Episode 176: Maddie Clifton

 In this episode Janus and Joyous dive into the sad case of Maddie Clifton and how her compassion for the other kids in her neighborhood lead to her brutal death.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Unsung Murder Ballads is a true crime podcast, and as such, we will be discussing topics that are disturbing, graphic, and often violent in nature. So this is not for children under the age of 13.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

But you know this because you did start playing this episode. So here are some things you might not know about us.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

We are going to be critical of mistakes made by both criminals and law enforcement.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

We're going to express our views on things that you might not always agree with.

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We will occasionally go on an off-topic tangent.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

And we're going to use dark humor to express ourselves now and then.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

So if you're easily triggered, this might not be the podcast for you.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

However, if this is your cup of tea, then raise your pinky finger while you sip and join us for this week's horrific case, you sick bastards.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

This is episode 176. I am Janice Dead.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

And I'm Joyce Dead.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

And yeah, it's the 6'7 episode, but backwards.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Wow, look at that.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Yeah, yeah, I'm showing my age.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Seven six.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Yeah. I don't really get it, but that's because I'm old. Whatever.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

I mean, I'm not old, and I'm also too old for it. It's it's a good thing that we're both not 12 years old.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Right? That would be weird if we were both 12 years old. Not gonna lie.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Yeah, and if we were having this podcast right now, um I think we would be in trouble with our parents.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

I was gonna say, where the fuck are our parents?

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Yeah, where the fuck are our parents? They're letting us do this.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

You have no idea how well that ties into the episode tonight.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Kinda sorta.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

It I am not we got some absent parents here.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Before now, I was gonna say, but and it's funny because that's where you jumped with it, and I realized I gotta give a disclaimer. I am in no way blaming the parents for this episode.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Yeah, the parents, but it is someone that has parents, a thing that very few people do.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Very, very few people. No, this one's a this is kind of a brutal case. It's uh it's definitely sad. Yeah, I know. I I don't know why recently I've been picking some really tough ones. And I should say, I've been trying to find cases for our next fumbles, and it is so hard to find it's almost like I've gone through all the good idiot criminals. I can't find anything that's not just either really, really dumb that it's not even funny. It's it's hard right now. I don't know why I'm having trouble finding new cases for that.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Fumbles are a fine art.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Yeah, but I'm looking. I do plan on doing one soon. I just don't have enough yet to do a full episode.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Listeners, if you have any good fumbles to make it.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Oh, yeah, send them our way. Yeah, that's fun. Okay, so uh here's the teaser, and then we'll kind of get into it. And it's not much of a teaser, it's very short, but it's uh it's gonna it's gonna set the tone.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

So Alright.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

So the eight-year-old girl from across the street had been missing for a week. The entire neighborhood, and really the city, was affected by it. There were search parties out every day and every night. Missy Phillips, herself, her husband, and her fourteen-year-old son have all been part of these search parties. And then one night, while putting away some things in her son's bedroom, she realized that the floor under his waterbed was damp. So she looks down to investigate and she found something she never imagined.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Oh no. This is the leaky waterbed.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

It was definitely what the mother thought.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Yeah, that's what you would think.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

This is the case of Maddie Clifton. So Madeline Ray Clifton, affectionately known as Maddie, was born on the 17th of June 1990 in Jacksonville, Florida. From the moment she arrived, her family saw her as a beacon of joy and a light in their lives. She was brimming with life and enthusiasm, and energy the energy she had touched everyone she met. She lived with her father Steve and her mother Sheila, and she had an older sister named Jessie. Maddie loved sports, especially basketball, and she was always outside playing and doing something. According to everyone that knew her, you couldn't keep Maddie inside. She wanted to play with everyone all the time.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Sweetie.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Exactly. So this and this is the worst part of I mean we say this on every case, like it's fucked that the world grabs the good ones. So as much as her she loved sports, she also really enjoyed dancing and she played music and apparently was showing some talent on the piano. One minute she was performing on a stage, graceful and poised, like a ballerina, and the next she'd be outside playing football.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Wow. What a cool kid.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Right? Her family said that one of the things that stood out about her was that she was very kind and empathetic. And she didn't like seeing people that were lonely or uncomfortable. She would always walk right over to them and introduce herself and get them included in whatever was going on. Everyone in Maddie's neighborhood knew her because she would literally knock on their doors and ask if their kids could come out and play.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Wow.

unknown 5:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

So at 5 p.m.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Dangerous.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Yeah, well, exactly. At 5 p.m.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

I guess we think about it more now because we're all afraid of each other, but yeah, and this was night this is taking place in 1998.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

So that was Jesus, that was almost 30 years ago. Wow. Yeah. I'm old. Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Yeah, I'm old.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

At 5 p.m. on November 3rd, 1998. Maddie was outside in the Lakewood neighborhood of Jacksonville. And uh her choice of sport that day had been golf. She had been out there hitting balls up and down the street.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Golfing?

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Golf.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Fucking hilarious.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

How many eight-year-olds are playing golf?

SPEAKER_00 6:19

I mean, honestly, I wish I could go like go back and see how many things she probably did throughout the day. You know?

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Yeah. That she ought to have the energy. Right. I feel like even when I was that age, I was like, oh, I'm gonna take a nap, like read a book.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

And that's funny. So at 6 30, Sheila, her mother, called Maddie and her sister Jessie in for dinner. Jessie walked in alone and told her mother that she hadn't seen Maddie and she didn't know where she was. So Sheila called around the neighborhood, but no one knew where Maddie was. And after a quick look around herself, Sheila called 911, as you do. As you do. She gave the police Maddie's name, her age, what she was wearing, and that she was last seen playing outside around 530. Later that night, when they still hadn't found her, everyone in the area was out there with flashlights. That night's calm was sharply punctuated by the sound of Maddie's name being called out by people over and over again. As the hours passed and the sky began to darken, the search crew the search crew actually grew in size as more people joined in. Neighbors would say that Maddie was everyone's daughter, everyone's sister. And as the night passed and the sun started to rise, there were still no clues as to Maddie's whereabouts. After a full twenty-four hours, the local residents said if they weren't at work or at school, they were out searching. Now cars were being stopped as they were coming and going from the area as well. And eventually the National Guard were involved.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Great to see this kind of response. We do love when we see this.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

100% agree with you. So the National Guard started searching the sewers, and they were dance searching dumpsters. They were going through every manhole cover. They searched miles of woodland and they start were searching ponds. And then the FBI got involved and they put out a hundred thousand dollar reward. And at this point, authorities started searching the neighbors' houses as well. They're like, maybe she's being been abducted by a neighbor kind of thing, and they searched all the neighbors' houses, which they gladly opened their doors to.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Wow, yeah, you rarely hear that.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Rarely. So a neighbor of Maddie's, a man named Larry, who lived just five doors down from the Cliftons home, was an early suspect. Authorities kept returning to him as it seemed he might have been the last person to see her. Now he told them that he saw Maddie leave because it seemed like she was out of golf balls, but that she never came back to the area where he could see her. Police interviewed him roughly ten times. One of which one of the interviews they had with him lasted for eight hours.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

What the f wow, that's really long. They're really wanted him to be a suspect, huh?

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Well, it turns out Larry had been arrested twenty years previously for two different incidents of sexual battery.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

So yeah, they I get why we're asking. Yeah, they have every reason to be looking at him. And in both of those cases, the charges had actually been dropped. Which again, if you know anything about this shit, that's suspicious too.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

But he offered to give them whatever they wanted. He was offering DNA samples. He cooperated with them fully. And he even said to interviewers later that he knew he was a prime suspect. He was forty five years old, had a criminal record, and he would occasionally play outside with the neighborhood children. Of course he was a suspect. Which would make me a suspect because I would be out there playing with neighborhood kids too if I lived in that kind of environment. You know, when I was younger at least. Yeah. Maybe not now. So police had spoken to every neighbor, but they were speaking to six of them with more intensity. But unfortunately, none of that led anywhere. After four days of searching, the police ended the neighborhood search and they started to concentrate on following leads that took them out of the area. Now, Lieutenant Mark Foxworth, a police homicide detective, said that there was no evidence that someone had kidnapped Maddie. They were not looking at it as an abduction or a sexual abduction. This is a quote from him, pretty much. He said they were they were approaching it with the possibility that she may have just run away.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Fuck off.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

After four days with the FBI and the National Guard involved, the local police are basically saying, Yeah, she might have just taken off. Because they're saying there's no evidence of anything else.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

So keep looking, bitch.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Right? Fucking ridiculous. I'd have been so pissed if I were her father. If I were her father, I might have just killed this guy.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Yeah, I would be so, so mad.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Well, it had been a week since Maddie was missing. And across the street, the neighbor would make a horrible discovery.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

So this wasn't the neighbor whose house was searched, clearly.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Oh, just wait. Oh fuck. Fourteen-year-old Joshua Phillips. Fourteen-year-old Joshua Phillips and his family who had been out looking day and night for Maddie. Joshua and Mary, Maddie played together a lot. His mother, Missy, one day she was walking past his room. She was kind of lost in thought, and she glanced inside. And she saw just how m much of a mess his room was, full of trash. And she just thought, she can't let this her kid live like this. So she goes in and she starts cleaning up after him. That's what mothers do, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

She saw Maddie's missing person, persons flyer, sitting on one of his bedside tables. And Joshua had a water bed, and as she's picking things up off the floor, she noticed a wet spot in the carpet. Now she had been smelling something odd for the past couple days. And she and she began to think that maybe this water was the cause of it.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Maybe it does get nasty up in those water beds.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Exactly. So she pulled up the mattress and noticed that the frame of the mat the bed itself was collapsing. The bed wasn't sitting correctly. And she started shifting things around, lifting things off of the frame itself, trying to fix it. And she saw a small sock intertwined in the frame. She reached down to pull it out, but it wouldn't budge. It was stuck. So she got down on her hands and knees and she looked under the bed frame, and then she recoiled in absolute horror. Oh no. There was a small foot right there in front of her when she looked under that bed.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

She would later state that her eyes knew what she was looking at and everything that it meant, but her brain was resisting it as she tried to connect the dots.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Oh, I bet. That's the crazy kind of shock to be in.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

In a panic, Missy ran out the front door and straight to the nearest police officer and practically had to pull him up the stairs to her son's room. Which I have to say, I give this woman credit, this could have gone very different.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

She didn't do the thing that a lot of people do, which is like go see what his story is, maybe she takes her off.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Cover it up, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Within minutes, tape was up everywhere, and Missy's house was full of police officers. She had found the decomposing body of Maddie Clifton under her 14-year-old son's bed. Oh as they removed her tiny body, Maddie's hand was found clutching the frame. The police had searched the Phillips house a couple of times. And although they noticed a weird smell, everyone assumed that it was either Joshua being a teenage boy.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Right. Or his pet birds, because he had birds in his room.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Oh, that's gonna be a stinky room, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Right. So you can sort of see why that smell didn't resonate.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

So onlookers, neighbors, and even the family's friends had to tune into a televised press conference where it was announced that they had found eight-year-old Maddie. Oh. Now the autopsy showed that Maddie had been beaten with a baseball bat, stabbed in the throat and all over her body before being stuffed under the waterbed.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Police even found the knife and the baseball bat in the room. So clearly this kid's not very bright.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Yeah, what the fuck? But he's already hiding a dead body in his room while people are continuing to search his house.

unknown 15:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Right, right. We're gonna get into some of that too. Now Maddie's shorts and underwear were reportedly removed from her body. Oh no. But the examinations showed no signs of sexual assault.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Yeah, so, and we're gonna get into some of that again in a little bit too. Now, Steve and Missy Phillips, Joshua's parents, had to go to the police station to see their son. And Missy said that she was in tears, realizing that while she sat at that station with her son, she knew that the Clifton family was at home praying to God that this was somehow a mistake.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Oh that's awful to sit with, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Now Steve, Joshua's father, told his son to tell them the truth and tell it quickly.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Good.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

So with his father sitting next to him, Joshua told them everything that happened and didn't deny that he killed Maddie. He said Maddie knocked on the door wanting to play, and Joshua had told her that he had to do chores, but that Maddie persisted and wouldn't leave. So he relented, but told her that he could only be outside for so long because his father would be getting home soon. Now he told the police that he was afraid of his father because his father drank a lot and became violent. So Joshua said that they were outside playing baseball in his backyard by the pool. And at one point Maddie threw the ball and he hit it back and it hit her in the face, causing her eye to bleed. He said that Maddie fell down screaming and he panicked and dragged her inside the house so forcefully that some of her clothes had come off.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

That doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Honestly, that doesn't make sense to anybody, but that's what he said.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Alright.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

If I had to guess, he maybe wanted to assault her and couldn't, or was just curious and wanted to know what it looked like down there, maybe. But we're gonna get into other things too.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Yeah, I can imagine that.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

We're gonna get into other things too. So I don't really think that last statement on my part is true either. But anyway, he claimed he was afraid of getting into trouble, but Maddie was loud and upset. So he said he hit her in the head with the baseball bat until she was unconscious.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

He then pushed her under his bed and went downstairs acting like nothing had happened. When his father came home later, the two of them sat downstairs talking for a little bit, and Joshua went back up to his room. He said he heard Maddie groaning under the bed, so he removed the mattress and pulled her back out. And from there he tried cutting her throat twice with a pocket knife and then stabbed her in the chest seven times. Seven times. Clearly not a well thought out plan, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

If this is even the truth.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

And from there he pushed her back under the bed where she would remain for the next six days.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Now insane.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

What's really fucked up is that Maddie knocked on his door all the time because she knew he was a lonely kid, and she always made the effort to reach out to him so he had someone to talk to and play with.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

What's so fucked up. What the fuck? Interestingly, the Phillips family had moved into the area about two years prior, and Joshua exhibited no red flags. He was quiet, he kept to himself, he performed well in school, he liked his computer and he read books. He loved animals, especially his birds. He had never been in any trouble. Every one of his neighbors said he was a good kid, including Maddie's mother. None of them thought he was capable of something like that. They didn't have any qualms about Maddie's. Exactly. Now Joshua later said that his father was a drug addict and an alcoholic and was violent to both him and his mother. And he said it was his father's rules and his hatred for other children coming over when he wasn't home that led to him being so afraid of his father. Yeah, if it's true, maybe. It's tough to say. Now Joshua said that if he did something wrong, all he wanted to do was hide from his father. Now, on the flip side of this, one of the police investigators during the search for Maddie had gone into Joshua's room and sat down with him to ask him questions about Maddie. And he said that Joshua sat there, cool as a cucumber, quote unquote, as he sat on his bed, petting his dog, was completely unemotional and unaffected by police being in his house.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

While she was literally underneath.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Exactly. Literally awful. Literally, as people were walking up and down the street at night searching for her, he was asleep on top of her body. Ooh. Maybe some of what Joshua says is true. Maybe all of it's true. But the kid still has something wrong with him.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

Nuts. Yeah, there was something deeply fucking wrong with you.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Deeply. So on November 14th, Maddie was laid to rest, and the streets were lined with people holding hands and showing their love for her family. Five days later, on November 19th, a grand jury returned a first degree murder charge, and Joshua would be tried as an adult at 14.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Now, obviously, because of intense pretrial publicity in the Jacksonville area, the courts had to move the trial, and it would be another year before Joshua Phillips would actually be in court.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah, that tracks.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

His defense team tried to paint a picture of a kid who lived. Lived in a house where he had to walk on eggshells, terrified to do anything wrong, that he was abused and scared enough of his father that when Maddie was injured, he completely panicked. They said that Maddie's death was an accident or at worst, manslaughter.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

I don't know about that. But I guess they're they have to defend him.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Exactly. And really, what else can you defend it with based on his confession?

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Right. There's nothing else you can do. He really just confessed to it.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

And I'm surprised he didn't just plead guilty, but Well, we're gonna get into it because well we'll we'll keep going. His lawyer and his defense team did not call a single witness. And in the end, Joshua never said a word in court. And the prosecution probably for the best. Probably for the best. Now the prosecution said his story didn't add up. They never believed that it was an accident based on physical evidence. They argued that there was no indication that he was playing baseball with her. The autopsy just didn't support his claims that he had hit her in the eye with the baseball.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Right, it feels like we would have clear, clear knowledge of that.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Exactly. And where he said he dragged her inside and that her clothes had come off. They said there was a lack of dirt or sand or anything on her body.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

And then there was no blood found outside the house or anywhere leading up to his room. Which suggested that Maddie wasn't injured before entering his room, however, she got there.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

I like this story even less than the story he was telling.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Right. So the prosecution also mentioned that before the murder, Joshua was actually on his computer watching pornography. So while the they say that there's no real evidence of sexual assault happening, things didn't look good when you started adding it together.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Right. And he was like, Oh, I'll have to do chores.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Right. So to the prosecution, this basically set the stage for premeditation that he was thinking about it, that he lured her into the house, which wouldn't have been hard to do with a girl like Maddie.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

Right. But then it's also like if it if it wasn't hard to do, did you really lure her or did she just want to come in? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Right. It's tough to say. Although I I I can't, you know, she's eight years old. She may not have realized the danger of going into a older boy's bedroom.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Especially Right, totally. She would have she probably wouldn't have thought anything of it.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

He probably even could have said, Come see my birds.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Oh, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

And I'm sure that's normal for her. Like if she hangs out with all the neighborhood kids, they're probably all different ages.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Right. Well, yeah, and from what we gather, she's just going up and down the street playing with anyone who will play with her.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

So Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Well, after a tough trial, the verdict was obviously not going to be anything less than we're expecting. Joshua was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole because it's a first because of the fact that it's a first degree murder charge. So wow. So at 15 years old, Joshua Phillips became inmate number J11775. Now he appealed his conviction in 2002, but it was upheld.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Yeah, what the fuck grounds does he think he has to appeal?

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Well, we're going to get into some other things too. So trust me, this isn't quite over yet. We're getting there.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

So there is a memorial pre playground at Maddie's school, which everyone agreed was the perfect tribute for someone who loved to be outside playing and loved getting other kids to play together. So a memorial playground.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

That's very sweet.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

I actually kind of want to go to it. As weird as that sounds.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Just to like honor her, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

Yeah. I don't see myself ever really returning to Jacksonville, Florida, but I did used to live there back in like 2006.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

So Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Yeah, very briefly. So following a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that found that mandatory life sentences for juveniles were as unconstitutional, this threw Joshua and many other people's sentences up in the air. In 2017, in 2017, Joshua was back in court to be resentenced. As all the evidence was read out again, Joshua just looked down and shielded his eyes. As David Chase, the now retired Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, the evidence technician for them, described how Maddie was found. So at least the kid has shame. All these years later.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Yeah. Joshua talked for about five minutes while he was on the stand directly to Maddie's family. He went on about life in prison and how sorry he was for everything that he had done. He even talked about God and how that gave him hope that someday he might be free again.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Oh, shut the fuck up. They don't want to hear that.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

No, and it's ballsy on his part, I gotta say.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

It is, but I guess you start to go crazy in prison. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Maybe. Now Maddie's family also spoke. They talked about all those moments of life that Maddie had stolen from her. They literally called Joshua the devil, saying, What we didn't know was the devil himself had moved in right across the street. The same devil that picked up his flashlight and proceeded to look for her, knowing good and well where she was the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

So he was sentenced to life with a review after 25 years.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

But he's already served. Well, like 20 something.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

So as we get to 2020, Joshua appealed, but the Florida Supreme Court rejected his appeal.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Good.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

And by mid-2025, the 41-year-old was back in court again asking for a review of his sentence, citing the completion of a 20, his 25-year minimum term. So Joshua Phillips was brought back to court and he was waiting there to basically go in for this review to see if he could be released. And then in March of 2026, this year, stating that he realized he was not yet, he had not yet met what he considered what other people had advised him were the minimum expectations for a release, he withdrew his request.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

Yeah. In a letter he wrote to the judge.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

I didn't hear about that much.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Right? He claimed that in a letter he wrote to the judge that he didn't need, he didn't want to talk to therapists earlier in his sentence because he was a quote unquote lifer, and that he wanted to find his own sense of rehabilitation, thinking he was never gonna get out. But what he didn't realize until he here he is asking for release, that by doing things his own way, he was never going to be released, and then he had to work within the system to demonstrate how serious he was about his rehabilitation. So he withdrew his request.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Which is really weird because it shows a lot of growth and maturity.

unknown 29:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

I mean, I guess like this happened when he was 14, he's now in his 40s, so that's a big change.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

So the other problem with what he's done is that every time he goes back into court, so do Maddie's family, and they have to relive this every time.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Yeah, it's pretty awful that they have to keep doing this.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

And so why could they just record it and play it back?

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Right? Well, after he was convicted, district attorney Harry Swaskin, I can't, I'm thinking I'm saying that right, and Sheriff Nat Glover admitted that they had second thoughts about going after him for a life sentence without the possibility of parole because he was only 14.

unknown 30:22

Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Well, it was interesting they decided to try him as an adult.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Well, interestingly, they said they had no issues with that part, but they looking back, they said that they think they m should have done it as a second degree murder plea instead of first degree.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Because by going with first degree says premeditation, right? That's the difference.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

And they're saying that by Yeah, I could see it being second degree.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

Right, and by doing second degree, it would have allowed the judge to give him something less than life. So they're basically these two have come forward and said that if there was a case for clemency or parole, they support it being this kid, or at least being reconsidered like in terms of spending the rest of his life in prison.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

So even some of the cops say it doesn't know like from what I've heard, I don't know if there's evidence of premeditation.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

Right. So it's weird. But either way, even though I what he did was horrible, I think if there's anyone that we any of the killers we've talked about that maybe has learned something, has grown, has been rehabilitated, it might be this kid.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Right. Or well, uh from what we can tell, he's in the process of it.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Right. From what we can tell, correct.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

So I mean it sounds like he's if he's just starting the process 2025, then he's got right he's got a quite bit of time. Right, I don't know when we see the results of that attempted rehabilitation.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Right. I don't see him getting out anytime soon.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Definitely not anytime soon.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

So when death happens, especially a death like this, things change. And Maddie's older sister, Jessie, said it changed the course of her life.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

She actually said it caused her to start to lose her identity. So she describes herself and when she was younger as being a nerdy kid who never wanted to be with the popular kids, and she often got picked on. But then suddenly, with the murder of her sister, everyone knew who she was. Everyone wanted to know her. She felt that she was no longer Jesse Clifton, that she was just Maddie Clifton's sister. She said that she was stuck in a place of never wanting to forget that she was her sister, but that she also needed to grieve her sister and try to navigate a life of being on her own and being her own person.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

Yeah, that's really fucking tough. That's like crazy amounts of therapy you would need to cope with that. And how do you ever really cope with losing someone under those circumstances?

SPEAKER_00 32:59

Right. Well, Missy Phillips, Joshua's mother, had a very similar journey of her own. And it actually Oh, I bet. And it actually ended up being one that brought her closer to Jesse Clifton, Maddie's sister. Wow. So two years after Joshua was sentenced, Steve, his father, and her Missy's husband would be killed in a car crash.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Oh shit. That's awful for the poor mother.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Yeah, Missy, she she basically at that point wanted to pull away from society. She was because she blame her. She knew what people were saying behind her back and the look she got, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:39

So Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

But Jessie, Clifton, much like her sister Maddie, started to show up at Missy's house asking if she could walk her dog for her. Jesse said that she would sit at her window waiting for Missy to come home and she would run over to help her carry groceries inside.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

What a sweet girl.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Crazy, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:02

Yeah. But just like the level of compassion in her heart is incredible.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

Right, and and that's just it. And she basically, from I don't know if it was Missy who said it or Jesse who said it, but basically she was recognized, Jesse was recognizing that Missy was alone at that point, and people weren't being particularly kind to her. So she went over there to make sure she didn't feel alone, just like her sister would have done.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

And what a beautiful way to keep her memory alive.

SPEAKER_00 34:31

Right?

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Maddie's really beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Maddie and Jessie's parents would divorce after 25 years of marriage. And Jesse would say, Yeah, quote, simply put, they handled their grief different differently in such a way that they couldn't stay in sync. Unquote.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

Yeah, I mean, grief is so personal. I can't you could be aligned in so many ways and still not be aligned in that way. I can't I imagine it would be hard to go through that with someone and have your marriage survive.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

Right. Yeah, I can't imagine it. Like I luckily nothing like that has ever happened to me or anyone that I care about that closely to where it might have torn us apart as friends or family or whatever. So and that is the case of Maddie Clifton.

SPEAKER_01 35:21

Well, that's heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

I told you it was kind of a brutal one, and I don't know why it's been that I'm finding all these crazy ones recently, but you're just trying to torture me, that's all. You know, I mean what else do you want to do?

SPEAKER_01 35:33

I don't know what I did.

unknown 35:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

You're right.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

That's I mean, that's the point of this podcast. It's it's joyous as terror hour. Um you traumatize me, but then I forget about it. Uh and that's how I personally handle the grief.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

Right. Well, I I was putting some of this together with some I I was wrapping up um had some friends over, and they as I was wrapping this up, we were chatting, and I said, uh, this might be another one where I make joyous cry.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

You did.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Oh, I got I did. Hey, wow, okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

You did, yeah. When you were talking about how how Jesse's going over and and looking after Missy and making sure she's okay, that that one made me cry, just thinking about like how much she how much of her sister still lives in her.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

And like that's just like the insane level of compassion you have to have as a person to even if there's a part of you that might blame her for what happened, that you that you can look past that and think instead of this is a human being who's who also lost her child in a way, right? Like she did life in prison. I mean, she lost her child forever, too.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

And she has to live with that guilt of my son did this to this girl.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

Right. I imagine she goes through every second of of her son's life and thinks about like how could this have been my fault?

SPEAKER_00 36:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

I think that's what most people would do.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Now imagine the strength it took Jesse and Maddie's parents, or mother at the very least, to let Jesse go over to that house.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

Oh yeah. That one's hard to imagine, too.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

That's strength of character right there. Because yes.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Yeah, it really is.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

I mean, the kid's not there anymore, and they know this, but there's like in my mind, there's a ghost there for at least them.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Oh, of course. And I think it's like crazy that that Jesse was even able to enter that house. I it would be so hard thinking like this is where my sister was killed.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

But maybe she's a really incredible person.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

But maybe in a dark way she felt that it was bringing her closer to her in some ways.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

That could be that she was like the my sister, this is the last place she ever was, and so maybe she felt together with her there. I guess I guess we'll we won't we can't know, but right.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

Well, it makes me think of those like highway on the side of the highway when you see like a wooden cross and people are leaving flowers there because someone died in a car accident there. It kind of makes me think of that.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

But either way, the Clifton family, the strength they had to put to do that, especially Jesse, is that's crazy to me. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

Yeah, it really shows the like the character of the whole family that they were all just like really kind, compassionate, and caring people.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

Yeah, they didn't hold it against the rest of the Phillips family.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

No, and that's that's really, really big of them, and maybe there's something we can all take from that.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Right. And like and if you think about it for compassion. And if you think about it, the fact that Missy Phillips ran out and got the police after finding what she did instead of trying to protect her own son speaks volume of her volumes about her character.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

That is true. That is true. There are so many cases of parents who were like, oh, I think about Casey Anthony and how much her parents helped her.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

Right, exactly. Well, thank you everybody for listening. Once again, I am Janice Dead.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

And I'm Joyce Dead.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

And we'll see you guys next week.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Bye.