Joe Clark- The Bonebreaker Killer

One summer day in 2017, Jamie Lynn, a resident of Baraboo, Wisconsin was waking up and starting her morning routine.  Getting ready for the day, maybe making breakfast or coffee.  Then, she heard a dog barking.  It wasn’t just a normal bark though, it was like an, “Oh shit, there’s something going on,” kind of barking.  Then she heard a neighbor scream.  She peered out her window, and that’s when she saw it.  

What did she see?  She saw Kelly.  Kelly was an 8,400 pound Asian elephant.  Kelly was hungry, and usually eats a few hundred pounds of food a day.  Soon, more and more neighbors began to notice… the 8400 pound elephant roaming around their neighborhood.  

The officers in Baraboo actually knew what they needed to do in case an elephant was roaming around their town.  They called Kelly’s trainer who showed up about 45 minutes after Kelly was initially spotted.  The officers knew that while they were waiting for the trainer, they just needed to watch Kelly enjoy the delicacies that she was finding on trees and shrubs.  They knew not to use their sirens on their cars or make any sudden movements.  Once the trainer showed up, they worked with Kelly to get her to start her walk back to her nearby home, slowly and in the middle of the street.  The trainer only had to call her name once, and she walked with them all the way back, stopping occasionally to eat some plants and trees.  They said that Kelly has one speed, and it isn’t fast.  

Kelly had some help in her escape though.  She had a roommate, Isla, who was attracted to shiny things. Like nuts and bolts, or latches on an elephant enclosure.  Isla had unlatched their gate, and Kelly took the opportunity to explore, while Isla stayed back.  Where Kelly was very food motivated, Isla wasn’t, so when Kelly saw the opportunity for some free grub, she took it.  

So, how the hell did an elephant just show up in this neighborhood, in a small Wisconsin town?  Well, Baraboo was actually where the Ringling Brother Circus was established back in 1884.  After Ringling settled there, several other circuses re-located to the city, earning it the nickname “Circus City.” Baraboo is the home to the Circus World Museum.  Baraboo has obviously embraced their past with the circus and hosts a circus parade every year.  Kelly and Isla are involved in that parade, so that’s why the police officers are specifically trained in how to deal with them.  The morning Kelly escaped, no one was in any actual danger, and they had the situation under control immediately.  The police chief said that it’s more about knowing what not to do instead of what to do.  

Baraboo is just north of Madison, Wisconsin, the state capital.  With an average population of 12K, it is much less populous than Madison, which has a population of 250K+ according to the 2020 census.  But, what brings us to Baraboo, Wisconsin today?  

Thaddius “Thad” Phillips

In July of 1995, Thad Phillips spent the day with his family.  He remembers that earlier in the day, they went out for dinner, mom, dad, and his three younger siblings.  Thad said that after dinner they returned home and hung out for a little while, and eventually, his parents went to bed.  That left Thad and his youngest sister in the living room, watching TV on the couch.  After a while of watching, they both dosed off to sleep. 

Later that night, Thad woke up, but he was being carried by someone.  He was only 13, so it wasn’t uncommon for him or his siblings to fall asleep on the couch and have their dad come in while they were sleeping and carry them to their beds.  Initially, he didn’t think anything of it, until the person carried him out of the house.  In his mind, it must have been one of his father’s friends who was having car trouble or something and needed help.  To him, a child, it made sense that the friend couldn’t wake his dad up, so he thought Thad could help.  Thad said that it was still dark outside, and he wasn’t completely sure what was going on.  They had only lived there a few weeks, when he asked the person where his car was, he told him it was just over the hill they were walking towards.  He said that looking back, he wasn’t scared at all, he didn’t even realize that he should be scared.  

The stranger asked Thad if he could run with him, so they started running away together.  Again, just a 13 year old kid who thought he was helping one of his dad’s friends.  After they ran for a while, they arrived at a run down looking house, about a half a mile away from where they started.  The stranger told Thad that he lived there with his brother as they went in.  

The house though was a fucking disaster.  Trash everywhere, old food scattered throughout, dishes everywhere.  Very quickly, Thad realized that this wasn’t a friend of the family.  The stranger said that he was going to be having a party and started to name off people that Thad knew from the neighborhood and school, saying they were all coming soon, and they were all going to hang out and have a good time.  That put Thad at ease a bit.  The stranger introduced himself as Joe.  

Joe asked Thad if he liked model cars and trucks and told him he had several upstairs in his room they could go look at.  Thad followed and they looked at them briefly.  

In a flash though, Joe  pushed Thad onto a nearby bed onto his back.  He quickly grabbed Thad’s right ankle and began to twist it.  He twisted and twisted until Thad’s ankle snapped and splintered.  Immediately after, Joe sat on the bed beside Thad and buried his face in his hands.  Instantly, Thad shot up off the bed.  He was in shock and confused by what was happening, but he tried to escape.  The adrenaline flowed through him as he ran out of the room and down the stairs. Thad said that as he was running, he could feel the broken bones of his ankle slide further up his leg, rubbing against the other bone in his leg.  Thad made it through the living room and half way through the kitchen by the time Joe caught up to him.  

Joe wrapped his arm around Thad’s neck, putting him in a choke hold and drug him back to the living room and threw him on the couch.  He then grabbed Thad’s right leg and began to force it up towards his head.  He put all his weight on it, and Thad’s leg was over his head when his femur snapped.  

The femur is widely considered to be the strongest bone in the human body.  It is the largest and thickest bone, and it’s protected by layers of muscle surrounding it.  It’s estimated that it takes about 4000 Newtons of force to break the femur, which translates to around 900 pounds of force.  The majority of femur breaks seen by physicians are from traumatic accidents, mostly car accidents.  

Hopefully that puts into perspective the amount of force we’re talking about.  It wasn’t just the bone breaks either, Joe would punch and kick Thad as well.  It was a constant barrage of blows essentially.  After his leg broke though, Thad said he didn’t feel any pain from it, it was just a loud pop.   Immediately after that though, it was like a flip switched and Joe became a normal person.  

Joe would want to just talk like nothing happened.  Thad would just try to get him to talk or keep talking to keep him from attacking him.  Thad asked Joe why he was doing this to him.  Joe said that he was fascinated with the sound of breaking bones.  Thad asked him why he didn’t do it to himself, and Joe said that he tried but could never get the angle right to break his own.  Thad asked if he had ever done this to anyone else, and Joe told him yes.  

As the night turned into morning, Thad asked Joe if he could call his parents, just to tell them he was okay.  Much to his surprise, Joe was like “Yeah, sure, no problem.”  Joe handed him a phone and Thad shakily tried to call, only to realize that the phone was disconnected.  It wasn’t just the physical torture, it was also a mental torture.  Joe laughed and enjoyed watching the hope drain from Thad’s face and eyes.  Thad begged and pleaded; he told Joe that he wouldn’t tell anyone what happened.  He said that he would tell everyone that he tripped over a coffee table and hurt himself.  Joe just said that no one would believe him and sat on the couch beside him and watched TV with him. 

After a few hours of TV, Joe carried Thad back upstairs to the bed.  Thad was fighting back the whole time.  He would hit Joe in the back of the head and try to punch him.  Joe was sitting on top of him with his back towards his face.  He grabbed Thad’s left ankle and began to twist.  And twist and twist, until again, the ankle snapped and splintered.  All the punching made Joe madder and madder.  He kept twisting and twisting the ankle.  Thad described it like twisting a rubber band.  

Joe told Thad not to yell or fight back or he would break his neck or back.  He held a pillow over Thad’s face or would force Thad to hold the pillow himself. Thad said that he believed Joe 100%.  He had already broken his leg and both ankles.  He had no reason not to believe him.  

43 Hours

Throughout everything though, Thad said he refused to cry.  He wouldn’t let Joe know how scared he was.  The mental fortitude Thad showed in the face of pure, true evil is astounding. Throughout the day, Joe would leave the house and go outside to try to get his car started.  After each time, Joe would storm back into the house and up the stairs, complaining about the car, and inflict more pain and damage.  

After each “torture session,” Joe would pretend to administer aid to Thad.  He had a ton of white socks that he would put on Thad’s feet in an attempt to cobble together homemade casts.  After he put the socks on, it was like the switch would flip and Joe would be “normal” again.  At one point, Joe put leg braces on Thad and forced him to walk around.  He forced Thad to walk to where the stairs were, and stand at the top.  Thad described it as he was standing on a board at the top and either it gave way or Joe kicked it out, sending Thad tumbling down, landing on his back. 

At this point, Thad’s injuries are getting worse and worse.  His ankles were swollen to the size of softballs, and his right thigh was swollen to the size of a basketball.  His legs were black and blue.  Joe took Thad and drug him back upstairs and left him on the bed.  As the sun went down and night set in, Joe left Thad alone.  Thad heard the front door close then a car drive away.  This was his moment to escape.  He knew he had to do everything he could to get out.  

Thad forced himself off of the bed and drug himself to the top of the stairs.  Then, he mustered all the courage and strength he could and threw himself down, head first.  When he hit the bottom of the stairs, he passed out from the pain and exhaustion.  It might go without saying, but he hadn’t eaten or drank since this ordeal started, and that compounded his injuries.  A few minutes later, he woke up and tried to crawl through the living room to the kitchen.  He passed out several times dragging himself across the floor.  He was in the living room, trying to get to the kitchen when the front door opened, and Joe walked in.  

Joe walked in and was in shock.  He couldn’t believe that this 90 pound boy had gotten all this way with all the injuries he had.  He grabbed Thad and carried him back up to the bed.  He started to twist his ankles more and repeatedly jumped on his chest and hit him.  Thad said that Joe just took all of his anger out on him.  He had no clue why, but he felt every part of it.  

After the beating and torture from his escape attempt, Joe carried Thad back down to the couch, and they watched a couple of movies.  Ya know, just two friends hanging out on a Saturday night.  Eventually, Thad passed out and slept for a few hours.  

The next morning, Thad woke up and looked at his legs.  He described them as not even looking like they were human legs.  They were completely bruised and had started to turn yellow and swollen all over.  The pain was EXCRUCIATING.  Thad said that he can’t even explain how much it hurt.  Once Joe saw that he was awake, he carried Thad up to the bed again and started to torture him again.  Every few hours, he came back to inflict more pain and damage.  

At one point, he grabbed Thad’s left leg and started to twist it at the knee.  Eventually, it snapped and was facing backwards.  Thad couldn’t do anything to stop it.  He looked at his legs and they were just completely mangled.  He said to himself that there was no way he was walking out of the house.

A few hours later, the sun set again, and Joe was planning on going to a party.  By this point, Thad had made three different attempts to escape but was caught each time, resulting in more severe beatings.  This time, Joe decided he didn’t want to take any chances and carried Thad over to the closet.  He threw him in and locked the door.  Thad laid there, and he heard the front door close and a car drive away.  This was it, he knew that he had to get the hell out of there.  He could feel his body slowly starting to give up.  This was one of his younger brother’s birthdays, and all he wanted was to be home with his family. 

He rummaged through the closet and found an old, sturdy guitar.  He grabbed it and started to beat on the door with it, praying it would break something allowing him to get out of the closet.  After a while, the door gave way, and he was able to unlock the handle and get out.  Again, he drug himself across the room and into the hall to the top of the stairs.  Head first, he threw himself down, and again, he passed out at the bottom.  Using everything he had, he drug himself through the living room and into the kitchen.  He saw a phone on the wall, which he knew worked.  He had heard Joe talking to his girlfriend about going to the party that night.  

Thad said it was pitch black almost, but there were 2 lucky things about this phone.  One, it had a long cord that reached all the way to the ground. Ya see kids, back in the day, phones had cords, and if you wanted to be able to walk around and talk, you had to have a long stretchy phone cord.  The other lucky thing was that when he had the receiver in his hands, the dial pad was on it, and not the base attached to the wall.  Thad shakily dialed 911. 

Now there are some articles and sources that say that the police initially thought it was a prank phone call, but sent someone out to investigate anyway.  But.. Thad himself said it went like this;  He told them who he was and that he was being held captive.  He remembered enough from walking there that he could give them a general idea of his location and he gave them Joe’s name as well.  Thad said that they knew right where he was immediately and they knew who Joe was because they had had dealings with him in the past.  

When the officers arrived, Thad was laying in the kitchen.  His left knee was completely backwards and his feet were sideways.  He said that looking at their faces, they were in complete and utter shock.  Paramedics quickly got him on a stretcher and into the ambulance.  The next thing he remembers is that he woke up in the hospital.  The doctors told him that he was about 2 hours away from dying from internal bleeding.  His skin was like rubber.  His toes were all facing different directions.  His recovery was long and slow.  He required several surgeries over the course of years to regain the ability to walk, albeit with a limp.  Joe Clark was arrested the same night at a local party.  When he was arrested, they said that the first thing he said was, “Oh, he’s still alive?”

Joe Clark

Thad told the police that Joe told him he had done this twice before.  One of the names he couldn’t remember, but the other was a boy named Chris Steiner.  In July of 1994, the Steiner family went to sleep like they usually did.  Their 14 year old son Chris went to bed earlier than usual because he was scheduled to work the next morning at a new job and wanted to get a good nights sleep before.  When his parents went to wake him up at 6:15 though, he was nowhere to be found.  Chris’ dad had checked in on him the night before around 10PM, and he was in bed, fast asleep. 

They called the police who came out and started an investigation.  They discovered that there was a screen that was slashed in a downstairs bedroom.  This was Chris’ older brother’s room, who was staying somewhere else that night.  There were muddy footprints all throughout the house.  Lastly, there was a set of patio doors on the ground floor that were unlocked. 

Initially, both Chris’ parents and the police thought that Chris had snuck out to go to a party or to see a girl.  It was the 4th of July weekend, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.  But as the hours turned into days, that theory quickly washed away.  The police then theorized that Chris had just run away, but his parents said no damn way, he would never do that.  He was excited about his new job, and they didn’t have any family issues or anything that would drive him away.  They insisted that Chris had absolutely no reason to run away.  

On July 10th, a body was found in the Wisconsin River.  The body had started to bloat from being in the water and was badly decomposed.  Dental records confirmed it was Chris.  His cause of death was listed as drowning, with an undetermined manner of death.   The police did investigate other theories though and even questioned Joe Clark about it.  All of the tips they received regarding Joe though were just hearsay, and Joe’s mother gave him an alibi by saying he was home in bed at the time Chris went missing. (Proven to be false in his trial later)  Chris’ family mourned his death and laid him to rest, but his mother held on to her own suspicions that Joe Clark was involved.  

When Thad told the police what Joe told him, they talked with Chris’ parents and got permission to exhume his body.  They performed a post-mortem and discovered that Chris had breaks in his legs and ankles that were IDENTICAL to the ones that Thad sustained at Joe’s hands. 

The police searched the house that Joe kept Thad in and discovered a notebook with 25-30 names of boys who lived in the local area.  It was a kill list of sorts.   There were three headings with different names written under each one. 

• Can Wait
• Get To Now
• The Leg Thing

For his abduction of Thad, 17 year old Joe Clark was charged with:

• Attempted 1st degree intentional homicide
• Causing great bodily harm to a child
• Mayhem (intent to disable or disfigure)
• Causing mental harm to a child
• Child enticement

Joe said that he did take Thad, but it was only to hang out.  He claimed to have no recollection of how That got injured because he “kind of blacked out.”  He pled no contest and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.  Joe was adopted, and his defense claimed that his biological mother was a drug abuser and she did so while pregnant with him, which caused his actions.  They also claimed that Joe suffered a head injury after a severe bike crash the year before.   

During his trial, Thad was set to testify against Clark, but was shot in the back by another 15 year old boy in the area.  

He was able to testify eventually though, and Joe Clark was found guilty.  He was sentenced to 100 years for kidnapping and torturing Thad for 43 hours.  Thad was also awarded financial damages in a civil suit.  A judge awarded Thad $21 million.  Although Clark was penniless and serving his sentence, the judge said that at some point, Clark might make money off the notoriety and sensational nature of the case, and if he did, it would go to Thad.  

After his trial for Thad, Joe was put on trial for Chris’ murder.  He was charged with 

• 1st degree homicide
• Mayhem
• Causing great bodily harm to a child

Clark pled not guilty, and maintains his innocence to this day.   He was found guilty on the charges though, and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for 60 years.  

Clark has tried to appeal his convictions on the basis of lack of evidence, but they have been dismissed fairly quickly each time due to lack of merit.