed the second time. All of this happened because Josh was afraid of getting in trouble. But the state's medical examiner testified that Maddie had suffered three separate attacks. She was struck three times on her forehead and on top of her head receiving wounds that would have been fatal about 30 minutes after inflection. Her neck wounds perforated her windpipe causing her to bleed to death or drown in her own blood. Nine stab wounds to her chest and abdomen were inflicted when she was all ready dead.

46:59 Why would you stab a dead kid? Just curious why would you stab any kid but why would you stab a dead one? Now I do want to add in this. They do have the argument here that Maddie's hand was still clutched around a bracket from the water bed frame which the argument was that she was still alive when Josh shoved her underneath the bed. There could be a million different scenarios there of when she died or how she died. The doctor is saying that there were post mortem wounds and that's scientifically proven. Maybe Josh is telling the truth. Maybe he remembers it but the doctor says that she would have already been dead. There's a million ways this could have happened. I know you're probably screaming at me right now but remember I'm recording live. I'm not sitting here just reading a complete script.

47:48 So I just don't understand if she was alive when she was still put under the bed then you had the opportunity to render her help. If the autopsy is correct which I tend to believe the autopsy is, then she was had three separate attacks. Her head's been hit multiple times and then you cut her throat and the doctor is saying she's drowning in her blood and then you go back and you stab her seven more times post mortem. I just don't see the purpose in that but then again I don't murder children and drag them under my bed. So I guess I'll let you think about that one and you can decide what you think happened. I don't really think it matters in the long run. I mean whether she died in a few minutes or a few hours he still shoved her under the bed to suffer and die and rendered no aid whatsoever and I just don't like that. I just can't understand how that would be your thought process.

48:36 So this trial as you can imagine became a media gold mine. You had murder, a missing child, a teen boy versus a young girl, a dead body under a water bed, a kid who claims that he was abused by his father and then maybe some sexual abuse with her clothing being moved about. But I can tell you I did not see anything that said that she was sexually abused. So I want to be completely fair and honest and not leave out stuff to fit an agenda of any type. So the case was everywhere and another issue though that they encountered with this trial was that so many people in the tight neighborhood were in such disbelief about Maddie Clifton's murder and who did it that the trial judge had to order that the trial be moved and take place in a county halfway across the state in order to hopefully curb any jury bias that there might be. And so this is going to be called a change of venue and a change of venue is going to be granted when the applicant proves that by reason reason of prejudice existing in the public mind or because of undue influence that a fair and impartial trial cannot be obtained in the parish where the prosecution is pending. All right. And so hey, legitimate argument. I'd say move it too. You know why? I don't want to be able to come back on appeal and say nope, there was undue bias in my case. So I think that was smart. Move it to another to another area. Another famous example of this by the way was the OJ Simpson case because in 1995

50:11 remember he went on trial for killing his wife and and Ronald Goldman and the courts granted him a change of venue and they moved it to Santa Monica from downtown Los Angeles because it was so big right they were trying to just get that jury pool to not be from right there where everybody their mom knew what happened. So Josh Phillips attorney's name was Richard Nichols. He did not put a single witness on the stand during trial which was kind of a bold move there I would think. But he did it strategically when it was all said and done. He was hoping that he could use his closing argument as the bomb drop to try to save you know, Josh from you know, save his life from being locked up or getting the death penalty or whatever. Now he was going to emphasize in that closing statement that Phillips was a scared child acting in desperation because he was so abused by his father that he feared his wrath and what would happen. And so that is the circumstances that would explain away why he acted in the manner that he did. So the trial took place on July 6th in 1999 or it started and it was a pretty short trial which you would have expected this or I would expected it to be weeks or months but it only lasted two days. It lasted shorter than that he was missing you know. And the jurors deliberated for about two hours before they found Josh Phillips guilty of first degree murder. And so that means the jurors didn't do a whole lot of arguing about his guilt.

51:38 That's a really quick turnaround on a case. It's kind of like they reviewed it and they all agreed first degree murder. What Josh says happened would really sound like a second degree murder if it was not planning and prep and intention right. If he says he accidentally hit her with the ball and then killed her they said no they went first degree which is you know the worst degree you can get. So now why wasn't he given the death penalty for what he did some people may not know. So I want to just say that we as a society have come to the agreement that some people are just too young to be executed and that we cannot be adults killing children. And I'm gonna let you know I agree with this to the extent as long as we understand what the term child means. You know some people think an 18 19 and 20 year old 21 year old 20 year old you know is a child. No they're young but you definitely know better of what you're doing you know at those ages 14 I don't know and if I'm making you mad that's cool at least you're thinking about it 14 to me that's a bit young and there's enough in my mind personally where I feel like he was old enough to know better.

52:51 Obviously I don't know that he necessarily because he was panicked that he was thinking about the entirety of the life altering decisions he was making in that moment but I not the killing part I know he knew better but I mean he knew he wasn't even supposed to be playing with a girl younger than him which is why he says he had to kill her so he understood rules and authority but when it's all said and done I don't want to be someone that's executing a 14 year old that's not for me. It's not my personal code of conduct but you certainly can disagree with me go America you do your thing. Now I don't want to bore you with anything Supreme Court wise I know people aren't usually into Supreme Court cases but to tell you where the decision comes from to not execute that's an Eighth Amendment thing that's considered or there's an Eighth Amendment argument there you know cruel and unusual and unusual punishment but where they decided some people think life in prison is too much for a kid. How can you take a kid who's not even legally able to drink or drive or do whatever how can you take away their whole life you know for something they did as a kid. Well I did pull his the findings of the courts whenever he appealed his ruling of and being sentenced to life in prison and the court said that they find the penalty of life in prison it not to be grossly disproportionate to the crime of first degree murder meaning it's not cruel and unusual because it's not disproportionate you took a life therefore you lose your life in essence that you'll have to live it out and the in prison and the argument here is that they say that the

54:24 court held that Mr. Philip's sentence did not violate the proportionality principle mandated by the Eighth Amendment so they they were equal it doesn't matter that he was 14 years old they did not feel that the factor of his age outweighed the heinous conduct an ultimate harm death that he inflicted upon his victim and that was their actual finding. So he was sentenced and he has life in prison now the Supreme Court found in 2012 that they said they thought life sentences for juveniles were going to be unconstitutional at this point so that mean that he became eligible for recennencing hearing now this was absolutely horrendous because her sister was terrified and was totally in whole heartedly against it her sentiments echoed mine where she says Maddie doesn't get a chance to walk this earth again so why should he get to walk free in the earth and luckily for society and Maddie's family when his recennencing date came up in 2017 the judge upheld the original sentence and ensured that Josh Phillips would spend the rest of his years in prison. So whether or not you agree with the outcome of this case look Josh Phillips wasn't a good friend I can just say that either he was willing to kill in order to save himself from being in trouble or he was willing to kill to cover up his sick fantasies of murders and looking at naked little girls because by the way they found

55:56 that Josh was watching pornography for the hour prior to when he did kill Maddie if that's important to you either way he proved he was and is capable of horrific actions in order to keep a secret and it's interesting to me that we usually share our secrets with those we love and trust most we feel like they're the closest to us but I believe in always keeping your head on a swivel because after all one of the most dangerous creatures on this earth is a fake person who calls them self your friend [Music]