At an age when most boys get their kicks by chasing girls and sneaking beers, 17-year-old Joe Clark of Baraboo, Wisconsin, got his through the imprisonment and torure of other boys. If not for his last victim's seemingly endless amount of resolve and a literal never-say-die attitude, Clark's crimes most certainly could have escalated in their brutality.
Clark's eventual imprisonment did not come soon enough for 14-year-old Chris Steiner, however. Steiner's parents found him missing from the family's home on July 4, 1994. When police arrived they clearly saw the signs of an abduction. Steiner's bedroom window screen had been sliced open, muddy footprints were evident on the carpets, and a patio door was discovered to be unlocked. Despite local authorities best efforts Steiner was found dead six days later draped over a partially submerged tree on the edge of a Wisconsin River sandbar.
Strangely, an autopsy showed no traumatic injuries on Steiner's body, though police remained convinced fould play was definitely involved. His death was caused by drowning and officially listed as 'undetermined'. The mysterious crime was something new to the rural town of Baraboo. No doubt locals hoped that the young boy's death was an isolated, one-time tragedy. But Steiner's killer was living among them and waiting to strike again. In the early morning hours of July 29, 1995, he did.
Thad Phillips awoke that night and felt himself being picked up from the living room couch a and carried through the house, thinking one of his parents was escorting him to bed after he had fallen asleep watching TV. Instead he was hoisted outside and set down by a young man he could not quite recognize but quickly assumed was a family friend. Unfortunately, it was Joe Clark and when he told Phillips to run with him, the groggy and confused boy agreed.
Not until the two arrived at a ramshackle home about a mile away did Thad realize he might be in trouble. Clark introduced himself by his first name and then forced Phillips to his upstairs bedroom, tossed him on the soiled bed, and proceeded to viciously twist and turn one of Phillips' ankles until it snapped and splintered. Immediately showing his fighting spirit, Phillips managed to free himself from Clark's grasp and limp his way downstairs where his abductor caught up and threw him onto a couch. No doubt angered, Clark pushed Phillips' leg upward toward the boy's own head and leaned in until the thigh snapped. The abuse continued into the night when, after dressing Phillips shattered legs in crude casts of socks and ace bandages, Clark left his victim alone on the bed while he went out, apparently convinced the boy was no longer a threat to escape with due to the extent of his injuries.
He underestimated Phillips. The gutsy youngster dragged himself down the stairway, making it into the kitchen when Clark and a girl arrived and sat down on the couch unaware that he lay silent in the next room. Unfortunately, when Clark's friend left, the sadistic youth discoverd Phillips lying in the kitchen and after recovering from suprise, dragged him upstairs yet again to continue the brutal punishment and for the first time threatening to kill, though that was certainly the ultimate intention all along.
On the evening of July 30, Clark again left the house but was taking no chances with Phillips this time. He locked the battered boy in the bedroom's closet before leaving. Inside the darkened cubicle Philllips had to have realized he was running out of chances to escape and even his enormous willpower had to be fading. Feeling around with his hands in the dark he found an old, heavy guitar and battered the door down with it. Dehydrated and his legs useless, Phillips slowly dragged himself down the stairs again, passing out repeatedly from pain and fatigue until he reached the kitchen phone and managed to shake the cord until the reciever fell from the hook. He then dialed 911 and explained his location and predicament to a suprised dispatcher.
Officers quickly responded to the Clark house and rescued Phillips. He had been held capture for about 43 hours in total and had sustained horrible fractures to both legs which would require several surgeries over the years and result in a permanent limp. Soon afterward Clark was arrested and Phillips told officers that Clark had spoken of brutalizing two other boys, one who's name was Chris and another that he can't recall to this day. A subsequent search of the Clark home uncovered a ghoulish list of boy's names, some of which were listed under the heading, "The Leg Thing". Thankfully, Phillips bravery ensured that none of those potential victims would experience the torture that he and Steiner did.
Clark was first tried in the Phillips attack and entered a plea of no contest to attempted homocide and other charges. He was sentenced to a 100-year prison term but claims to have no recollection of the Thad Phillips' abduction and torture. The Steiner case was a different story and Clark elected to plead not guilty, though an exhumation of Steiner's body had revealed taht he sustained injuries to his ankles that were identical to those Phillips endured. Clark's parents' testimony that their son was home asleep in his room on the night of the killing did not hold water in the face of other witnesses that claimed Clark regularly snuck out of the house via an upstairs window. Also damning was testimony by a former fellow juvenile detention inmate of Clark's who said Clark had admitted to her that he had killed a boy and placed his body over a tree. All said it was obvious that Clark had murdered Steiner and on November 7, 1997, was found guilty of intentional homocide and sentenced to life in prison plus fifty years. Clark mainains his innocence in Chris Steiner's murder from a prison cell to this day.