Hello. Hello. Welcome back to Diagonising a Killer, the fifth episode.
Fifth episode. We're getting down to the...
I mean, we're like practically famous.
Yeah, I think so. I think, like, it's already gone to my head.
Yeah. I'm famous.
And we're rich billionaires now, so...
Yup.
There's no need to do...
Yeah, there's no need to do any more of these after this episode.
You know what? I think we're done.
We're just gonna retire.
Definitely.
So, before we get into the case, I just kind of want to really quickly touch...
There is gonna be involvement of child murder and some pretty graphic things.
The victim is very young, the killer is very young, and that's just a trigger warning.
If you don't want to hear that, I'm gonna talk about that.
So, this might not be the episode for you.
Without further ado, I am going to just jump right into it.
We're gonna be talking about Maddie Clifton today.
She is the victim, and Josh Phillips is the suspect or the killer.
But first, I want to talk about Maddie because she just seemed like an all-around badass of a little girl.
How old was she?
She was 8.
8?
Yes.
So, just kind of going back to the day everything happened.
On November 3rd, 1998, Sheila Clifton, Maddie's mom, came home from voting.
It was actually election day, so she voted that day.
She saw Maddie, and as she was coming home, Maddie was running out the door to go play.
She promised her mom, I'll be back for dinner, don't worry, I'm just gonna go play with the neighborhood kids.
Because they were all really close.
And it was 1998, so kids did that then.
That's what you do in true 90s fashion.
So, she was last seen actually hitting some golf balls, and then she actually returned home to grab some more, and then she went back out.
She was 8, and she's playing golf.
Yeah, just like for funsies.
It's like, who introduced you to golf?
That's not us.
I mean, I played golf when I was 8 with Dad.
But when I went to play with the neighborhood kids, it was generally like riding bikes, not playing golf.
Yeah, right, so what about us?
So, unfortunately, this time when she returned home to get more golf balls, that was the last time that she was seen by her family.
She did have an older sister, and her dad was obviously there at the time as well.
So, Maddie of course deserves to be known for the good parts of her life.
So I kind of want to go through just a couple of things that I read about her.
She was known for being a little girl that could like really resonate with people, so she was really bright.
She was like really...
Is she outgoing?
Yeah, like she wasn't afraid to have conversations with adults.
Like she just wanted to know everybody.
She had no stranger danger.
Exactly.
And she just loved everybody.
She was friends with everybody.
She always made the people that weren't, I guess, popular kind of...
She tried to go out of her way to like talk to them and make them feel like, you know, good.
She had brown hair and brown eyes, and then a face full of freckles.
So just like the cutest...
Post a picture of her whenever we post this episode, and she was just the cutest little girl.
She loved a lot of activities.
These included piano, golf, basketball, and baseball.
Oh my gosh.
She played a lot of sports.
She's multi-talented.
Yeah.
All around tomboy, and I loved that because that was me growing up.
So it was mentioned that she could actually...
Someone just made a little comment about her after the fact.
They're like, you know, she could be wearing a tutu one minute, and then the next minute she's digging in the dirt for worms.
She was just one of those little girls.
Yeah.
It's like a Junie B. Jones.
Yeah, exactly.
I loved those books growing up.
Oh my God.
Like literally, when I went to middle school, I asked them, like the librarian, I was like,
do you guys have any Junie B. Jones?
And she was like, this is middle school, honey.
We don't carry those elementary books.
Ew.
All right.
It's like, I'm 12.
I'm so glad you're reading.
Yeah.
And it was...
Another account mentioned that when she would watch TV, she would actually...
I love this so much.
She would root for like the bad guy or the scary guy because she didn't like the idea of people being lonely or like feeling isolated.
Aw.
So she would be like, go bad guy.
Like, I don't want you to be sad, you know, or a friend friend.
Poor Frankenstein's monster.
Literally.
So pure.
So because of this mentality, like I said earlier, Maddie was friends with everybody.
One of the people that she was frequently friends with, and you know what I always go out to play, was her across the street neighbor, 14-year-old Josh Phillips.
Joshua Phillips.
Okay.
Josh was much older than her, of course, but by all accounts, he wasn't as intellectually developed as a 14-year-old.
I actually read one report that said he was...
He had the brain of an eight-year-old or like the mental capacity of an eight-year-old.
That was never like diagnosed or anything, but he was just kind of a strange kid.
Yeah.
You know?
Didn't really fit in.
He was stunted somewhere in his life, probably.
Yeah.
And we'll learn later that he was severely abused.
So I think that might have something to do with it.
Yeah.
Of course, Josh had a rough childhood with an alcoholic father who would frequently abuse him and his mother.
They were both terrified of his father, Steve Phillips, his name, and they hated living with him.
I mean, of course, I mean, I would...
Why wouldn't you?
Exactly.
Like one does.
The father had a lot of really strict rules.
He didn't like it when Josh had friends over, and weirdly, he had an extreme disliking for little girls.
The father did?
Yeah.
I mean, I guess it's better than having an extreme liking for little girls, but like...
Yeah.
That's weird.
Still, yeah.
And Josh was an only child.
Actually, I think I'm wrong.
I think he had an older brother, but he didn't have a sister as far as I know.
Yeah.
So I don't know why...
I don't know.
That's really interesting.
Like maybe it's...
I don't know.
Like, I don't know what the psychology behind that would be.
Yeah.
Like why would you...
Maybe?
Maybe because they're weak or...
Well, I was gonna say...
Or he raised two boys and...
I don't know.
Yeah, but I mean, he's not really relating here, but maybe he like did have a liking for them,
and he made...
He thought that...
Obviously knew that was a bad thought, so he was like, can we just stay away from him?
Yeah.
Maybe he just...
It made him uncomfortable.
He turned it into anger instead of...
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't know.
The guy, he's dead anyway, so.
When the Phillips family decided to move to Jacksonville, Florida, this is where this all took place,
they moved, of course, into the house across the street from the Clifton's.
By all accounts, many people around the neighborhood before this happened said that Josh was quiet,
friendly, and well-liked by the neighborhood.
I mean, nothing out of the ordinary.
So he quickly became good friends with Maddie because, of course, she's just a loving little
girl, you know, wants to make everybody feel included.
We're gonna go back to the day that she was last seen, November 3rd, 1998.
Josh's father, Steve, was gone for the day.
His mom was not home either.
And he had a really strict rule.
He didn't like him having friends over, but he had a really strict rule.
When I'm not home and your mother's not home when you're home alone, no friends over at
all.
Of course.
I mean, I probably would say that to my 14-year-old too.
And after leaving her house, Maddie actually walked over to the Phillips home and knocked
on the door because that's what you did in the 90s.
Can Kenne come play?
That's what my friends used to always say.
She knocked on the door and Josh answered.
And she asked if he wanted to go play baseball.
And he was like, okay.
Even though my dad said, no, I can't have people over, he's like, whatever, I'll just
go outside and play baseball.
Right, yeah.
Because at least he's not breaking the rule that there's people inside the house.
Yeah.
So he's gonna go outside.
But it kind of seems like his dad's like, don't hang out with people when you're alone.
Don't leave.
So he went against his father's rules.
He said yes, and they proceeded to play baseball together.
So at some point during this game, Josh accidentally, by his words, accidentally hit Maddie in the
eye with the baseball by accident.
I guess he was pitching and she was trying to hit whatever.
Of course it's hurt.
And so she starts crying and she starts screaming.
Apparently it was hard enough that she was bleeding.
Yeah.
So I guess, yeah, I mean, it had to have been hard enough she was bleeding.
So she starts screaming and crying.
Maybe like, broke her nose or it's bleeding from the nose maybe.
Yeah, maybe.
So this freaked Josh out.
He was like, oh shit, like, not only am I not supposed to be out here hanging out with
people, now I've injured someone and my dad's definitely gonna find out.
So he does what any logical 14 year old would do and he drags her inside the house and hits
her with a baseball bat to get her to be quiet.
Because he was maybe afraid she was gonna say something to somebody or...
So during...okay, this was...trigger warning, this is bad.
He dragged her inside the house later on when she is found because unfortunately she does
not survive this.
She was naked from the waist down besides her socks.
Josh claims that her pants and underwear both fell off as he was dragging her in the house,
which you could have just picked her up, I'm pretty sure.
Like she's an eight year old.
It was later determined there was no sexual assault that occurred, thank God.
But when they looked at his records, he had looked up and watched porn before and after
this whole attack.
So I think personally, and I'm speculating that he intended to sexually assault her
and he couldn't.
He couldn't bring himself to do it or maybe she was already deceased and he didn't want
to or whatever.
That's terrible to say.
I literally have goosebumps because that's so disgusting.
That is gross.
So yeah, he dragged her inside the house and this is when he claims that her pants came
off.
So he gets her inside, she's still screaming, of course, she's still crying upset.
He hits her, I guess on the head or in the face with his baseball bat in an attempt to
get her to be quiet.
Of course this does not work, so he is then hitting her multiple times.
There was not a clear number, some sources said one, some sources said a couple times.
Either way, she was not that conscious.
She did not cry or scream anymore.
So then the next thing that he does is to put her, he thinks, I guess she's dead at
this point, I'm not sure if he knows, he had a water bed and so he removed the water bed
mattress and put her in there and then covered her back up with the mattress or the water
bed.
So put her body in between essentially what would be like the, I don't think that water
beds have a box spring, but like the frame, like the platform of the bed.
And water beds, I mean you've been on one, they're really fluid, so it wouldn't really
be that obvious that there was something underneath there because it would kind of conform around.
So anyways, and of course he's thinking this whole time like, oh shit, not only did I injure
this little girl, now she's in my house and my dad definitely doesn't want that.
So what am I going to do?
Like I'm going to have to shut her up somehow because if he comes home and she's screaming,
you know, and so then he, not to say this is logical thinking, but I'm assuming this
is how he was thinking.
And then he put her under the bed.
He actually, his father actually just comes home like shortly after this.
He actually goes downstairs and has like a full on conversation with his dad, just like
nothing happened.
Surprisingly I don't know if the dad noticed or he probably has blood on him, like from
something.
Maybe, I mean he's in his own house, he could probably wash up the change.
That's true.
Um, anyways, so they had this conversation, seemingly normal conversation, well then Josh
went back up to his room and noticed that Maddie was groaning and grunting.
She was alive.
Oh my god.
Um, so this is really bad.
He heard this and obviously realized she was still alive, so he removed the mattress.
He then cut her throat with a kitchen knife and stabbed her seven times in the chest.
I want to like cry right now, it's so sad.
Later on he's like, I don't know what I was doing this and that and the other.
Why do you have a kitchen knife in your room?
You had a conversation with your dad in the kitchen.
So he just swiped this thing on the way back up to his room?
I thought you thought she was dead already.
You know, what is the, that's planned.
Right, yeah, it's definitely planned.
But like you said, if he's 14 and he has the mind of an eight year old, I mean I know,
I mean we have a niece that's nine, you know, I mean, and she tells white lies and fibs,
you know, to get out of trouble and maybe that's not unlike what he's doing.
He thinks that no one is going to know.
He thinks that it can't be figured out.
And maybe that's where his, the impulse or the reaction kind of is disjointed from what's
actually transpiring.
Yeah.
It made sense to him to hit her because she's crying, you know, and that's-
Yeah, I mean, I completely understand where you're coming from.
However, it becomes very clear later on, especially in his statements, he never was in a position
where he didn't know right from wrong.
And it's obviously very wrong to not, I can see maybe the baseball bat thing, like, oh
my god, like I got to do something like panic mode.
But then after the fact, you're having a conversation with your dad and then you go back up to finish
the job, that sounds bad, but for lack of a better term.
That's where it gets me because I'm like-
Yeah.
And the sort of thing that's disconnected from what- clearly he thinks that if he tells
that fabrication that he doesn't think that he's going to get in trouble.
He doesn't realize how easily it can be found out that, no, somewhere along the line you
grabbed a kitchen knife knowing what you were going to do.
Yeah, exactly.
And also, again, here, playing devil's advocate here, if he was just afraid that her noises
were going to wake them up, sorry, this sounds really bad.
Why wouldn't you just like put a pillow or like something quiet stabbing someone and
slitting their throat when they're literally looking at you is very, very brutal.
Yeah, that's brutal.
It's personal.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So that's where it kind of gets-
There's some type of a weird gratification from that.
Literally.
Yeah.
And then the fact that he watched porn after this.
Oh yeah.
That's- oh, I actually just got chills.
So unfortunately Maddie ultimately died from those wounds.
Now the same day when she has not returned home by 5pm, of course her parents start to
get worried.
There's obviously cases where people don't come home and they're like, oh, they just
ran away in an eight year old, they were unlikely.
And at this point, they called the police.
They were like, we're not wasting any time.
She said she would be home by dinner.
She's not here.
That's not like her.
Like I know my child.
Yeah, she seems like a very responsible girl.
Yeah, exactly.
So upon learning that Maddie was indeed missing, law enforcement went ahead and opened a case.
It was reported that cops, reporters, and hundreds of people around the community came
in the search for Maddie.
Wow.
This included Josh, who joined the search for Maddie for seven days.
Two.
Everything had fallen well where she was and what had happened to her.
She was still, he hadn't moved her.
Oh no.
She was still in his room.
He continued to sleep on that mattress for the next week with her underneath it.
And like, I can see her face right now.
It is bonkers.
That's haunting for sure.
And from a scientific mind point, sounds gross, but there's decomp happening here.
Yeah.
And especially with that much blood loss, blood has a very specific smell.
But even when it's fresh, it's a very specific smell.
My son had a really extensive nosebleed once and the smell in the carpet was like, I mean,
I went to town with it with like bleach and everything and it still had this very distinct
smell.
Yeah.
And that's from a nosebleed.
I can't imagine, you know, a gallon's worth of blood.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm just so...
I can't even imagine what like your mind has to tell you yourself to like be able to...
Or what you have to think to like be able to sleep.
Literally knowing that there's a...
I mean, he's also 14.
What 14 year old parents doesn't go in their room?
Just wait.
Oh no.
So the search included everyone was scouring like the dumpsters and like the woods nearby
for like any evidence.
There was zero evidence in this case because of course all of it was under the bed.
Like there was no other evidence.
Yeah.
No one...
Exactly.
There was only one crime scene.
It's like there were multiple crime scenes.
Yeah.
So again, this has been a week later.
November 10th is now the date.
The Clifton's had just finished an interview with the reporter outside of their house because
there was a bunch of people there.
They had just finished an interview when Melissa Phillips, Josh's mom went into his room and
noticed a giant wet spot on the floor next to his bed.
Well, her first thought is, oh, the waterbed's leaking.
Like obviously it's a waterbed, right?
So she moved it to try to find the source and she was just hit with this like horrific
smell.
And of course what she saw, like I literally have full body goosebumps that I cannot even
fathom finding something like that.
Melissa's a bad bitch because the first thing that she did was run straight across the street
to the police that were right there talking to the Clifton's and told them exactly what
she saw and found.
Holy shit.
Oh, I literally am cold right now.
While they're in a news interview?
They had just finished recording an interview.
And so she ran across the street, she told the police, well, Josh wasn't home.
He was at school at the time.
So the police fucking went to the school and surrounded its ass and pulled him out of class
to arrest him for this murder.
How crazy would have been to be like a spectator to that?
Like I'm 14.
Just waiting your own business in high school.
Literally.
No, he was in middle school at this time.
Middle school, yeah, I think he was 14.
Yeah.
Oh, that's so weird.
So before this, thank God, of course, that's a terrible tragic thing that happened, but
Melissa was able to find this at the just the right time because they were actually
honing in on a different neighbor than they thought had something to do with her disappearance.
And the only reason that they thought that he was, he could be a person of interest was
that he actually failed two lie detector tests when it came to questions about his history
of sexual battery.
So it didn't include what those questions were.
And I don't not going to include his name.
Yeah, because he contained in this case.
Because it doesn't matter.
Yeah.
Either way, of course, after that, Josh was their top suspect and this guy was like a
I mean, I would say like, you know, this guy that might have taken the fall for it, but
eventually Josh was going to be found out.
I mean, how do you cover like there's nothing like that up?
There's no way that would have literally made the entire house smell like a couple days.
Yeah, yeah, there's no way.
So when Maddie's body was found, like I said earlier, she was unclothed from the waist
down with the exception of her socks.
With this discovery, that's when police went to the school.
So they figured out what was happening, they saw, you know, Maddie, then they proceeded
to go to the school.
They didn't just immediately go on, you know, Melissa's a word.
Yes.
So they brought him in for questioning and within two hours he gave them a full confession.
So it was like pretty cut and dry.
Yeah.
When he was arrested, the parents, this is so sad, the parents of the children at the
school that Maddie attended all went to go pick up their kids because they found out what
happened and there was literally witnesses that saw these children like sobbing.
Like with their parents, like trying to console them because they pulled them out of school
early because they found this out, of course, in the middle of the day.
Oh, it's just so awful.
Oh, and a few years later, Josh was actually noted as saying, even though he made no conscious
effort to, he kind of ignored what had happened.
Like he just kind of tried to disassociate.
He said that during his childhood, when things got really bad, he would take himself out
of the situation and like pretend like it wasn't happening.
And so he said that he ultimately like did the same thing during this.
Yeah, and became a coping mechanism.
And that was his explanation on how he was able to sleep on the bed for that long.
So it's hard to ignore.
Yeah, the thing.
Right.
So we're going to go to the trial now.
So due to the severity of the crime, Josh was actually going to be tried as an adult.
His trial was actually moved to a different county because they moved it to Polk County
because the amount of media in Jacksonville was just so much.
They wanted to kind of have like a little bit of a secluded.
I mean, well, within his rights to have a non-biased jury.
Of course.
Yeah.
So he was actually convicted of first degree murder by the jury.
And on August 20th, 1999, he was sentenced to life without possibility of parole.
Shit.
At 14.
Well, 14 when he committed the crime.
Well, he was 15 at this time.
So it was like a year later.
He was not eligible for the death penalty because the minimum age for the death penalty
in Florida is 16, which is bonkers to me.
That's 16.
Still 16.
Looks so young.
Yeah.
Um, it's noted that Josh didn't stand much of a chance at his trial.
And this is very interesting to me.
The defense actually didn't call any witnesses on his behalf.
And witnesses would have had.
Maybe his parents, maybe to like advocate for him.
Yeah.
Or I guess like character witnesses.
Yeah.
But get this.
Melissa, the mom later said that she did not agree with how his defense attorney, his
name was Richard D. Nichols, handled the case.
But apparently Steve, the dad told the attorney to do whatever he thought was best.
So the dad is still a piece of shit.
He's like, yeah, take it.
I don't care.
Yeah.
Pretty much prosecutor Bernie, Daila Rihonda.
She's now retired, but she was the prosecutor in this case.
She said about the trial quote, this was a devastating murder that will forever be in
the memories of anyone in Jacksonville at the time.
Historically, it was one of the most horrific murders.
There is no doubt about that.
Because it, that's terrible.
And then her age alone makes that just heartbreaking.
I mean, it's heartbreaking when it happens to anyone.
Of course.
You know, it's terrifying, but so young and so ambitious and had a lot of different avenues
that her life could have gone, given the fact that she was so talented.
So this is still the prosecutor quote, everyone was talking about it.
When you've got a missing girl and this missing girl turns out to be dead, I don't think there
was anyone who didn't know about this or who wasn't praying for her or attempting to find
her.
Awful.
Now in the year 2000, so a couple of years later, Josh's father, Steve actually died
in a car accident just one year after the trial.
It seems like it was alcohol related.
Yeah.
Maddie's parents also went through a divorce, unfortunately, probably due to stress of this
whole situation.
Worse.
And in 2002, an appeals court actually held up the same conviction.
So a couple of years later, they're like, nope, you're still life in prison without
possibly.
You're still a writer.
Yeah.
So in 2006, when Melissa, Josh's mom began seeking a new trial, believing that his age
at the time of the murder should have been taken into consideration.
At the same time, two officials that were involved in his sentencing said that they
were also having second thoughts about the conviction, which if it was my child and the
crime was that graphic, I'd probably be the same thing that Melissa's doing.
Like my son was 14, you know, you have to at least consider that in the trial instead
of just the crime itself, which is unfortunate, but people do.
So in 2005, new hearing dates were actually set for Josh, with the goal being to have
just have the charges at least reduced to second degree murder so that the death penalty
would be off the table and parole was an option later.
They can't just take the death penalty off and say that it was first degree or disfers
degree because of the savage nature of the crime.
Well, they didn't.
They didn't send it to death.
It was just, I guess it was still up in the air.
Maybe once he tried 16, maybe they were like, let's redo a retrial and maybe they could
do it then.
So to reduce his license because of his age.
Pretty much.
Yeah.
So and then if they did get, if they were successful in getting second degree, then he might have
the possibility of parole after like 40 years or something.
So this is 2008 now.
Josh was asked to write an apology letter to the Clifton family, but he declined.
And when asked why, he said that he wanted to apologize in person and he thought that
a letter wouldn't show his sincerity.
So he really does feel about about this.
I'm not saying anything, I don't feel bad for him.
You know, he did what he did, but it's clear that he is very broken up about this.
He's very merciful.
Um, however, Maddie's mom Sheila said that she did not want to see him in person even
for an apology.
She's like, sorry, but no.
Yeah, rotten hell.
Uh, I want to say like get fucked, but I'm trying not to say fuck so much because mom
said, can you say fuck way too much in the first episode?
People aren't going to want to listen to that.
Fuck.
I'm leaving that in there.
Fuck it.
I'll take that out.
The Supreme Court later made a ruling that stated this is like a new law that stated that
sentencing juveniles to a mandatory sentence of life without parole is unconstitutional.
So now they have to have a retrial or not a retrial but a resentencing because they
did something unconstitutional.
Now it wasn't then, but it is now.
So in 2017, they was a resentencing, but the judge still upheld Josh's life sentence because
he is now over the age of 16, obviously.
This is almost 20 years later.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, he actually had an appeal in 2020 but was also denied and he's actually still in
prison today.
He's 37 years old.
Still in prison.
He's literally been raised in prison as an adult.
I was going to say that's more than half of his life at this point.
During one of his hearings, uh, I think this is one of the resentencing hearings.
Hello, Clifton, Maddie's mom spoke out and she was noted as saying, quote, we were raising
our girls, this literally gave me the heaves.
Quote, we were raising our girls in a Christian home where we prayed every day.
What we didn't know was that 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.
Full bod, sheeves.
Seriously.
That was chills and heaves, if you didn't get that.
It sounded like I was talking about weed.
It was the GPs.
It was the Hebeys and the GPs.
Yeah, all of them.
I know.
Sheela also told the judge during his resentencing hearing, quote, the defendant now wants a
second chance to live a second life.
What does Maddie get to appeal her death sentence to?
Damn!
Bow-ow-ow!
Mike, drop, Sheela.
That's crazy.
What a bad bitch.
She also was quoted as saying, quote, should he ever get released from prison, I pray that
I will no longer be on this earth.
Yeah.
Damn, this girl's got it all.
I know.
She's just a mom.
That's a mom shit.
Now, I mentioned earlier that Maddie had an older sister, Jesse.
So I want to talk about her for a little bit because she had kind of a rough go of it afterwards,
of course, like anybody would.
Now, she got a chance to speak out as well at these trials and she was noted as saying,
quote, when I needed somebody to talk to, there was nobody.
Nobody understood me.
There are days when I go to the cemetery and I sit down in the grass because I don't have
anybody else to talk to, so I talk to her in the ground.
She was also noted when talking about her parents that, quote, everything stopped when
my parents divorced.
She mentioned that her dad shut down while her mom wanted to talk about it, so they had
two different ways of grieving and it really was not a good thing.
Sheela, the mom, moved out.
She moved in the same neighborhood but to a different house because she did not want
to be in that house across the street from the Phillips.
I don't blame her.
When talking about the house, Jesse said that her dad moved out but that she's still living
there and is in the process of buying it from him, actually.
She's going to buy the child at home.
She was quoted as saying, it's always been my home.
So the same house that they grew up in together.
Also, it's worth mentioning, just see and show how much of an amazing person Jesse is.
She was actually noted as like consoling and hugging Josh's mom at one of the trials because
she said in her own words that they both lost somebody in that.
Because not only did Maddie lose her life but Josh's mom lost his son as well because
she doesn't have contact with him even though it's not the same thing.
She understood that, which is like really...
Seems like these parents did a really good job raising their daughters.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Especially like, Sheela's a bad bitch.
Right?
Hell yeah.
She birthed a bad ass bitch.
Seriously.
So back to the trial and stuff, I said that he did a number of like resendancing trials,
especially after that differentiation in the laws in 2017.
His case was actually one of 80 that were like making their way back to do a resendancing
because they were all involved in that younger than 16 life conviction.
So they were making their way back to the fourth judicial circuit after the Supreme
Court said that it was unlawful to do this and that and the other.
And the reasoning behind this is that they're backing up of why they don't want this to
happen is because they said that science shows that the brain is not fully developed
until the mid-20s.
Yeah, everyone knows that.
And their statement was that an underdeveloped brain can make a person irrational and impulsive.
Yeah, that's every teenager ever.
Of course.
So that's not, I'm sorry.
I was irrational and impulsive when I was 14 too.
That doesn't mean that I'm doing shit like this.
You didn't have a body under your mattress.
Seriously.
We're going to go back just a little bit when Josh was 33.
So this was four years ago.
We have a quote from him.
A quote, I had no clue what life meant, what death meant, nor the depths of suffering that
would follow one act.
I had no inkling of how long suffering could last.
I have lived long enough to understand what suffering really was.
I did something horrible and I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry.
Even now after all these years, it is just so unfathomable that all of this could have
occurred.
It tears my mind to know that I stole such a precious life from you, from the world.
I wish I could take away your pain.
And it's like, I want that to sound genuine so bad, but then it's like, do you feel badly
for doing that or do you feel badly that you're stuck here in prison?
I think that there's a lot of weight to, and a lot that can be said about somebody that's
again growing up in a prison system where he's automatically exposed, and I'm sure
he didn't go to Juvie.
He went to prison at 14, 15, or 16 years old.
They try to make him as an adult, so yeah.
And so he's exposed to men who have made potential careers out of harming people, and to really
make a decision then and there, like, am I this kind of a person or am I not?
And I do kind of think that there's weight to what he said, that maybe he didn't realize
the magnitude of what that meant.
He just knew that he was in a pickle and tried to fix it.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I also, I kind of have the belief system, I mean of course there's a lot of exceptions
to this, but prison is not there for punishment, it's there for reform.
It's not meant to, I mean of course, again, some people, yes.
In a perfect world.
In a perfect world, it's for reform.
Yes, and unfortunately that doesn't happen all the time, but I don't believe that it
can't happen, you know, and especially we're talking about his age, he was so young, now
he's almost 40, like maybe there is, maybe he is a different person, you know, and there
was actually a couple people that have testified on his, not testified, but you know, advocated
for him saying that they don't believe that if he was released he would be a danger.
So I don't know.
A well-known psychologist from Chicago, his name is James Garbarino, testified during
this time at the retrial that he believes that Josh is truly remorseful.
He said that at 14 Josh suffered from the psychodynamics of his family, and he had a
father who was emotionally and verbally abusive with a mother who suffered from depression.
So I mean that's not easy.
It's not, like that's not an easy situation, you know, we've been fortunate not to grow
up in an environment like that, but I have lots of friends growing up that did, and there's
deal dealing with ramifications of what happened when they were kids, and I don't think that
parents, much like Josh didn't recognize in the moment that he was doing, he probably
knew he was doing something wrong, but he didn't realize the magnitude of it, I think
that's a perfect parent, no there's no perfect parent, I'm not a perfect parent, there's
probably things that I'm doing today that I will regret doing, you know, when my son
is older.
There's no such thing as a perfect parent, and I do think that even bad parents, if
you want to call them bad parents, don't realize that they're raising someone to be an adult
one.
Yeah.
And I think it's like a kind of a hard thing to swallow.
Just a couple more things, the psychologist described Josh as a teenager who was socially
isolated and estranged, he was quoted as saying he didn't feel connected to positive
experiences as an average teenager, he had feelings of hopelessness to despair, possibly
suicide which is not surprising given the psychologically abusive treatment by his father.
Before the resintencing hearing, actually Josh said that he would like a second chance,
but he was unsure if he deserved one, and he was quoted as saying, quote, maybe I deserved
to die in prison.
This resintencing remained the same with life, but in 2023 he'll be eligible for another
appeal or resintencing.
I don't remember which one it was.
I do find that interesting that quite a few people, and we have, I think we talked about
that with Wong's case, the one that we did, that people that tend to feel suicidal can
turn homicidal.
And I think that's pretty interesting, it's like they feel this pain and they don't know
what to do with it.
They mostly want to take it out on themselves, but maybe they're scared to, to do it to someone
else.
Now, Josh didn't have any diagnosed mental illness, and I don't want this to be a, well
they're doing a podcast about mental illness and then they're doing all these cases where
they're not mentally ill, because again, everybody's story deserves to be told.
And I actually think it's kind of fun and interesting to try to, of course I don't have
the credentials, I'm not a scientist, I'm a psychiatrist, but to try to maybe, from
my viewpoint of it, maybe determine or, you know, speculate about what he could have been
diagnosed with, how he got the proper treatment.
So I'm going to talk about that for just a second.
This is just me doing my own research.
This isn't, this isn't hold, holds no way, it's just my speculation.
So if I could diagnose him with something, I would probably relate it most closely to
depersonalization, derealization disorder.
Now this involves an ongoing or episodic sense of detachment or being outside yourself,
which is exactly what we've seen, observing your actions, feelings, thoughts, and self
from a distance as though you're watching a movie.
That's the depersonalization.
Other people and things around people that have this disorder may feel detached or foggy
or even dreamlike, and time may be slowed down or sped up and the world may seem unreal.
That's the derealization part.
People experience depersonalization, derealization, or both and symptoms that can be profoundly
distressing, can only last a few moments or can come and go over many years.
So that to me seems pretty similar to what he was explaining when he said that he kind
of ignored it, he didn't think about it, it went away, you know, like not realizing what's
happening.
Yeah, I, for sure when he was talking about, it's, it's in the evidence.
The evidence is that he thought that he could hit her that, and then once, you know, he
had battered her that he could cover it up under his mattress at 14.
I don't think that's the mind of somebody who really thought any of it out.
I really do think it was, now, you know, you talk about the knife and things like that,
that that scenario might have been different, but he was already way deep, you know.
But it's not like he tried to, he could have just dragged her to a field outside.
He didn't have to drag her inside.
Of course.
I think that in his mind he was like, okay, next one step at a time.
It's just in the moment.
It's not, and so that's what I'm saying is that that's definitely the mind of, even
in my opinion, not the mind of a mature 14 year old.
It does sound like a child.
It sounds like somebody, you know, you wet your pants and you're trying to hide it real
quick.
Yeah, stuff it up your bed.
Stuff it up your pants, stuff it up your bed.
Yeah.
No, well it does, it actually does, you know, go without saying, of course, that the crime
was very brutal.
However, I don't believe that he should have been charged with first degree murder because
first degree murder, the biggest, biggest thing about it is premeditation.
And I don't believe that he was like, okay, when Maddie comes over, I'm going to accidentally
hit her with the ball and then I'm going to, you know, I think it was second degree because
that's after the fact you're not planning it.
However, what holds the most weight is that kitchen knife.
You don't just have a kitchen knife in your room.
That thing is huge.
You don't need that in your room.
It's like a tiny knife, maybe, that is what like really resonates with me is that like
I don't believe that he intended to hurt her at all in the beginning.
However, what ultimately killed her was the stabbing and the slitting over throat with
that knife that after the fact she grabbed.
Yeah.
This is also, you know, again, when you talk about the abuse that the father, you know,
that he was subject to his father's abuse, we don't know what kind of a household they
had.
We don't know, again, if he's talking about the fact that he felt suicidal, he might have
had knives in his room.
That is a very good point.
Or maybe he was, maybe he had it in his room to defend himself from his dad.
Maybe he was planning on, you know, for a guy with his dad.
Yeah.
Huh.
I didn't even think about that.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
Wow.
Because now when I'm imagining this kid's like room, I'm thinking there's like probably
like, it's old to go boxes and like, you know, like laundry that hasn't been done.
And it probably smells like a foot anyways and like, you know, because it's probably, I
mean, just, you know.
All right.
Well, thank you for being here today.
We had kind of a little bit of trouble getting the microphone situation set up.
So you haven't heard any of this as it's been going on.
You've just been talking.
So you'll have to listen back.
What's kind of funny is I don't think we tested it.
So we'll just have to see.
Oh, no, I can hear you perfectly clear.
Yeah.
Anyways, well, we're going to come back very shortly.
I think we're actually going to have two episodes coming out this week, or we're going
to have this one.
And then right afterwards, we're going to have another one.
In the meantime, you can follow us on Instagram.
We are at diagnosing a killer.
You can also tweet at us at killer diagnosis.
And I've said this every episode, but I will have an email set up for you guys to email
us and give us any feedback, extra comments.
Like we always say, if we left anything out, if any of our information was incorrect, please
tell us.
We like to be accurate on the things that we're putting out.
Of course, we put a lot of our speculation in there as well, but anything that or if
you want to add something or if you have a case of your own, maybe it's like a hometown
case you want us to cover, please let us know and we'll definitely do our best to shuffle
through those.
All of the ones that are going to be coming in from all five of you.
I think it's like six or seven now.
Oh, well, we did find a few people in the last week.
Maybe I should put a disguise on when I go outside.
We're going to get the Roxy over here.
I know, we need to get some new sunglasses.
Anyways, thank you so much, we hope you keep listening to us and maybe we'll have Koala
on again because you all seem to really like her.
I like being here.
She's just smiling.
I like being here.
It's fun.
All right, until next time.
Love you.
Bye.
Love you.
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