The Twisted Tale of Joe Clark: "The Baraboo Bone Breaker"
The Twisted Tale of Joe Clark: "The Baraboo Bone Breaker"
17-year-old Joe Clark had a secret obsession. He loved to watch and hear people's bones break. In the summer of 1994, he abducted 13-year-old Thad Phillips, and put him through days of brutal torture
On July 10, 1994, the body of a boy was found draped over a partially submerged tree branch in the Wisconsin River; an autopsy revealed that the boy had died of ‘accidental drowning’ and that there were no signs of foul play.
The body was a local 14-year-old named Chris Steiner.
Chris Steiner lived in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and on July 4th, his parents had awoken in the morning to find their son missing.
The police theorized that the boy had snuck out to go and party with his friends since it was the 4th of July, but further investigation pointed to Chris not leaving the house of his own accord; the screen door to his bedroom window had been sliced open, and muddy shoe prints were found on the carpet.
Chris’s parents, Kathy and George Steiner, did not believe that he accidentally drowned, nor would he have snuck out of his room in the middle of the night, but with no clear idea about what could have happened, the case stalled.
Not giving up, Kathy and George tried numerous times to get the police to do their job and conduct a thorough investigation. However, no further investigation took place.
Chris’s parents, obviously devastated and deflated by the lack of efforts by the police, decided to conduct their own investigation in the hopes of solving their son's case.
During their investigation, one name kept emerging - 17-year-old Joe Clark. also known as the “neighborhood bully.” Despite Kathy and George's findings, there were no apparent links that connected Clark to the death of their son, and subsequently, the case of Chris Steiner was closed.
Kathy and George buried their son on July 14th, 1994.
Abduction of Thad Phillips
Thad Phillips, a 13-year-old boy, also from Baraboo, Wisconsin, had fallen asleep on the sofa one night in July 1995, after watching TV but awoke when he felt the sensation of being lifted and carried from the sofa.
Thad assumed that one of his parents had begun to carry him to bed, but eventually, he realized that he was actually outside. Waking groggily, Thad saw an older boy standing over him.
Confused, Thad assumed a friend of his Dad’s had taken him outside to help him with his car. Confused and disorientated by the situation, he asked the man where his car was, and he replied, saying that it was just a little further away.
The older boy then asked Thad to follow him, and the pair ran off towards the car; a little while later, Thad and the man arrived at a dilapidated house.
The older boy told Thad that he lived in the house with his brother and was planning on throwing a party for all the people in the neighborhood. When Thad stepped in, he was met with mounds of filthy dishes, molded left-over food, and piles of garbage and clutter.
This is when Thad began to feel uneasy. The older boy, or ‘man’ to Thad, asked him if he would like to see his collection of model cars that he keeps in his bedroom, and when Thad agreed, the man introduced himself as Joe.
Held Captive and Tortured
Thad, still confused at what was happening, followed Joe upstairs, and for a little while, they looked at the car collection, but Joe suddenly turned and shoved Thad onto a soiled mattress and jumped on top of him.
Thad put up a struggle, but the 17-year-old was much stronger and was able to hold him down - Joe grabbed one of Thad’s ankles and violently twisted it with such force that the ankle snapped.
Fuelled by adrenaline, Thad was able to escape Joe’s grip and attempted to run down the stairs, but due to his snapped ankle (which he could feel sliding up his leg and scraping against another bone), Joe caught up with him, grabbed him in a chokehold, and then threw him onto a sofa in the living room.
In searing pain and obviously scared to death, Thad tried to reason with Joe to let him go.
He promised that he wouldn’t let anyone know what had happened and that he would tell people that he had tripped and fallen over a coffee table, but Joe refused, stating no one would believe him.
Terrified and in agony, Thad asked Joe one simple question: why? And Joe gave a simple answer: because he enjoyed the sound and feel of breaking bones.
“The Baraboo Bonebreaker”
The sadistic attack continued as Joe bent Thad’s leg up towards the boy's head and pressed his weight against it until the femur bone broke.
Now convinced his torture victim wouldn’t escape, Joe left Thad on the bed and exited the house. Strangely, before Joe left, he actually tried to fix Thad’s broken bones.
He would place them in makeshift casts made from socks and ace bandages. Once Joe left, Thad managed to painstakingly drag himself downstairs and into the kitchen, but later, Joe returned with a girl, and they entered the living room, unaware of Thad’s broken body lying silently in the other room.
Eventually, the girl left, and Joe walked into the kitchen, found Thad on the floor, and dragged him back upstairs, where the torture continued.
In between the breaking of Thad's bones, Joe would attempt medical care and would even fashion braces for Thad to use to walk around - seeing Joe seemingly had a somewhat compassionate side, Thad tried to use this to his advantage to keep Joe talking, in order to delay the inevitable.
Joe would speak to Thad during the spaces in between the torture as though nothing had happened and would even sit and watch TV with Thad. However, Joe would also stomp on Thad’s broken bones.
In one desperate attempt, Thad thought he had convinced Joe to let him call his parents to let them know he was okay, and to Thad’s surprise, Joe agreed. It was only when Thad began to dial the number that he realized the phone was actually turned off.
The parents of Thad Phillips awoke the next morning to find their son missing, and with the family only recently moving to the area, they did not believe that Thad would have snuck out of the house to hang with friends as he hadn’t quite made any yet.
Of course, however, this is the explanation that the police ran with, and they simply told Thad’s parents to wait for their son to return home.
Overcome with worry, Thad’s parents drove around the neighborhood looking for their missing 13-year-old son and even scouted a local fair that had come into town, but to no avail.
Little did they know that the house in which Thad was being held captive was little more than half a mile away from their home.
During his captivity, Joe would take out his daily frustrations on Thad. Once, when Joe’s car wouldn’t start, he bounded back in the house and straight upstairs to Thad, where he twisted Thad's legs until they snapped, shattering his kneecaps, and jumped on his chest, breaking his ribs.
Escape
Several days later, on July 30th, Joe planned on leaving the house again, and to make sure Thad wouldn’t attempt another escape, Joe locked him in a closet.
Within the darkness, however, Thad managed to grab onto an old, heavy guitar and battered his way through the door.
By this point, Thad knew his days were numbered; his body was broken, and his legs were swollen to the size of softballs. He was a thirteen-year-old boy who had been held captive and tortured over a 43-hour period.
Thad showed immense fight and dragged his shattered body through the bedroom, downstairs, through the hall, and into the kitchen, passing out at multiple points due to the excruciating pain before reaching the dangling cord of the phone. Thad grabbed the cord and shook it until it dislodged the receiver and fell to the floor, and when it did, he dialed 911.
At first, the police thought it was a prank call, but they were obligated to send out officers to the scene - Thad was able to describe the house and could even recall the directions they took on the night Joe carried him outside.
However, the police knew exactly where he was located as they had dealt with Joe in the past. A few minutes later, police officers arrived at the property, walked into the kitchen, and discovered, to their horror, the battered and beaten body of Thad Phillips.
At the hospital, the doctors said Thad was lucky to be alive and informed him that he would only have had a few hours left to live due to the amount of internal bleeding his injuries had caused.
Thad's legs were broken in four places, his toes were pointing in every direction, one of his kneecaps had been twisted around to the back of his leg, and his skin was like rubber - his injuries were compared to those received by people involved in serious car accidents.
Arrest and Trial of Joe Clark
As Thad was receiving treatment in the hospital, Joe was arrested while at a party, and when he was informed of why, his response to the officers was, “Oh, he is still alive?”
Joe Clark initially denied any involvement with Thad’s injuries and said they must have happened during one of his blackouts, as he suffered from fainting spells.
Joe said he didn’t harm Thad as all he wanted to do was “hang out.”
However, during his captivity, Joe had told Thad that he had already killed two boys in the same manner. One of the boy’s names he couldn’t remember, but the other he did.
Thad remembered that the boy’s name was Chris Steiner.
With this new information, permission was granted to exhume Steiner's body and search for similar injuries. This new examination resulted in the discovery that Chris Stenier’s legs had been broken in a very similar fashion to Thad’s, and it was brought to light that when Chris’s body was first found, no x-rays were taken.
It is now believed that Joe kidnapped the boy, broke his legs, and then threw him, still alive, into the river, where he drowned due to his injuries.
A search of Joe’s house uncovered a chilling list that contained several boys' names, which were under various titles such as ‘Get to Now’ (which they believe was a spelling mistake and was meant to read ‘know’) and ‘The Leg Thing.’
Joe Clark was handed a litany of charges, including attempted first-degree murder, battery of a child, intent to disfigure/disable, causing mental harm to a child, and child enticement.
Clark pleaded ‘no contest’ but claimed to have no recollection of abducting or torturing Thad Phillips.
He was sentenced to 100 years in prison.
Though Phillips was awarded a $21 million settlement, he maintains that he has not seen a single penny and has had a GoFundMe set up to help offset his very costly medical bills due to the injuries sustained from Joe Clark.
Murder Conviction
With new information now available, Joe Clark was also tried for the murder of Chris Steiner.
Joe’s defense team tried to argue that his biological mother, who was under the influence of drugs throughout her pregnancy, had affected Joe, along with a bike crash Joe endured a few months earlier.
His mother even tried to create an alibi for Joe, stating that he couldn’t have snuck out of their house to kidnap Chris as he would need to pass by her bedroom, and she would have heard him.
However, it was proven that his mother is a heavy sleeper and that Joe was known to sneak out of his parental home on numerous occasions, so his alibi fell apart.
Even though Joe had been charged in connection with Thad Phillips, Thad was asked to testify against Joe for the murder of Chris Steiner.
Tragically, Thad was shot in the back by 15-year-old Michael Huebsch shortly before the trial began. It was believed that Michael was friends with Joe and had shot him out of revenge for testifying against him. However, Thad Phillips survived.
After several days in the hospital, Thad was able to testify in Clark’s murder trial, where he was ultimately convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 60 years.
To this day, Joe Clark still denies any involvement in the murder of Chris Steiner.
Sources:
“Joe CLARK A.K.A Bonebreaker”, Murderpedia, https://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/clark-joe.htm
“The Bonebreaker Killer: Joe Clark”, The Squonk and The Hag, https://thesquonkandthehag.com/2023/08/03/the-bonebreaker-killer-joe-clark/
Astapove, Anastasia, “JOE CLARK- THE BONEBREAKER KILLER. The teenager survived torture for more than 43 hours”, May 25th 2024