thank you these are the legs of a 13 year old child swollen yellow and twisted these injuries are not the result of a car crash a sports injury or some disease no these bruised broken legs are the result of the deranged madman he's addicted to the sound of breaking bones and loves inflicting pain on his victims this is the story of Thaddeus Phillips the boy who survived the Bone Breaker Baraboo Wisconsin 1995. it's the night of July 29th and Thad Phillips is sound asleep suddenly he feels the sensation of being lifted up but this isn't
a dream it's the beginning of a real life nightmare see Thad and his family had moved to the area a couple weeks before and after a night out at dinner Thad fell asleep on the couch watching TV at some point he realizes that he's being carried to the house and Dad who's still half asleep in groggy out of his mind assumes it's his dad he's probably just taking him to bed as he's done many times before but the person holding him is not his father or his mother in fact it's not even a family member
as he becomes more aware Thad realizes that he is in the arms of someone he does not know however since the mystery man is so friendly Thad follows him into the night about a mile way to an old rundown house as they step inside it is an absolute dump a sharp stint fills the air and his dad looks around he knows exactly why the homes filled with garbage and rotting food all over the counters the floor piled at least a foot high The Stranger introduces himself as Joe and tells dad that later he's gonna have
a party and proceeds to Rattle off a few names some of which the boy recognizes from school Joe then asked him if he wants to go upstairs and check out some cool model cars and trucks he has before everyone gets there for the party and that agrees he then follows him up the broken wooden steps having no idea he is walking into the clutches of a monster and the moment they step inside the room Joe like a light switch changes from warm and welcoming to crazed and psychotic he then lifts up Thad and throws him
onto a filthy looking bed straddles him and pins his arms at his side the boy desperately tries to break free thrashing about wildly but 90 pound Thad is no match for Joe who is nearly twice his size Joe then grabs a hold of the boy's right foot and twists it until snap he's totally confused and utterly shocked he has no idea who this lunatic is and why he's doing this after shattering the boy's leg Joe lets up a bit relaxes and shrugs his shoulders as if to say sorry and despite his injury the young boy
frees himself from Joe's grasp and adrenaline is now pulsing through his veins this is life or death he jumps off the bed and just starts running he later tells police that as he's running about the house he can feel his leg in foot splintering with every step Thad makes it out of the bedroom flees down the stairs through the living room into the kitchen where the front door is but then Joe catches up to him and tackles the boy to the ground he then drags Thad who's kicking and screaming for his life back to the
living room and places him face down on the couch Joe then sits on the boy's back in like a wrestler takes his right leg and forces it above his head he leans on it with as much pressure as possible until his thigh pops and dislodges from his hip bone now his hostage won't be escaping anytime soon guys honestly I've never broken a bone in my life but this kind of pain irks me I've studied a lot of crime and this type of attack is quite uncommon but but the reason for it adds up but more
on that in a bit at this point Joe's personality completely shifts again and he becomes quite friendly the Bone Breaker continues this cycle for hours on end and when thaad isn't being abused Joe actually carries him around the house and they watch TV together and talk about life and this seems weird right yeah let's get some quality time together before you again break some of my bones but this is actually quite common with some of the guys that we've covered on the channel Harvey glattman for example would physically and sexually violate his victims but once
he was done he would cuddle with them and watch TV this shows that once their sadistic urge is satisfied they become somewhat normal anyway despite the fact that Thad is just a kid he somehow has the emotional intelligence to just play along he acts like they're just buddies hanging out so he can disarm Joe and get him him to let his guard down in his head he's thinking if I act like his friend maybe he'll stop hurting me show some mercy and perhaps even let me go and it's during one of these down times that
Thad asked Joe why he's doing this to him Joe tells him that he is fascinated with the sound of bones when they break that asks him why he doesn't just do them to himself and Joe admits that he's actually tried it in the past he just can't seem to get the angles right to break them in the way he wants right Joe further admits that he's actually done this before to two other boys and what happened to them I'll touch on briefly but let's just say it involves X-rays and a shuffle the next morning after
a few hours of watching TV together Joe out of nowhere picks up injured dad and Carries him upstairs to resume brutally breaking down the young boy's body his left ankle is grabbed and turned in the same way his right one was the day before Until It Breaks Joe then methodically coils the kid's skin until it quite literally looks like there are rubber bands wrapped around his leg and then he proceeds to twist his foot backwards pointing in the opposite direction Thad tries to fight back repeatedly hitting him in the head but this just makes the
Bone Breaker even angrier he grabs a pillow and Smothers the kid's face and threatens to break his neck in the same way he had his legs if he doesn't stop resisting and throughout the day Joe comes and goes from the house and each time he returns he twists and breaks a new body part this strange ritualistic cycle of evil and then nurturing continues as Joe tends to thad's injuries wrapping his legs in cast he makes out of socks he even forces the boy to wear makeshift leg braces and walk around the home to say this
psycho is perverse is a bit of an understatement thaad later tells investigators that Joe would get aroused and pleasure himself while watching the poor boy suffer he is the true definition of a sadist someone who gets off while inflicting pain on others and the worse the victim's pain is the more excited they get when nighttime arrives Joel finally decides to leave the house and go out with some friends thad's left upstairs sprawled out across the bed all his captor thinks he's unable to make an escape due to his mangled limbs but he couldn't be further
from the truth because as soon as that hears the vehicle door shut and pull out of the driveway he flings himself off the bed he then uses just his upper body summoning all of his strengths to pull his dead weight and crawl across the floor thad's fingers grasped the ground as he moves almost like a snake and makes his way toward the staircase and unable to walk down the steps he throws himself head first down to the bottom and passes out when he hits the ground he's awakened to Joe standing over him and he drags
the boy back upstairs and unleashes an anger unlike anything before he proceeds to get on top of Thad and start jumping up and down breaking each and every of his ribs and when it's over the boys thrown into a closet and the door is locked July 31st 1996. almost 43 hours after this unimaginable horror began Thad is thirsty hungry and getting weaker by the second he thinks that he might be bleeding internally and knows that if he doesn't escape soon he's gonna die thads still Trapped in the Closet fumbles through the darkness trying to find
a way out eventually he finds a large wooden guitar and smashes it into the door over and over again until finally it breaks down he crawls for a bit passes out wakes up crawls for a bit passes out wakes up does this several more times until finally he reaches the front door by the kitchen there he spots a telephone mounted on the wall it has a long dangling cord so he pulls and Yanks at it until the receiver falls off the hook onto the ground that doll's number one and the dispatcher traces his location and
police are sent in to rescue him and he's rushed to the hospital in critical condition when he arrives doctors say that he's in such bad shape that he was just within hours of passing away his legs no longer look human they are bruised and swollen beyond recognition his toes and kneecap perhaps are facing the wrong direction and is thigh and hip bone have popped out of place and are broken thad's also bleeding internally but the boy is still alive despite his injuries when he'd been rushed to the hospital he'd somehow managed to tell investigators that
his captorer now identified as 17 year old joe clark had in fact done this before and yes the guy who brutalized that is another kid the House of Horrors belongs to his parents who'd been away visiting his sister Joe's arrested a few hours later and had been found partying at his girlfriend's house when he's taken into custody when authorities search Joe's home they come across something truly terrifying inside his bedroom they find a notebook and inside is a list of two dozen other boys in the area several of them Thad knows personally and they're written
in three different columns in Joe's handwriting at the top of each column is a heading showing when he planned to kidnap a boy and what he wanted to do with them there are phrases such as get to now can wait and most disturbing the leg thing thanks to thad's bravery none of these potential victims experience the same fate that he had also remember how Thad told police that Joe had actually done this before well he can't remember the name of one of the victims but he does remember Joe telling him about a boy named Chris
Steiner who rewind one year earlier July 4th 1994. a kid named Christian Steiner disappears from his Baraboo home and there are signs that someone had broken in a slashed window screen muddy footprints in the house but authorities don't know who or why someone would kidnap a 14 year old boy they even speculated that he'd been a runaway until his body is found five days later his corpse is battered and Bloated and found Tangled in the branches in an isolated area in the Baraboo River the medical examiner determines the cause of death as drowning because water
is found in the boy's lungs however over the method of death is listed as undetermined so while the cause is drowning the method could be one of four things homicide which is murder suicide accident or just natural further the corner had only x-rayed the boy's skull not his legs or arms meaning the Steiners had never known what happened to their son until Thad revealed it a year later after Joe's arrest authorities dig up Chris's body from its grave an X-rays of his corpse are laid on top of X-rays of thad's injuries and shockingly not only
are there massive breaks in Chris's legs but they are identical to thad's injuries every place that Thad had a fracture Chris did too and his cause of death is changed from undetermined to homicide experts say that Chris had drowned when he was tossed in the river because he couldn't swim due to his broken legs there are two trials that take place one for Thad Phillips and one for Chris Steiner and side note there's a detail in fads that's just random and honestly a bit strange during thad's trial Joe admits to taking that but only to
hang out and had no idea how the boy had been injured because he had quote-unquote blacked out he pleads Not Guilty by reason of mental defect further the defense argues that Joe's mom had used drugs throughout her pregnancy with him causing developmental problems and that a year before the incident he had suffered a traumatic brain injury in a bike crash he'd fallen off the handlebars before hitting his head and this could have been a trigger her for his deviant behavior however the jury doesn't buy it and Joe Clark is found guilty and sentenced to 100
years in prison Thad then sues him for 21 million dollars and although he wins he'll never see a dime of that money in Chris's trial there's a similar result and Joe is convicted of his murder and receives an additional life sentence Joseph Clark is currently in prison where he maintains his innocence to this day