Boy Tells Police Killing of Girl Was Interrupted

A teenager told police he was beating an 8-year-old girl in his bedroom when his father came home, so he stepped out of his room for a bit, then returned to kill her.

The body of Maddie Clifton was entombed for a week in the frame of 14-year-old Joshua Earl Patrick Phillips’ water bed. The corpse was discovered by the boy’s mother when it began to give off an odor.

On Wednesday, the boy was ordered held at a juvenile detention center until his trial. He is charged with murder, but because of his age he will not face the death penalty.

Maddie disappeared while chipping golf balls with friends in her neighborhood. Police said Joshua stabbed her nine times in the body and twice in the neck and hit her in the head with a baseball bat.

Joshua “came out so his father wouldn’t go into his room, and he continued to hear some movement from her, some sounds from her, and after he got clear of his father he went back and somewhat finished the job,” Sheriff Nat Glover said.

Glover did not say if there was a motive for the Nov. 3 killing.

Maddie knew her neighbor as a playmate and friend who lived across the street from her home in the working-class Lakewood neighborhood. Joshua had no criminal record and kept a C average in school.

“There was no indication she had any reason to be afraid or had any apprehension to go with him,” said Glover, who said Maddie did not appear to have been sexually assaulted.

At San Jose Catholic School, where Maddie was a third-grader, stuffed bears, rabbits and gorillas were scattered among the flowers and notes at the base of a 50-foot-tall shrine to Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

“Maddie, we will never forget you,” one note said.