Episode 456: The Bonebreaker Case

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hey weirdos.

I'm Alina.

I'm ash and this is morbid.

It is, but it's one of those that I'm not sure why I kept for the morning, because it's not going to start your day out on a great note.

Fantastic.

This is a pretty gnarly one.

That makes me nervous because my tum already hurts.

I know you're having tummy trouble.

I know.

What's going on?

I don't know, I think there's just like a random shit going around in the universe.

Yeah, maybe.

You know, we saw Corinne and Sabrina from two girls, one ghost. recently, we had a little recce with them.

That was so fun.

I love them so much.

And Corinne had a shirt on that said, What was the shirt? and you were like, Wow.

I was like, Wow, that's relatable. It said. Something like, my tummy really hurts, but I'm being brave.

I need to get you that so fast. That's how I feel right now. My tummy hurts, but I'm being really brave about it.

That's how I feel right now.

It was hilarious. It's that's very much a U shirt.

I got in my car this morning. I'm like, my tummy really hurts, but I'm being brave, but I'm being really brave about it. I'm going to drive over and I'll be right there. Oh, I love it so much.

Also, if you haven't listened to Two Girls, One Ghost, what are you doing? It's a fun, spooky ass time, and they're wonderful.

So definitely go listen to them.

Uh, but yeah, so Ash's tummy hurts, but she's being really brave about it, thank you. So there's that I keep finding, and I was saying this this morning to Ash that I'm in this.

Phase of life where I can't stay up.

After the girls go to sleep, I sit on the couch and I just pass out, yeah.

And it's been happening for like, weeks, and I'm like, Why can't I stay awake?

See, it's funny to me, It's like, it's very concerning to Elena, She's like, I don't like this.

Yeah, I hate it.

It's so funny to me because that's been me for, like, the past, like six months to a year. I go home, I turn on a TV show and five minutes into that TV show, I'm just like, I'm out.

See, usually I'm like, I can handle like a few hours of sitting and like doing something else at night, but now it's as soon as I sit on that couch, I'm out.

We're doing a lot, man.

It's not great.

I don't love falling asleep like that. I got to figure out, you know what it is? It's a blanket. Hello, I figured it out.

No, it's I'm not doing anything physically for my body right now.

Like, I've taken a hiatus from, like, doing any kind of physical activity with my body.

Oh, see, that's not the problem for me.

And I think that's a problem for me. Cause I think when I exercise, like when I do the bike or something and I'm on like a good routine with it. I feel like it like, energizes me in a way that I.

Don't think is happening right now.

So maybe I I think I stopped when I got, like, sick at one point.

Yeah, and then I just didn't do it again. I've been meaning to.

Do it, girl, I got to do it.

We got walking treads for our desks.

Yeah.

So I think it's, I think it's necessary. I need some physical activity.

Yeah, walk a mile in these Louboutins.

Exactly.

These louboutins are you walking in louboutins?

No, not me.

No, I think it really is like, part of it.

At least maybe I'm hoping that physical activity will make, I think it will make me feel better.

As like, in general, but I don't know you, you might still fall asleep early.

Maybe, but maybe I'll feel better about it.

Also, you, you're not giving yourself enough credit. You have two brand new puppies.

That's true, I think that's definitely having to do with it. You, they're doing great by the way.

Yeah, but like, you learned how to or not, you, like your youngest, learned how to sleep. So then you were sleeping for a minute and your body was probably getting used to that, and then you were like, Ooh, you know, it's a good idea, let's fuck this up entirely. You got two dogs and that's probably what happened.

I know it's wild, I don't love it.

Listen, all you Capricorns out there, you might feel this sudden, uh, feeling that you've never felt before called tired.

It sucks.

Lay down.

All my capricorns can attest like it's we don't like it.

Just lay down for a minute.

We don't like it because it's not, it's not conducive to productivity, and that really annoys me.

That's like, super good for productivity. Maybe you should start doing that during the day, maybe it's time for you to develop a nap time. Oldie. Maybe you gotta have a nap time. maybe it's time for your nap.

It's time for my nap, everybody.

Um, I'll wake you up with some oatmeal, with some cream of wheat, some cream of wheat. I used to live with this lady that loved cream of wheat.

You know, it's, it's a real, it's a real food.

I don't know what else to say about it.

It's a you can eat it.

So I don't know.

I don't know if you should.

I don't know if you should, but why don't we get into this terrible, terrible case? That will probably keep me from sleeping even further.

Oh, fantastic, let's do that.

Um, this one is wild, someone suggested it.

A few people suggested it.

And I was like, and when I saw them suggested, I was like, I'm sorry, what? because they were like, Can you do the bone breaker case? and I said, What?

Excuse me.

And I looked it up and I said, What, excuse me?

I didn't know this existed. Oh, no.

And this is real rough. So let's begin July 10th, 1994..

We got a nineties case.

It's the nineties. This is when the body of 14 year old Chris Steiner was found.

Floating in the Wisconsin River.

He was discovered after a nearly week long, desperate search for him who had, and he had mysteriously disappeared, seemingly into thin air, from his parents home in.

Baraboo, Wisconsin.

Uh. His cause of death was officially labeled as death by drowning, and the theory police were going with was that he snuck out of his house by his.

Own volition that night to go swimming with friends. Doubt it? They ruled it was just a tragic accident. There was no. According to them, there was no other evidence to prove anything.

Else. But was it an accident, or was this the beginning of a case that has torn my entire nervous system to shreds? It is that's literally what I wrote in my notes, I wrote. It was the latter.

I am a psychic.

You are, we are one.

So let's begin with Chris Steiner's death, because this is so tragic on the I. Reading about his parents just ruined my my whole heart.

I feel like with a case like this, in any case in general, where somebody loses like a teenager in their life, that's horrible.

And in the middle of the night, right?

He was in his home and then he just wasn't right. I found him floating in a river a week later. And they had no answers.

Like, at first, this was just an accidental drowning and his.

Parents never believed that.

Well, cause parents know.

They just know, but they had to wait like a long time to figure out what.

Actually happened to him, and it's even worse.

So, on the morning of July 4th, 1994, Kathy Steiner. Chris's mom, went to wake up her son, 14 year old Christian, known as Chris Steiner, who would have been asleep in his bedroom. At this point, she opened up his room, she opened up the door and she found that the room was empty now. Chris was supposed to work a 7am shift at McDonald's that morning.

So alarm bells immediately went off. Uh, cause he had just started that job and he was excited about that job, so he wouldn't have just bailed.

So Kathy informed her husband, George, that Chris wasn't in his bed, and together they searched the house. During the search, they found that the window screens in their other.

Son's bedroom had been sliced.

Ooh, I don't like that.

Both the front and back doors to the house were unlocked.

Oh shit yeah.

And there was no sign of Chris anywhere, so they immediately called the police to report him missing. But imagine this, whatever happened, this person came through their other child's bedroom, into this child's bedroom. Like, how do you wrap your brain around that now? According to George and Kathy, they had last seen Chris around 10pm the night before. He said his father, his father, had gone in to check on him in his bedroom and he was in there.

So, and it was his first day on the new job, so he was like he was exhausted. So he just passed out on his bed in his clothes. We just let him do it, whatever.

Now, initially, George Steiner suspected that the window screen, uh, to the first floor bedroom had possibly been cut by one of Chris's friends. Because he was sleeping, they convinced him to sneak out of the house to go swimming. So I think they were hopeful that this was just some like, really shitty.

Decision-making by his friends.

Right? And when police checked with Chris's friends, though, they all were like, Yeah.

No, like, we did not see Chris last night.

And none of them had even seen him that night.

And they were like, we definitely didn't go to the house. They all had like things that I don't think all of them had, like rock solid alibis, but I think they were like we were home, right?

So now they ruled out the potential for his having simply snuck out because it.

Just wasn't looking like that, was it?

And investigators kind of shifted their focus to maybe not. Somebody intruded into the house and came and got him. But instead, Chris must've run away and slip a screen on his way out. Yeah, it's the nineties, and he's a teenager. Of course, he ran away.

Every once in a while you'll hear something where they're like, they probably just ran away, and it's like, how often does that happen?

That many people are running away.

Yeah, it's like, but even the detectives working this case were having a little.

Trouble believing that themselves because they were like, it just doesn't fit with any of this. Like you said, the slice screen was weird.

And they said that, one of them said. Quote He was believed to be a runaway, but there was not. There's not been any sign of him in a few days.

That's what um saw, I think it's soak. Is it s-a-u-k County?

Yeah, soak county soak, right?

Soak County Sheriff's detective Mary Ward had said that to the press that there was just no sign of him since then.

Yeah, and that didn't really add up, because it's like, if he ran away, you would.

Hear from him or someone would have.

Yeah, like, where's he running to?

That's that thing no one hears from him.

Like, he probably, like, if that was the case, would have hitchhiked with somebody or stopped, or going to stay with someone.

Like, where is he staying right? And according to his parents, they said he had never run away before and they couldn't think of any reason that he would before or now. And they said there was no stressful events, no triggers that.

Could really have set him off.

Everything was pretty normal, he had just started a new job.

Yeah, he had just vanished.

So, like I mentioned before, the day he'd gone missing. Chris had started that new job at McDonald's and he was working with his older brother, Jim. And he was super excited about being out of school because it was summertime and he was looking forward to earning all this money at his first job like this was a very exciting thing for him, totally, and Kathy Steiner told reporters Quote he even had it figured out how much he.

Was going to make working Sundays and holidays. At the time, he had just finished eighth grade and was eager to start high school.

Thank God, just finished eighth grade.

Just finished eighth grade, that's, oh, that's awful a child, yes.

And when you look up pictures of him, he's so cute aww. And friends and family worked closely with detectives, they were very forthcoming with any information.

Nobody seemed to be holding back anything or being shady.

And they all spent a week. All his friends and family were posting missing flyers around Baraboo and the surrounding counties. The police were on it, they were doing tons of searches, and George and Kathy Steiner were speaking to every media outlet that they.

Could get their faces in front of.

That's I can't imagine how hard that would be.

That is I, my brain can't even wrap around that. Because to have to talk about it and beg people like they were literally saying, like, if you have any information, please come forward.

Like, if you know where our son is, like, just begging for help.

To have to do that.

And unfortunately, the search came to an end on July 10th. that's when Chris's body was found floating in the Wisconsin.

River by two jet skiers.

According to Sheriff James Smith quote, the body was quite decomposed when it was.

Found, and investigators actually had to use dental records to identify him.

Oh my god.

Cause, remember, this is July and he'd been in the water for a week.

Yeah.

So the autopsy was conducted the following day and the pathologist on the.

Case was Dr.

Robert Huntington. And he speculated that Chris's body had been in the water at least two days, but probably longer. He determined that the cause of death was probably drowning. But, he said the advanced decomposition from being in the water made it kind of difficult to determine if anything else had happened. Um, so. Detectives knew where the body was discovered, but where it went into the water, where it went into the water was something that they weren't sure.

It was still a mystery, cause they it could have floated a long way.

That's the thing, um, that's what's tough when it's like water.

Yeah, and it's like, So. They couldn't tell where he went into the water, and they couldn't tell if he had gone into the water already dead, or they couldn't tell where the drowning had occurred.

Nothing like that.

And there didn't appear at the time to be any signs of physical.

Trauma like bruising or cuts. So they looked at it and said, this seems like an accidental drowning. Unfortunately, there was really only minor abrasions, but they said that could have been from being in the water.

So, given there was no sign of struggle in the home, I don't know why they're.

Ignoring that sliced screen.

I was like, that seems struggly to me.

No apparent trauma to Chris's body. The sheriff's office started operating on the assumption that Steiner and his.

Friends were out partying and were too afraid to come forward with any information.

That's nice, which doubt everyone involved. Great.

Also, these are like 14 year old boys and girls that you're being like, I think.

You're just too scared to admit that you got him killed.

And it's like, Yeah, like, what?

And they're all like, we were not with him, like, are you kidding? Can you imagine that being put on you at 14? Sheriff's deputies searched the shoreline and the surrounding area. They were hoping to find a campsite, a party spot that they could be like here.

It is this is where he went into the water.

But the river had actually risen considerably in the days before he was found. So if there was any evidence of that, it was gone now, in the absence of any evidence to prove that, anything else but accidental.

Drowning had happened here, the Columbia County Sheriff's Department went with.

Wow.

That's pretty quick, that's it.

This was very little comfort to the Steiners because obviously that it was quick.

There was like, a lot of, oh, like, it seems like that's probably it.

Like, that's not very comforting. And they still had no answers, no real answers, what had happened, they didn't find a spot. They had no one that has admitted that they were out partying with him or that they had come and got him.

That's not like him.

Yeah, and they were like, we don't have any answers. All you're telling me is that you're pretty sure that he drowned.

Like, if anything, you're just making more confusion.

It's awful. And they were just left to wonder what happened to him.

That's terrible.

And their grief and confusion was made even worse because there was odd evidence left in the house that night that he went missing. There was the slit in the screen and there was also muddy shoe prints suggesting that someone had to come into the house while everyone was sleeping. And Chris had to sleep with whoever it was. But there was a lack of any other mess or struggle evidence which indicated that he knew whoever had come in and left with them.

Willingly.

Right, so that was even weirder, that they were like, it seems like somebody else was.

Here, but again, Oh, that's freaky.

Yeah, isn't that so spooky? yes?

And it's also like, why not look further into those footprints?

That's the thing. Who was the who was that?

Right, like you would like, they know Chris's size, and clearly like, If they're, they're Chris's size, then who the fuck, who did that?

And take a look at his shoes, did he have that kind of shoe with that tread on the bottom?

But later a little further, yeah.

And later, George, his dad, said. Quote What hurts so much is that, you know, there were other kids with him. Something happened out there, something terrible happened out there. What we don't understand is how somebody could have left him there without calling, Oh.

Somewhere.

That's awful.

And George and Kathy Steiner had to bury their son at St.

Joseph's cemetery in Baraboo on July 14th, 1994.

More than a year was going to pass before they would get any more information about.

What actually happened to Chris Steiner?

Oh god.

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.

I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad.

I'm like, stop around.

She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling. And it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back.

So let's. That brings us to July 30th, 1995. A year later, 9-1-1 dispatchers in Columbia County received a very scary and unusual call from a panicked teenage boy, Oh. He claimed he'd been kidnapped, tortured and locked in a closet for two days by his teenage neighbor, Joe Clark.

What?

Yep. The dispatcher traced the call to a home, and officers arrived at the scene very quickly. Only a couple of minutes later, we're in. This scene was Joe Clark's home, where he shared with his parents.

I was going to say he lives with his parents, correct?

This is where they discovered 13 year old Thaddeus Thad Phillips.

Stop.

He was disoriented and suffering from severe dehydration, broken legs and other.

Bruises and injuries.

Holy shit.

And he had broken out of a closet now. First responders rushed him to St. Clair Hospital. He was immediately taken into surgery for the broken legs. And they basically had.

To save his legs, they were so broken.

Like, they were so shattered in so many places that they weren't sure they were.

Going to be able to save his legs.

Holy shit, that's like on another level.

Now mean, and this is like a child, like an actual child. Meanwhile, Baraboo Police waited for 17 year old Joe Clark to return home and immediately took him into custody without incident.

Who the fuck is this kid?

Oh so, Thad Phillips had a terrifying ordeal. he. his ordeal had begun two days before this. Shortly after midnight on Friday night, July 28th, Thad was watching television with his sister, his five year.

Old sister, by the way.

Oh um, and this was the last time either of his parents saw him before he went to.

Bed.

Oh my God, now it's wild right now.

Case is like, these teenage boys are in their own home, right?

That's the scariest thing to me.

Like, they're not just they're not out, they're not walking down the street, they are in their own fucking home.

Like, he's hanging out with his five year old sister, yeah.

Now, at some point. Thad had fallen asleep on the couch with his five year old sister, right as we just started talking about that. But he was with his five year old sister, too, like they both had fallen asleep on the couch.

That's adorable, too.

And he was awoken in the middle of the night, and he thought he was awoken by his parents trying to lead him into his bedroom.

Yeah.

So this was not his parents, this was his teenage neighbor, Joe Clark, who had walked into his fucking house and.

Woken him up on the couch.

What?

He lived like a half a mile down the street from the Phillips house, and Thad didn't see, like, couldn't, like, understand that this was him. He was disoriented, he was only half awake, so he didn't really like fight back or question a lot when Clark helped him off the couch and out the door.

Oh god.

And he had guided him down the street to the Clark House and into his second.

Floor Bedroom, Joe's.

What?

Now, at that point, like, he started waking up and was just like, What the fuck is going on? But at the. And. Then Thad's father, Donald Phillips, woke up around 4am and he went.

To the living room to make sure the children had gone to sleep in their beds.

And he found his daughter sleeping on the couch and no thad. And he was like, never would he have left his five-year-old sister alone, sleeping on a couch. Like he never would have done that, he would have carried her into a room.

Of course.

So he was like, What the fuck is going on?

And, more confusing, his shoes his sneakers were exactly where he'd left them earlier that evening, so wherever he went, he went barefoot.

Oh my God, yeah, he was like he, that was his pair of shoes.

How haunting would that have been? Yeah.

So the Phillips had only recently moved to the area, a few months earlier, to like a.

Welcome to the neighborhood.

And neither Donald or nor his wife really felt comfortable going to a lot of the neighbors for help because they didn't know them.

Yeah.

And so, and they were a little at this point, they were probably concerned, like, I do, I don't even know these people.

One of them, right, yeah.

So they started, they spent the entire morning checking any place they thought.

Thad could have gone.

Like the Columbia County Fair, the Baraboo swimming pool.

But when they couldn't find him, Donald Phillips called Baraboo Police to report him missing.

And at no time during this search did it occur to either of Thad's parents or anyone else, for that matter. That the boy was being held only less than a mile away from their home.

That is unbelievable.

In a teenager's closet.

And the parents had no idea.

Oh, yeah, we'll talk. So, by the time they'd arrived in Joe Clark's, excuse me, the time that he had arrived in Joe Clark's bedroom. Thad was definitely, like I said, more awake and more like, what the fuck's going on?

So he was very confused about why he was being brought there in the middle of the night, and Thad had seen Clark in the neighborhood. They've never really spoken. Oh, that's even stranger. Like, he was like, I've seen you, but like, what the fuck is going on?

And that's why he had brought him to his house.

That's why I abducted you. I just want to hang out.

Thad accepted the explanation. I think it was probably because he was so out of it.

Yeah.

But after a very short period of time, he was like, I would like to go home.

Like, I, it's like 3am.

And, to be honest, he might've accepted the explanation, in my opinion, because.

He was like, You're terrifying.

Yeah, I'm not going to flip out here, I'm just going to be like, Cool, let's hang out.

That's exactly what I thought when you said that.

But he was like, I would like to go home, and this is when Clark lost it. He shoved Thad to the bed and began attacking him.

And months later, Joe Clark told a judge he'd blinked out and didn't remember what happened after he pushed him onto the bed. I bet.

And he said, When he woke, when he woke up, he said that Thad was bellyaching about his legs.

Um, what?

Joe Clark is such a manipulative piece of shit.

Sounds like it.

Like, I love, my favorite excuse for these fuckers is always I blacked out.

I don't remember.

So wild that you just blacked out.

No, that doesn't happen, yeah.

You, you went out of your way to break into this boy's house and steal him off.

The couch next to his five-year-old sister.

And then you just blacked out.

But then you just you didn't mean to hurt him, though, like nothing was going to occur, like you're an idiot.

Now, according to the report filed with the sock, sock, sock.

Sock, It's really hard to say.

It's probably like, Souk souk.

I think that's probably more like it.

Souk County Sheriff.

Yeah, that makes more sense.

Sheriff's Department.

Once, Thad was on the bed. JOE CLARK This is really graphic. By the way, I just want to point this out if you don't like bones and breaking bones.

Oh, I don't um, can I go?

I mean, hopefully the name of the thing kind of made you stay away if that's something you don't want to listen to.

But, uh, Joe Clark grabbed him by his left ankle and began twisting until.

The bones in his ankle broke.

Goodbye.

In the next two days, Clark subjected Thad Phillips to brutal outbursts of violence. And that included Joe repeatedly jumping on his legs, causing fractures to both femur bones.

Holy shit.

Femur bones.

Your femur is so thick-ica.

Yeah.

How like is Joe a big kid or no?

Um, that's the thing he's like, not a like, massive kid, no?

But it's like it was just the rage and violence that he had.

I'm like, Where the fuck are your parents?

Oh my God, no. Ankle fractures and dislocation and tibial fractures in both lower legs, so he broke his femur bones on both legs and his tibia on both legs.

Knee things.

Freaking out and knees, every part of both of his legs was shattered.

That is an absolutely insane.

Months later, Dr. Michael Plute, who was the surgeon who performed Thad's first two surgeries, said to the sheriff's department that quote the force used to break Thad's.

Bones was too much for him to handle, having been in a car accident.

Oh my God, yeah.

And there was more injuries on top of that, like he had contusions, he had abrasions, and he was also severely dehydrated. Because he wouldn't eat or drink anything during the time, because.

He was scared that Clark was going to poison him, yeah.

I don't, I, I would think the same thing.

Now, when he wasn't physically torturing Thad and breaking his bones, Clark was taking immense pleasure in psychologically tormenting him, Joe told Thad. Quote He was fascinated by busting people's bones. What? And that he had done this to at least two other boys.

One of whom, he said, was Chris Steiner.

And did Thad know Chris Steiner?

He was like, Uh, I know that name, like he'd heard of it.

Oh.

And at one point, he said, quote Clark had exposed himself.

This is very upsetting, by the way.

He had exposed himself and proceeded to masturbate in front of Thad and placed a.

Pillow over Thad's face to smother him, though it's unclear whether he was doing this in an attempt to kill him.

What the fuck is wrong with this kid?

What you find out is that, like this kid, Joe Clark, and he's not a kid at 17.

No, he's an animal.

He's a fucking monster, he literally got off on suffering, like watching someone suffer, like he's a straight up monster. Oh my god.

On Sunday, July 30th, Joe had left the had to leave the house. So he carried Thad's body like broken body, and you know, this guy wasn't carrying him in a nice way. So this guy, this poor kid. Thad has two shattered legs from the waist down. They're just broken.

He must've been in like, complete shock.

Oh, I can't imagine the pain.

And like, I can't even imagine.

And he had carried him to a closet in his bedroom.

And after binding Thad's legs with a bandage, he locked him in there.

What the fuck?

Yeah.

This is like, like, Oh my God, this is unimaginable.

It really is this the fact that somebody could do this, but a 17 year old.

Like, this sounds like a movie that I would never watch.

And one that you would be like, that's insane.

That's like, because no way, that's why I wouldn't want to watch it, yeah.

And so Thad is in the closet with two broken legs. He's been psychologically and physically tortured for two days.

Dehydrated as hell.

And he sees a guitar in the closet and he's like, Well, this is my only chance. So he uses the guitar to break a hole through the door, like bust through the door. How this kid had any strength to do that, I have no idea.

And he was able to unlock it.

He dragged himself down the stairs with two broken legs.

What?

No, his legs were banging on every step along the way.

Stop it.

He found a telephone and he called 911.

Holy shit.

And, by the way, no parents around.

Thank you, I was, that was my next question.

The Phillips family were relieved that Thad had been found and they raced to St.

Claire Hospital.

But they found that doctors were now trying to put several rods and pins and.

Stabilizers in Thad's legs, which they were like, what the fuck?

Like, what do you mean? And Donald Phillips told investigators that he'd never seen Joe Clark before.

Donald is the father.

And he said, as far as he knew, Clark wasn't friends with his son.

He was like, I don't know who this kid is, right, like, I've never seen him.

And at the time, Phillips was like, this must be some kind of like, one time freak.

Attack like, what the hell is this? Like? Everybody was just like, he must have snapped, like, what is going on?

Because they hadn't seen anything like this.

And they hadn't heard Thad say Hey, he said. He did this to Chris Steiner.

Oh, shit.

So the doctors went to work on saving Thad's legs again. They had to work to save them. They were thinking they were going to have to amputate both of his legs.

I can't imagine, like, what shape he was in.

Oh my god.

And it looks like he, like, played sports and stuff. He's a little cutie.

And mentally, what his state was in, I can't, I can't even imagine.

Probably had to, like, learn how to walk again.

Cause he was like, awful, he would like berate him and scream at him, he would like say awful things.

And then he's standing over him, like masturbating, while he's suffering.

So fucked up that. How do you get past that? That's like layers and layers and layers of trauma.

Well, Sheriff's deputies transported Joe Clark to a juvenile detention center and they sat down for an interview, which I'm sure was a terrifying interview. Now, at no time during the arrest, interviews or trial did Joe Clark really.

Become forthcoming or honest with anybody.

I'm not surprised.

Um, yeah. And initially, Clark was held on kidnapping charges, obviously, which gave detectives a little more time to investigate other potential charges. And, according to Clark, he'd seen Thad in the yard a couple of times on previous occasions. And went to the Phillips House after midnight on the 29th after seeing.

The Phillips car is absent from their house.

The fuck.

Yeah, so he's an actual predator, he's like a stalker.

Like he was, he was watching Thad Phillips in his own fucking yard on several occasions, then waits for it to look like his parents aren't home, Kills him off the fucking couch. This guy had no idea. I mean, I know he's doing much worse things. But it's like he had no idea if the parents were home or not. And he's just leaving his five-year-old sister on the couch as No.

Oh, doesn't give a shit.

Yeah, he doesn't give a shit.

If you have the audacity to walk into somebody's home like that, you don't care about anything.

He said when he showed up at the house at midnight, the door was unlocked.

And so Clark just let himself in the house.

Yeah.

It's it's definitely your house now.

And he found Thad sleeping on the couch with his five-year-old sister, and he, quote, assisted him off the couch.

Oh yeah, you're so great.

And then he said he walked, Slash, carried him into his house.

Like, uh, uh, abducted.

Yeah, I think I believe that's the word you're searching for now. Beyond that, he said that he again blinked out and doesn't remember.

Anything that happened, but two days doesn't remember a damn thing.

Now, based on Thad's report, that Clark cause now he had said, hey by the way, cause he was with it. Enough to say by the way. He said he did this to Chris Steiner. Sheriff's investigators in Columbia County reopened their investigation.

Into Chris Steiner's death, and we're very eager to find out what Joe Clark knew.

So when Steiner's body was discovered in the Wisconsin River that previous year?

Again, he had been in the water for nearly a week and it was the.

Decomposition was considerable. That's why it made that autopsy so difficult.

Cause your bones deteriorate.

They don't, they deteriorate, but it's like, it's tough to figure out what is.

Post-mortem injury and what is perimortem premortem? Like? There's no, it's hard.

Yeah.

It's very hard, especially in a river like that. When it can, you can slam into things and break bones.

I'm a little confused why broken bones weren't discovered here or noted from what I but, but I don't know.

Okay, I'm just saying to me, I'm a little.

And a full autopsy had been done previously. That, yeah.

So that's that's confusing to me, that is, um, but that's just me.

Uh, that's weird.

That's weird.

That's suspicious.

That is a little weird, so Steiner's body was actually exhumed and re-examined for this.

And it was x-rayed this time, which I'm like, it wasn't x-rayed before.

Yeah, weird.

But I imagine that's probably because they went in with a pretty preconceived notion that he had accidentally drowned and had.

Left his house on his own volition.

So perhaps it wasn't quite a full autopsy.

So this is a good lesson for not going into something like this with a.

Narrative of what went down.

Right, like, that's kind of your whole job not to do that.

So they did the x-ray, and, huh? After an x-ray, the coroner reported that Steiner had indeed suffered broken knees and broken ankles. Very similar.

To the injuries that Thad Phillips had.

Holy shit.

And the findings of the second autopsy and their implications came as No.

Surprise to Kathy Steiner, Chris Steiner's mom, right? She had always suspected Clark.

What?

Yup.

And she said, quote? He was the last one to talk to Chris that night, and she said he wanted him to go somewhere with him, but Chris refused. He also knew that Chris's brother was not going to be home that night. Oh shit, which, like Kathy, Kathy knew.

And that's why he broke in through the brother's room, cause he knew he wasn't going to be there.

Cause he figured the brother wasn't going to be there that night.

Oh my God, this kid like, he did, what's the BTK thing that he said he would do?

He would like troll.

I think he called it.

This kid is fucking trolling neighborhoods.

It's true.

The days before he disappeared.

And she said that Clark was quote very domineering and said he quote hung around younger boys because he could bully them.

Ew.

So he's a disgusting predator.

Yeah, he's a fucking weirdo.

As the coroner's office conducted their second autopsy of Chris Steiner's body, investigators served a search warrant at the Clark home in Fairfield, Wisconsin. Among the evidence seized in the search was Quote, a 48 by 40 inch plywood board with quote unquote, satanic writing and illustration scribbled on it.

A film canister quote with possible marijuana seeds.

Remember, it's the Nineties, yes.

Um, a leg brace and a body brace. Several horror films on VHS, which, by the way, Dave found out which horror films were like, and I love it because Dave when he.

So, among other things, Joe Clark had terrible taste in horror movies.

It was Witchcraft.

Which is, I don't know which year. There's a few Witchcraft movies, but none of them look like they're pretty awesome one. I want you to look this one up, guys. Okay, children shouldn't play with dead things.

Oh, what the fuck?

It looks if you look at the IMDB page for that, it has like a little trailer.

For it or some little clip.

It looks ridiculous and so weird.

EW Even the cover, I'm like, yeah.

And he also had close encounters of the third kind, so he's not killing.

It in the horror game here.

Definitely not.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask. Was it a crime of passion?

If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia.

Or a corrupt police coverup?

If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a coverup to prevent one of their own from going down.

Everyone had an opinion, and after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision.

To end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is.

Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. join Wondery Plus in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Experience in Person The unsettling, true stories behind the Dr. Death podcast at Exhibit C Live presents Dr. Death a closer look.