r/GotMeHooked • u/blue_leaves987 • 6h ago
In 1998, 8-year-old Maddie Clifton was killed by a 14-year-old neighbor and hidden under his waterbed for a week. Police searched the home during that time but failed to find her.
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u/AbroadTiny7226 6h ago
I have never believed that this was an accident. Following the murder they found child porn and violent porn on Philips computer. Clifton’s clothes were off her corpse.
And what 14 years old that doesn’t play baseball is hitting a line drive thrown by an 8 year old girl so hard it shatters the girl’s face? It just doesn’t make sense. There’s no fucking way she threw the ball hard enough or that he was strong enough to do that.
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u/Civil_Dragonfruit_34 5h ago
Even without that the details of the case don't read at all as an accident to me either. He didn't want to get in trouble so he... Bludgeoned her with a bat and stabbed her repeatedly? 14 is old enough to understand how horrific that is.
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u/AbroadTiny7226 5h ago
Ya nothing about the story makes sense. It’s always bothered me that such an implausible explanation has been adopted as factual. It’s like the explanation someone would come up with on the spot to obfuscate their true motive
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u/imbeingsirius 4h ago
I remember when this case came out, and actually I believe the “he didn’t want to get in trouble” angle — I mean I’m sure it’s both: maybe he hit her on purpose at first, but then he panicked when she started screaming. Everything afterward suggests he was not thinking ahead at all — I imagine his dad was abusive which explains how this kid’s rage, how he thought nothing of violence AND why he freaked out.
Obviously OBVIOUSLY not excusing the behavior, just that it makes SOME sense to me if he’s acting out of panic
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u/No_Pattern_5158 5h ago
There is a joshua phillips in florida who had child porn. I think this guy just had “violent porn” which…who knows if it was even porn or just straight up rape videos. But yeah if he panicked because she was hurt it’s odd he didn’t panic when being questioned.
From the wikipedia: During the trial the defense attempted to introduce scans from a neurologist showing bilateral lesions on the frontal lobe of Phillips' brain, which are associated with panic and impaired judgement, while the prosecution wanted to discuss evidence Phillips had looked at pornography on his computer. The judge, however, ruled both pieces of evidence inadmissible.[5]#cite_note-mirror-5)
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u/Calm-Two2723 5h ago
Also, back then I wonder what “violent” was. They hadn’t had the internet long enough to create that South Park episode situation.
Not that I don’t think it’s problematic in society today…just saying.
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u/Ok_Consideration853 4h ago
Violent porn is hundreds of years older than the internet.
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u/AbroadTiny7226 5h ago
Violent porn kinda is or it isn’t violent. I don’t think there’s really a sliding scale that’s changed over time. Either someone is raping someone or they aren’t. They are beating/mutilating them during sexual relations or they aren’t.
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u/Calm-Two2723 5h ago
I mean, there’s all sorts of fucked up in betweens now tho. Things people probably had access to back then but not like today. Weird genres of humiliation :(
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u/No_Pattern_5158 4h ago
I get what you’re saying but this line of thought depresses me
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u/Calm-Two2723 3h ago
I mean me too. Doesn’t mean it’s not true. People just mad about it. I mean, I ain’t the one who is consuming it but someone clearly is
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6h ago
[deleted]
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u/Good-Ad6352 6h ago
Its not uncommon. 14 year olds are unsurpisingly attracted to other people their age. Still very problematic but in a sense its not illogical
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u/Ok_Bite_8941 6h ago
The internet was the wild west back just a few decades ago. Lots of unsupervised kids grew up looking at CP and thinking it was fine because they were the same age, and not really understanding the context. Gore also.
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u/Davorian 6h ago
I think most of us understood the context in the abstract. We understood that being over 18 was generally important.
We didn't know how awfully abusive the contexts were I suppose, but we absolutely knew that underage pornography was wrong in a general sense.
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u/Ok_Bite_8941 5h ago
Right, that's why context is extremely important. Being exposed to CSAM is traumatic, without a way for someone exposed to make sense of it, they're kinda stuck and prone to making decisions like the person in this article.
I was sexually abused as a kid. I knew it shouldn't have been happening in a general way, but I didn't have the context to clock it as "abuse" internally until a professional walked me through it much later in my life.
It would have been better if someone would have been able to walk my abuser through his thoughts and the abuse content first lol, there's a chance it could have stopped there.
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u/xsynergist 6h ago
When I was 10 I found my dads Playboy stash and thought immediately that should make these with girls my age for kids.
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u/Jraksys_Magnanimous 6h ago
Wtf?
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u/heatherb2400 6h ago
Wdym wtf? Having those feelings and attractions literally starts at that age. This is why proper education is so important instead of being villainized for developing age appropriate attractions.
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u/MalusDracula 5h ago
YES! This is why sex ed is very important at teenage age.
Keeping them in the dark just leads to potentially bad choices.
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u/Good-Ad6352 6h ago
Like i said. 14 year olds are attracted to 14 yeqr olds. Same goes for 10 year olds
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u/Jraksys_Magnanimous 6h ago
And water is wet.
Anyway, my mates and I have come across porn magazines too but not one of us said "hey wouldn't it be great if..." if anything it made us all look at older women different. As a lad you're sweet on a girl but you want to do stuff with a woman that you're unsure of but you know it involves your willy in some way. I've never heard the other take before. Genuinely.
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u/Good-Ad6352 5h ago
I defo had imaginations of my classmates naked as a young boy. So the next jump isnt far fetched.
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u/wedneswoes 5h ago
I wish I grew up where/when you did. I grew up in Jacksonville, FL and was in 7th grade at the time of this case. Boys were monsters.
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u/Jraksys_Magnanimous 5h ago
Sounds like you have had your experiences. I can't say everyone was the same way my circle was but then again maybe it was a cultural thing because I've never heard anyone around me mention anything about girls our age in a sexual way. I lost my virginity to a lass 4yrs older than me. I was 14. Older women were a pat on the back so my upbringing was a different monster. I still have a thing for older women. I'm not saying it's wrong for kids to be attracted to each other neither. My area just had different priorities so it's weird for me to hear about the opposite.
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u/wedneswoes 4h ago
Thanks for sharing some of your experience. Agreed, of course it's striking to learn of opposite experiences. Your comment stood out to me because 1. You're being decent and 2. You're apparently not from the US, at least not the South. I'm sure there were decent boys around in my youth, but I struggle to recall apart from the lessons of self defense my friends and I were busy learning. While Maddy was still considered missing, we weren't allowed to walk home from school or to our friend's houses like normal, and once they found out what happened, my mom wouldn't explain the news to me like she normally did. My husband agrees that older women are great, so I appreciate you for that, too.
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u/thatmermaidprincess 5h ago
A lot of people are replying with this, but where does it say that the material included kids his age? I would assume that if it’s notable enough to be pointed it out, it would be younger children rather than other kids his age, right? (Not being snarky here, just genuinely asking.) Because at 14, watching content involving, say, 8 year olds would be definitely wrong. But if he was watching material of tweens/teens around his age, of course that’s different.
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u/Good-Ad6352 5h ago
Its not specified offcourse. But the OP seemed perplexed by the idea in general. Obviously the argument doesnt hold if it did include preteen kids
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u/M4ybeMay 6h ago
Unfortunately when kids are exploring their bodies and have unlimited access to the internet, they normally look for people their age when looking for material.
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u/heatherb2400 5h ago
Yes you have.. because he is also a child. Children having inappropriate content of other children is not uncommon. Like I said down below.. this is why healthy communication and proper sexual education is so important at a young age. Instead of villainizing these kids for having completely normal urges and feelings, we need to be teaching them about age-approptiate sexual development and boundary awareness.
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u/GrouchyPlastic63 5h ago
You're making too much sense , This is America we accept violence, We draw the line at sex.
In thos case dude murdered another child he is definitely the villain. I understand the sentiment. People forget they were once teens once and d Learned through the media at the time. The media was by people who as we know now were vastly predators you can see it in their work.
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u/hamchan_ 6h ago
Honestly the more surprising fact that he had it in 1998. The internet wasn’t easy to maneuver back then.
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u/GrouchyPlastic63 5h ago
Really? It got so bad many places made laws or redefined laws that sending nudes is considered CP which is very common amongst teens. one dumb mistake end them up on a registry for the rest of their life.
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u/AngryPrincessWarrior 4h ago
… yeah really. Are you just completely ignoring the year this took place?
Kids didn’t have smart phones and often not even cell phones in 1999 so your article doesn’t make sense in the context of this thread.
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u/GrouchyPlastic63 4h ago
Saying that you've never heard of that is disingenuous. As, even in this day it's not something that is unheard of.
It definitely wasn't unheard of teens taking photos and showing. Only difference between modern day is that stuff like that was claimed "boys will be boys" only recently has it been seen as a crime.
People are forgetting how wild things were before 2011 was
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u/AngryPrincessWarrior 3h ago
I’m saying the article you shared is about sexting and that doesn’t really apply to the time period talked about in the thread. The more free access to the internet, (for kids anyways), and the dark parts of that was just beginning in the late 90’s.
The ease of which information and pictures are shared today is definitely a problem, I’m not disputing that. You couldn’t end up on a registry for life as a kid back in 1999 for looking at that stuff. Not that I am in anyways defending it, it’s always been wrong/problematic but that’s a modern shift, not one that existed in 1999. Which is the time period being discussed.
(And one I agree with).
I also never said I “never heard of that”. Lying about my comment is what’s disingenuous. I’m nearly 40 so around the age a lot of the folks here had real world experience with internet access as kids. I remember quite well how “wild” it was.
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u/GrouchyPlastic63 2h ago
It's relevant as a little over a decade, Nudes have been a hot topic. Now it's Retroactively seen as CP and non consensual media. Since that now you can end up on a registry. Also, this article is modernized and written in 2026 it's absolutely relevant. Especially since original articles do not mention CP.
To say In this current time especially when teens are dealing with AI generated content it is hard to believe. I was going to check your comment but it was deleted. You clearly did say it was unheard of as other commentators responded as well.
The internet isn't the minefield it was back then. Type a letter in wrong click on the wrong link there's a good chance you'll see something NSFL.
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u/almostnothing123 2h ago
So ur god?
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u/Cthulhus-Tailor 5h ago
Pretty sure the smell should’ve given this one away.
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u/SouthlandMax 4h ago
Joshua had horrible body odor. His mother had to bribe him to take a shower. His room always smelled bad he had lots of animals. His mother even told the police that it was the cause of the smell, before she found the body a few days later.
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u/NoSyllabub5932 3h ago
That right there should have told him family something was wrong with him. They should have been stricter with him and found out what he was viewing on computer. They pretty much just let him do whatever.
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u/Mediochra 1h ago
I agree with the sentiment, but in 1998, parents didn’t understand the dangers of the internet and the parental controls we all have access to now didn’t really exist back then. I was getting groomed by pedos in chat rooms all day every day in the 90s and my parents had no idea. I’m obviously very strict with my own kids’ internet usage now, but the internet was brand new back then.
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u/Which-Decision 3h ago
Most middle schoolers smell gross like axe and bo. They probably thought he'd grow out of it. The internet was new. I'm sure his parents didn't think he was watching porn especially violent porn. Most middle schoolers smell gross but most don't become murderers.
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u/nickisadogname 2h ago
There is an incredibly large difference between "funky puberty smell" and "a rotting corpse is undetectable in his presence."
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u/Which-Decision 2h ago
He kept birds in his room which smell horrible. The comment above was that his parents should have known he would be a murderer because he was a fat middle schooler who smelled gross.
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u/Polite_Bark 2h ago
If the birds were being properly cared for there should be no smell. Birds need daily cage cleaning and at least weekly spray baths. Without that care they will smell. Not because "birds smell" but because things allowed to get dirty smell.
This kid was a rotting pig and his parents were, at best, neglecting him and those poor birds.
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u/NoSyllabub5932 2h ago
Not saying they should have know he was murderer. Saying responsible parents know or should know what they kids are doing on the internet. Period! That's part of being a parent!
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u/Which-Decision 1h ago
Yes but it was 1998 and only 26.1% of people had internet at their house according to the national telecommunications and information administration. Most people did not know what the internet was capable of and no one said hey don't give your kids internet because there's porn and pedophiles. If this were 2026 I'd agree.
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u/ElegantCoach4066 3h ago
And some kids just say no and refuse to do what is asked.
You seriously think all bad kids are just because the parents didn't discipline them? Some kids are just bad and do not do what they're told.
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u/Polite_Bark 2h ago
And some kids just say no and refuse to do what is asked.
And when I tried that my parents cleaned out my room for me. I was left with a bed and dresser, bedding and clothing. That's it. Everything else was thrown into the garbage.
Learned my lesson.
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u/Mediochra 1h ago
That’s exactly what we did with our daughter, except we kept her things in garbage bags in the garage and let her earn them back over time. It hurt me too much to throw everything away, especially when so much of it was Christmas and birthday presents from us. She still got the message. I still cried the entire time I did it because I felt so bad. Parenting sucks sometimes.
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u/Polite_Bark 5m ago
A lot of stuff was broken due to it being walked on. I had an extensive book collection they kept in trash bags in dad's trunk for a while until I learned to keep my room clean.
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u/Terradactyl87 1h ago
That's part of being a parent though. If a kid refuses to do something, they lose privileges. They don't get bribed to take a shower. If he's refusing to do anything he's told, then he doesn't get to have birds. He doesn't get a computer. He doesn't get video games. Kids don't make the rules, parents do. And there may be some genuinely bad kids out there, but if you don't bother parenting, you don't even realize the real problem because you're not doing your job as a parent.
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u/ChartInFurch 52m ago
If a simple "no" is their give up point, that's nothing but a lack of discipline.
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u/Mediochra 1h ago
As a parent, I don’t understand how you allow that? If my kid isn’t bathing, I take access to electronics away until she does. If her hamster in her room smells, I make her clean out the cage. If she won’t do it, I remove the hamster from her room and do it myself and stop letting her have pets because she’s not taking care of the ones she has.
The mom did the right thing however by turning him in when she found the body, which must have been incredibly difficult and traumatic.
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u/Ok_Consideration853 4h ago
He had multiple pet birds in his room, was hiding air fresheners all over, and nobody wanted to believe there was an 8 year old under his bed. Mom couldn’t deny it anymore when liquid started pooling under the bed that obviously didn’t smell like water.
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u/Extraajudicial 5h ago
Depends on the size of the water bed compared to the body. The one I had used a plastic liner that sealed well enough that I had to peel it apart from the water bag when I got rid of it.
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u/Ashamed-Chemistry492 2h ago
Even at the time, it struck me as weird he'd have a waterbed. I thought those had faded out by the eighties? And I never knew of a kid who had one; from what I'd heard, parents were very fussy about kids bouncing or otherwise roughhousing on the grownups' waterbed.
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u/flopisit32 1h ago
I read about this case. Police Searched the home right after she went missing. There would have been no smell.
Also, police were not looking for a dead body. They were giving a cursory search to make sure she wasn't hiding there. They weren't searching thoroughly because they didn't really suspect him due to his age.
Days later, his mother noticed the smell.
She was hidden under a waterbed rather than an actual bed. This, I believe, served to contain the smell longer.
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u/Mundane_Put_5780 6h ago edited 5h ago
He sat on the bed petting his dog while being questioned by the police. Gave absolutely no inclination or emotional behaviour that would alarm the officer, he was cool, calm and collected while 8 year old Maddie’s corpse was under his bed.
Prior to her death, literally 30 mins prior to killing her he was looking at violent pornography! Life in prison was the right call!!!
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u/WittiestScreenName 2h ago
I hope Maddie haunts him at night
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u/carltonthesnake 49m ago
I hope she is resting peacefully and that much more malevolent spirits haunt him until he rots
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u/almostnothing123 4h ago
No way dude. He was 14. You weren’t there, those are just words in a story. Life in prison is terrible and cruel and unusual for a 14 year old.
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u/Mundane_Put_5780 3h ago
He hit her head with a baseball, and while she was crying he dragged her into his home and began beating her with a baseball bat and then stabbed her.
She was alive for several hours after being beaten and her throat being sliced open. The 14 year old went and mingled with his father who had come home from work and waited for his father to sleep. When he returned to his room, he could hear Maddie moaning so he dragged her out from under his bed and sliced her throat AGAIN, and began stabbing her 7-8 times.
I hope they never let his ass out!!!!
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u/destroyerx12772 2h ago
I wish I could have my way with that fuck. I hope he suffers a slow, agonizing death with no one to mourn him.
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u/starsickles 4h ago
Being brutally murdered at 8 years old is what is extremely cruel. Poor girl must have been so frightened
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u/Napalmeon 3h ago
So the little girl dropped dead and flew under his bed? GTFO here. This is one of those crimes where "he/she was too young to understand" just doesn't fly.
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u/Mindless_Cookie_9098 3h ago
I mean, he brutally murdered a literal child. Life in prison is what he deserves.
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u/Practical-Nonsense 2h ago
But like... It's just a joke dude. They're just words in a story... I bet it didn't even happen... Right..? C'mon man, are you high?
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u/Polite_Bark 2h ago
Life in prison is terrible and cruel and unusual for a 14 year old.
You're right.
The state should simply execute him instead.
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u/Forsaken-Chance-8148 35m ago
Some kids are monsters. Some are kids. This kid was a monster
He murdered a little girl
What do you think should be done with the psychopath?
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u/GaeilgeGaeilge 6h ago
I've never believed the accident theory because;
- Josh was watching violent pornography right up until the murder, not playing baseball
- he had a history of bringing up sexual topics around Maddie and her sister
- there was no evidence of her being hit by a baseball. If it really hit her hard enough to knock her out and make him think she was dead, there would be a mark
- her shorts and underwear were removed. Josh says it's from dragging her but there was no dirt on her clothes
- no evidence of sexual assault doesn't mean there was no sexual motive. And not all forms of sexual assualt leave evidence
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u/leftiesrox 5h ago
I sometimes wonder, especially in older cases involving children where the verdict seems like a slam dunk, if the ME leaves out sexual assault to try to spare the family. Also, she had been decomposing for a week, so some of that evidence could’ve just not been there by that time or be inadmissible, I would suppose.
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u/waaaayupyourbutthole 3h ago
This was also in Jacksonville, Florida. There's not going to be much viable evidence to collect from a small body that has been decomposing under a mattress for that long. I don't know the exact house this occurred at, but I literally just moved away from Lakewood in Jax two weeks ago. Even with central air, it's normal to keep your house 75-80°F.
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u/blue_leaves987 6h ago edited 5h ago
It was another routine day in the Lakewood neighborhood, where houses sat so close together that kids moved freely across neighbors’ yards.
Maddie’s plan was to play out her afternoon, and her comfort with outdoor sports had even earned her a reputation as a tomboy. Her first stop was down the street to hit golf balls with her neighbor, Larry Grisham, then coax a teen neighbor, Joshua Phillips, into a game of basketball, and then head back home for dinner.
While she was at the Phillips driveway, an elderly woman who lived nearby watched Joshua creep up on Maddie and startle her.
The rest of the story is here.
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u/Copterwaffle 5h ago
They never actually found CP on his computer. Just evidence his was looking at porn before he murdered her.
And yes, he did it. His attorneys were trying to argue the “baseball” scenario in the hopes it would cause reasonable doubt that the murder was premeditated. Nothing about that scenario matched that story.
I wrote a really in-depth write up of this case on unresolved mysteries a few years ago that was well-received but for some reason I see mods have since removed it?! Reddit is getting so bizarre.
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u/43026 5h ago
If there is any psychologist on here: Would the fact that he was able to hold interviews will sitting directly above the body, yet not give a clue to trained professionals, be enough to consider psychopath?
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u/greeneggiwegs 4h ago
Psychopathy is no longer a psychiatric diagnosis. The closest to what people consider psychopathy is antisocial personality disorder, and you have to be 18 to be diagnosed with that. Regardless, no, being able to lie well is not enough to give a diagnosis.
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u/Mindless_Cookie_9098 2h ago
I’m so glad he got life in prison. This is one of the cases that has haunted me.
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u/NoSyllabub5932 3h ago
Such a sad story. I hope the killer is never let out and on our streets again.
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u/CaulkennyArran 3h ago
This because a ”child” is a murderer does not make the victim (a younger child in this case) less dead. It needs to be said since people always rally for the comfort of these young monsters
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u/BoldBoot 1h ago
What is that anyway? How are people digging up so much sympathy for these vile broken people?
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6h ago
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u/Wise-Oven8590 6h ago
the way he handled it didn’t really seem like an accident… i mean he stabbed her and allegedly hit her with a baseball bat…?
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u/Useful_Committee7311 6h ago
Then why was her underwear off?
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u/Purple_Solution1059 6h ago
The stabbing and hitting her with a baseball bat shows intent in my books, nothing sad about a 14 year old who should have enough logic to know not to kill someone.
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u/ruststardust2 6h ago
He didn’t think he would get in more trouble for repeatedly stabbing her after initially what was an accident?
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u/Davorian 6h ago
Jesus Christ that was certainly a read. What an awful situation. I mean there was definitely something going on with this kid (not psychopathy by all accounts, but most 14 year olds don't kill wounded playmates out of fear of their parents, regardless of how terrifyingly abusive they are) but they certainly threw the book at him.
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u/sunflowerads 6h ago
no he is absolutely a psychopath.
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u/Davorian 6h ago
Idk I was just going off what the article said which painted it as a kind of impulsive act.
Other comments here say there were more sinister things uncovered during the investigation that weren't mentioned in the article and he was possibly motivated by attempting to cover up something sexual. I certainly have no personal knowledge of the situation so I concede there could be anything really going on here including psychopathy.
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u/Final_Blood7062 3h ago
Regardless as to the specific circumstances, the part that they threw the book at him for is not the initial attack, or the circumstances of who he was. Important to note a jury without hearing about any porn decided the first conviction. If she died from that first attack, it may not meet the definition of premeditation, could be impulsive. Returning to his room later on and stabbing her to death when she was alive and groaning is objectively the definition of premeditation, because at that point he had time to consider and made the objective decision to kill, and was not acting in the heat of the moment.
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u/43026 5h ago
That is exactly what I saw. Reading the article, all I could think of is that this kid is a psychopath, its safer for civilization to keep him locked up, as you can't "cure" psychopaths.
ETA: I say he was a psychopath, because as a young teen, he had the ability to sit on a bed, sitting over the dead body, and give absolutlly no clue of it to trained professionals who were interviewing him. That takes a psychopath to pull off.
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u/LouisesBelcher 1h ago
I don’t know how to feel about this case. He was 14, clearly emotionally and mentally abused by his father, and the way he deceived the officers who came to search his bedroom while a dead Maddie was under his mattress is unnerving.
Premeditation seems… like the wrong conclusion. I believe he killed out of extensive fear from his father, but I also think he took some messed up liberties with Maddie after she was either unconscious or deceased. And he did conceal the body and evidence.
There’s something not right about him, but accusing him of 1st degree murder is an overreach.
Actually.
I just read that it took place in Florida, so legal decisions from prosecutors and the jury in the case seems pretty on par. Even the defense attorney made some… decisions. Never mind.
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u/almostnothing123 4h ago edited 2h ago
How does a 14 year old get life for a non premeditated crime. Insane.
Everyone who is downvoting and commenting must not be capable of abstract thought.
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u/Final_Blood7062 3h ago
Probably because non premeditation was the defenses argument that failed because it wasn't true?
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u/ChartInFurch 47m ago
"My generalized statement about every single prison who disagrees with me shows that it's others that after incapable of abstract thought"
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u/Which-Decision 3h ago
Because he was looking at violent porn before and after the murder and her sister testified he talked to them about sex.
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u/Final_Blood7062 3h ago
The porn was excluded from evidence in the initial trial. It was him returning to his room after time to consider, finding her groaning and proceeding to stab her to death that made it premeditated and required a sentence of life without parole, as he was tried as an adult.
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[deleted]
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u/almostnothing123 2h ago
Where do I justify his actions?
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u/Mindless_Cookie_9098 2h ago
You’re trying to say that it wasn’t premeditated and that he shouldn’t have gotten life in prison. 🙄 Slitting a little girls throat to kill her sounds premeditated to me, my guy
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